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@Indy I've been plugging away at this for a couple of hours on sketchup. First here are the elevations continuing in the style as before. As before I have no idea if the neighbours will be overshadowed or overlooked badly with this design. The council may be dead set against it too. Obvious points to note are. 1. Same footprint as your existing design. 2. Simplified roof. Just a hip roof with a flat GRP rectangle in the centre. 3. Fake chimneys only. 4. Open porch/balcony added to the rear. BEFORE AFTER Now for the floor plans. BEFORE + AFTER The foot print is the same I;ve done my best to keep the positioning and sizes of the rooms as you had them. Changes to note: 1. I've added side windows to the porch. 2. The hallway is more defined and has built in storage. 3. The study has an additional south facing window, built in book shelves and a glazed door with sidelights to brighten the hallway. The Storage opposite is symetrical. 4. The generous sized WC (wheelchair accessible size) has a south facing window and the door into the hall has a fanlight to do the same. Symetrical with the door to the visitors suite opposite. 5. The Visitors suite enters into a large dressing area with a tall window. The bedroom has an extra window and some shelving. It is further removed from the hallway for privacy and noise. 6. The central hallway is the part of which I am most happy! The staircase is much more of an event, fitting of such a larger house. Storage underneath. The South facing tall window will give tremendous light. Above is a surrounding wrap around landing and in the flat roof 3no 1m2 velux flat roof lights. 7. I've removed the niche for the ASHP. it would be more effective in the front garden with a stylish screen. Where it is it's awkward to build around and might be continuously defrosting due to lack of airflow. Also I'm not too enamoured with such a high current device enclosed on all but one side by the house re fire. Domestic bliss calling here............................................ I'll finish when I get a chance!

A good friend of mine who is a regional rep for Build Base Came out to site today with news on building products Concrete products set to rise Timber products are falling in price He also mentioned that BB are getting into the heat pump market Even Pasquils who he deals with have reduced quotes from six months ago So not all doom and gloom on the materials front

Plot 1 done, my plot done apart from kitchen that was waiting for the worktop template completed today. Plot 2 done in 4 weeks. and externals wrapping up in terrible conditions. 15 months - 3 plots - 7,000 sq. ft at £110 psf to a high (London SW1 spec) in Cambs. Have been self censoring on here as I have been critisised as a bit of a Swearey Mary (in the good times of Viz!) which is fair enough for the community. So this post will pretty much wrap it up for me as coming back from site where every other word consists of 4 letters to post here seems pretty much impossible! All the best lads. Tony

The reality is that unless you've got the space in front of the house almost entirely boxed in the the air temperature on anything other than a completely still day will be almost exactly the same as ambient. If you do have a sheltered corner the ASHP will certainly immediately stir up and mix the air with the ambient. If you were building a gigafactory and one side was in a shaded valley and the other side to the south of a large hill then maybe it might make a difference. A house is simply too small and the heat pump needs too much air for it to work. I think the confusion and intuition is to do with how we feel sitting to the north or south of our house. The sun's direct radiation, and the lack of cooling breezes make all the difference rather than the air temp. Radiation would help an ASHP a tiny bit, and I mean tiny compared to the effect of all the air it's processing. The difference would be much less than 1% I wager. Other factors such as the fan struggling to draw too much air because the ASHP is too enclosed and a poorly insulated water pipe will have orders of magnitude more significance.

I recently set frigate.video up on the old server PC for CCTV recording and I'm very impressed with it. Planning to turn down my windows machine currently running BlueIris on. Frigate uses Tensorflow for real-time object detection, and works best with a coral.ai EdgeTPU. They're difficult to get hold of now (global chip shortages) but I did manage to but a M.2 PCIe one from RS. Two adapter cards later (M.2 R key to PCIe mini, and PCIe mini to PCIe standard!) and it's working very reliably. But for simplicity definitely get the USB Dev dongle if you can! Constant image detection hardly adds any power demand to the 50W this machine already draws (mostly on 6 spinning disk raid array) so I will knock 40W off my base load by turning down the other windows machine. Configuration took a bit of tuning, the cameras have substreams and it's best to use those for lower res feed for the image detection and then it will record clips from the corresponding high Res (8MP) feed when anything is detected. The built in webui is simple but very usable, far better than the clunky android app for BlueIris, or the QNAP NVR I briefly tried. Good MQTT support and a premade Home Assistant integration so easy to build into other use cases. I found the driveway PIR I installed was false triggering the front lights all night, so I've disabled that and instead use the "person" detector from the CCTV, covers a much larger area with so far (2 weeks) zero false positives. We have a shared driveway, with the zones and masks and detection I can easily set it to only trigger when someone walks on "our" side of the driveway. Great fun! I've set it to detect other interesting object types (car, bicycle, cat, elephant) but I think I'd need much higher res detection stream for cat detection to work, and our street is disappointingly devoid of wondering elephants.

Thanks for all the comments. After a considerable effort all round. we actually got a site visit by the case officer last week where we could discuss things face to face (at a distance), and this has appeared today.... A change of heart, thank goodness. Now the real work starts...... ?

More of a concern to me as someone with only weak 2g phone signal at home, is will the 2g switch off mean they finally get their finger out and give is 4g coverage? Or will we be left with none?

The terminology can be tricky here. Extract and exhaust are opposite sides of the heat exchanger. Your supply will always lag the room temperature a bit (in heating climates) as the heat exchanger is less than 100% efficient. Beware the internal heat exchanger temp probe may not be too accurate either. Perhaps verify with an external thermometer.

I think you should price up a bulldozer renovation. You might be surprised at how little difference there is vs a complete remodel for a vastly superior end product.

Emmisivity without an air gap is next to nothing. So the foil would act as a conductor anyway.

We are a few months in to our 330m2 plus project which includes a basement. It’s a demolish and rebuild 5 bed detached. Turnkey with our selected builder at 575K contract sum. This includes the upward revision of the initial quote ( early 2020) to account for late 2021 building material prices Masonry build, relatively simple design but highly insulated and a fair amount of glazing. Good spec : ASHP, Underfloor heating, MVHR , Cat 6 Cabling, Triple glazed etc. So far all good. Went with a reputable local builder after tendering out to 3 reputable local builders ( East Kent) Quotes all came in between 560 and 630. My job and my OH’s jobs preclude any project management or DIY so for us turnkey was the route. Initially went to cost consultants for an estimate ( cost of just under a grand) quoted 820k without basement and 920k with basement. Another project management firm said minimum 775K cost before their charges. Prefab kit house provider quoted 650K excluding basement and groundworks and demolition. So far I’ve found the free build cost calculators ( home building and renovating etc) were much closer to the mark . ( £495k-£650k for a turnkey main contractor route plus /minus 10 percent for timber frame) I’m sure we could have done it for 85K less if we had the time but greater risk of costly errors as we are not builders, dealing with BC, warranty provider, multiple trades , likely longer build , keeping the neighbours informed especially when your lorries are going to cause temporary obstructions etc pretty daunting for 1st timers like us plus self build mortgage providers much happier with turnkey fully costed main contractor if you are not tradespeople So far brilliant progress and still on budget..sure that will change but only with our consent.. All our tendering builders knew the area well including soil type etc and we had loads of site visits to see their other projects etc as well as assessing how easy it was to get on with them etc. Flexibility etc. So far it’s been pretty good and relatively stress free.

It is difficult. There are programs to calculate it, but it is basically, simply the iteration of different rainfall possibilities against outflow, and how much is left to store. If you can handle the logic then you can do it yourself. If not then you may not get the right answer by buying a program. You will probably end up buying the exensive crates anyway, so might as well get their free design, with the benefit that bco will accept it. You can sometimes save by reducing the crates volume by using natural storage, eg ponds, swales, even barrels.

My guess the G/Y earth was a later update. for me it's the screwits that date it.

I’ve built a couple of these steel framed workshops 12m by 6m last one. I brought the steel c sections from a steel supplier and then had the angled corners and top sections bent to the angle I wanted. holes drilled on site and bolted together. no need for big pads under the legs, just a floor slab that is thicker in the location of the legs. I cannot see why you can’t build what you want for £20 grand all done.

Assuming the pipework from the ASHP to the emitters is not too long and very well insulated.

Doors are £5-700 ish, so that makes it about £1k per window fitted which seems a bit steep tbh. And that U-value is crap as you can get 1.2 easily these days

That would make my blood boil and be showing him the door. My parting comment would give me a best and final quote by post valid for at least 14 days and I will let you know.

Not really. It works with the Internet gateway and polls the data like the multimatic app (probably equally as slow ?) https://community.home-assistant.io/t/vaillant-multimatic-integration/87240

Using an ebus coupler? Let me know how you get on with this as I'm interested to do the same given i) no modbus interface available ii) EEBus works well but is limited.

Yup. You’ve already designed it.

It never happens. If it does, you’ve got a failure in the roof tiles, no membrane, incorrect falls, or gravity not working as if the gutter fills up it overflows over the front …

Why not give Vaillant tech a call. They are really helpful.

Hi CJ, I am in Edinburgh and just starting our second build which is a house for my parents. My advice would be that it would be too much cost and stress. One hour from Edinburgh gives you most of central Scotland, but assuming you mean within commuting distance of Edinburgh then your budget just won't stretch to it. Looking at our current build and others I am seeing in the area, basically by the time you buy the land and build the house you will be lucky if it is worth what you have spent. The upside though for most people is they do get the house that they want. Build costs have soared with rising materials costs. Indeed I would go further than @ProDave and assume a cost nearer to £2500 a square metre once you take all costs into consideration such as landscaping, professional fees etc. The 1970s bungalow behind my house just sold for over £700k. The buyers are going to knock it down and build a 200sq metre house. There is no way it will be worth the £1.2-1.3m they will need to cover their costs(The design looks very expensive). That is what you are up against, there are very few plots and people are willing to pay over the odds for them. But I feel your pain of wanting a house that works for you and your wife as you get older. We have designed a house with a bedroom downstairs for my parents. The vast majority of developer built houses have no bedroom downstairs and too many bedrooms upstairs. Wholly unsuitable for an older couple. Occasionally I do see a Bilder do something that might work for you. Bellway are building some bungalows and cottages in Livingston for example which would probably be in the £3-400k range. You might also find some houses in the Shawfair development which looks like it will be very nice in a few years or in Winchburgh where there is a lot of building going on. But it would just be a matter of being very focused on looking for the right thing. I would also look at developments by Dandara. What you are looking for is surprisingly unusual, it shouldn't be.

Getting the right people is crucial. My first builder gave me nightmares and serious stress, it's better now I have finally got good, reliable people. It's sooo stressful when people let you down and there's a chain of interdependent events. Hence it's easier and cheaper to build slowly, but the rent costs can spiral and be a significant hidden cost. Most self builders live on site ij a static to save money.

Sounds like a great project, and a lovely part of the world too. We are at a similar stage and quite nearby (Midlothian), just waiting for the Building Warrant to be approved so we can get started. If I end up finding any excellent local contractors I'll be happy to share if you promise to do the same!

Welcome, very interesting conundrum, stress is a funny thing, I suffer health issues linked to stress but found our build completely non stressful and in fact found it empowering after two bouts of cancer on top of my previous health problems. I was lucky and had a brilliant builder who built the shell etc and I did all the internals but he was capable of doing the lot through contacts with other trades. Stress is different things to different people. I think it all depends on what you want, what you can find and what you can afford!.

Hi and welcome to the forum. Plenty with health issues self build though obviously not full hands on. You plan is good, your idea of budget sadly is not. £100K might get someone to build and erect a timber frame but that is a long way from being a habitable house. With the recent rise in materials cost allow £2000 per square metre for a finished house. The economics are not always in favour of a self build, it is more about getting the house that you want built how you want it. Going forward that should also mean very very well insulated and air tight etc so you get low running costs. Edinburgh is probably the most expensive part of Scotland, others will have to advise where you might find a sensibly priced plot within an hour. Start by looking at https://espc.com/

You could use 50mm EPS and cut it with a hot wire - not difficult to make

You could use bend formers and lag them? I have a bag left over

Hi all New to the forum - just taken on a big project for our home, a renovation and extension of a 1970s bungalow. Looking forward to sharing ideas and picking your brains! Thanks

I really like the design. One of the more thought out examples I’ve seen on here. certainly better than our house. However one aspect of your brief keeps bugging me. The need for natural light. Typically light from the South can penetrate about 4m into a room. Diffuse light from the North a maximum of 3m. Looking at this I can’t help but feel your kitchen will be very dark towards the centre of the house, the upstairs landing similar. The master bath and B4 will take the lions share of the sun upstairs while the study may suffer from overheating and the library/sitting to the south west will be (perhaps) rarely used during daylight hours. I would consider a rejig or the rooms. I would bring the kitchen/diner to occupy the East side of the ground floor( ideal for morning) stretching from South to North and the lounge to central rear for views of the garden. The projecting extension could be moved to the east side to accommodate both the inside space and with a roof terrace omitting the need for a separate balcony. To bring more light to the centre of the house I would make the staircase more spacious leading right to the top floor (may have fire safety considerations) with a pair of large remotely operated Velux’s on the top centre of the North roof. These would have a “Halo”effect on the hall being really visually striking as you entered the front door. If done well it could look like a stairway to heaven! Additionally it would be very effective as stack ventilation during cooling months. The master ensuite is terrifically large but if you were to make it a bit smaller it would still feel very spacious thanks to that terrific bay window. Take that bit and widen the dressing room slightly. Put a tall window in the east wall ( frosted perhaps for privacy) and a large mirror on the West Wall. Then line the North and South walls with cloths storage. (corner cupboards/storage are too difficult to use well. Finally glaze the bathroom door (mayby something funky like frosted stained glass). This combined effort would take the dressing room from a small dark room full of messy corners into a bright enjoyable area to get clothed. Now for the part I’m certain I’ll get more detractors on. I would drop B2+ensuite down a floor in the same position and raise the utility and study up a floor in their place. ( maybe put the study in B2 and leave b3 as is) Practically unless you’re a die hard “hang the clothes on the line” type there’s far less benefit having a utility/laundry near the garden rather than near the bedrooms where all the cloths live anyway. Realistically I cant see the downstairs utility door being used all that much either. A good door is three times the price of a good window. An upstairs north facing study is isolated from street noise, has even diffused sunlight (much better than direct for working in + video calls etc) and importantly, for those of us who have seen covid test our belt buckles, far away from the biscuit box! A downstairs bedroom with access to a shower is practically so so useful. For having small kids its brilliant to be able to change dirty nappies and wash them up on the ground floor. ( Even with years of farming and various types of manual labour, nothing has been as testing on my back as children). Its great for friends and relations who are not as well able to handle stairs to come and stay. Also being on a different floor it gives good privacy to guests, au pairs and inmates alike! Finally, although we all hope to be active for many years its quite likely a temporary injury will come sooner than you expect. I fell off my road bike and bashed my knee a few years back and although it was only a week, having a choice of living upstairs with a bathroom or downstairs with the tv and kitchen was not as dignified as it could have been. Then there’s the old age debate which of course is well known. I know you have provisioned for a lift. This isn’t a terribly robust path in my opinion. The likelihood is that if you aren’t building it in on day 1 you won’t do it until you really have to have it. Then you are assuming that you’ll be in a position to splash £20k minimum + inflation and be able to wait for it to be installed. Remember older people can find it difficult to access credit and some illness and accidents (as i found out myself) can come very suddenly. Overall though I love the feel of the plans, the room shapes and scale. I have a couple of thoughts on the outside but make sure you’re really certain if the layout first. Good luck!!

We have a hole through the wall with a 150mm duct and a magnetic backdraft flap. Have to put a window on tilt when the extract fan is on 2 or 3 due to good airtightness. It works fine. I wouldn’t be afraid of a recirculating extractor with a good carbon filter mind you.

ASHP simply move too much air to make much use of relatively small localised warm air pockets. A 10kw heat pump moves up to 3000m3/hr. Say you were to allow an hour for each airchange to gain meaningful heat in a nice suntrap that was sheltered up to 10m high with 300m2 ground area .Then put the heat pump in the middle. On a still day it would make a measurable difference to the performance of your ASHP. However you’d be better off just putting the entire house in the said suntrap instead! I wager a better ASHP location would be as close to the house as possible to reduce pipe heat losses and in a naturally windy area so the fans don’t need to work so hard.

@Grian I think you need to approach this from the “how small can we make it” approach and think comfy caravan as a starting point and only add size if it adds significant value. I’ve been hunting through my links and bookmarks as I am sure I have some links to a beautiful teardrop shaped cabin in Canada that has to survive wind and snow but they have given it near 180° panoramic views and the whole lot was made offsite using 8x2 modules that were bolted together on site. They did some clever stuff with a porch so that the inside was kept clean (and warm) and also additional storage. Same thing with doors that open out, all things that save space, and sliding or pocket doors on bathrooms etc. The other benefit of a teardrop or triangular shape is that it “opens up” a view, and you can use the small space for WC/shower and then make the front space more open plan and have the sofa / bed / living space. Adding in lots of light to the front and you create some clever open spaces. One consideration that you could make (assuming you have decent water pressure) is to use a small unvented cylinder. You can then use immersions to heat it, and even use a solar panel or two as a power source.

Id be looking at insulated cladding on something like that. It will add cost, but it will be sooooo, much nicer! And if you insulate, wack some underfloor heating pipes in when you do the base, even if you dont use/cant afford it now. Thank me later.......... That said, a concrete slab is a big chunk of budget. If its steel, as per simplysimon says, concrete pads will allow the building to go up. Then for a floor, use block paving. Easy to lay, and much cheaper as you can do that yourself easily. Does depend on your lift(s) though. A 2 poster would need concrete, but again, you could do it with 1m3 blocks.

In these old timbers I would avoid nails too if possible. The timber will be well seasoned, quite hard possibly and already have a few splits etc in it. The spiked (toothed) washers work well in new timber as it still quite soft, even some of the knots. But with old timber you really need to crank up the bolts to make the washer teeth bed in and form a close joint. You can easily do more harm than good to the old wood, it can split inder the bolt tension load and cause a headache. I would look to see if you can use M12 bolts in cleanly drilled holes. As a ball park you want to look at putting 2 number bolts per joint with 50 x 50 x 3.0mm thick square washers under the head an nut. The trick here is to see if you can get the bolts in while maintaining the edge and end distances. See table below for a guide. End distance is the distance from the bolt centreline to the cut end of the timber. Edge distance is the distance from the bolt centreline to the edge of the timber. Unloaded means that the force in the bolt is acting away from the end or edge. Loaded means the bolt force is acting towards the edge or end. With a typical roof connection the timbers are at an angle so we are left with having to use the loaded values. Sometimes this does not work so you look at M10 bolts.. then one larger bolt.. the joys! Mull this over and have a word with your SE.

This definitely isn’t Arts and Crafts but I can see what you mean generally. I’m talking about the parapet walls yes. They would be a brick thick if they are real stone, you don’t generally support stone on timber frame, they wouldn’t be as thick as drawn imo. There is also unsupported brickwork on the top dormer unless the cheeks are timber. I like the back a lot more than the front, apart from the balcony clashing with the roof.

we put a 6x9m steel portal frame a couple of years back and it cost a hell of a lot less than £70k+ even with the price of steel going up. you will/should be able to do a lot of it yourself, it's just big meccano. 1m3 pads for steel bases can be levelled with a water level, that's what i did as i don't have an out door laser, and a manitou to lift the steel, see a friendly farmer. go for fibre cement roof to stop condensation, i know you get anti- con. roofing but fibre is much quieter in the rain. plenty of places do roller doors, either elec or manual.https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185267209428? https://www.steelbuildings.co.uk/products/steel-building/? a bit smaller than you're looking at but also a lot cheaper! shutter for slab and get and two lorries of on-site mix, don't forget to put a dpm down.

Good to see, shame it's so far from me but positive signs.

So I’ve taken to drawing it up prior to chatting through with builder… thoughts? (Ignore some of my dodgy scaling eg courses not lining up)

Having bought and sold a lot of houses increasingly the solicitors seem to pick up on everything, to which I either fix if its major or decline and say the correction cost is built into the price. So do one. Its often not the buyer raising the issues.

Another +1 for Latzel. Ordered Thurs 9th, arrived today. Whilst their website isn't the best, it is usable, just switch to the DE version at the top of the page and use the automatic Google translate. Shipping via DPD. Customs wasn't an issue, once the goods hit the UK I received an email with a link to pay the charges. Delivered 24hrs later Order total = £607 DE Tax refund = £92 UK Tax & Customs Charges = £110 Final Total (inc Delivery) = £625 UK vendor (inc Delivery & 12.5% discount) = £1003 Does make you wonder why the UK vendor prices are so much higher!