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so, here we are at the end of the 3rd week of our build with the groundworkers having dug the basement to depth and put the sub-base down ready for levelling and compacting on Monday with the blinding and insulation to also be completed on the same day. We got a second digger driver on site this week and things have really got going and on Friday we even had a 3rd person to stand around with the laser level to assist. Here's the time-lapse video of the week. The basement contractors were due to start on Monday but as the groundworks aren't quite finished they've been pushed back to Tuesday. Despite that we're very happy and even happier since I've been told that the basement construction should only take 5 - 6 weeks, whereas previously I'd been working on around 8 weeks to complete. This is brilliant if they can do it in that time frame and I've already given the timber frame company notice that we might need the TF a couple of weeks earlier than anticipated if they can accommodate that. only time will tell if that's the case. The week finished off with me laying my first ever slab. It will house the electricity kiosk and also be a place for our wheelie bins to go. it was actually the UKPN surveyor who suggested to me to make the slab for the kiosk a bit bigger to allow the bins to go there. I thought it was a great idea and saves me creating something further down the line. Being a bit of a cheap-skate I use some of the old shiplap cladding from the pool house that got pulled down so it probably wasn't the best wood to use for the formwork and, after I put one piece down I did notice is was a bit warped but figured it's just for bins so just left it there. if it's not obvious it's the piece on the left hand side. Also, the 150mm ducting for the electricity cables made tamping the concrete down quite tricky around them so it's not perfect but it'll do. And if anyone asks I'll just say it adds character. seems to be a one-stop excuse for shoddy work. I promise I will take more care over the actual house! For mixing the concrete I was going to hire a cement mixer but at the last minute decided to cancel that and save myself £25 and a drive to pickup and drop-off the mixer and ended up mixing it by hand in a wheelbarrow. that was pretty hard work for someone who sits behind a desk all day and I'm feeling pretty stiff and sore right now but I'm sure as the manual labour progresses it'll help get me in shape in the long run. I'd like to finish with an observation.....this self-building is a funny old thing as I've never ever looked forward to a Monday morning so much in my entire life! I'm just so excited to get to Monday to see what next week will bring. Hopefully I'll go back to hating Mondays once the build is completed. that's about it for this week. I can't wait to see what next week brings.

We had a visit from the OS (Ordinance Survey) . Nice old guy asked permission to survey us, and got on with it. Accurate to a few mm apparently. So I jumped at the chance and asked him to survey our boundary wall. Which he did . That might well have avoided a few sets of solicitors fees in hundred years time then innit?

Given enough funds, I am planning on retiring into a self-build for my retirement in 10-15 years. I'll be selling up, downsizing and using the sale and savings to hopefully be mortgage free when I move in. Given this amount of time ahead of starting the project, and that I have only read a couple of books and watched Grand Designs, what should I do and when in the coming decade?

10 - 15 years? Spend 5 - 8 of them drinking beer and sleeping to store some up! Don't tell the Mrs 2+ years off site start that 'we have plenty of time to sort out the layout' as that phrase seems to boomerang on you when you are a few months off finishing up! I don't know what they think 'plenty of time' means but it certainly doesn't relate to a site programme. I now understand why contractors hate variations especially late ones (like when you have built the f*cking partition!) - they are generally unnecessary and annoying!

Depends what the actual gap is. The first number (15 for example) is usually the width of the compriband, the second number of expansion (from and too) - in this instance expanding from 7mm to 12mm. The compriband manufacturer will only warranty for that expansion and not above that. Important to note, this will be fine for windows if they have a 10mm tolerance. Head of slider “may” be different.

Yes this is a real return transom https://www.scaffolding-direct.co.uk/used-kwikstage-4ft-return-transom.aspx And this is how you use it https://www.avontus.com/blog/how-to-add-a-return-transom-to-a-kwikstage-corner/

If you have paid for them then you want them to be there. If they are not there then either get a refund or additional bars sent out.

Howdens own brand. I doubt it's better than Qooker, but it was certainly cheaper.

Five years in and our Qooker is starting to get a bit erratic, seems to switch itself off and needs a reset at the top to rechearge. I descale twice a year and the plastic housing is starting to crumble around the bolt locations, cosmetic but annoying also.

I came home from work today and the kettle was sitting on the kitchen worktop. Yes the Lamona boiling water tap had stopped heating water. A quick check of records found I bought it from Howdens in November 2019 and a phone call to Howdens confirmed it has a 2 year warranty. They then gave me the phone number of the manufacturer who without quibble have posted a replacement water boiler unit. I will keep you posted.

1) No this is where a VCL should be. 2) The hipped areas would have warm roof characteristics but since you have other areas not really I cannot see why, but it should be insulating enough to prevent interstitial condensation in the internal layer, but it should not be less vapour permeable unless very carefully designed

We had ours from Philip Bines who is near Melksham and they do work in Bristol . we did the whole house so offcuts were not enough . We fitted them prior to plastering . We had kitchen worktop to match - did not plan this in the begining !

A garage is considered a fire risk so both walls and ceiling must be designed to prevent fire spread to the house. For example when there is a bedroom above a garage the floor/ceiling between the two gets special attention (two layers of plasterboard i think?). Its different between a room and a loft in the house. I don't think that needs any special treatment.

A metallised breather membrane above the battens could add 0.6m2K/W (about 15mm of PIR or 25mm of loft insulation) and taped will provide air tightness. A liquid applied air barrier with a vapour permeability appropriate to its position applied to continuous sheet layer could provide air tightness.

I have 200mm of batts between rafters and 75 mm pir underneath all joined together with squirty foam and joins taped to form my air tight layer, foamed to walls and taped between walls and pir. Not as as good as some with u value, but airtight no gaps in insulation detailing absolutely spot on as I did it. So some may have a better u value but badly executed by the builder.

You have plenty of time to plan but it’s best to take advantage of anything you can well ahead of your schedule. For example have you considered some walk on glazing ?

My roof is 19 degree pitch with zero roof space (ie its vaulted). We ended up with PIR inbetween the rafters, AVC, batterns for services/lights and then plaster. We had an Ok u-value and the house if anything is too hot so works well. Why not put PIR in between the rafters rather than 'fluffy' stuff?

Regarding a heating source (sorry haven't read whole thread so assuming no water heating) - assuming it is a airtight/ well insulated why wouldn't you just use a small electric heater rather than the expense of an ASHP/GSHP. I had a SIPs built office similar size that I just used a small heater in and it was plenty.

The way phase change materials (PCMs) work is that they start as a solid below a transition temperature. Heat gets added and the temperature rises until it reaches the transition temperature (note that there's really a temperature transition range, partly due to material properties and partly due to imperfect heat transfer within the material). At that point, extra heat energy no longer raises the temperature, but instead goes into changing the phase from solid to liquid. In general, this phase change takes a lot of energy. That's why a relatively small volume of PCM can store a lot more accessible energy than can be achieved by heating something like water while it stays within its liquid phase. Once the PCM has all been converted to liquid, adding further energy will start to increase the temperature. At some point, the PCM's maximum operating temperature is reached, and no more energy can be added. One difficulty with PCMs is that you can't determine from temperature alone how much energy it's storing when it's at its transition temperature. With water, if you know the temperature, you can estimate how much hot water you have. With PCMs, once you reach the transition temperature, there's no significant temperature change until the PCM has all liquefied. This means that if the temperature is below or above the transition temperature, you can estimate total energy based on temperature, but you're somewhat in the dark while at the transition zone. Estimating the energy while the PCM is at the transition temperature is what's been discussed above. However, once you go above the transition temperature, you can again determine how "full" the energy store is. So if your Sunamp was completely full, then used a small amount of energy, that would have resulted in a temperature change that the Sunamp controller can interpret as meaning that capacity again exists. So the Sunamp knows when it's full, and in theory knows (or could know) how much capacity it has left as long as its PCM temperature is above the transition temperature. It's when it's at the transition temperature that it's ignorant of how much energy it's actually storing. Of course, the vast majority of the energy stored by the Sunamp is available at the transition temperature, so the ability to determine energy capacity based solely on temperature (beyond "nearly full" or "nearly empty") doesn't exist. I'm completely ignorant of how Sunamp actually program their controllers, but something like the above could be happening in terms of allowing the immersion diverter to operate even if only a small amount of power has been taken from the store from when it was full.

Make up some breathable 'sausages' from garden weed control fabric, fill with mineral wool insulation, then staple to rafters.

When I started my business a few years ago I looked into claiming for home office running expenses but advice from accountant was that the benefit was marginal so I didn't bother. If you go for the dual use and the business paid for the office (to save VAT and permissible costs) then using it as a gym will attract a Benefit In Kind (BiK) charge so I suppose it's swings and roundabouts.

I'm amazed a tax advisor company can write that much article and not mention the CGT aspect! The normal advice is to put an exercise bike in the office and say it's a dual purpose office/gym. https://www.taxinsider.co.uk/working-from-home-don-t-lose-private-residence-relief-ta

Interested in the tax position, assuming you're a company director / limited company. As far as I can see, you can claim VAT (if you buy the building through the business) but only if it is exclusively for business use (so no summer houses). This is from the link below: If your limited company is VAT registered, then it may still be advantageous to pay for the cost of the garden and build through the company despite not being able to offset any costs against your corporation tax bill. Some costs can be recovered through reclaiming on VAT. This option would not be available if you were to pay for the garden office personally. For those who use the VAT flat rate scheme, be aware that you will need to ensure the cost of the materials and the cost of the construction are separate. Furthermore, the materials should be bought all together and charged as a single transaction that is at least £2,000. Under the flat rate scheme, only capital assets for individual purchases at a minimum of £2,000 can be reclaimed. This means VAT cannot be reclaimed for services, so be sure to avoid package deals where materials and installation are sold together. Another note of consideration is that VAT cannot be reclaimed where there will be any significant personal use of the garden office. If there will be some minor personal usage, then you may only be able to claim back a portion of the VAT. Although there is no allowance that will help cover the initial cost of the garden office, the cost of instillation for utilities such as electrical wiring, plumbing or thermal insulations can be covered as a capital allowance. This means that the cost of these can be deducted from your company’s profits to reduce your corporation tax bill. The plant and machinery allowance does not apply to anything that is not outrightly owned by the company, so if you hire any equipment such as air-conditioning just over the summer months, this cannot be claimed for. Other capital allowances that can be claimed include furniture such as desk, office chair, shelving, floor lamp etc. https://www.ridgefieldconsulting.co.uk/advice-and-news/how-to-claim-tax-relief-on-your-garden-office/

Bear in mind this will likely make the office portion liable for capital gains tax when the house is eventually sold. In fact even if you don't take the tax break, having an area dedicated to working can open up CGT liability, but taking a tax break to build it basically predeclares this to HMRC https://www.ftadviser.com/investments/2020/08/12/advisers-warned-of-tax-implications-of-working-from-home/

Have you decided on heating type?. I have a small ASHP for a moderate sized house, as mentioned before what about an air to air heat pump that will do cooling as well (during Scotland’s famous heat waves ?).

You're correct. I'm getting confused! His pallet shed was a separate thread!

Very tidy. Why is your soil pipe white? Should be red/brown for underground use I would have thought?

buy your plot as soon as you can decide where you want to be -- it will only go up in price and 10 years inflation could make a big difference and maybe so much that you will never be able to get the plot you want then it could take years to get planning -and if you change your mind --you will make money on resale of plot

And that's where you're wrong! ? They can look alright but there's a bit of compromise. I built one with the nephew. The key is getting the same pallets ideally. Even then you might find a tub of Screwfix's finest plastic shims a great help. Decent square base. Then a 4x2 sole plate all round, itself sat on a strip of dpm. Butt them together and screw. You will need some reclaimed bits let in to and screwed to the bottom line of pallets and the ones that'll sit on top. You'll have to cut/adapt pallets for doorways and windows. Pallets were painted as it progressed. Membrane the whole lot outside. I left him to it to do the roof. You need to let in sections to form a wall plate at the top. He clad the inside again, with pallet wood: Clad. In this case various trimmings from a DIY lumber mill. Painted & with "Dad" sign and bird box! Reclaimed front door. To be fair this was my nephew's first proper DIY project on his own and I think it came out alright. When he started a square was a novelty, now he uses a bevel gauge! I still catch my head on that corner of the front fascia. Mind you he's a porg. Make or buy a pallet buster btw! https://youtu.be/cvG5pe62DsE I think @ProDave built one too essentially to mount his DIY PV array.

Reminds me I never got round to fitting my alarm, but then again I can hear it every time I feed the chickens next to it. It’s on my to do list ?

You need the roof on as soon as the frame is up to load the structure, you will probably stick 3-4 tonne of materials on that roof. Then the rest as peter said. How can the plumbers and electricians come in without studwork up, where are they going to run pipes,cables. What are you fixing sockets to, you cannot hang them in thin air. Roof on. Insulation ufh screed studwork mvhr plumber- electrician same time. Mvhr before other services always as its bigger duct and needs the most space.

You can’t start inside without a decent roof covering - are you doing it yourself ..?? You could notionally build block sleeper walls for the stud work to work off and then install stud work and the other trades can start but you need that roof on ASAP.

Interesting thread this. Good technical points made by Peter,Craig et al. To add my thoughts, partly technical, but mainly to open up design options you can consider that are cost effective, that won't lead to problems with your mastic etc on the finishes, sticky door issues, glass that fails due to adverse unforseen loads etc and the subsequent arguments. Don't forget that these large glazed openings cost a lot, the glass, slim frames etc. A bit of technical stuff. The formula for deflection of a steel beam is 5* w* L^4 /384 EI. For the keen, often domestic steel beam design ignores what is called shear deflection but for timber beams this needs to be accounted for as it is significant. To explain the formula for typical domestic steel beams. E is Young's modulus.. a property of the steel which does not change with beam size. w is the load per metre run of the beam. I is what is called the second moment of area and L is the length. Now you can see that if E, I and w all stay the same then if you have a beam 3.0m long then L is to the power of four i.e. 3*3*3*3 = 81 units, if you have a four metre beam we have 4*4*4*4 = 256 Now 256 divided by 81 = 3.16. So you get over 300% more deflection on a four metre beam than one that is 3.0m long all other things being equal. The thing to draw from this is that beam deflections are very sensetive to length. Extrapolate this to an 6-8m opening and you get this exponential deflection which plays havoc with your doors. The next parameter you can vary is the second moment of area "I". To get your head around this the formula for a rectangular beam is I = b*d^3 / 12 where b is the width and d is the depth. You can see here that if you have a rectangular beam 200mm deep beam d^3 (cubed) is 200*200*200 = 8*10^6 mm^3 (mm cubed) but if you have a same width but 300mm deep it is 300*300*300 = 27*10^6mm^3. So buy increasing the depth of the beam by 100mm you reduce the deflection by 27/8 ~ 300%. The way a steel I beam works is that you cut out the sides and place more steel in the flanges. This give a much more efficient shape so by moving the material to the top and bottom flanges you get more "I" for your buck! Now for a big glazed opening design the starting point is how much deflection will be ok over the head of the doors. There are general structural recommendations in the codes that go along the lines of beam span / 360 but these are mainly to do with the other elements of the building. If you have an effective clear span of 8.0m that is 8000mm / 360 = 22mm. That is going to jamb your doors, break the mastic seal (at times you will notice the bend over the opening) on the outside and probably damage any wall paper inside. It's easy to fall into the trap where you see the deflection as being say 22 mm, so you put in 25mm of say compriband.. but if you compress compriband or similar down to 3.0mm it will start to extert load on your doors.. it's good (squashy) but not that good! You also need to make sure that when the load is not there that the compriband will recover and not leave a gap. The next thing (Craig, Peter etc have touched on this I think in the past) is that there is a difference in how you install bifold doors and true sliding doors. A sliding door head can be installed with a bit of a gap over the head as they now tend to be all bottom supported, but bifold door heads need tighter packing at the head. In other words bifolds are less forgiving in terms of beam deflection. If you think about it. When the bifolds are open there is a lot of glass weight hanging out from the building so the mechanism at the head of the doors needs to be held firmly in place so that over time they still perform, the tolerances are tighter and less compatible with the structure. As promised. If you have read this far then if you have a single storey extension with a large opening you may have a flat roof above. Here you may be able to use the upstand on the flat roof to accomodate a deeper beam thus reducing any downstand in the extension. If you have a two storey house with large bifolds etc below you can start to look at turning the upper floor external wall into a big truss. This in the right circumstances can allow you almost take the doors right up to the ceiling! The secret is that there comes a point where a big steel beam is no use / economic if you have some height above to do something. If you have a modern house, say with an "L" shaped roof" and go in the attic you may see lots of thin prefabricated trusses. But at the "L" bit you may see some sturdy looking trusses.. girder trusses. You can apply the same principle to creating a large glazed opening on the ground floor. If I was looking at designing a 3.5m plus opening for glazing I would use start by saying.. I want no more than 6 - 8mm deflection at concept design stage under say snow loading or roof access. I would then look at the type of construction.. masonry, timber frame. Timber creeps over time so that has to be accounted for. I would also look to see how much the founds may settle.. if there is uneven loading.. differential settlement. Once you get a handle on the "feel" of things you are on your way to getting a problem free solution. This all may sound expensive as you need an SE, experienced designer that can look holistically at this but it may only cost a little more for the extra design input. Ideally it may end up that you save money!

Building controls have issued our “Completion Notice” a big milestone for any self build and definitely called for a celebration. A big sigh of relief from both our councils building control and us.? Our many thanks to all the contributors at BuildHub, we certainly could not have done it without the support of the forum members. Particularly Jeremy Harris @Jeremy Harriswho’s broad knowledge and good advice...goodness knows where he’s disappeared to but the forum is a poorer place without his input. It’s been a while since we first broke ground in January 2019 and it certainly has had it’s moments and a good few sleepless nights. There is no doubt in our minds when doing a self build that you have to be doing it for yourselves. We’ve ended up with a house that we could not have gone out and purchased and learned a whole lot on the way. Our initial vision was something small, manageable and future proofed. Hopefully we have achieved this and have added a decent quality house to the housing stock. When we started we visited the building research establishment (BRE) and looked at the Zed Factory house that was there. We decided to take a look at that route. ZED provided either a shell or turnkey solutions, both of which were within our budget. The cost per square metre in the ZED literature at BRE indicated a very competitive turnkey price in the region of £1,350 a square meter. As with all things the low price came with compromises as it was a “cookie cutter” solution and the finish was not all that we would have liked. What we have ended up with is our own vision at a comparable cost of around £1,400 a square metre built to our specification. Sounds like a great result, that is until you factor in the fact that we did the majority of the labour. It’s easy to see why the prices from ZED increased to more like £1,600 a square meter when we asked them to quote. From a design point we still need to live a full year in the house to know if we got our energy sums correct. Early indications are that we should need very minimal input in winter but may have too much solar gain in spring. Our east facing windows are great for the clear winter morning but a little too warm for April sun. In the big scheme of things it should be easily fixed by adding blinds. Our EPC rating came out as a “B” marked down from a due to our use of gas for heating and water, a bit daft given it’s the lowest CO2 emissions at 0.184kg per kwh compared to electricity which is in the 0.233kg region. It would be simpler and better just to do EPC on a kwh per square meter basis, putting the emphasis on input reduction. The MVHR is certainly helping, here's a screen shot from the duct temperatures on a frosty morning. We’ll draw our blog to a close at this point, just got to dust off our resumes and add house building to the skill set ?.

Hello, I have just received the following quote, initially I thought it was quite high but for a total solution I think on reflection it might be pretty good. The following is for everything heating, hot water and general plumbing and drainage - just not including sanitary wear. What I will say is that I am reasonably handy but I have no interest in fitting any of the system myself, I know I will pay much more for taking this stance. I'm time poor and would prefer just to be a customer and I do really like the idea that this firm will handle it all which means at least I can't get stuck between two plumbers blaming each other. In summary, my question is not can I do it cheaper, it's; Is this a fair deal from a very well regarded local firm who has been recommended to me? Secondly, I notice their is not buffer tank, should I ask for one. Thirdly, I would like to run this backwards from the PV for cooling. The firm have no experience of this but will this system do that okay in the future? NB; I'm working until 10pm so I might be a while replying. Many thanks, Matt. Hi Matt Following on from our telephone conversation last week we have pleasure in providing a quotation for plumbing and heating works to your new home. Quotation covers the supply and installation of the following: • Daikin Monobloc heat pump EDLA 14. • Daikin 300ltr Unvented cylinder. • Magnetic filter, Anti-freeze valve and flexible hoses. • Low loss header inc insulation. • Pumps valves and controls. • Eco Heat underfloor heating ground floor. • 8 Stelrad compact radiators to first floor rooms, including thermostatic radiator valves. • Hot and cold services • Above ground waste systems. • Plumbing of sanitary ware, sinks washing machine, dish washer and external tap. • Testing and commissioning Total Cost for these works £31,768.40 excluding vat. Costing excludes, • Any electrical works. • Sanitary ware, sinks taps and sink wastes. • Towel warmers. • wood burner Radiator positions and sizes will be discussed on site prior to installation. Floor insulation to be supplied and installed by yourselves prior to underfloor heating being installed. Costing excludes accumulator if required for boosting water performance.

I did mine with off cuts from a kitchen worktop company, £30 for 350x 2900 ten years ago ?