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So far my spreadsheet counts every pound we have spent that we otherwise wouldn’t have spent. Like everyone we have a fixed budget that we don’t intend to go over and that includes buying the land. It’s not a tight budget as such but it is capped at that amount. We aren’t on Grand Designs where they miraculously find another £100k from somewhere and the wife ends up preggers. ?

This is a bug bear of mine on this forum - I have two. The first is how some go on about how 'perfect' and 'precise' their slab, frame whatever is. This caused me a.lot of stress early on when things weren't quite perfect. I now know enough to know that building ain't perfect - it doesn't matter as long as the end result is correct. I.e. insulation, air tightness and look. The second is costs. I think people like to delude themselves/be able ro brag how little their build costs and kit all sorts of things such as plot etc. How can that not be included- its a build cost. Yes it will vary depending in region (which is the excuse most use for ommitting) but then so do labour costs, do they omit those? Nope. People on here love to massage the numbers. Not many will give you a true 'total' cost. My dislike for this stems from the fact that the unwary will.read this and factor it into their costings and come a cropper. For myself, every single spend I have that would not have arisen if I wasn't self building is a 'build cost'. Simple. 'Sat quietly now waiting for the I built my house for less than £1000/m2 people to pipe up?'

Because they can . Logic and reason don’t come into it

Homebuilder's Bible has a good chapter on how design impacts build cost. To quote from memory... A sphere has the minimum surface area to volume, but not easy to build Next most efficient is a cube - i.e. to enclose 100m2 of floor you need 40m of linear wall (10m x 10m). Rectangle is less efficient, the same 100m floor may require 50m of linear wall (20m x 5m). Angles increase complexity and reduce usable space. Gable ends maximise room in roof space and simplify roof construction. Walls are cheap, glass is expensive. Slopes, difficult access, laying services all cost extra money, but often the land is cheaper as a result - same if planning will be tricky to get. Then, considering the structural build method, some are low cost material but high cost labour (brick & block), and the ratio changes as you move into ICF and then timber frame. Speed of construction can be desirable if you have expensive accommodation costs during the build or high financing costs. We built a basement, which on the face of it is an expensive idea, but it turned out to be one of the more economic parts of the build working out as £1000/m2 and it also acts as the foundation system for the house above. However that was highly dependent on the ground conditions and site access etc, which in our case were all favourable (but you need to spend ££ to establish this before you start). Then you have global FX rates, supply chain issues, local and national labour costs & availability etc.

They want to sit tight mate - you don't want swaying partitions! You doing 4x2 or 3x2 CLS or metsec?

Won't an A2AHP he cheaper that 6 solar modules, an inverter/charge controller and battery, and then all the kit to work work it back to a resistance heater. https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/tf-12000ch/telefunken-tf12000ch-air-conditioner-air-conditioner

I thought about it a few times, but hadn't got around to trying It's not obvious in the page source (just the pixel height of the bar chart elements) but reloading the report with Network logging on makes it easy to find. (I'd previously used that trick to discover restful commands to turn it from heating to cooling mode and back, meaning in principle I can automate switching the unit over at the start/end of cooling season) That spat out some JSON numbers for consumed and delivered DHW figures for this year, by month. HotWater: [0.03, 41.129, 74.68999999999998, 61.456, 41.15999999999999, 41.328, 45.029, 20.189999999999994,…] ProducedHotWater: [0, 5.39, 192.41999999999996, 184.10899999999998, 148.61900000000003, 165.85999999999996,…] consumed delivered COP Feb 0.03 0 0.00 Mar 41.129 5.39 0.13 Apr 74.69 192.42 2.58 May 61.456 184.109 3.00 Jun 41.16 148.619 3.61 Jul 41.328 165.86 4.01 Aug 45.029 182.04 4.04 Sep 20.19 86.418 4.28 Oct 26.348 93.619 3.55 Nov 25.089 69.9 2.79 Dec 2.21 7.28 3.29 December is suspiciously high, but maybe just data error as we're only a few days into it. But ranging from 4 in summer to 2.8 in Nov seems healthy. EDIT: I'm a bit suspicious though of why the overall demand dropped so much from Sept onwards. We have PV divert in addition to this, but do run the ASHP to heat DHW when the sun is strong too. Give me a grim feeling that when running in Cooling mode, it actually spends a bunch of time chilling then reheating the cylinder. GOD DAMN IT I bet that's the damn Honeywell VA4073A they installed getting stuck in the mid position ?

Sucker! ?

then pipe it into the sewer anyway.

Fibre or paper

OK, had my retest today. Improved from 7.9 to 5.55. I could probably have done the work to get below 5 given a bit more time and a lot more enthusiasm. The guy said that it was a surprisingly big improvement. From bad to mediocre! I found quite a few largish holes in places that were out of sight. I presume these were the main areas of improvement. I am not convinced it has actually made any material difference to gas usage. The one thing I did conclusively fix was the WC. It was consistently colder than the rest of the house and the heating ran a lot of the time in there during winter. Now the heating runs less than the adjacent hall.

From memory they are about 250mm

Just occasionally a good idea may occur during construction, often a suggestion from a contractor. However it may be too late without disrupting other details. Therefore it is very important to do all this discussion before you start, including detailed discussion with all parties. Contractors do not like changes as it disrupts their plans , material ordering and resources, and so it either costs you more, or doesn't make the savings you hoped for. it might also require redesign. At some stage you have to trust designers/contractors and get into detailed discussion. As a contractor I was always wary about giving away commercial ideas, but there comes a time for trust in that direction too....or not.

So why not use the standard UFH manifold and the Wunda automatic balancing valves ..? They just need a 230v supply and they balance to delta 7°C difference and are about £20 each. Then a cheap thermostat in the room - wired or wireless , and you can flow to a zone or even individual rads.

I agree to both the above, we spent what we had, some things did not get finished and when more money came along, they did. The end valuation we got when converting to a high st mortgage (from the Ecology self build one) equalled the original site cost plus what we spent so I consider that a win. For me, self build is about getting what you want, where you want at a price you can afford. It was never about profit. What was very useful, and something of a reality check, was (post PP approval) getting a QS to itemise the build elements and do a cost plan. The 'book' costing was about 30% over our available budget so I was able to see where to make savings, either through value engineering / design simplification or some good old fashioned negotiation and bargain hunting.

I am not an expert on this type of thing but if you have planning permission granted by the LA and highways consulted can they legally change their mind? Might be worth consulting a planning consultant to find where you stand.

I hope not, there comes a point where you need to define a detailed budget. I assume the biggie that could account for a + £700 sqm figure is an architect. Then add site insurance, mid build planning revision applications, pre build enviro surveys, ground quality test digs, crane hire, muck-a-away, planning consultants, 10 year warranty, mortgage arrangement fees, site fencing and building control. Someone recently said their m2 costs did not include main service connection charges which is highly dubious accounting. What about tools? I have probably spent over a £1000 on these, they will offer some post build benefit but it is money I would not have spent otherwise. There is a consensus that a detached garage build cost is excluded. When considering the broadest financial picture, each year in a static caravan saves £1000 on council tax, no need for gym membership and our holiday budget has shrunk. Long term I will be far less likely to get trades in to fix problems.

Hi @Bitpipe and @LA3222 , and poor old @ToughButterCup having worked over the years, as self employed builder all the way to multimillion pound property, in roles from quoting, as an estimator, planner, cost engineer, site manager, surveyor and clients project manager, form pre-tender estimates through to final accounts I can safely say that every build is different. I know of no "One size fits all" answer. There are lots and lots of variables, far too many to list. For the avoidance of doubt I am not mocking anyone. Its neigh on bloody impossible to estimate the final cost. Having been paid to do just that day in day out for a few years .........

.... " Well ah'd like ter raise 't same concerns - 'ees jus' mekkin munne, plus 'ees gunna mek an 'ell uvver mess on it. " ... tr from the vernacular above to; Hail citizen of West Lancashire! I, as a citizen of the aforementioned zone, make plea that our esteemed colleagues of Salamander Cottage are speculators of the worst kind. They merely plan to; design, build, flog and run. And since the esteemed applicant has no idea how to build anything, he's going to screw up big time.

That's a shame. It sounds as though everyone has lost out really. I can't see that he has been through the MPTS at all. The CCG applied to stop him from being one of their GPs rather than going through the fitness to practice route, so he should be still able to practice outside of West Kent CCG area.

Calculations are one thing but Barryscotland is in the process of gaining real, empirical data. If he logged his indoor/outdoor temperature differential vs. kWh input wouldn't that yield a more accurate Q instead of arriving at it from U*A*ΔT using a long list of assumed U values? Often wondered about this because it sounds a lot easier ?

You're not wrong about negative feelings towards 'up country' people. It's peculiarly strong in the Cornish it seems... The principle in law is that the council would be liable because they are the publisher of the defamatory comments - the comments are reviewed by the council before being added to the application page. The law concerning social media sites is a little bit different because people effectively self-publish, and the social media company can only react after the fact. Internet providers have also been sued for hosting libellous comments, but without success to date.

Increased resistance makes the current draw go down. The resistance of the long cable run will drop some voltage and reduce the current. It will however dissipate power as heat so the heater element will not reach its design temperature and the cable (from the reel) may exceed its. A coil of cable has self-inductance from which the magnetic field opposes current flow (inductors are sometimes called chokes). This is similar (in effect only) to resistance and therefore also dissipates heat.

75mm minimum, 100mm better. Box ( surround ) all waste pipes with the same as well as you can.

Unless you have it on good authority that your Brickie is massively OCD with regard to insulation,ditch the rigid insulation boards. In fact,ditch them anyway.

I've had a gander. Our walls were 250mm cavity wall with Stainless steel ties going from inner leaf @ 4/m2 so probably a much worse situation than you are in. Changing to Teplo basalt ties would have cost an extra €2500 over SS and would have saved...........drumroll.............. €2 per year in heating (2 kWh) It was beyond insignificant in the scheme of things. By improving the airtightness by 0.005ACH per hour we'd have got the same improvement or plugging a leak 3mm in diameter.

Get your own back by flaunting your youth and vitality. Go for a daily jog around the village in your best gym bunny outfit then stop outside the houses of the evil ones, plonk your ghetto blaster down and do a 10 minute step routine to Eye of the Tiger at full volume.

So true. There are lies, damn lies and square meter build costs.

What do I love about the lights here? When they're all off and I can't see the sh!t hole and amount of work needed!