Leaderboard

This may not be what you want to hear, but you want cheap to build, then ditch the basement. The basement will cost more to build per square metre than the above ground storeys.

A wise man once said to me “ WTF are you doing?! “ He was right . WTF am I doing . Wisdom indeed

A Prat Fall

planning wouldn't give us a bigger property above ground as it would've been substantially bigger than the existing property. so my 'fun' rooms had to go somewhere and so a basement it was. plus I've always wanted a basement. ?

That’s not like you Nick ?

Get photos of the existing layout and the new one. If the new pipe is no longer shared then it might become your responsibility rather than the water co. If you have photos you can prove it was theirs and the neighbours changed it.

Or you could do everything like me ( yr 8 at the moment) but save literally 100’s of K .

@pocster speaks words of wisdom here. even if you can't do any of the labour yourself then you could save a lot of money by project managing the build and using subbies to do the work. could save at least 20% over using a main contractor.

Your issue will be the 15% semi matte finish that they use - it will be sprayed and potentially has a binder / flatting agent in the paint which will change the overall finish.

You can get sample pots from Little Green for a fiver. And they come with a free brush. ?

Kitchen brands tend to use big name paints, farrow and ball and little greene, found this… https://www.littlegreene.com/marine-blue

Good news. Unusual way to be alerted to such a fault. It looks like that is a good quality stainless steel pump so should be robust.

Sorted, it was a stone obviously stuck, lucky the pump didn't burn out but explains the heat when we opened the cover. The covers will be finally be sorted and fixed down this week which will hopefully prevent any issues of bricks falling in.

I refer to my previous point - I think they have not told BCO and WaterCo that there is sewage works as part of their extension. As such, the cost and issues are all theirs not yours.

Indeed. I suspect that is why the builder is trying to put the onus onto the OP. He knows this is an issue, perhaps didn't allow for it and thinks the OP can now be made to foot bill. Well I am sorry but this builder has been caught out or didn't do due diligence. Interestingly, this could now delay the neighbours build until this is all agreed and new warrant drawings approved. Time to get real with them.

Have you had someone staying that doesn’t know about not putting female sanitary products or wet wipes down the loo?

This is of course true . @Peg n Bru do you plan doing any of the work yourself ? . It will take much longer ?? ; but your labour costs are zero .

Go and look again. If it is still running and the level has not gone down, then turn it off at your consumer unit and call your plumber. And try not to flush the loo or run much water until he has been.

Sorry to hear you've had such a torrid time so far. A self build is stressful enough when things go reasonably well. One additional point not mentioned is CIL exemption. Do you have this in place, you really need to have it in place before you even start clearing the site. If you don't have it contact your council and plead your case, they may be sympathetic. On our project the architect was probably the least value for money, mainly down to high hourly fees and poor communication. I've just used a architectural draftsman who's been really good value, handled planning, structural calcs etc, (robin@lowmasdesigns.com) he's on the south coast so may not be able to help you. Google 'Architectural Services' for your area for people providing this kind of service. You do need to get the design and planning sorted before going forward.

Welcome. You are among friends here: unqualified but interested and bearing the scars of a good few years' building experience between us. Yes, you are where you are. I'd venture to say that every single person posting (rather than lurking) knows exactly what you mean. Your post begs many questions. Help us with a bit more detail. Can you post the plans, and a site plan please? Can you give us more of an idea of what you mean by '... left with a hole in the ground.....' (photos) Exactly where are you in the Planning Permssion cycle ? '... get through planning as speedily as possible....' Please tell us you haven't started building without Planning Permission. As written , it sounds as if you may have (temporary accomodation... living on site ... hole in the ground... ) Now's the time for a calm, detailed look at the situation. We'll help you do that. Ian

Estimator's hat on. It is a pain breaking down your own detailed costings to fit a simplified spreadsheet like this. Different contractors will put sums into different boxes when summarising. 10 to 15% overhead and profit is generally not enough, but nobody wants to see more, so some will be 'lost' in the other figures: either spread through or plonked into a big and early item, or classed as prelims. The provisional sums vary a lot too, so are clearly the contractors' tricky items, and may balance out some other items when allocated. tbc and % without sums make this pretty useless too. heating 11k or 42k. not the same job. windows 21k or 41k not the same spec. As Mr Punter suggests...simplify it if you have to start soon, and leave the innards. Don't rule out any of these contractors yet. The cheapest may very well be very efficient, while the others use subbies a lot. The dearest may be the only properly quoted price. Very good luck,

You might want to turn off the PV while doing these tests or that will confuse a lot of those simple energy monitors. Just turn off the big AC isolator that should be close to the PV inverter.

Osb is fine

Put 3x2s in to catch the fixings, ie a full noggin/dwang

Under the kitchen sink, more room to add stopcock, change from underground pipe to copper/plastic. Easy to get a main bond to it, there is a requirement for water at the sink anyway so makes sense, of course if you had plant room it would be there, even an attached garage I would consider it in there, just to keep access to the stopcock easy.

where will the outside tap be?

I did too Joe, I was meaning maybe there is some restriction they have been asked to comply with otherwise I wouldn't have worried about the existing footprint.

Design services are standard rated and cannot normally be reclaimed. "Mixed" invoices (eg supply and fit) should be charged at the lowest of the two rates on the lot. Since "Fitting" is zero rated the whole of a supply and fit invoice should be zero rated to you. However in this case they are providing Design Services and materials both of which are standard rated. There are at least three possibilities... 1) Two seperate invoices. You can only reclaim VAT on the one for the materials. 2) One invoice with design and materials separately priced. The whole lot should be standard rated but only the Vat on the materials would be reclaimable. 3) One invoice with just one figure for the total and VAT. HMRC should allow you to reclaim all of the VAT.

Just had something very similar on a property near me and the builder went through a lateral drain whilst digging founds and didn’t spot it, and pouring the foundation they ended up with concrete in the drains. Cost £18,000 to resolve… Bigger concern is that your neighbour is digging over or near a lateral drain or sewer. If that is the case they need a build over agreement and your neighbour will need to do that at their cost not yours. Minimum will be repair and lintels, worst case is they need to move the drain or re-lay it.

+1 @ashthekid Looks like you are the house with blue door. Neighbour is the house with red door. Water co is responsible for the red pipes, you the purple bit to your boundary only. https://draindetectives.co.uk/blog/who-is-responsible-for-drains/

If it’s a shared pipe it might be the responsibility of the water company these days - that’s what a letter I had from welsh water a couple of years ago said.

When their garden starts to fill with your sewage, I am sure they will think about fixing it.

I'm not sure in rural Shropshire there is any taste for contemporary art!

Hi, one of the issues which has arisen with our Velox build is how to support the weight of the large triple glazed windows. I assume that this is an issue with most ICF builds. The window frame is approximately 100mm deep. At first floor level the window frame sits approximately 15mm in from the exterior 35mm Velox panel. This means that it is resting entirely above the 180mm of exterior EPS insulation. The attached picture shows the "angle" we are using at ground floor level (where there is only 80mm of EPS to ground FFL) to support the window frames, bolted through into the concrete floor. I would be interested to hear what solutions other people have used in ICF builds.

We all ponder the same question. But you are fairly amusing, so carry on. At least your posts don’t go on for ever and ever and ever like a certain bloke we know.

There's this rather agonised looking lion, if we count central Shrewsbury as rural. I wonder why it looks like that? It could be an early version of the cat pencil sharpener.

Just before the Brexit vote we had a firm of bricklaying contractors and the vast majority of them were voting leave because they thought the Eastern Europeans were keeping wages down. There were plenty of people and press at the time who were scathing and condescending towards them but it looks like it worked for them.

A plumber, who spends half his life with his arm up someones U bend becomes immune to such matters. I am glad I am not a plumber.

What's this? This seems to be running. Not really sure what this is: And then there is another bit which I'm not going to post pics of as it's full of sh!t.

I'd be inclined to start sending some Mr Whippys through, may get them to rethink their strategy and fix it schnell machen?‍♂️