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Hang on a sec. We’re in the middle of a national emergency / pandemic and the HMRC redeployed their people to administer the priorities of the numerous emergency tax schemes - Furlough, emergency business loans, etc etc etc. I’m sure they assessed that the Self Build VAT Reclaim Scheme might not be a priority over the small matter of saving the economy, jobs, businesses and ensuring millions of people who couldn’t work could feed their families and pay their mortgages/ rent. Or are we suggesting that those of us who are privileged enough to have built our own homes and awaiting some money back should have been the priority ? And so due to there being an inevitable backlog they’ve decided to change their rules to release 70% of claim ASAP, while they clear the backlog and can fully check the claims. What exactly should they have done? ”Dear Mr Smith, please find enclosed your VAT refund. Because we have prioritised the VAT refunds for self builders over other emergency Covid 19 schemes, I’m sorry to say the economy has now completely crashed and your lovely new home is now worth about the same as your VAT refund. Yours, HMRC”

From memory you can’t get a BS under felt any more suitable for new build. The breathable ones are much nicer to work with and they are cheap as chips. Nothing wrong with putting two layers on either if it will be left open for a period - just buy a cheap disposable one to go over the top of the first tacked down with a few counter battens. +1 to that - they are simple to use and not expensive. Timloc Easy Ridge system are good - they need a timber up stand in the centre of the ridge but nothing too complex.

Have you tried to RTFM..?? Pump needs to be covered by water - you fill the tank more than you think. Check there isn’t a sponge filter missing off the pump grille

I posted the letter imagining it to be useful information for anyone recently embarked on a vat reclaim. Given that this thread seems to have turned into an opinion piece i'll clarify my own position as the o/p;....I find the vat office approach perfectly reasonable under current circumstances. However, I don't see debate over the fairness of it as useful to this build related forum, it won't change the facts ....maybe start a moaning thread in the non-build related section to discuss the performance of our various government departments and agencies. What might be useful is if other current/imminent claimants update this with their own outcomes. Further useful info on my claim. Claim submitted 1st June, claim acknowledged mid july, that letter received 21st August, plus 20 days would be 10th September, so 101 days end to end. We dont have Building Regs sign off yet, we moved in last August and had a VOA effective from 12/08/20. We were concerned this may trigger a 3 month time limit on claim submission. There has apparently been inconsistent application of rules by the VAT office due to slightly ‘blurred‘ definitions of completion, and we didn’t want to fall foul of this. We spoke with the VAT DIY Helpline 0300 322 7073 for clarification. They explained the 3 month deadline would not be triggered by the VOA but that reasonable explanation of delay should be provided along with our claim. They also cautioned against waiting for the Building Regulations completion certificate if only limited external works remained or if VAT expenditure became nominal. As such they described it as a balancing act. Submitted invoices within the final 3 months to claim date show that quite fundamental works have been ongoing. They cover for example plasterboard, dab adhesive, angle beads, plaster, sand, cement, 2nd fix electrical components, plumbing components etc. We wrote that we believed we had chosen the right moment to submit our claim. On the one hand we have amongst other things 2 bathrooms still to fit, only a rudimentary kitchen, 3 undecorated rooms, outstanding external render and landscaping works still to do. On the other hand Covid-19 has ensured completion will remain out of reach for some time. Against this background we were braced for some malicious wriggling on technicalities by the vat office but actually they seem to have been entirely fair and reasonable in the application of their rules.

Aco-drains are only good when they have somewhere to drain to - and you’ll probably find the only place to stick a soakaway is under your new drive ..! Run off into the lawn isn’t an issue - if it gets boggy you can sort that at a later date.

It is about how water splashes up and how it copes with rain running off - If they are only dry laid edgings I would do as @Declan52 said, possibly worth cutting an inch or two off the tarmac so you get a clean line and haunch then backs with concrete to stop the tarmac moving. Then back fill with gravel.

Option A Take up the bricks and dig out the sand. Relay the bricks length ways so you have a gap of 100mm ish to the wall. Fill this gap with clean decorative stone so it acts like a drain. Option B Or paint it with something like Thompson water seal to see if that works. If it doesn't then option A. Option C Nuclear option. All up and redo.

http://www.fix-r.co.uk/shop/tilr/dry-fix-ridge-kit/universal-dry-fix-ridge-kit/ @Onoff I used this - it was cheap and easy to do - never used one before but SWMBO and I did it no problem, we got it from the local roofing place who suggested using it saying it was as good as the more expensive ones.

Drill a couple of holes through each side and expanding foam through the holes. Better than using sealant.

Not all digger drivers carry cable tracers! ? Lay tape, it's pence.

So we have been thinking about the option for months. We have ended up with a building that is well insulated, will be reasonably airtight but not near passive. We have had to ditch MVHR due to too many issues with steels in the way. We have ended up skint due to rogue builder and I have had to fully build the house myself from the ground floor timber walls up. We have now taken the very unpopular decision to go with a gas combi-boiler. Our thinking is as follows:- We cant have PV on site due to planning restrictions We are mega cash poor at the moment We have to move in end of Sep 2 of us in house, 2 bathrooms, rarely will there be more than 1 shower on at a time Limited space for hot water tank, oh and we are skint btw ? So we can get a gas connection to the house for £320 (and that's them doing all trench work!), we can get a decent combi boiler for a grand or less. Any (gas safe) plumber can fit a gas combi boiler, simples and the amount of plumbing we need the skilled plumber to do v me is low. That will also free up plenty of spare power for hot tub, car charger (if we get one), etc. We can run UFH downstairs and wet rads upstairs. No mains pressure shower, but then that uses more water and that costs. We could even use a elec shower downstairs, would only be used occasionally so cost nada to run, and I have a 10.5kw one sitting in my 'box of bits'. so FOC really. Any other option, no matter how hard we look, would take years to get a decent payback. On our current bungalow (gas combi boiler, cooker, rest elec) we pay £900 fixed all in for gas and elec. We will get a similar deal for new build. Even with all the energy savings gadgets, if we halved the energy bill it would be years to get a decent payback. But for us, if we cant get a new gas connection for 320 quid that makes it the simplest and cheapest option.

Pictures ? Row where hangers will go. Other side where i'm going to bolt ledger plates either side of the 9 inch internal wall. I've tried two ways of closing the cavity. Cutting the PUR boards flush with the edge and filling the remainder like this. And cutting boards to make a fitted piece face on. This is the better method I think. Hopefully you can see that the cavity gets wider toward the top of the reveals in these pictures.

Suggest a long pile roller, or perhaps spray if you can.

Nothing stopping you at all, just don’t kill anybody, and if you do make sure nobody sees you.

I have used masonry paint. No undercoat but watered down first coat. You could just use emulsion if you want.

A chunk of reasoning is over here: To specifics, we wanted Gaulhofer but couldn't get the U-values to meet what we needed in PHPP (partly due to some of the very human issues craig outlines in that thread). So we went to other manufacturers with similar looking (but PH certified) product. GBS was too limited in the Alu clad options, plus didn't quite feel right for us. Weru were ridiculous price. Internorm were about same price as GBS, but had option of integrated blinds, so we settled with them (Studio / Home Pure mix). The price was close to GBS. We tried to use Aspect in Exeter, but they don't do install in our area and really weren't interested in supply only, so ended up with another one of their other suppliers. This story it To Be continued. (I can also share a spreadsheet with more specific window-by-window comparisons)

Think I used VP400 and it was exposed at least 6 months, much longer than recommended with no problems.

We got a guy who knocked down our old house by hand as he wanted the bricks. He did it for nowt, and was easily the mosy dangerous contractor that I have ever seen or heard of. He started the work until a few days before Christmas and was finished very early in the new year - he did it then because in his words " the council and the HSE will be on holiday" The knackered bricks (of which there were many) went on the back of a farm trailer to a farmer for his tracks The timber was burned on site. Metal went to the scrapyard. Everything else went to the tip. Cost = £0. Took a couple of weeks.

I have used one of these and it was very impressive. The sliding tray was dead accurate. I had some big tiles to cut and used a Rubi cutter where the machine slides over the tile. The blade had a tenancy to wander off. I am not a pro, but the DeWalt is superb.

is that the tile saw you used the 15% discount on?

Just make sure you exercise due diligence and actually seek out references / previous customers a good builder will be more than happy for you to speak to their previous customers. Ensure you have a contract and document any issues or promises by email. Thus protects both you and your contractor. Pay them promptly at relevant stage or whatever. Sorry saying this - just in case it’s your first big build project Etc. I once had some building work done by a great bloke a friend of family. We had a bit of friction over whether the quote included him installing a new window cill on an existing window to match In with a new window / window cill he had installed. Found an older email referring this, he’d genuinely forgotten. Friction over problem solved.

The water must enter through the grill ... also makes sense for the impeller. I did find it odd looking that the cable came out from the same side preventing it sitting on the pipe and grill. I would sit it on its end and keep the grill under water level. Failing that, fold the cable over and tape down to allow the pump to sit impeller?pipe downwards. probably need a weight too ... i have a different machine with suckers on the pump but it still floats around like a deranged fish

tbf £1300 falls into the very cheap end of things, our local authority uses construction costs of £1800 per m2 for ground floors and £900 for upper levels... If you had a quote for a single storey at 85, have you seriously downgraded the specification to aim at less than that for two stories? or have you reduced the floor area?

You are quite right your post was a helpful factual update on the current VAT reclaim process and some of us have then debated/agreed/disagreed the HMRC decision. ? In terms of your recent claim was there anything allowed/not allowed that you didn’t expect was the case? Or anything they queried you didn’t expect. For those of us yet to claim. ta

The probes are fairly quick and easy to do, especially if you only need to probe 2.5 metres. I would want to make sure the solid strata was uniform around the foundation extents, with no voids. The probe table you have would have been more reassuring if the soil was more consistent, whereas there is very little capacity for the first 2.0m. I doubt there will be much cost difference between probes and trial pits. I would want at least 4. If the results vary a lot, you may need to install piles.

Welcome. Affordable - what does that mean? I can't, you maybe can. What is certain, though, is that land in your immediate area will cost more as a proportion of your total build price. A quick glance at SPONS will show you also that build costs around your area are more expensive than those inside the M25. You need @nod on the job. He's brilliant at nosing out sites and buying them at the right price. @Ferdinand's yer man for setting you straight in relation to planning once you've found somewhere. Many here have found the search for a sensibly priced and convenient site needs a good dose of persistence. Plenty of time to absorb the collective wisdom on BuildHub then......

Floors don’t work like that - they act as a panel even with point loads (up to a certain point) so if you use sand cement to level, it will go hard. Then add marmox and the carbon foil and then laminate it will be fine. Tbh I wouldn’t be leaving out any areas in a room like that so you can move things about in the future. The carbon film stuff is fairly good at self regulating so you shouldn’t get any problems.

Hi, can you clarify what you are wanting? Strongbacks assist the floor`s stability and rigidity while strapping is there to restrain the walls, not the floors. You can never have enough or too much strapping, always err on the side of caution - nothing worse than someone pushing a heavy sofa against a wall and the wall bowing out and staying there.

These people can do a double glazed roof-light with around a 1.2 U-Value or triple glazed at around 0.9. https://roof-maker.co.uk/rooflights/lanterns/slimline-rooflights/ they give you a price instantly on the web-site. They can make a 5m2 lantern light. I would be worried that as well as having a poor U-Value that rooflight would be very noisy. The 3.0 U-Value on door D3 seems to be an assumed value. It is covered up by the word Draft, but if it is a steel fire door it may have a U-Value more like 2.2.

This is the supplier I'm looking at: https://www.shopclima.it/en/panasonic-paw-fc-d15-r-aquarea-compact-fan-coil-with-right-side-connection-1-5-kw.html €214.00 Plus €75 shipping (it does reduce if I order multiple, so a bulk buy maybe an option although the UK wide onward shipping might wipe out the benefit) @ProDave also interested in this topic

Yes it did but farm land is cheap compared to the land with building permission . Land is max 10K per acre for farm land around here, building plots up to 300K per acre.. So that only knocks off 10k of the calculation.

I am with @Bozza on this. Had they decided to scrap the scheme just as you were finishing the build as they needed to make savings I could understand the ire. During this pandemic, lots of people have lost their livelihoods through no fault of their own. Waiting 20 days for the final part of your VAT refund is not a crime against humanity and democracy.

So the house has had some issues with subsidence and geobear came in to do some remedial work to improve the ground conditions. The left table is how many blows it took before they started work and then the right after. You can see it's had an improvement, The higher the number the better. The test involves driving a metal probe into the ground and counting the blows it takes to move it 100mm. So more blows means harder ground. Are you having issues with cracks etc??

Actually looking at that they list a “multi function valve” on the the top of the UVC. Wonder if they lock out the cold tanks ..? Seems a lot to go wrong - series UVC would work fine and no valves or moving parts required.

Basically the probing has confirmed that the ground is decent until you get to over 2m where it becomes rock solid. Any test that takes over 50 blows is when you stop it as that is perceived to be something like rock. But due to the limitations of the test as you can't actually see what you probing you might need to dig trial pits to confirm that it is actually rock and not a large boulder at 2.1m. Did you only get one test done or does the data from a few tests all look pretty similar??

thanks @joth. I have no specific units in mind for anything yet! still on the research stage. I'm tempted to run pipework to multiple locations and just cap it off and then when I decide if/how to cool then I can pick the best place to do that based on the unused pipework in place. eg. I could put an AC unit (or fan coil I guess) in the loft and run a duct to the vaulted entrance hall like @Jeremy Harris suggests he'd have done it. or I could run a duct cooler with the MVHR in the plant room. so I might as well insulate the supply ducts and run a few copper pipes to a couple of locations....all just in case! still have loads of research to do on this and many other subjects! I look forward to reading about your exploits in this area.

Both into one, and dishwasher before sink where possible so it washes the sink waste through.

Network switches are trivial to change at a later date. Indeed if I moved house I'd probably take my switch with me. Thus I'd really not sweat debating which switch is used, it's akin to debating what brand TV or vacuum cleaner you have. That said, you'll probably find all your devices are either PoE or have a realistic need of 10Gbit - hard to imagine anything that needs both, so I'd personally get 2 switches, one optimized for speed one for PoE, it'll probably be more priceworthy and this has benefit that when the PoE switch dies (they all seem to eventually) you don't loose all connectivity. Just my 2p. Thinking about things that are more integral to the build and harder to to repair / replace if they fail or don't live up to promise: Fakro windows - Consider the FTT U8 as it's much better U-value and I can't imagine the external aesthetic is that much difference. Liebherr fridge - Pros: reportedly very reliable and serviceable (they make the fridges for Miele). A++ ratings available. Cons: these oversized ones are hard to move and seem to get discontinued very regularly (happened to us this Jan, and we had a chance of heart then too). On the plus side if you make a space big enough for that beast in your layout, you'll be able to put any other fridge you ever want into it. Bora, Liebherr, Fakro, Neff, Sapienstone, Eclisse - all going into our build so ping me in the new year for updated opinions :-) You haven't selected main windows yet? That probably is the single biggest thing that impacts the build, so worth putting effort there.

Project complete ! opted for wall mounted vanity basin and wall mounted wc Just need to find a suitable lid for WC housing

I'm going to take a different view here. Partly because I believe most of it, but also to argue devil's advocate to help you think about your case. (Aside: take some readings with a suitable light meter now - so you at least know what levels should be OK for your daughter). I think that some planning measures apply to *main* windows, which may limit the case you can make to planning. If you consider the current amount of light you get through the side windows to be adequate, then you can probably wholly mitigate the impact of this extension with things under your control ie you may not need to be quite so concerned about the extension. I am making that assumption because there are things currently reducing the light level that you can address but have not done so. That you have not maximised existing potential will make it harder to argue that loss of light from the extension is a material threat. From what we have, I would suggest these are: 1 - That huge hedge which looks to be 9ft high and very long. If that is part yours you can remove it or reduce the height to say 1.5 or 2m. 2 - The glazing bars and surround-frame in those windows take up about 40% of the area. By putting in single panes and mirrors in the reveals and different non-blocking blinds you could probably nearly double the amount of light coming in. 3 - That bike shed is a blockage to some light - albeit minor. 4 - You seem to have about 15% of the windows blocked with a solid blind - surely these should be above the opening for max benefit? If your N argues from the current position, the impact of the extension will be reduced because these blockages exist now. That smaller impact is in your neighbour's favour, and I would argue from his side that it is obvious that D does not need more light in the room because you have had the capability to provide it for X years and have voluntarily chosen not to do so. I would then say that since no one knows what the benefit of those mitigations would be but it is probably far more than any conceivable impact of my extension, it is absurd to restrict my extension since you have not done the maximum under your control. I would say that has an 70-80% chance of winning the argument with the planners. If I was being sharp-clawed, I would add that the priority in your design of your windows was obviously not to maximise light coming in (glazing bars etc rather than a single clear pane), so why the sudden fuss now? I would put the cost of changing the inner frames of those windows to be a single pane design to be about £300-400 the pair, which is eg less than a report will cost. I think for you you need to decide whether you actually need his extension restricted if you do the changes under your control, or whether you are better to eg modify the windows and trim the hedge, and have a dialogue about minor adjustments they can make which will give you a push to get more light. I would be looking at things like asking him to make sure that any side windows he has do not look into yours so that you can have clear glass (ie make sure they are not lined up), to make sure that any fence is not ginormous, and maybe encouraging it to be rendered white or cream so that it reflects more light. You could request these as PP conditions (don't think you will get that). If you are going down the "stop it" route, then I think you need to consider maximising the potential benefit to your D under your control *now* to spike his argument. Not trying to tell you what to do - but there may be other ways to skin this cat that are easier to do and involve less potential of conflict, and you may even get a warmer, fluffier relationship with N. Ferdinand

No blog in a year and then two in one week ! Having finished and moved in, I would like to pass on my sincere thanks to my fellow forum members for their help and inspiration. Whilst the decision to follow a fabric first / passivhaus approach had been made before I discovered the forum, the information in the blogs and posts was a huge help. Some of the areas where the forum had a direct influence on my decisions included: Inspiration - Many of the blogs - Warranty - Finance - ASHP coolant (CO2 or not) - Suppliers - Services - Where to get good prices - VAT refunds - CIL exemptions and many other things as well. Finally, a special mention to that administrators for working on a voluntary basis to keep the forum going. Hopefully, when things get back to normal, I will have an opportunity to meet a few of you face to face and thank you in person.

Probably useless to most people but its freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeceee! (at the moment) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Solar-Energy-engineering-photovoltaic-technologies-ebook/dp/B0198VHPHM

I agree wholeheartedly with @vivienz I opted to use a very non-local (at the time) contractor for our foundation and house build; they were based in Tipperary at the time and the team, and the whole house and garage, came over on the ferry to build our house. Best decision I made in the whole build, as not only did they do a cracking job, but the guys had nothing else to do whilst they were over here except build our house. Having contractors not turn up for a few days, because they've got another job on, seems commonplace. By using a contractor that's coming from a fair way away you remove that issue.

In my case, I don't think I would have stood a chance of getting the team I wanted together locally in North Dorset and I went off piste for my slab, timber frame and M&E. All the rest of my trades are local, though, and they've been great. I have worked on the basis that if you get your expert team in for the specialist work, you're drastically reducing the chances of anything going wrong in the first place.

I resemble that remark!

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If you think this is bad try registering a Lasting Power of attorney at the moment. Taken me 6 months so far. While you wait you may have to find £1500 a week for nursing home bills ?

Love it! ? (Always annoying when someone's garage is built better and is warmer the my entire house! ? )