Leaderboard

This where as a client you need to inform yourself of building design and what you want from it from the aesthetics, but also the building energy performance. For me the self build journey isn't about turning up at the architect door and a few weeks later having a design and then blindly getting someone to build it for you. It's more about working with the architect to get the design and performance you want (even if outside the architect comfort zone), if you need to say no this is how we will do it, then do it. We are the client and as long as conforms or is better than the regs all is good. Our architect has basically copied our design and building the same for himself a few on the west coast of Scotland, he had only done building standards builds prior to me demanding lots of changes and upgrades.

I agree with the points made above though the use case drastically reduces to those that have massive cash reserves and can finance purely out of savings. Borrowing at current IRs makes little sense as there is no light at the end of the tunnel - i.e. complete the development and then remortgage to a domestic product at reduced rates. There is no concept of reduced rates at least for the foreseeable future and long term predictions are all around 4-5%. I'm not sure I fully agree that land prices won't come down as a result. For very old and large landowners with little borrowing - sure, they can afford to wait it out and see what happens. For anyone who bought in the last 2-5y, their financials won't stack up anymore and I'm guessing more of these plots with PP will start to hit the market.

Maybe I can train some mice to carry the mesh down the hole for me. In theory I can just lower a 4.5M strip of the stuff down the cavity once the wall is complete to protect the bottom, then put some up at the east and west edges, but I'm pretty sure the implementation is going to be a pain ^^. Everything about this brick wall is, honestly. Paddle mixer arrived, so I got a fair bit more done along that brick wall - The membrane is going in longwise, lapped in every two bales (they're 350mm high, the membrane is 1M wide, so it works out nicely. The packing straps, once tightened, and with a lot of gentle tugging either side of the building before it's secured permanently, should hold it taut against the bales, keeping the cavity clear. This bottom strip of it will need its height adjusting so it's not baggy around the bottom of the straw post-compression, which will be faffy, but doable. Originally I was going to have 5x2M strips going vertically, but that seemed even more faffy. Pretty sure the lime won't cure properly - we're late in the season for it and it's a pretty wet mix that's being denied further water - but its main job is to make the outermost layer of straw unpalatable, and I reckon it'll manage that. Will probably give it a miss for the top 2-3 courses. Sunny weekend coming up, and I've got a friend round to help, so hopefully we can make decent progress on it together.

Has Openreach flown a cable across your property and not provided you with any information on objecting to the cable? Some parts of Openreach seem not aware of the latest legislation regarding their rights and OBLIGATIONS when flying cables over private property. It has taken me months to get a cable moved and this is some information which may help in getting a cable you object to moved. First, based on my experience, don’t waste time with their complaints procedure which is tedious, difficult and obstructive and you’ll be responded to with a barrage of technical and legal bullshit telling you why they have flown the cable legally and why it can’t be moved. Send a signed for letter to the CEO and if you get nowhere, raise it with your MP. The applicable legislation as at the end of 2023 is Schedule 1 of the Digital Economy Act 2017. This supercedes parts of the Communications Act 2003. When flying an overhead cable Openreach has to comply with paragraph 75 which is a duty to attach a notice. This should provide an address to which you can send you objection to the cable. Openreach are committing an offence if this notice is not provided. Openreach apparently haven’t instructed their engineers to leave these notices. If they don’t leave a notice, write to Openreach and ask for the details that should have been on this note. The right to object is described in Part 12 which is paragraphs 78 to 81. If the cable is impacting your enjoyment of your land and it would be possible for the cable to re-routed without the re-routing resulting in another landowner being impacted and without Openreach incurring substantial additional cost, the county court can instruct Openreach to move it and there is provision within the legislation for the county court to award you costs. So, before allowing Openreach to bully you, make sure you have read the legislation and be prepared to take them to court.

No. Glulam is large bits of timber glued together in layers, think bits of 4 by 2 glued together in layers in both planes to make whatever size you want. Kerto is literally overgrown plywood. Think thin strips of wood glued together in layers to whatever size you want them. We used Kerto beams for our roof ridge beam. According to the SE Kerto will give the same strength in a smaller size than a Glulam. But if lift on sight, a Glulam can be sanded and varnished and look quite nice.

I can feel “ new toy “ purchase coming on . Watched that fusion 360 video . Whilst obviously not particularly familiar with it I can now design basic shapes for my needs . That’s a start .

Don’t bother. I read your other post, for such a small amount of blockwork your heat loss from a regular joint to a thin joint is so small it’s not worth even entertaining the idea.

the formlabs has a UV cover on it already to keep the resin good, but yeah its serious money

resin needs to be stored in a UV resistant container as the UV cures it. I leave the resin the tank in the machine for months at a time but the other stuff i keep in their own tank containers in a cupboard. If its filament you mean then it needs to be stored dry as they absorb moisture from the air. Especially PLA that is like a sponge and goes super brittle if you leave it out. I store filament in vacuum bags with those silica packs in.

They all seem to default to 100mm. It was only me researching it that I found out you should put in more. I planned for 210mm but we ended up at 185mm. My architect said anything above 150mm was a waste of money!

Alan's right - some LPA's will discuss queries with you. Others are in such a state that they will take no amendments whatsoever and one is quite open that even simple domestic extensions will take 12 weeks to determine so feel free to go to appeal.... Personally I'd apply for the house with the LPA's amount of parking shown and then apply for the garage once the house is secured. Two applications I know but planning can be a bit like a chess game at times! Again, pre-application discussions vary. Some LPA's are good, prompt and stand by their officer's opinions (assuming councillors do not get involved), others take forever and the advice they give is so thin you'd have been better just giving an application a shot. State of local government today I'm afraid.

I think the gap between the nose of the stair and the floorboard says all we need to know about the skill of the "carpenter" that fitted that. for a start I would have had the newel post further to the right.

I don't know if this is helpful or not because our A2A system hasn't been installed yet (gas warm air currently...) But... We've specced a Mitsubishi unit, and gone for one considerably larger than the expected heat loss. For a few reasons. 1. All the AC engineers seem to recommend it based on experience (but this may just be natural caution) 2. A2A units have reasonably good modulation ratio's so short cycling should be less of an issue. Ours is around 6;1 (so 1.4kw to 9.5kw 3. You get lower output in extreme temperatures, as much as a 25% drop @ -10 degrees on our unit 4. There seem to be some efficiency advantages to HP's running in the middle/ lower end of their capacity so long as they don't excessively cycle. This is also true for unit noise 5. On the Mitsubishi range, the COP increases quite a lot for the larger units over some of the the smaller ones. On the positioning of the outlet grille and return duct - there are some brilliant resources from the US online. I'll try and post one I found later on

Our (70's) house has a combination of floor and wall gratings. Apart from looking a bit dated they are mostly fine in the floor if you know your room layouts. We've noticed that all sorts of stuff falls down the grates, but it's easy to lift out and vacuum clean. This is one of the advantage of the lift out grates, albeit they don't look as good as flush linear slot diffusers. I'll send some pictures of ours in carpet later if that helps. We're actually doing the opposite to you and moving some floor ones to the ceiling on the first floor where we have a loft above. This isn't for aesthetic reasons though, they look fine in bedrooms - for us it's technical, around our heat pump installation.

No. You are partially correct in that heat loss through the slab is really dependent on the average slab temp and not the room temperature, but the slab will pass about 7ΔtA W into the living space, so by example if you have a 100m2 slab and need 24 kWh of daily heat input, say, to keep the house in thermal balance, then this is an average 1000W so the slab needs to be roughly 1.4 °C warmer than room temp across the day to do this, and you should add this 1.4 into this term, but given that this is a small delta and the estimate is ballpark, then it's just easier to use room temperature. The average slab temperature can be very different to the boiler / heater flow output. (See my blog posts on this.) Also because of this sort of simplification, this spreadsheet really only works if you have a (near) passive class build (i.e EPC A class). In this sort of build, there is also no way a flow temp of even 35°C is suitable for this type of house as you'd end up with a 1:10 on/off cycling of your boiler / ASHP.

Chemistry at school was less well explained.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1133079/Approved_Document_L__Conservation_of_fuel_and_power__Volume_1_Dwellings__2021_edition_incorporating_2023_amendments.pdf

14 hours ago, Temp said: ...and Sparrowhawk replied: My thought too. If you can hear it as you move, how much flex are you feeling in the floor? As per the OP's description The construction of the flooring is (bottom up): Concrete Plastic Membrane Plywood Laminate (glued down) The 'squidge' appears to be occurring between the concrete and the plastic immediately on top of it. I don't think there is any suggestion that the concrete is moving.

Exactly right, basically land is overpriced at the moment relative to rising build costs. The problem is many self builders just want to build and often aren't that fussed about the financial returns. If there were lots of plots available then these people wouldn't be enough to sustain the market, but in most places there are very few plots so of the moment prices remain high.

I've had the same one for 45 years. Still think that I am a lucky chappy. 🤣

A lot of material prices have dropped Though still expensive Interest rates are still very low When I bought my first property The rate was 12% which rose to 15% soon after Predictions are peaking at 6% But the same experts predicted a 1920s style recession straight after the lockdown ended Acquiring the plot is a massive part of the build

Don't have an Instagram account, not my scene staring at other peoples food/holiday/latest clothes fit/toned thighs, I'll get Ken from accounts to come over with his slide projector and show me his family holiday in Torremolinos 1981 if I'm into that!

Yes and not about to reduce. Those with lots of land don't usually need the money so can negotiate hard/ sit tight. S106 contributions are too low, again I suspect because it basically comes off the land value.