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I'm not sure many can say this, but we've just had the easiest planning journey, despite what appeared at the outset to be fairly complex surroundings. Our plot is a 1-acre garden split, leaving just under 0.5 acre with the original bungalow and just over 0.5 acre with our plot. We are a stones throw from a conservation area, most of the trees in our garden can be seen throughout the village, our pre-plan noted highways access issues that we were only half-heartedly able to 'solve' and there were 27 neighbourly consultation letters sent out. The plot is about 4 miles from the centre of Norwich. Despite this, we sailed through in 8 weeks to the day. No public comments at all, nothing from Highways, nothing from the District Council. Just one comment from the Town Council who said that we have a good design and our approach could serve as a lesson to all. Relieved is a massive understatement, we have been hugely blessed with this opportunity to build our forever home. We attribute at least part of our success to the fact that we weren't greedy. The plot could have sustained so much more, 4 houses, even 6 or 7, but all we wanted was ours. This was never a cash cow for us. So, here is our design... View from the West... View from the South West... It's just over 193m2, plus a 24m2 carport. It'll be built from ICF. The scheme will save 5x 70ft Scots Pines, a 50ft Hornbeam, a 70ft specimen Lime, an 80-year-old Black Mulberry plus various others from the chopper. Despite the whole unsplit plot having 14 direct boundary neighbours, nobody overlooks us. We plan to do as much as possible ourselves. My small niche recruitment business won't survive the pandemic, it's hanging on by a thread now, so this will be my full-time occupation until it's complete. If we play our cards right, we'll be mortgage free and living in our dream home. Anyway, just using this as a means to try to consolidate our excitement. Now to set off on a VERY steep learning curve!

If you have the height use 200mm eps and save 40-50%.

If cable routing allows swap rcbo in main CU for MCB and then have an rcd or rcbo CU in garage so at least a trip would be more local than having to go back to the house to reset it. All my outbuildings only have local RCD's in their own CU's

Get one of those clamp on EMC ferirte beads over the mains lead. It sounds like the mains wiring is acting like a big antenna to pick up the interference from the electric fence. While you are at it, have a good look at how the electric fence is set up. How is it earthed, you don't want it earthed to the mains, give it it's own earth rod and have no connection to the mains earth, and an EMC ferrite on the mains lead for the fence energiser as well.

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?

Well done ?nice to hear a positive planning experience and an amazing looking home. Lovely city Norwich, going tomorrow for afternoon tea at the assembly house .

Congratulations ..!! Looks good - time to start a blog !

I sent the PP for the 2 houses here and they wrote and asked for the full PP for 2 different style houses on the plot from a few years earlier. I had never seen that PP and it wasn’t on the planning portal. Contacted the council but although they had a reference to it they didn’t have a scanned copy of the PP. They said that they would try to get it back from the archives for me but then said that it couldn’t be located. I rang HMRC and they told me not to worry. I can’t imagine how it could be relevant to the VAT claim . I think they just make it up as they go along!

Yep, needs to be commissioned before 31.03.2022 as RHI is stopping. No word on whether they'll be anything to replace it, but they plan to encourage more new builds to go with heat pumps from 2022, so there maybe incentives.

Here's hoping they put something in place for after next March, I'm all set on ASHP, but no way will I be done in time to submit RHI.

exactly why my cynical mind said ?

In what way is it damaged? If just a crack and it is still working for instance someone will take it for free for just tinkering about with.

Hi and welcome. Which part of Oxfordshire? (my old stomping ground) or another at Graven Hill?

Welcome Bill, we are a friendly bunch so ask away, just remember there is no such thing as a silly question, silly is not asking, looking forward to hearing about your project.?

Welcome. Always good to ask ahead of time. Marvin

ResinLab.it

Hi and welcome, Here's my experience.

Sorry - promised a pic and failed to deliver! Sorted. The garage ceiling was a piece of p*ss compared to the attic room.

Yeah I agree, they're completely useless and I wish govt would do something, because the system does not work at the moment. Especially with UU I've been told different dates, different timescales, different rules each time I've spoken to a different person - to the point where I now can't believe anything they tell me to be anything more than just fobbing me off. I really do hate them.

I'm not very familiar with Sunamp but I know they store energy in the latent heat of fusion (aka phase change, aka melting) rather that in the materials specific heat capacity (aka temperature change/rise). Phase changes normally occur at a constant temperature so to work out how full it is you really need to know how much of the magic wax (or whatever they use) has melted and how much is still solid. If you keep adding heat once its all melted the temperature would start rising again so they can decide that its full when a certain maximum temperature is reached. Likewise if the temperature falls below some minimum they can assume its empty. So full and empty are probably easy to work out but anywhere in between is tricky. Its a bit like the difference between lead acid batteries and lithium. With lead acid the voltage is a reasonable measure of the state of charge but with Lithium the voltage curve is a bit too flat to be a reliable measure of how full they are. Modern Battery management systems measure how much energy has gone in and out so they can work out how much is left in the battery since it was last fully charged. With the Sunamp its easy to work out how much electricity has gone in but I suspect they don't measure how much is taken out? Hence i agree with... Once you have input an output data you could (with the help of a computer prog) calculate how much is still in the Sunamp without waiting to see how much you have to put back in to fill it up.

Cover it all in lean mix concrete. Nothing fancy required. Only really for driveways and roads, not needed for other areas unless very shallow.

Just back fill until the last bit you want concrete over is left then fill the gap - try and get at least 200mm over the ducts. No rebar or anything else needed.

Concrete. You basically put everything in a duct and concrete over the lot.

i can't see why not, though my price is excluding VAT, so for the sake of 80p its not worth the cutting

It seems to me that something is going out of true towards the end and rather than the blade cutting through it is putting a load onto the tile which is cracking it. It stands to reason that a good blade spinning fast will remove material thus cutting through, if this remains straight, level and true then the blade will continue on it's path, if at some point something tilts or turns or rocks, I could see the above occuring. I had an issue with vibration, once the tile was nearly cut, the last bit was just cracking off - I ended up needing to get the tile to sit more firmly so it couldn't vibrate the backs of them their quite rough so sitting flat and firm was not an inherent characteristic of the tile. I would perhaps get some scrap tiles (looks like you may have a few!) and investigate how square everything sits in relation to each other particularly at the last section of the cut. If the issue is limited to the last 50-60mm then could you try cutting it with a wooden spacer to move the tile out further, if that cuts no issue then you know that something is happening at the final stroke. Is the blade running dead straight the whole way? It is not by any chance taking a lean at the last section due to a loose rail or bearing or bent bit?

Could you use dritherm 32? i and getting 150mm thick for £10.22 M2. Though i guess there is the issue of cutting it, as it comes in 455mm wide batts what will be a pain to cut into 400 cts timber

Concrete on site 8 am sharp, pumped in by 10, levelled by 12. Powerfloat 4 pm.

If your putting Wet UFH in You really need 75 mil screed to give you 50 mil coverage on top of the pipes

50mm is ok with some screed materials e.g. anhydrate. Not all screeds are equal.

50mm screed is plenty thick enough for wet UFH. As for the bathroom, Electric heating mats work great, tiles can be problematic tho. I have 800mm porcelain tiles and they can curl up a bit if/when the cat decides to cook itself all day/night in one spot. several times i have stubbed my toe on a tile edge or corner only for it to be flush again the next day. In future i would go with smaller tiles.

HI thanks the reply I cant connect an SWA gland to the side of the CU. there's not enough room to physically do it. I think ill just terminate in IP65 box on outside wall then bring tails of swa and earth from banjo in through wall in conduit to box above CU then go in behind CU is spaced off wall slightly as other cable go in behind.

Yes, @Dianne, https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/17860-caravan-act-build-technical-source/?tab=comments#comment-289019 about 65ft by 22ft

This bit worries me. You do know how to terminate SWA, with a proper gland designed for the job that clamps the armour mechanically and makes contact to it. You then take the earth connection from the "banjo" supplied with the gland. It does not take up any room "in" the CU.

As above you need to ask your neighbours etc. Social media is another source of help. There are often posts along the lines of "can you recommend a good builder" with lots of suggestions for you to follow up on. My builders merchant was very helpful once we got to know them. We are project managing our build so we opened a cash account and got lots of quotes from them which opened up avenues for us to ask about bricklayers/groundworkers etc. Once we had one trade on site we would ask them to recommend the next trade etc. We were also lucky to have lived in the area for forty years so could tap into the local grapevine. Good luck it is a very worrying process.

You can reclaim the VAT so only a cash flow issue any way

Were in the Huntingdon area so too far away to recommend anyone. Think our builder is retired now anyway. You can also try local Estate Agents. They will probably know who builds nice houses in your area. Do your own checks on anyone they recommend.

When you think about it the mortgage will be covering everything you buy which will be subject to vat anyway unless it’s supply and fit so I don’t see a problem with that, unfortunately kit firms can’t zero rate unless they are erecting it for you

Happened to us when we were selling our first self build, built 1992 selling 14years later, day before completion solicitor asks for the permission from Sepa for the septic tank , of course I don’t have it , trip to the local authority office in the days when you could actually speak face to face with someone, rattled off what I was looking for and the very kind lady says it’ll need to come from the vault which will take 7-10 days! Then she said what month and year are we talking I said August 1992 , few clicks on her computer and she said you’re in luck everything from July 92 onwards is on computer, £15 later I had it in my hand!

Mightn't be mains-borne at all. the iMac's audio amplifier may well just be picking it up... Does a battery powered MW radio tick also?

Service void before services: Note the gap in the vertical battens at 450mm and 1200mm above floor level. This is to allow socket and light circuits to run horizontally without having to drill the battens to do so. Similar view with some cables in. That's a bundle of AV cables that I wanted to take the shortest route. AV cables are not confined to safe zones like other wiring. And here are some pipes as well in the service void, hot and cold water for the kitchen sink.

We put sarking board along the bottom for fixing skirtings. Then 25mm vertical straps at 600mm cc. And 25mm strap along the top. It's easier doing the top or bottom strap after services are in.

We paid £45 for branded 1200x600x14mm including delivery (from italy). https://www.cottodeste.com/collection/limestone Initial prices i had for these was €30+delivery in italy. £98 from London showroom. Shopped around and found £75, then shopped around more and got £60, then started negotiating (knowing what price in Italy was) and got them down to £45 including delivery. I can’t believe the margins that exist in resale of tiles in U.K.!!

Bat mitigation gave me a headache and was very expensive. It's not as simple as slapping up a few bat boxes (although I have these, of course). I possibly have a worst case scenario for you: If they find bats you will likely have to have a Licence to remove the roosts and relocate the bats from Natural England submitted by the ecologist which is slow, then the validation is time limited. When estimating your timing for the build, be very generous and overestimate so that you don't stress and have to get another licence. I've spent about £6k so far, plus building ramifications which are hard to quantify. They will keep on surprising you with the requirement for another survey to keep your licence valid (£500 a time) Do plenty of research on ecologists (I just chose one from Google), ask your local council, you might even be able to use local (cheap) bat enthusiasts for the surveys, but make sure they are acceptable to Natural England and that they are recognised for the Licence. My ecologist designed mitigation and I didn't realise the significance at the time or I would have discussed alternatives more. My main worry has been F1 bituminous felt. It stops the roof from breathing so you might have to take care with roof design and look at alternatives. My architect overlooked this till it was too late and I was ill and not fully on the ball. I had to have supervised stripping of the weatherboarding (£300 per day) so as PeterW said if your design can can accommodate not disturbing them, that might be a solution. Also beware 'Batsafe' membrane is not actually bat safe: it's polyester and there are lawsuits pending over its use. I don't think you can rush this but at least do research now into ways round problems... and maybe buy a caravan for extra space for this summer

Put a for sale sign on it out front of house. Like homer Simpson did. Nobody takes it if it's free.

Lucky it was just your feet on show or that blade would have looked even bigger!