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Following on from the thread on timber frame price increases, i have made a simple python code to scrape prices from consumer websites to track how outlet prices may go up or down. My plan is to run the code automatically daily to scrape prices from websites and save them to an excel file for select products, which can be tracked over time. A sample of the data input CSV file is below; Item Store Description Website 1 Wickes 18mm 2440 x 1220 OSB https://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-General-Purpose-Oriented-Standard-Board-3-OSB-3---18-x-1220-x-2440mm/p/110517 2 Wickes Blue Circle General Purpose Cement - 25kg https://www.wickes.co.uk/Blue-Circle-General-Purpose-Cement---25kg/p/224661 3 Wickes Studwork CLS Timber - 38 X 89 X 2400mm https://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-Studwork-CLS-Timber---38-x-89-x-2400mm/p/107713 4 B&Q 18mm 2440 x 1220 OSB https://www.diy.com/departments/osb-3-board-l-2-44m-w-1-22m-t-18mm/1696229_BQ.prd A sample of the data output is below, which will be amended on a daily basis; Wickes Wickes Wickes B&Q 18mm 2440 x 1220 OSB Blue Circle General Purpose Cement - 25kg Studwork CLS Timber - 38 X 89 X 2400mm 18mm 2440 x 1220 OSB 07/07/2021 10:16 £45.00 £4.15 £10.45 £39.00 07/07/2021 10:18 £45.00 £4.15 £10.45 £39.00 07/07/2021 10:22 £45.00 £4.15 £10.45 £39.00 The question is what sort of products / stores I should be including to get a good spread of different goods, such as the consumer price inflation basket of goods and services, but for construction. Any suggestions?

I think I weigh about a stone less than I did this morning. Honestly, I would rather have climbed a Lancastrian Mill chimney a la Fred Dibnah, no safety gear, no clothes on, a woodpecker snapping at my withers on a freezing morning before dawn. Here's why. Back in the mists of time, 6 years ago now, we got Outline Planning Permission, and then Full PP. We went throught Outline and Approved Matters route (2015). Then it was Head down Arse Up Go wasn't it? A few light traumas on the way - nowt like it will be for all those brave souls starting out now - but traumas there were. Successes too. And like the diligent person I am, I save all our invoices in a folder just like I was advised here. And promptly lost them in the move into our as yet unfinished-but-habitable house. Cue an extended office exercise, culling as many invoices as I could get by begging, cajoling (the people at the Screwfix head office are NASTY) and a bit of banter and using online accounts where I had had the forethought to create one. Local BM , Haldane Fisher were smashing. This time, all saved on my computer. VAT refund looms. Read the Application Form first page (VAT431C) , got the spreadsheet all bright shiny and accurate, skim the Notes - nay borra tae the likes o' me Jimmie Time to fill in the declaration and Checklist Nice people at HMRC, they give you a Checklist. This is what caused a sharp exit to the smallest room in the house Just about to type an X in the box marked Yes when I read '...and Approval of Reserve Matters...' Oh (expletive deleted)ety foockety foockety foockinghell. I have never even seen that document . Ever. Ever ever ever. And I'd downloaded all the documentation from that cursed website for future reference onto my hard disk. Hadn't I? Back onto the LPA website, that's where it'll be: (wyre brorough planning website) that den of juvenile web design, that fantasy playground invented by a demented drunken Planner. The relevant document MUST BE THERE musn't it? Oh Please God it is. Nother trip to the smallest room. On the website. Huh? Won't let me in ... need to register .... Whadya mean you twats, I've friggin registered years ago . Arghhh, you barstewards, you f.....ers New website Design. All over the place. Beads of cold sweat trickle down my face Decision Notices. Earliest ones: 2016. Panic is now real - a calm decends. Thats it, no time now before my submission deadline (next week). Oh Hell, how do I break this to Debbie? Divorce? Cat jumps on my lap. Starts to purr. Calm. A moment to think. Ring the architect. "Reserved Matters Approval? Yeah, why, haven't you got a copy? " 15 long seconds later it was in my In Box. The re-designed website had no documentation on it earlier than the summer of 2016. Our Reserved Matters Approval, August 2015. So if anyone wants to refer to a Planning Application before 2016 in Wyre Borough, yer stuffed. I hate Planners, I hate webdesigners, I hate the people who don't know how to handle Databases efficiently, and I really deeply loathe those lazy bastards that learn just enough about database normalisation to falsely claim they know how to design a Content Management system. There ought to be a law against it. Goin' dahn da pub ternight..... Coming?

Sometimes you wonder who designs the forms etc, thinking of the MHRC. So you get outline PP first. Then you get full PP, sometimes referred to as Approval of Reserved Matters, but not always. So surely it is only the FULL planning permission that matters? WHY do they want a copy of the outline planning, that became an irellevant document the day the full planning was granted? My concern with the VAT claim thing was what happens if the post fails and your claim and your valuable invoices never arrived. You can't insure a packet of documents for the value of a VAT claim. All I could come up with is laboriously scan every single invoice and store a copy on my NAS drive, so in the unlikely event of the claim getting lost in the post, I could reproduce all the invoices but they would clearly be a copy not originals. So the lessons to anyone early in the self build sage: Keep a copy of all planning documents. Keep every single invoice in date order in a box file or similar. I chose to do my VAT claim the old fashioned way by filling in the paper form. If I were doing it again, I would enter each invoice onto the form as I got it, to save days of tedious work when compiling the claim at the end.

Looking for PIR sheets and cant see any difference between IKO Enertherm, RECTICEL EUROTHANE GP, Celotex and Kingspan. Apart from the price. IKO Enertherm seems significantly cheeper at about £55/ 1220x2440 sheet as opposed to £75/sheet for the others. Am I missing something?

Ah, ok, glad they didn’t ask me as I only had full planning ?

I didn't really mean buy them separately but rather approach the seller to see if he would consider selling you a bit more than what is in the listing. He may not have considered selling a paddock with the plot. Agricultural land is quite cheap so it might not add much to the cosr. Especially if you agree an overage. On the other hand the neighbour may no longer be the owner. Sometimes there is quite a back story for why people are selling. Lot depends what you want the extra land for. The planning rules prevent you easily turning a paddock into an extension of your garden, but if you are horsey then having a paddock next door is perfect.

CCF, though after phoning them, it appears that the local branch can't get the recticel and they can only off the more expensive celotex

Should have used windolene instead of tape.

Multisolve, WD-40, Big Wipes (the ones in the yellow tub).

yes

Put the 50mm down first as it's easier to cut round any pipework that's on the subfloor going to sinks etc.

I always use Ditra mat simply because my supplier price matches the cheaper Dura Ive used plenty of Dura It’s not as good to work with as Ditra But does the same job

It's a good initial investment but no substitute for a full GI on the footprint where your basement will reside. Should give you a good idea of local conditions.

You probably will have to use nearly two bags

Quite a few Scope's came up, but once I put in King's Lynn I got Scopejoinery which seems to just be a handmade furniture maker

Was that not called 'The Spastic Society'. There was a shoppe in Amersham called Scope in the 1970s. They sold damaged kitchenware. Not sure if there is a connection.

As people say you could maybe kit out the utility room as a temp kitchen while you think about things. Realistically if you order a kitchen you might need to wait quite a few weeks for delivery anyway. We have an expensive kitchen from a fancy showroom and I feel that I am being fleeced by their prices. But they have done two kitchens for us and both times it has gone like clockwork and they have finished the whole job inside a week so I feel it is worth it. However, kitchen cabinets seem very much of a muchness to me, they are all basically 16mm laminated chipboard plus doors. There might be small differences such as the thickness of the back panels etc, but the basics are pretty much the same. I think the quality of the installation has much more of an effect that the brand of the cabinets, so if you think the carpenter would do a good job then I would go with that. I looked up Scope. I would imagine they are expensive and only for people who want a certain look. For me being "hand made" is not an advantage, but you might like that style. I would just look around at kitchens and find a style you like then price it up from various places such as Wren and get a deal you are comfortable with and your carpenter is happy to fit. As to the fridge freezer, I have been in the same boat, a lot of freezers are too small and also awkward to get large items into like a turkey. We historically have tended to have hardly anything in the fridge as we shop regularly and as much in the freezer. Having had two American fridge freezer we have moved to a separate fridge and freezer both 600mm wide, But tbh I think it was more a style choice as they could be built in and I fancied a change. As someone mentioned there might be only two of you, but how often do you have visitors, my wife's American family overload the fridge when they come. A small point is that the running cost is pretty much proportional to the size. So a standard fridge freezer might cost around £40 a year to run, an American one will be more like £60. I wouldn't really let running cost drive the decision though. The pandemic has really changed how we shop and store food. We have taken to freezing way more stuff such as bread and ingredients. It has slashed our food wastage, but means there is now more stuff in the freezer and less in the fridge. Really it depends on your shopping patterns and how you want the kitchen to look.

Not till tonight, I am not on split shifts untill tomorrow. Cooking is easy. It really is. It is just a case of being organised and not overly ambitious. The rest is physics.

I've got our utility fitted out and the new fridgefreezer purchased. Just need to bring our current cooker down and we're sorted. The kitchen... will wait. I'd decided on a reasonably sized fridge freezer which will end up in the kitchen, and a small chest freezer as "overflow" in the utility.

I'm embarrassed to say we ended up with A fridge in kitchen An upright freezer and a fridge freezer in the utility room.

On reality you'd rod from the inspection chamber outside right up to the top of the stack. BC guy was dismissive of rodding points inside as they are rarely accessible or effective. Hence placing of a rodding point outside and use of easy sweep bends

Also remember that the level changes during the year, with us there is a huge difference between now and January

The last six weeks have been a bit of a slog but have finely got the roof finished, PV fitted and first floor cladding and windows fitted. Scaffolding came down yesterday 3 weeks longer than planed big hole in wallet. First floor chipboard flooring down so will start on the ground floor windows and studwork. But now back to real work as well.

ISOTEX is approx £70/square metre. ISOTEX is an MMC (Modern Method of Construction) and it can't really be compared with standard construction and timber frame IMHO

For some background stuff, read this (all of it). A bit dated now as he never saw how cheap PV and Wind Power became before he died. https://withouthotair.com/download.html

The architect I deal with charges based on the expected build cost based on a standard cost and if you want a gold plated kitchen it doesn’t create any extra work for him so there is no extra charge. I think that’s fair.

Apologies! Schematic below (hopefully)

Yes, I'm behind on the blog posts, but MBC are almost done.. just putting roof membrane on and fixing a few issues this week. You can read more about this here: http://www.windandsun.co.uk/products/PV-Mounting-Structures/GSE-Integration-Roof-Integrated#.X1uJ3JNKjUY But, for MCS certification you need a fire tested panel/tray combination or a AA rated fire-proof substrate. You weren't going to use GSE though were you?

I gave it a go, but really didn't get far - every time I try and import an image it hangs (beach-ball of doom on my Mac) I played around with lucidchart.com yesterday and got quite far quite quickly. It's a bit annoying to connect the wires (pipes) to small components like valves, and the routing all goes a bit mental if you move things around too much, but for a free online app it's very usable. (Still very much WIP, but gives the idea)

Like most things, I only know what I learnt about them on here The horizontal main drain needs separate venting somewhere. Ours is planned to be in the attached garage, which I'm now a bit concerned will make that stink. Etc https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/search/?&q=Aav

No mention of network cables in wiring regs. Put them where you like. Same for A/V cables.

In another life I will . I’ve got lots to do differently in my reincarnated next life . Knowing my (expletive deleted)ing luck I’ll come back as myself

Agreed that the 150mm is hard to cut. I ended up making an extremely large (and possibly lethal) table saw to get the cuts straight and vertical.