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There was not much in the way of progress from the last entry as we were already close to moving in. The plumbing was completed in the last entry and connecting some final electrical fittings was done soon after. After a decade since putting in outline planning it was time. Our furniture delivery has taken longer than anticipated and we are living with a bean bag for the living room seating and a mattress on the floor for our bed. But we are here. The first few days were spend getting used to living in a new space. As a family four we had spent the last six years living in a relatively small space, it is now great to have a room for each of our children and an extra bathroom. I am pleased with how the house is performing from an energy use point of view. We don’t typically get really high temperatures here and the external average temperature has been about 12c over the last few weeks, the house temperature has remained a comfortable 20c. I have been monitoring our electricity units on a daily basis and we are using between 9 to 10kw which is promising as my hope is that we can go six months or so in the year without heating. The real test will come in the winter as the electricity usage will probably be double, but we plan to make good use of our centrally placed wood burning stove. Once we are furnished, I’ll post some more photos. For the moment just enjoying the new house with the family. The next jobs are: - Ordering decking for a small decked area and for our access ramp - Spreading gravel around the house site - Gardening - Putting more material on the access road - Order some down pipes Thanks for reading.

Do you have a detailed SE design, based on ground investigation, to base these quotes on? I I.e. do you know the bearing strength of the ground exactly where your basement will be, ground water levels, any potential soil contamination that would complicate muck away? If not then you're getting 'best scenario' quotes but reality could be quite different - useful for budgetary considerations but risky to assume that they are not subject to change. Both the basement design (amount and type of steel & concrete plus waterproofing strategy) and groundworks will be highly dependent on ground conditions. Different soil types bulk up by different ratios and this drives the muck away cost (as it's per 20t truck but also by volume). Tricky access can also drive up costs as it just slows everything down. Some soil conditions can necessitate sheet piling instead of just battering back the ground and poor ground conditions can necessitate piling to support the slab. Bottom line is you won't know what you're dealing with and what the cost is (and whether you can afford it) until you have that ground report and it's always best to get one specced by the SE so you get the data they need. You then shop around to get the best quote for that work and when you have the report the SE can do your design - you'll know quickly if you need under piling or sheet piling to support the ground. When you have a full design, you can shop that around to get a comprehensive quote and can see if splitting the GW and build is cheaper. So, sadly you need to commit some ££ before you know for certain you can afford it. You can take a chance but if you hit issues, you'll have one very expensive hole in the ground. We went through all of this and had the pain of the GI company screwing up and having them to come back (at our cost) to get the necessary data, but we got through it ok in the end. Friends nearby discovered before the dig they had a stream 3m below their plot and had to pay for expensive dewatering during the build, however would have been a disaster to find that out mid dig.

Nick, I've been around JG and their collets for what? 30 years on gas air and fluid systems. How come you see problems with their domestic water fittings that don't occur anywhere else? How do these fittings leak? If it's fully inserted and under pressure, the pipe aint coming out...

Wunda are about the best price, but look around.

Was thinking the same thing. Quote for our 100m², 250mm slab with two layers of mesh is £6500.

Get an SE straight away - you'll need all your beams, slabs etc calculated anyway for building control drawings. I'm a designer, and it's never too soon to get data and surveys, and you can never have too much info. Get them on a fixed price basis. For ground investigation, you'll get a mini digger in and dig down a couple metres somewhere close to where you are building. The SE will climb down, grab a handful of muck and go "hmmmm" and take it from there. They'll then say if you need further investigations, boreholes etc. For basement design, they'll always assume worst case scenario, i.e saturated, low modulus soil and high hydrostatic pressure. I'm pretty sure our walls could be 50% thinner and have half the amount of steel... But I'm an environmental engineer, not a structural!

The Salus ones do as they’re geared and use stepper motors to change state. Others are a heating element that warms a bag of wax, and take up to 2-3 minutes to fully open / close. You cannot use solenoids as the momentum of the water flowing in the loop has enough potential to cause water hammer, hence the slow open / close normally preferred and promoted with the standard wax heads. Closed by default so you don’t get unwanted flow down one loop when another is calling. The Salus ones are great, and automatically balance the system by detecting heat on the return pipe and that makes the actuator arrest flow, thus leaving the remainder of the pumps potential to service the longer loops which have not yet returned warm / hot water.

A JCB 2CX (smaller version of @joe90's monster) is just under 2m wide, and might be a better bet, but there are a lot on the market that don't have a digging arm on the back, they have an air compressor for highway work such as jack hammers.

Always blended. yes, pump will switch off if you have a manifold wiring centre and have fitted actuators to each loop. ?.

just been out and measured it, 2.4m wide. Also it weighs in excess of 8.8 tons and will destroy your ground (it did mine) a tracked digger will do a lot less damage (should have got one really). I like the suggestion above of going to digger world and “playing”. I have been told the micro ones are not worth it (unless you need it to go through a doorway).

Crossed with peter.

Every UFH manifold needs a pump and a TMV. TMV’s cannot be pumped through, they have to be ‘sucked’ on, ergo a pump needs to be downstream of a TMV in a heating setup. TMV caps the max temp the floor will ever see, I’m sure there’s a reg there but moot unless you intend to not fit one. You should not ( cannot ) rely on an external Ctrlr to guarantee that the slab / screws won’t see the max temp of the heat source, so if said Ctrlr failed, on an ASHP, you could get up to 55-60oC floor temp which will cook anything that’s not high-temp tolerant, plus it would be a health hazard ( if a toddler or elderly were to end up on it ) or if anyone walked onto it barefooted etc hence the reg. UFH manifolds need the local pump to circulate water through the loops, and the ASHP circulation pump send the water to / from the manifold. Think of it like a figure 8, with the two circuits being connected but hydraulically separate eg both pumps can circulate at different flow rates without conflicting with one another. The IVAR blending set also has an inbuilt bypass ( so the ASHP pump never sees a closed circuit ).

Google Pvgis. Stick in your location and you can play with the angles and aspect and it will tell you what you are likely to get on average. I didn't see the point in trying to improve our winter generation as the improvement was minimal.

This particular post about upfront spending may be of interest, just as a sighting point for a lot of items.

That price tells me a lot. It's a common price point. In my experience its code for ... 'ok but' . The but varies. Buy a digger anyway. The thing about diggers is that they turn so many site tasks into a fifteen minute hold-on-a-moment-while-we do something that would otherwise take so much much more effort. We spent about £13000 on a good one. Loved and cherished it, over-maintained it. 2 months into a four year stay with us SWMBO called it : 'The Best Thing We've Bought' another BH member bought it. Just before Lockdown. The cost to us? The over-maintenance. And the VAT. The utility? Several thousands in saved hire fees, and many more thousands in saved aggro, hundreds of small two man jobs turned into - just a mo while I sort this -. Have a read

I hired a 1.75ton on a few occasions and having never used one before found it easy enough for trench digging and grading. We didn't want to tie up money and risk it being nicked so didn't buy one.

Not sure I would bother.... it will be a lot easier for the company to do the work and they will need a digger anyway to load up dumpers and trucks..... I think you should leave this job to the contractor and then if you only have a few other jobs just hire one in as needed. Buying diggers from private adds can be very risky And by the time you pay a professional to check out a few diggers that cost will also mount up. I love diggers And have been using them for 25 years on and off and really really need one Now.... but to get something decent in the size I need I am looking at about 15k.And just don’t have the budget. I am going to hire one as and when I need it. Not trying to put you off but seriously consider if you can justify it.

And as far as building control are concerned you can go upto 30sqm under certain conditions... If the floor area of the building is between 15 square metres and 30 square metres, you will not normally be required to apply for building regulations approval providing that the building contains NO sleeping accommodation and is either at least one metre from any boundary or it is constructed substantially of non-combustible materials.

There are toy ones that go through your front door. Then more useful sizes 1.5t to 3t, that will go through perhaps a 1.2m gap. Then the serious ones. I used a 1.5t to do a slab for a big conservatory, and it was fine. One thing to think about is whether you can tow it on your license with your vehicle.

Gross floor area, so internal floor area, inclusive of voids and walls.

Jcb's are all roughly the same size Mini diggers vary quite a bit but i would guess the one in the pic is about 1.9ton

They are lots of fun. Had a go in a 15t (big digger) and a 5t (larger mini digger) last week or so while ground works we're going on. Surprisingly easy and get the hang of. Then you hand it back to the owner and you see how it's done properly! Fun, but also dangerous and destructive. Telehandlers are the same. Even with the safety limit gear, it's easy to tip or roll a digger or handler. If you go for the likes of a C3X or other backhoe, you have the advantage of being able to fit forks to the front bucket. Not as versatile as a handler, but certainly handy for lifting a pallet of insulation from a lorry. They wouldn't be as manouverable as a mini dinner.

Thanks for the replies, spoke to planning today they had a complaint about a side window not being obscured and assumed it was the circled window, which it was not it was ground floor kitchen windows, apparently if he opens his landing window he can see my kitchen worktop and if i stick my chin on the worktop i can see his window. Theres a 6ft 8" wall within a 1m of the windows, and you don't have to obscure ground floor windows anyway. no work was carried out on side roofline before permission was granted on both plans there was nothing else they were concerned about it has creeped the misses out though so he may well of won

Much better. I am a massive fan of the garage being connected to the house. I would probably try and squeeze a window in at the other side of the kitchen next to the back door. Any reason for the small garage door. It would be very difficult to get two cars through there. Unless you plan to use the back of the garage as a workshop I would do away with the door and window and save yourself a couple of grand. Depends on your site layout but why not just go through the front door. The electrician will know where is best to put the board to route cables. If the back of the garage works then access should be a lot easier. If you need a water tank you would probably have space at the back of the garage which would be easier and cheaper than a hole. Again much easier access if anything needs fixed. As the garage is 8m long you could create a plant room in the back corner where the door is for this stuff. It does take up a lot of space.

I bought a JCB and learnt how to use it myself and it’s great fun, I would have struggled greatly without it, currently levelling the field after clearing up after the build. If you buy well and maintained it you will get your money back, go for it (but get a plant mechanic to go over it to spot any problems).

Or have a day at Diggerland, which reopens on 11 July. https://www.diggerland.com/ If you plump for one, then they are very very useful - Salamander Cottage blog has a couple of posts about it. (You need to like grease)

Thanks all for your valued input! We have come to the same conclusion; that the small protruding portion of original dwelling creates a rear & side PD extension issue, which in our instance hinders a rear full length extension. Should it not have ever been there, or have been a previous extension to the main dwelling - we could have extended fully along the rear without challenge, what a silly quirk! As such we are revising our scope to remove extension 'A' altogether, and increase the size of extension 'B' to finish flush with the rearmost section of the house. As we see it this would be fully compliant with PD for a side extension as it is less than half the width of the existing dwelling, and would still give us a similar square meter-age overall. Is this how you see it too, we would be interested to know? Thank you

On the subject of escape windows, I found my particular window supplier (Ideal Combi) was well clued-up on the requirements. I was able to simply say to them that I wanted the smallest compliant opening section and they specified it, including taking account of the angle to which the window would open.

For any window you have and are proposing to be used for escape purposes, just make sure it complies with the escape requirements, i.e. max 1.1m above floor level, min. opening area of 0.33sq.m with a min. dimensions of 450 x 450mm, etc...

You could hire a mini digger out for a weekend and see how you get on. Some people can take it them very quick. Others have no hand to eye coordination and are painful to watch. If after the weekend you think your near enough getting the hang of it then it will be used for more jobs than you think. When your finished with it and if it's kept in good condition you won't lose much money on it as well.

from what I remember your right that you don't want rainwater going into your septic tank, I guess it puts to much flow through it and causes problems with the leach field but I am not sure About specific reason.....

A rather splendid looking Box Delta if I'm not mistaken. Oh, and the house looks splendid too! ? I envy you living on Skye - some of the best Pollack fishing to be had there - which you'll have time to do now the house is finished. Enjoy! Tim.

Yes you are not far off the mark that is is a steep learning curve. We all make mistakes, even the "pro's". When you do, prepare to pick your self up and march on. It will be hard at times and every project is differant. If you put in the work things will go better at times than you expect, so look forward to that also. We talk about luck? Seems to me that the folk that put in the work into the research and consider advice seem to be a bit more lucky in general..just and observation. There is however a another bonus in this. You tend to get a home or say an extension that belongs to you, no one else has the same! Maybe adapt what you read here and make it your own. There are a lot of folk on this site that have extensive knowledge and experience so they can really help you form a balanced view. When you get stuck they will make time to help you. Remember, it's your project and your decision so you maybe want to take as many views as you can, and make what is called an "informed client decision" This is still one of the few sites that are not commecially driven (at least I think this for now). The "structural side" of this is my thing and I try, if I can, to chip in. Make the best you can of this site. Digest the information you get here and make your own informed decision. Take that approach and it will serve you well. All the best. Gus.

Well done. Try and find some time out to be proud of and reflect on your achievement. That will be hard to find as by now you'll have realised that island living is very rewarding, socialble and a great place to bring up kids. All the best.

Thanks for everyones comments on changes we could make, made us think a lot and we gave decided to link the house to the garage. We know it will add a bit of cost but hopefully it will be our forever home!

You did well to specify the blue sky. I hope you took control of the kite after the picture was taken. Pesky kids spoiling your fun!

Very nice, well done, you must be proud. We don’t use our woodstove very much but it’s lovely in the very cold weather, so nice just to watch at times.

The Spinklers ! The Sprinklers ! (Code for: you may as well consider making it open plan ? . You will understand that one as you learn the ropes. ? ) Sprinklers inhabit the nightmares, and trigger the dreams, of self-builders in Wales. It's actually a really good example of how regs can guide your decisions and help you be more creative because of external limitations. I'll explain tomorrow evening when I am back from hospital treatment. Your Mission, should you chose to accept it, is to find out what is distinctive about how self-builders handle Fire Sprinklers and Fire Alarms in Wales.

I am with Bitpipe on this. In a previous job I had to deal with a Dutch firm for machine spares and repairs. Their emails and spoken conversation came across as abrupt and rude. I am very thick skinned but this took me a while to get used to. No one on our site (150 employees) could string a sentence together in Dutch but our counterparts could all speak and write in English.

ok. thanks. I understand it now. my business is VAT registered but I'm not sure an excavator can be considered a business purchase for an IT company! unless I were building my own datacenter of course. hmmm......I wonder......

Shall we try by talking slowly ........?? DHW doesn’t need a TMV on the input to the coil but does need it from the output from the storage whether its UVC or SunAmp or TS. UFH should always have a TMV as you want to blend the floor temp to a maximum temperature to prevent overheating - trusting the ASHP to do that, and also only having the ASHP pump to circulate water in the system is a really bad idea.

sorry, been out all day (in my JCB?), yes it’s big, (See above from @Construction Channel, but mine is old and leaky) I bought it as it’s a multi task machine, digger, grader, shovel, crane, fork lift truck and been invaluable over the last 4 years. From what you say above if you could do all your jobs in one week I would hire one, take half a day to get used to it then crack on. Mine will be fir sale soon as all the big jobs are nearly done (but it’s been fun). A chap I used to know years ago who was a multi millionaire used to spend hours in his JCB just shifting stuff around just fir the hell of it!.

In the spirit of encouraging the live theatre... OH NO WE DIDN'T

Hey @Abbi ; welcome. There is tons to learn and lots of mistakes to make ( talking from my own experience of course ). Now is the time to be brave and creative though. I can hear a groan coming from the regulars......... Have you considered walk on glazing?. For that wow factor........?