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Now we have planning in place, and a design we are happy with, time to get started. We are certain we cannot employ a main contractor to do the build - at 280m2, the MC estimates are in the £400k range. We need to keep it closer to £250k. Demolishing the existing was the first challenge. After a few calls, it soon became apparent that this would not be cheap. £10-£20k from the main demo companies. Lowest offer was £4 for a reclamation company to come in, demolish by hand and take all the natural slate, timbers and Belfast red clay bricks. There's upwards of £15k worth of material there, so jog on!!!! So, I started the laborious process of demolishing the house in September 2019. As it was a single story bungalow, it seemed like a doable job, esp as the walls were red brick with weak lime mortar. Wall render, radiators, floor boards, insulation, kitchen, plumbing, ceilings. The biggest challenge and worst job was the loft insulation. Somebody in their wisdom chose to use 100s of bags of loose EPS balls. Absolutely nightmare. Couldn't sweep them up, couldn't vacuum, couldn't let them mix with the rest of the materials. In the end, we ended up punching through ceilings, and using a leaf blower to pile all the beads up, then stuff in to numerous 90l wheelie bin bags, and off to the dump. Horrible job! Ceiling down, beads separated using leaf blower. Walls stripped, floors lifted. Joists and floor boards being kept for future use on outbuldings, furniture etc. Roof stripped of natural slate tiles. Mostly done from inside the attic, with slates lowered down on pallets on a telehandler. Walls were demolished by hand, with a little help from my pregnant partner and our "site car" VID-20200328-WA0006.mp4 All in demolition including putting in a wider access road and stoning the front of the house, £3k. Next: ground works. VID-20200328-WA0006.mp4 VID-20200328-WA0006.mp4

Not sold anything yet. Have an offer of 30p per brick for 3000, but holding out for 50p for the lot (15k or so). Cleaned Belfast brick sells for about £1 a brick of I can be bothered cleaning and stacking on to pallets. Haven't actually advertised, just had a few drive by offers. It did mean I was able to build my electric kiosk for cheap.

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.

thanks Peter. Just seen this. That would have been a good idea worth thinking of but I was under pressure. In the end I have gone for celatex. Thanks again for your time and advise. I really like having this community, just need to make sure I use it earlier in future!

Use the right window for the right place! I tend to not even use the 150 upstand around worktops anymore in kitchens and just run the worktops into the window reveals instead of cells... But anyway, the external elevation should give you a hint of what's happening inside, so people would know where the kitchen is on your house by the nature of the windows... have windows as big as are useful, certainly in the sitting room I'd go fairly low to make sure I can see out of them when sitting

Windows are normaly lower so you can see out when sitting down. If it was me I'd put a wide patio door in there to max the view over lake.

I am not sure what you are asking or what you want to achieve. Do you want it to look fantastic from where you took the picture as if it is a main elevation or just practical to live in and suit your needs?

No it will be simple to get it to bend to your will.

Am I correct in thinking the joists sit on a plate on the gabions where the joists are 60mm above ground and that the chipboard floor is fitted. If so I would consider leaving insulating the floor until the house is weatherproof and then possibly blowing in EPS beads if the oversite is suitable.

How about a more contemporary design. These from Denmark so check standards. https://idealcombi.com/windows/contemporary-windows/

You just treat it like you would a standard brick wall. Just open the perps up to give you the required distance.

Never white grout. It doesn't stay white for long at all.

You could use a Cedral stop end profile and extend it out the depth of the brick slips. Leave a small even gap at the end of the slips and fill either with the pointing material or mastic of the same colour.

Unless you are using a system that means the perps are set you will easily get this to work by slightly opening or closing up the slips. As it is shown, there are some small cuts at the end that look a bit crappy. Do these return round a corner?

I would be fuming! That's good to know actually. Maybe we should get my brother-in-law to take a look around as well. He's a builder so might see things we haven't noticed. Thanks again.

a note of caution, my mate bought a bungalow recently and had a full survey, only a few minor things mentioned, however when the removal chap entered carrying a heavy bed, he went straight through the floor!!! Turns out the whole ground floor had extensive woodworm and he has had to replace the whole ground floor, joists included. Tried to make a claim against the surveyor but their “get out clause” is they are not allowed to lift carpets ?........ buyers beware, surveys are not all they are cracked up to be (I have never had a survey, but I was a builder ).

Personally I would follow the background.

98% air tho. It's certainly not as bad in terms of composition as phenolics. Second your comment tho, would have though an opportunity for something like sheep's wool stuffed between joists? Or blown cellulose?

What is the depth of the void and what type of joists do you have. A sketch might be useful.

I had to challenge a BI once who tried to say my structural engineer design needed altering, I refused and said he was more qualified than the BI (which did not go down well) but I won in the end, asking the BI to produce evidence that my design was not “fit for purpose”. Do nothing.

It is (spanning over load bearing wall). I have specced the deflection at 8mm or better on the JJIs at 400 crs (joists require to be doubled on some of the longer spans). Not got to that discussions with the posi guys yet but if I go with them I will be making sure that its specced for decent deflection rates i.e. 8mm or better. We have 600 crs where i am just now and the bounce is more than noticeable so will definitely try to avoid that. I have tried just about all the suppliers in Scotland - MiTek and Wolf system manufacturers but they have all come in at a decent bit over the JJI equivalent - unless my builder is getting really good rates for the JJI's (he has got that quote and I can substitute it with my own joists and pay the difference - he will allow that) I don't know why I am finding there to be a bigger cost difference than you guys!

Worth a thought..great stuff from "self build on Skye" They are nearly finished and already enjoying life. I built the garage first with a shower, bog etc and old second/ third hand kitchen that someone was chucking out. Slept in a 14 foot caravan next to it so planners didn't boot us out.. going back a bit now . Installed the bath well before the first fix, a cylinder with an electric heater, just a wind and water tight shell. Still remember having the first proper bath in the dark in my own home...and I needed it! It's these wee things that keep you motivated and your head up!

You need to look at the standard deflection rates, then specify you want it better, I wouldn’t want anything at a 10m span, and I would also really look at avoiding 600 centres. You are only going to get one chance to do that floor, spend your money on that and take £2000 out of your kitchen budget, you can always upgrade that, but you will hate a bouncy floor forever.

I only have experience with Catnic/Tata and it does not take that long to be honest. Putting the panels down is easy, if it is just a straight up and over detached roof with no hips/valleys then you could finish that in a day easily. The setting out and doing the edges, starter panel and ridge detail a bit longer but nowhere near £8000 worth. I went on the day course with Tata and saved a small fortune by doing it myself.

Or a bar or seats or if you really want to torture yourself Pinterest is your new best friend.

No brickie would ever use a credit card for this method. It's a £50 note or nothing.