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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

You are (strange) but totally right to be honest - make them tell you to f*ck off! I wasn't sulking but, if I was, sulk over. Happened to me at Audi Sports Net and will probably happen again - who gives a toss! I just don't want to ever be in a situation where I self censor - there is just no point in posting in that environment. Anyways, notice given on my shithole rental today (nice views mind) - move 'planned' (ie I have done f*ck all about booking anything) for w/c 14/2. We are not even going to be wet in the plot until week after next. Should be fine though. Called off the air test for the 11th and the b/c final inspection for the 14th. Sold Plot 1 - largest price achieved in the area ever - shows that people will pay for spec and quality - this was a major call when speccing the thing. I just think that quality sells itself and while the sales agent needs telling the market sets it's own level. Plot 2 will sell this w/e for even more. They are great plots tbh - I would have had an excitable accident in my pants a couple of years ago to have had the opportunity to live in one of those. Carpets in today - no joins. Had to move a 5m x 12m carpet through the plot and around a swerve. The thing weighed over 1/4 tonne. Boomed it up with the forks to get it in over the terrace thing and then 3 of us sweated and swore for an hour moving it in place. Got 1500 sq of carpet done - galleried landing and 4 massive bedrooms with joins under carpet bars only at the door thresholds. I didn't think that could be done tbh. Anyway - for those sensitive souls on here (don't ever go near a site if you are!) I appologise in advance for any upset I will cause ? Blame that Pocster chap - he has probably offended you alreay anyway! I have offered a walkthrough without thinking how I can do it - I can load it up to You Tube but would rather not - any alternatives?

I'm doing the lighting design for one of my current clients builds, which also has a tall curved ceiling. I've suggested recessed wall uplighters to wash the ceiling area with enough upward light to allow sufficient ambient light to make its way down lower in the room, with the idea being to have light but not to see the source ( or as near as damnit ). No pics of that one yet, sorry, but here are some of the same I installed on another project.

I am sincerely sorry to hear that. We know we were very lucky to have completed major extension works shortly after the first lockdown before price hikes and material shortages. These works have increased our living space by around 70% but now show up the inadequacies of the 'old' building's insulation so we really want to bring that up to similar standards - however our budget has already been blown. Hence my attempt at crystal ball gazing. You're almost certainly right. I wish you the very best of luck.

Marmox block built into the inner leaf instead of that pir????? just thinking out loud.

We built our house in 1997 and the Architect left the details of setting the copings to the masons. The very first snag we ran in to was water appearing around window reveals in the gable wall. This was because the coping stones were simply set to span across the cavity on slates with no overlap. Evidently they thought water wouldn't make it to the joints. Huh. The whole lot was stripped off and re-laid on a continuous roll of lead. This has to be turned down over the edges I'm afraid (no problem on the roof side) but water will seep into your external stonework if you hide it back in. Up to you. I don't know how it could safely be made much prettier. As for thermal bridging, we have a cold loft space so there's no issue.

On my house I stopped the inner skin to the gable wall at ceiling height? no thermal bridge then!

Ours is 900mm from finished floor level to top of worktop. We spent a *long* time deciding what height to have and soon discovered we were really were overthinking it having gone round measuring the height of any kitchen we stepped foot in and discovered if there is a ‘standard’ then it’s got quite a tolerance to it in practice. Indeed, we discovered a difference of 20mm between the heights of our own (non-connected) worktops in the existing kitchen and had never previously noticed this in the 10 years we’ve been here! I think this is one of those cases where it’s only an issue if you make it one. And believe me, I’m something of an expert in creating such scenarios. Don’t let it haunt you.

Pretty much like us. The ASHP does most of the heating and keeps the house at 20 degrees, but it is nice when it is grey and wet outside to indulge and get the living rooms up to 24 degrees at no cost with the WBS, something we would not want to pay to do by just turning up the thermostats. And of course it then takes a while to cool down before the thermostats click on again and the ASHP comes on so it saves electricity. But it is worth striving to get close to passive house standards, particularly the air tightness and an MVHR ventilation system. That is a revalation to live in.

Grout it! Insulation seems awfully thin and can’t possibly comply with regs unless it is aerogel or VIP’s . if you have humidity above 80% for extended periods then you risk condensation allowing water to seep into the gaps will cause saturation of the cement and potentially the backing, leading to growth. does showering water hit the tiles?

How long is piece of string? Cost depends a lot on where you are located and how high your specifications are. Knocking it down and disposal won’t be the main cost it’s the rebuild. Any budget cost I would quote you are likely to be irrelevant.

I think we can safely assume any financial assistance/incentive will be channelled via approved cowboys, sorry, builders, who will inevitably do a crap job. The program will fail, fall into disrepute, and the politicians will say lessons will be learnt. You can be sure nothing sensible will be done. Im just getting on with.

This looks like a 'cold roof' How are the rafters ventilated? Of more immediate concern to me is your cavity closer. Your copings will have mortar joints so the underlying surface will see a fair bit of water. You have 75mm flashing over the inner leaf only. You need a waterproof layer capping off the entire span.

Is that what you call it? In the last 5 years about 5 houses on one street near here were bought, demolished and better ones built. The houses were 400K houses, I wonder how the financials stacked up if I was honest. As I see it there becomes a point where a home on a plot on a street will struggle to go for much more. Say they build a new house and want £800,000 for it, I don't know that people are going to pay £800,000 for technically a smart £400,000 house. If you had £800,000 you buy a £800,000 house within a street, area or land that is £800K worth.

I used Self Build Insurance T/A Trade Direct Insurance Services Ltd. (Godalming) I never had to claim, so difficult to recommend, but it was underwritten by Zurich, so assume OK. They do need a rebuild value for the original structure, as well as a contract value for the conversion. There's nothing to say you would get planning permission for a new build if you "lost" the original structure. A barn conversion local to me had around a third of the structure fall in during a gale, mid-conversion, and the LPA immediately put a stop notice on them. They weren't allowed to continue until the original structure was reinstated and they proved via an SE report they were still achieving 65% (I think) original timber present in the conversion. This happened just as I was starting mine, so prompted me to have all my insurances in place.

Well guess what @Radian . 1 green, 4 yellow LED’s. The pump has automatically gone to ‘high performance’ mode now that it has somewhere to push the water to.

This one.

That will depend on how, and what, you measure. Exploring for, drilling, extracting, refining, transporting and storing oil will have a relatively small carbon footprint. But burn it in a car and it becomes horrendously high. So is it the oil company or the car company that is (ir)responsible? Or the end user. I have just driven 34 miles to read my weekly comic and have a coffee. Could have done both from home.

Think again. Only dodgy accounting methods that make it look carbon neutral.

Yes, lots of old wives tales here. If you already have a cementitious render, then the walls can and will dry to the inside of the house if they're allowed to, which means both a hygroscopic and vapour permeable buildup to the inside, including paints. This may be easy for you to do, but may not be. If you are to ewi the pebbledash, you'll probably need to first apply a levelling coat before applying the ewi (unless the ewi system manufacturers confirm it's okay to have the air gaps created by the pebbledash plus the ewi adhesive mortar behind the ewi. The advantage with ewi is that the wall is on the warm side and thus interstitial condensation risk moves outwards whereas with iwi, it moves to the interface between the iwi and outer wall. In the iwi instance, you then need to ensure that you either have a vapour control layer and ventilation cavity between the iwi and exterior wall, or use a breathable insulation material like woodfibre. The other option as you say is to remove the pebbledash and apply ewi to the wall. This is probably the best option rather than lime render and iwi. But again that depends on where you are and if you're in an exposed location? With ewi, you could just run that around the whole building, including your new extension, which could make it more seamless. What you'll really need to do is get a condensation analysis done on each of your options. The cementitious render isn't great for breathability of old walls and there's a different in 'strength' and 'flexibility' between the two. But I would also suggest caution in the selection and application of injected dpc if there isn't any sign of damp. Many buildings cope just fine without a dpc. Just have a careful look at the existing dpc if it has one - if it does it will probably be slate, and if not, have a look at the guidelines produce by SPAB and others as they can guide you in alternative material selection, for example using capillary and vapour permeable insulation materials on most of the walls, but instead using only a vapour permeable materials where there is more moisture risk.

Don't go. Keep posting and keep swearing. But remember ... you ain't nothing until you get 1 of these!

Do you know the high costs, finacial and enviromental, of sold fuel combustion? A correctly sized, and opperated, ASHP should not be a problem in winter.

Yes, that is what I've found and typically guides me towards just recessed lighting whereas what I'm most concerned about is getting a good desgn for ambient light - every house we've lived in so far has had terrible lighting sadly so we want to avoid this here.

Wire every light and switch back to a central position and create a joint box that allows you flexibility. wire normal switches with 3core and earth instead of 2 core and earth so that it contains a neutral if required for electronic switching/smart devices.

@dpmiller thanks again for posting the link to that Iver thread. @andy top, top tip. My quarter turn isolation valve was closed. Its now open and the flow rates are epic! In the words of the plumber that installed ours... "...Not checking pump / gate valves are open is 1st year apprentice error. I’ve not had one yet which has caused any issues." Feel free to put ours down as No1 if you wish. ?

We have a big kitchen/dining/living space with vaulted ceilings and have specified a hidden led strip along the wall/ceiling join that will throw light upwards. We'll also make this dimmable in sections, so the kitchen space, the dining space and the living space. There'll also be 3 dimmable pendants over the kitchen island. We'll add some floor lamps in the living space. You have to get the housings for the leds in place before plastering of course. Simon

More of an issue is it might be too low for a washing machine or dishwasher to fit under?

If a tax is reduced, or even abolished, in one area, another area, or areas, will have to have a corresponding increase. For at least the last decade, and probably a lot longer, the public have been told that they need to reduce energy usage. Now that there has been an unexpected, large price increase in cost, everyone is complaining that 'something must be done', but they don't want to pay for it. There is no magic solution here. No one is going to invent a small device that costs 100 quid and slashed an energy bill by 70%. Yesterday I used 20 kWh of electricity, that fed me, kept me warm, enough hot water for cleaning, allowed me to play on here, and let me put the lights on when I got home from work. It also kept my milk cool and fresh. I drove about 50 miles, so that will be another 45 kWh of usage. House energy cost me about £3, car £6.75. Two coffees cost me £5.50.

That's much better. A few suggestions just on resizing the boot room/porch. You could have a window with a 500mm high sill. It would be lovely. Are you happy with the transition from the back to the front of the house? You will still be treking the long way round through the utility or through the kitchen and the snug. These will effectively become hallways.

This makes sense. I agree that many grant schemes were unsuccessful and that in many cases money just keep going around with a lot being wasted on the way. Unfortunately - and this is obviously nothing but my personal view - zero vat on "refurbishment for energy efficiency " would in practice just lead to all the unintended consequences that we can think of plus some that we cannot. For example, trades - in agreement with homeowners - would start quoting inflated prices for "u-value improvements" while in reality doing some other work which is completely unrelated to this. If vat receipts go down the government will have to raise the money somewhere else. Tax system needs to be simple, every exception makes it worse.

Cool Cool, A couple of things I've figured out along my house journey ( and a couple of things I wish I'd known before) BTW a good architect will have these sorted but sometimes they get curtailed by the existing building and the clients requirements. (i) The main entrance should be into a dedicated welcome space, ideally with some natural light shining into it from in front or above or beside. It is pleasant to have a sense of "opening up) once in the door, A vaulted ceiling or a view up a stairs to a large window can do this. (ii) This should include discrete storage or be very near to a coat/boot room. (iii) A WC should be close at hand. (iv) Think of the flow through the house like a road network. For instance, the kitchen and stairway will be big paths for traffic. These should be accessed directly and via large "trunk" roads. If there is a circuitous route and narrow doorways and hall's it'll be a pain to live in. (v) Natural light is super important, if well designed for it can give the impression of a much larger space without any of the actual cost or hassle of building it. (vi) Light from the South is ten times better than E/W and 100 times better than Northern light. (vii) Tricks to get it into a house (a) South facing windows and glazed doors (obviously!) (b) glazed internal elements to suck some light into the inners. ( fan lights, glazed internal doors etc) (c) Atrium style skylights to get it into the centre of a fat building. (d) Clever use of mirrors and colour to reflect it inside (viii) You cannot have too much storage (ix) Natural light entering a room from two directions can make it feel much bigger. (x) The ratio of ceiling height to room size is important. My parents with 2.65m ceiling in their 4m*4.5m kitchen feels much taller than ours at 12m*4.5m and 2.7m high. I'm sure there's more.

What an interesting project. 1890's.. maybe corbelled brick foundations or stone laid flat both on compacted earth. I seems reasonable to conclude that when the flags were laid (6ft clearance) the ground must have been fairly dry. For me the next stage would be to investigate outside, where you can, to see what might have changed over the years. If possible I would excavate modest holes outside down to the level of the bottom of the founds and see where the water levels are, while also gathering info on the founds themselves as you'll need this later. In some ways you need to think laterally / holistically. For example: 1/ Have the neighbours / previous owners built something that has changed the water levels and how the water flows in the ground. 2/ Do you have leaky soil / rainwater drains. 3/ Have you found old clay tile drains in the garden? .. these can be small sometimes about 3 inches in diameter with a flat bit on the bottom. They get blocked over time and stop working and can cause the ground water to rise. 4/ Is there / could the be a leaky mains water supply pipe that no one knows about. You can test the water to see if it is treated (potable water) if it is then you need to find the source. You can also install a rough ground water monitoring system yourself using some perforated pipe with a bit of gravel round it. This means you can fill the holes back in and dip them every couple of weeks. You'll need a datum.. but you can use a water level or a laser level for this.. plenty on BH. It may yield some clues as to the direction of flow of the ground water. Once you have this information you'll be better able to select the right option for the basement, maybe save yourself a lot of money?

Cables run but location to be confirmed. Probably about 10 minutes before the ceiling goes up. ??‍♂️ Excuse the crappy pic. Phone really didn’t like those lights.

As long as the electrician is doing "loop at switch" wiring, which is pretty normal these days, then all you need to decide right now is how many light circuits in each room, and then in your vaulted ceiling room just leave a long length of the switched light feed cable(s) ready to be positioned before the ceiling covering goes on, once you have decided what you want. Decision time is just before plasterboard or other ceiling covering goes on.

Huge and bulb replacement, means scaffold to do it safely. Think carefully how you will maintain once furniture is in place. Low level up/down lights work well and are maintainable.

+1, to Thea over. also if you ask for help in design and wanting a fixed price to do it, the sparky will give recommendations to make it easier, not necessarily better. might be worth getting someone in for a couple of days on a day rate with a view to input and trying some fittings etc

If you are paying on a day rate He will be happy to help you design and move lights around If hes on a price He will expect a drawing and be able to crack on

So they wont know what size service void you are putting in if they do a quick internal laser measure and ask a question. I would also, if worried stack a load of stuff around as it makes rooms look a lot smaller. Guess it will come down to if someone has complained or not

Think Scotland have a rule on it but can’t remember anything from the guidance in the BStd without looking (but it is only guidance not a regulation at that point)

I don't believe there is a distance requirement for pumped chamber. There is however for ceptic tanks.

You will just need to run the uphill section from the pump station in different pipe. The only issue I have found is getting it to lie flat in the trench, especially in cold weather.

Nothing to do with planning ..! It’s a building regs issue so don’t even bother including it in any plans. When you get planning, you’ll need to work out where to site a pump station (usually between 12-1600 litres depending on the number of bedrooms/WCs) and then that pumps to a chamber that is above the sewer level and gravity takes over. The tank needs to be minimum 3m from a house IIRC. Where in the UK are you..?

Have a look at the kingspan website that should give you some ideas. Plenty of companies with solutions.

Is this connecting to mains sewage? the usual solution is just a holding chamber and a pump, sometimes 2 pumps for redundancy.

The technical guide here.. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/permitted-development-rights-for-householders-technical-guidance says height is defined as follows.. and Building is defined as.. So it seems clear its measured from the highest ground immediately adjacent to the deck.

It’s the “highest” point.

I thought it time I updated this forum as you were all very helpful coming forward with advice. I bit the bullet and used Potton Homes (Kingspan) to take the project forward. We are nearly at watertight stage but not without significant amounts of trouble and alteration. As soon as Potton have signed off from their participation in the project I will post a more detailed review. Unless things change significantly it wont be a dazzling review and should be of help to others venturing into the world of self build for the first time!

Yep it’s all good. Zero issues. It’s still happily blowing bubbles into my poo at it’s set intervals ?

The Graff tank going in today. Although the instructions supplied with the pump are limited you have to set the date and time on the unit and it definitely makes references to "cycle rest pauses".