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If water gets past the grout/tiles, it runs down the tanking membrane and onto the tanking tape which is lapped onto the bath/shower tray, thus directing the water back into the tray rather than the board behind getting wetter and wetter until it eventually shows on your celing below

I thought I would put a post together for those that are looking for windows, replacement or new build. As someone who deals with final order placing / final quote discussions. One of the things that crosses my desk on regular basis, is that the "other supplier" is more cost effective. Which leads me to ask myself "more cost effective against what" are you comparing apples for apples? When I ask people to compare, what we generally explain is to look at the following (see below) if they are not willing to supply a copy of the quote without prices. Product - is the product similar. For example are you comparing a Timber Aluminium cladded window with a Timber Aluminium cladded window? Glazing - Is the glazing on offer from both suppliers comparable? Is it double glazed v's triple glazed for example or is it float glass v's toughened or laminate? Check that doors have toughened/laminated glazing Check that windows within 300mm of a door have toughened/laminated glazing Check that windows below 800mm from the finish floor have toughened/laminated glazing Check that windows that are 1400mm in height or above for toughened/laminated glazing. Most suppliers will start to consider toughened / laminated from 1400mm onwards, some will still be float glass. Check triple glazed glass units. Some suppliers will only toughen the inner and outer panes and leave the middle pane as float glass, others will toughen all 3 panes (I recommend all 3 panes as toughened) when required. Why? quick example is from experience, a customer in the north west of Scotland had the middle pane as float glass in french doors, the doors are recessed with wall on either side. It effectively became a wind tunnel. What happened is during high winds, the door sashes had that much wind pressure constantnly, that the door sash was pushed away from the frame slightly and a rattle effect occurred (only thing I could think would cause this to happen). As a result the middle pane (float glass) shattered. This required the whole sash to be replaced, as the glass was glued into the frame on that particular product. Timber - Is the timber comparable, are both using spruce/larch/oak/pine etc.? Are any of the products finger jointed as standard (which is more cost effective versus fixed timber, but not as aesphetically pleasing). Is the timber cut from from one section of wood or is it individually glue laminated timber? Ug values - A 0.5Ug can be quoted by suppliers but the costs vary dramatically. One of the reasons for this can be the glass make up and the gas that is being used. Some quotes won't tell the gas being used but it's safe to assume that if it's 48mm glazing it is Argon. Pay attention to the spacer distance also, not for cost but if the spacer is above 18mm, convection can occur of the gas filling (gas moves around in the unit). Hinging - Are the hinges concealed or are they exposed? Door Hinging - Pay close attention as suppliers will have quoted standard framing on doors, others may have increased the widths of the jambs to increase the space available at the hinging for plastering behind. RAL Colours externally - are the quoted RAL colours the same? Internal colours - have they quoted the same? Some will offer the standard colours such as a clear lacquer, others will have them painted - does this have any impact on price comparison. Sizes - have any of the units been split, due to not being able to achieve the size required? Some suppliers will not be able to do large sizes, others will be. Look out for compromises. Don't always look at the end figure and immediately reject a quote as being to high, compared to the others. Most suppliers will have the supply price first, then additional items such as window cills, compriband, membrane, installation etc. which are optional to the quote and not necessarily required but may be included in the total cost at the end. Most self builders like to take on the mantra of doing the whole build, others would like to leave this to the supplier or builder and or source their own materials if supply only. What is being offered with the installation service, are the installation options / costs comparible to each other? Who takes responsibility for the windows upon arrival? Generally speaking most suppliers who are installing, should be taken responsibility from the moment the windows leave the factory, to the moment the windows/doors have been installed, sign off. If supply only, the responsibilitygenerally passes to the client once the offload commences. So it is important to document the windows before offload, during offload and once offloaded. The manufacturer will normally have documentation / pictures before departing the factory, it makes life easier on whether a claim with the haulage company or whether a claim with the supplier is required (both should go to the supplier who should deal with it). Warranty - how long is the warranty, what does it cover? Last but not least, is the quote comparible? Have the suppliers referenced things the same way or are have the drawings been scaled and then referenced by the supplier (this happens a lot when no window schedule exists)? A lot of architects don't create window schedules for some reason (one the major parts of a build and most costly aspects) and problems of missing windows can be encountered, due to the elevations not always showing "hidden" windows which can be seen on floor plans. Some suppliers can miss this, which then impacts that quote. Hopefully some people find this useful, of not apologies for the long read

I have an air blown sewage treatment plant with a Secoh EL-100 air pump that had been installed for ten years. The air pump stopped working the other day and when I opened it up the inside was covered in metal dust. The magnet had obviously stopped running centrally and had been rubbing against the metal surrounding the coils. I don't know why it did that but I've replaced it with a Secoh JDK-100 and hopefully it will last at least ten years as well. It has run continuously for all that time so not too bad. The new one uses a lot less electricity so one bonus.

If you haven’t found a plot yet I wouldn’t spend to much on your design/layout beyond just messing about. That was my mistake. When I found a suitable plot (with house on it to be demo’d) I had real difficulties doing my design. I then realised because I’d spent so long thinking about my perfect design it had influenced my creative juices. I had to teach myself to forget my old designs and start afresh. My plot was funny shaped and had great views which my design needed to take advantage of. Also the style you would love to build may not be acceptable by planners in certain areas. You’re better off having a wish list accommodation wise and assembling a portfolio of house styles You do like (Pinterest etc) for when you find your plot. Then the fun starts !

I thought this too but wouldn't worry about it too much. Certainly avoid very bespoke things like 2.2m doors or 2.8m ceilings if you want to save money, but built dimensions are unlikely to be exact enough and a lot of fittings as well as tiles actually benefit from not fitting exactly, eg framing around kitchen cupboards and tiles are usually laid with a grout line in the centre of a room and cut at the sides.

Welcome, As people have said you can probably save a lot doing all the work yourself. Many people are coming in the £1500-2000 a square metre range when using a main contractor and high end finishes and insulation. More modest tastes can probably get you in the £12-1300 range and doing as much work as you suggest yourself could well get that down to £1000 a square metre. I really would caution you on the time it will take you though. That is a large house. If you got a builder to do it I would expect them to take over 6 months after the shell was finished. Doing a lot of the work yourself could easily take two years. On a personal note, I am going to retire next year after working away for 18 years. I very much look forward to spending time with my family. The kids will be grown up and away soon enough. I would avoid a basement unless it is the only way to get the floorspace that you need as they are expensive to build. If you can get the same size of house on the plot above ground then do that. Using the roof space on the other hand is cheaper space if you want a larger house, a nice alternative is high ceilings upstairs in some spaces. At the moment, I would just plan and plan and plan. How all you use rooms, who will be there, where will the furniture be, what way does the window face? You can always redecorate etc, but once the fabric of the house is built you are pretty much stuck with it, so that is the key thing to worry about. You have a nice spacious footprint which is good, but I think you need to work on the layout. Overall the man issue is that the allocation of space between rooms seems odd with bathrooms larger than bedrooms and 2 rooms that are only 3x3m then 2 that are 2x3m Downstairs - 1. We wanted a grand stair which it looks like you have gone for too, but it is too close to the front door. It will make the hall feel cramped despite being large. 2. Study seems about right, but the snug/tv room which would expect to have more people in it is too small. We have a cinema room and everyone just ends up in there watching the TV on the big screen anyway, so I would worry it wouldn't be used. 3. Is that a pantry or utility room? Fine for a utility, too large for a pantry. We considered a pantry but it didn't fit neatly into the floorplan. Now when I consider that all the food in the house fits in the fridge, freezer and two cupboards in the kitchen I think a pantry would just lead to storing lots of stuff we don't use. 4. The kitchen is too narrow. You would struggle to get a sofa in there next to the table and feel comfortable. Keeping circulation room around furniture is important to have a feeling of space. 5. The gym is too small. We have been using a larger room (4.3x3.5) than this since lockdown and find it too small. What we have though is french doors in the room, so we often exercise between inside and outside which works really well. I would want access to the garden from a gym. What I would do is combine the snug and library into one room like a very formal lounge/library. Then I would make the kitchen lager so it has a proper sitting area using space from the pantry.I wonder if you designed the house from the outside in. For our house I gave the architect a list of rooms that we wanted and the rough sizes then he designed the house around them. 6. 5.2m is not deep enough for a garage, I made this mistake on my last house. Plenty of large cars are around 5m long. You would barely be able to get it into the garage and not be able to get past it. I reckon you need at least 6m and ideally closer to 7m if you can. As the garage is 10m across I would probably put the car area at one end or the other rather than in the middle. I would also consider putting the utilities in the garage to have more space the house. Upstairs, that hall will be really nice, we also have an upstairs laundry, it is great. 1. Especially as you say you may sell you really need to have en suites. 2. I would reduce the size of the bathrooms and add in ensuites, maybe losing one of the small rooms. I think this is enough detail for now. I suspect you could go back and redo the plan once you hear people's input.

We did all the drainage and treatment plant installation, dug trenches for and laid water pipes, painting and decorating and generally keeping the site tidy. Tiling and wooden floors were laid at reduced rates by guys we’d used previously, biggest savings were really made with us sourcing all materials.We’d has a turnkey price previous to starting and it was £100k more than we spent and not to such high spec.

The doctor will now see you..

I needed 2 pints and 3 reads of that..... OK. No tanking under the tray. Tanking is on vertical walls only. Tank from where the wall hits the floor to 300mm above that junction. So basically a 300mm tanking skirting board. There. Now go do, and post the pics in the morning.

You sure you haven't got a white painted, Welsh holiday cottage?

Push fit. for use only with solid core cables, just strip and push into the holes in the end facing in the picture. you can fit 4 cables per terminal. The slots in the top are probably for a screwdriver to release the cables.

That’s a straight push in. Just needs solid twin & earth cable.

Sensible woman. @mjward, what Gary ( @nod) is too modest to mention is that he is a very experienced, professional builder. So what if his spell check has a sense of humour? I keep hoping he might find a plot near us so I can go round and pick his brains. Mind you he gets up at 5. Even at Christmas ?

At the very least built the roof with Attic Trusses. the rest you can do relatively easier later if you want to.

Sure understood. Re kitchens you’ll read a lot here about a company called DIY Kitchens. Have a read of the posts. I swear by them. Yes they come rigid fit with metalwork & doors attracted. Easy peasy, worktops are harder get someone to do them for you. If you take your time & have the right tools kitchens Can be installed by the Self builder very easily. Plenty of YouTube videos. The one advantage of self building is you can ensure your layout means simple installation of kitchen eg no weird angles etc. Doing a run of tall units plus an island as commonly seen is a doddle.

Welcome! The problem with diy is; it’s a lonely job, everything takes much longer than you think it’s going to and you end up getting fed up with it. The house we built before this current one was 385m2 and really much too large for a couple with a grown up son , we had a studio flat above the integrated garage for son so the two of us rattled about it for 8 years before finally deciding to sell. My hubby (and myself) and son in law worked every spare minute they had ( as well as working full time) for 18 months. We had a couple of joiners and a couple of brickies and an electrician and everything else was self built, we spent New Year’s Eve laying underfloor heating pipes and spent 2 winters in a caravan. Would we go this way again? Never! We built the current house with builders although we did do a lot of incidental work and sourcing of materials and not everything went smoothly but we managed to get out of the caravan and into the house within 6 months (although we’re still doing garage and drive on our own and it’s been done to quite a high spec for£1k per metre.

Sounds about right. Chamber will be £150, benching and backfill, excavation etc will be about right. If they have to do external backdrops then these take a lot more effort and bits to make them work.

Quicker hot water tap My wife thought I was being extravagant spending a £1000 on a tap while I’m happy that we purchased Grohe and Gebrits for the bathrooms The free standing extremely heavy tub looks amazing But we’ve never used it Same with two of the showers While we have UFH my wife insisted on a wood burner 3k well spent One big spend was importing 175 m2 of Italian Porcelain slats Pretty happy with those and great to lay My wife’s indulgence was a German kitchen with quarts surfaces While I saved quite a bit fitting it myself I’m not convinced that they are worth all the extra cost and 7k on appliances was more than I would have spent We could have got below 800m2

Ok so you have to give some thought to the fact that if you are doing a lot of the work yourself and you,’re not a tradesman the build will take longer and the family will be living in a building site / caravan for some time. You might therefore want to think about renting but by the time you add that in you might be worth going more towards a more turnkey service. Your proposed house is huge and it won’t be long before you and wife are living in a very large house when the kids are away. Less of an issue if you intend to sell when the kids leave home. An option for you could be to build a smaller house with less personal involvement. So you all get to move in quicker, perhaps you could do the kitchen something like that, perhaps provide help to the trades. And that’s you in a nice house in the country. Then move to phase 2, with your increased knowledge, and build a big double garage with accommodation above. Something you can do yourself more hands on. So you have the smallest commute between home in country and your project. I was like you wanted to get hands on and save money but wife persuaded us to go turnkey but I’m doing the kitchen. Then landscaping and the most luxurious manshed known to, well, man. House is big enough for us as a family, small enough that when daughter leaves home we won’t need to sell because it’s too big. you’ll have seen those self build TV shows where the fella ends up working 16 hours a day for 3 years and misses his family growing up. But it’s broadcast in a 55min show. Also think god forbid if you got injured or ill mid build.

I would do a bit of re, thinking. Why hex a therm, it’s possible the dearest insulation you can buy. Why timber shuttering, if you use one of the insulated slabs with the upstand you don’t need shuttering. If you look look at what sort of price people have paid for their house slabs your one is very expensive. There was a post a week week ago regarding cost for a slab, I think from memory it was on average £145-175 a m. With ground works on top of that. That hexatherm is £60 a m ??? I would leave that to the big civil engineering companies.

I used this for my trays:

Your prelims are for managing the job, RAMS, PPE etc. May also be for overheads costs and profit. Skips - for concrete pump washout? Offcuts from insulation. Packaging. Pallets. Pipe and duct offcuts. Tree roots. Not sure how deep the foul is going but it doesn't sound crazy. Can you exclude any of these from their works and do yourself? At least now you have prices and quants you can compare to others / look at SPONS.

Hello Martin & welcome. My turnkey house is costing circa £1200-£1300 sqm. 214 sqm. NE Scotland. Medium-high spec. Family of 3 with a 10 year old. Also recently retired. Is the idea of doing the work yourself motivated by budget or by wanting to keep busy/project. And also can I ask age of kids/ is spouse retired. All relevant to advice I can offer from my own experience. Bozza

First picture you appear to be pretty tight to the frame, using the thin nozzle for the PU foam, might be a challenge to fill. I would try and squeeze in a 3 to 7mm expanding compriband and repeat on the right side on the inner and outer section of the frame but you might just be too tight. You won't need anything else, no need for airtighness tape. I would PU foam the bottom and apply an airtightness tape here, you have got a large gap at the bottom. I would suggest compriband but it wouldn't be economical to do so. A single roll would be approx 5 to 8m length and you would waste about 4m of it, costing in excess of £100 for 1 roll.

yep, waste pipe is in front of the hot & cold supply. You need to take the PB layer off and maybe a bit of the insulation. I tidied it all up before the unit went in (more insulation etc) but it gives you an idea. The bottom pipe feeds an external tap - I wanted to be able to drain it from inside the house hence the drain plug.

I heard/read, on here I think, that the carbon intensity of grid electricity is dropping for SAP purposes. May be worth checking that out. https://www.cibsejournal.com/general/sap-in-building-regulations/ And do yourself, and everyone else, a favour, forget all about wood burners.

Welcome I brought five Brickies in to build the shell I did the roof and slating to get it watertight and pretty much most of the rest between my wife and myself 283 m2 Came in at 830m2 Pretty good standard fit out German kitchen and three bathrooms Italian tiles throughout Sash windows 400 m2 of paving We are just in the process of completing the purchase of two more plots I would be very disappointed if we don’t complete the build for under a £1000 m2

Fair enough but if its basics like foul pipes, chambers etc then an evening on the internet will sort you out. Appreciate that blocks, concrete, type 1 etc will all be more locally supplied and those vendors may be less willing to deal with a newbie.

Can you post the build up as to fail SAP you must be barely over Building Regs. make the following changes and see how it comes out. Add on 25mm of PIR to your floor, up the insulation in the attic to 500mm, neither of which cost much. Next option is to (if it’s trad build) expand the cavity to 150mm and use blown beads. Finally go to a 3G window (even basic uPVC) and you’ll exceed BRegs and get a decent SAP score.

Wow, ten years is good, hope mine lasts that long, can’t remember what pump I have but secoh sound familiar.

Hi All, Sorry to resurrect this post but seemed better than starting a new one. I have recently had my SAP calcs done for my self build (yet to start) The SAP calcs failed our build as we plan using gas for hot water and heating. Solar hot water has been suggested as a solution. However, it really doesn't seem cost effective unless my figures are wrong. Could any of you wise members advise me? Yearly gas saving £120 ( checked old bills for 6 month summer usage ) RHI payment £230 pa ( from official site ) Over 7 years I would save £2450 With an estimated install cost of £4.5K having one of these systems is going to cost me £2k after 7 years. Am I missing something? Why would anyone even consider a solar hot water system? Unless of course I am missing something which is quite possible!! Thank you for reading

As an alternative, get the supply list and organise it yourself. Many trades do not get that spectacular a discount from suppliers as their main concern is deferred payment / credit on account etc to manage cashflow. The client ultimately pays the bill so the trade is not that price sensitive, some may add a small margin on the materials. I guarantee you will match or beat his prices, if you shop around and play a few supplies off against each other.

I did have one but I removed it about a year ago because of the risks with maintenance.

Naked Rambler...

Before I finish my bathroom I'll wager.

I am sure we discussed this before? It's a no brainer. Air blower type treatment plant and discharge to your stream. It really is a simple and easy system with very little to go wrong and very little maintenance.

Next person who askS me that is going to be handed a paint brush and a pot of paint. Every bloke that comes on site wants to use the Geberit Aqua Flush. Wimmin don't want to. Appen's cus there's no door on't bog?

RHI is valid even if it's used for space heating only, there's no policy requirement it contributes to domestic hot water heating, let alone that it must provide 100% of it. In fact the rules around Legionnaires pretty much requires there's a secondary DHW heat source. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/environmental-programmes/domestic-rhi/applicants/eligible-heating-systems Heat pumps don't have to provide domestic water heating to be eligible, but may do so

and don,t forget to give him the branches back maybe thats the solution to the robina - -if tennant is suddenly told your going to dump all the branches in his garden from the over hanging tree --maybe he will get hold of the landlord for you or maybe just inject it with round up with a hypo needle at night

(I'll also drop this post on the other thread) I think two key points amongst others for you are: 1 - If you go for a treatment plant, avoid one where any mechanics are in the goo. When it breaks you will be in deep sh*t, literally. Some bubble air through instead. 2 - Decide whether you want something powered or not, which will help refine your options. We used to have an unusual thing called an Aquatron for our last 15 years at the former house - which was also used in the famous Grand Design in the Cotswolds with the barn supported in mid-air, which was iirc the first Certified PH in the UK. These are easier if you have a bit of height difference (ours was installed using a Ha-Ha, GD one had it in the basement). There are other possibilities. These are threads you may find as useful background, though a couple of years old: Ferdinand

So the RHI can be done and then an Immersun added to any “spare” immersion. If it’s not wired in then it’s irrelevant when he does the calculations ....

@Roz 1) Your fabric heatloss is 95W/K and your ventilation heat loss 62W/K (in January) so a total of 152W/K 2) With a 22°C difference outside to inside then your total heat requirement is 22*152 = 3344Watts 3) It would be usual to oversize the boiler by 15% giving 3344*1.15 = 3846Watts and add 3000watts for DHW giving a boiler size of 6344Watts 4) Casual gains are estimated at 483Watts but probably safer not to subtract these. I would say from these figures a 5kW heat source is to small.

I think this is mainly meaningful once you have a list of what you want the rooms for and how you intend to live. Though I find that adding half a metre to once dimension adds more perceived space that might be expected, but that is in the context of contrasting to a normal practice. So eg a 4m x 4.5m lounge feels substantially spacious even compared to 4m x 4m, and you have something that is still a practical room once you have shelves or a desk at one side. Ditto 3 x 3.5m over 3m x 3m. Placig the door on the short side in that dimension may give a perceived extra size in a normal room as you are looking along something which you expect to be square rather than across it and your brain may assume a larger width too. Or it could work the other way ? . Also think about using circulation routes as dual purpose eg have a breakfast bar backing onto it if you know that in general you will not be sitting at the bar and wanting to walk past it at the same time. Particularly if you want a room of 2 halves the Golden Radio may be a bit short and fat. Remember that it has been used in design mainly for visual appeal when observed rather than utility for spaces to be experienced - which suggests more in proportions of your facade or garden rather than spaced to live in. F

Erm what does “ clear decision making “ mean ? also what’s that strange word “ compliance “ mean ?

Send us a cake, oh please the wife has me on a chocolate ration, only two squares of fruit and nut per day.

Steady on chap. I’ll come back to this later. Son’s been shielding so only now taking him to the hairdresser as we can’t see his face anymore......

Don't say that, just don't. I'm at that age when it's not a joke anymore.

To my credit, I had to look that one up.

I have a plasterer who did such a fantastic job of the curved ceiling of a 5.4m cathedral roof we nicknamed it the Chapel of St Andrew the Plasterer ..! And he’s never out of work ...!

Can't remember what a Titan feels like...