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Both in same. Less chance of a loose connection breaking the earth continuity (which usually goes un noticed because everything "works")

I am not convinced these "credit" market things do anything more than create some non productive jobs to move some money and bits of paper around a system so some companies can claim to be smug and "met targets" The fact we seem to be "solving" the problem with schemes like this gives me little hope that we will ever actually solve the real problem.

they look great but they are £6.50 each inc VAT. https://www.screwfix.com/p/mk-logic-plus-rapid-fix-13a-2-gang-dp-switched-socket-white-with-white-inserts-5-pack/313ph my Hager faceplates cost me £2.11 inc VAT and I had to buy 82 of them. so would've cost me £360 more. now, if I was paying a sparky to do the second fix I would recoup that in time saved on labour for sure but as I'm doing it myself then I can't justify that extra cost. don't get me wrong. I absolutely love the Wago connectors. if only these were a bit cheaper and I hadn't already bought 82 Hager ones I might've been persuaded. 🤣

This is just what we are doing at the moment. Not sure we are going the cheapest route mind you but pleased with how its turning out....... Top tip - you need the correct membrane at the back designed for open cladding. In the pro clima range its this one - https://www.ecologicalbuildingsystems.com/product/solitex-fronta-quattro

When I first use a new brand or model when second fixing, I take one if the grub screws out and examine it. Some will have a flat, some round and some have a pointed tip. I've even seen ones with off centre poorly machined tips that carve into the copper like a drill bit. Screwfix now sell Sockets with wago style lever terminals which I think is the future. One lever per wire, solid connection, easy to identify and separate for continuity issues. Retermination doesn't damage either the wires or terminals either.

I go with both in one like @ProDave says, I always double over a single wire to act like two if it’s the only one under a screw.

These guys are good for a lot of window related stuff https://www.wholesaleglasscompany.co.uk/shop/butyl-glazing-strips-flexistrip-georgian-bar-mounting-tapes/foamsekure-bms-georgian-bar-mounting-tape.html Searching for “astragal bar tape” seems to yield a lot of good results.

Unless the circuit is designed to have a high integrity earth added (usually an IT room or other area with dc current leakage, like a fruit machine room) then it's a preference thing. I tend to use both elements of the ring/radial in the same terminal, with the link to the backbox in the other. For me, it's all about the dressing of the cables back into the space that's more significant, it's all about the butterfly shape! Correctly dressed wires will massively reduce the risk of pinching, being pulled out, and damaged by faceplate screws.

Think the insulation of hot water return piping is a bit of a historic issue or if you install without proper controls. If you run on a timer and thermostat at a time period you are likely to use the hot water, not much of an issue without insulation. If you want it running hot all the time, the heat loss us going to be ridiculous without insulation. Horses for courses really, use common sense.

>>> Omega Seamaster watches, pre-war Leica cameras, Umbrian villas You forgot Riva launches... @sunflower - congrats, there are not many oak frame-style people on here, but there are a few. Me, for one. A couple of drawings / images of the plot for us to be jealous over?

3M VHB trim tape as used for side mouldings and the like on cars. Not the cheapest, but guaranteed to work.

I am insulating from the ridge to the eves, so the voids either side and above the living space are insulated, The voids / space either side of the bedrooms can then be used for storage and means I won’t have to insulate the MVHR pipes

>>> Surely working and living in the same place is the most environmentally sound approach? No need to travel. I think it's just that you're sort of slipping between the planning cracks. The rules we have are largely based around simplistic 'use-cases'. So there's residential, there's commercial and there's industrial. It sounds like you're looking for a mix of residential and commercial. Not so much artist or artisan, which are often accommodated within residential (on the basis you won't be doing much of anything to annoy anyone) but a bit more industrial - think fumes, noise etc. Now there are some rules around 'live/work', which I don't pretend to know, but which you might like to investigate. You also may find some cracks between the rules that you can use to your advantage - but you'll need to know what's available to buy and why the rules are in detail. So, either a place with outbuildings you can use carefully so you don't tee anyone off or some kind of farm arrangement where mixed business and residential are the norm or even easier a house and a nearby space in a mixed studio. If you were in Suffolk I might suggest Jet for instance: https://www.oldjet.co.uk/about-old-jet-arts-centre/ In the latter case, you have the added advantage of a community you might enjoy.

Great stuff - in that case you're home in a boat! Good luck.

The lack of door requirements has come from the BCO from their technical department. So for our build it’s gospel and confirmed with the BCO and he’s going to put it in writing for me.

I've previously suggested putting the extra £2.5k towards a "price guarantee" subsidy. Scheme would be open to anyone (even self installs) as long as they have a smart meter and a smart heat meter (provided by energy company) fitted. The heat meter would work out the heat delivered and hence the cost of that heat if delivered via gas. It would then deduct the difference between that and the price of electricity from the customers bill. In effect guaranteeing that the customer never pays more than gas for (say) 5 years. The scheme would then taper off over the next 5. Combined with the £5k subsidy off the install this would make an install about the same as a gas boiler replacement. Therenwouod he less need for the rad upgrades upfront as the subsidy would take care of any underperforming. It would give 5 years to bring the system up to parity with gas (and grants would be available for that eg radiator scrappage schemes).

I don't think they are inner rooms though? but as all first floor rooms have a secondary means of escape they're not considered inner rooms. that's my understanding

Rain screen membrane: Intello Pro Clima (might have the brand name wrong, Intello do a rangeof membranes) - £50 if you can buy as little as 20 sq m OR some left-over roofing felt , £0 Stapler, staples - not much wood - cheap as you like (pallet) £0, expensive as you like - high tanin content £200 + screws or nails for nail gun £20 both One person day to fit £200 Shadowgaps increase over time (wood dries out), so its essential to use a rain-screen membrane of some sort.. the cheaper it is the quicker it will need to be replaced.

Nice toasty -7 last night for us, with a high of -1 forecast today and -8 tonight. But plenty of clear sky so hopefully a decent amount of solar to power the heat pump

It’s all good But a long way off no gas boilers in new builds by 2025 that many on here where convinced would happen Totally unrealistic Wonder how many of the new pledges will actually happen I suspect the ones that bring in more tax revenue I

This is after 20 mins running this morning….

Found it! it's the MVHR, turned them both off at the mains and all looks to be be resolved after 14 hours. After several hours of research found someone on Facebook who had similar and discussed it bring an anti frost thing the MVHR was doing. Having looked at the MVHR manual (vent axia sentinel) it does say below 0 degrees it does activate frost protection. For now, I'm just happy to have found the culprit.

Worcester have already announced had they plan to spread that 3k accross everything they sell. I think smeone posted there press release on here. The jist was, there insufficent demand for heat pumps to make a credible business. Sounds like a another bunch of reasons that will stop anything other than a full priced (overpriced) tax payer funded bodge job. Ie, no DIY. Because it cant be "verified" as a qualifying installation. Indeed, i suspect, and logically it must, lead to heat pumps only being available to professionals who can produce the necessary paperwork to back it up. Maybe im too cynical???? Looks like another oil boiler for me......................................... Edited to add, they are not going to break the price link. Way to much money being made.

Not in the south east they dont. Bugger all chance of that. That concept seems limited to the rather less economically well off areas, like cornwall. Where, it seems to be a thing.

just to close this thread out..... I've heard back from the BCO and I am correct with my research. because we have a secondary exit from the basement and emergency windows/exits from the first floor we do not need protected stairways. as such we don't even need the doors between the hallway and kitchen. we might fit something in the future for sound reduction but nothing for now. it's one less thing to worry about.

I don't know if that's a huge issue, it seems fairly easy to set up an HMRC login these days (and some people will already have one). I don't have any special info but it wouldn't surprise me if they take the same approach as for Charity Gift Aid claims - upload a spreadsheet with known column headings and data formats (or download a template from them and fill it in). It's hugely cheaper to build a system to parse and validate the content of a spreadsheet than to build one that can support line by line data entry and the likelihood of people needing to do it in more than one session - unless there's a need for variable/complex types of fields on each individual item. This is a huge bugbear of mine (as a software developer). None of the cloud accounting packages are anywhere near as fast to use for bulk data entry as the older desktop packages. They have other advantages, of course, but for "power users" they can be painfully slow to use!

Roof still not finished, but will not move as much.

Bet the glulam moved less than the oak would have!

Best of luck, the dream was an oak frame the reality was glulam trusses 🙂, look forward to your posts.

Oak framed houses, highly varnished wooden boats, vintage motorbikes, Omega Seamaster watches, pre-war Leica cameras, Umbrian villas: all make me dream . My god we lusted after an Oak Frame build ..... but couldn't afford to build its garage. Not envious, just hope it goes well for you. Seems I'm just going to have to follow your posts then innit. 😐

Good luck and hopefully you will find inspriation / advice / good & bad experiences, from those who have trodden the path, you are intendeding to take.

Is this outbuilding ancillary or within the curtilage of a dwelling? If so, select the first option and the fee will be £103.00 + £64.00.

The other dimension here of course is the environmental one. Not just the pointlessness of manufacturing celotex which then just goes into the loft basically for storage, but the gap between how well we think a building will perform based on design and what happens in practice. Think of the potential extra fuel you'd use over the next 20 years or so whilst being potentially convinced you've got an efficient modern house. Bad workmanship has huge potential to influence the carbon footprint of our housing stock whilst likely also leaving us to get the maths wrong about what that footprint is. The reflections in this thread highlight what a key part good BC processes are to any drive to reduce emissions.

That strategy also extends the longevity of the HP, which is a strategy I adopt with my new clients, and also helps avoid any possible ‘freezing’ of the unit in the winter / adverse months. Off peak rates ( 5p/kwh ) can now be utilised quite advantageously and using that plus PV during summer sees the ASHP having a very easy ( therefore long ) life. Ive just done a couple of ASHP’s ( PV + Octopus GO! ) where we’ve not bothered with the wet circuit to the UVC at all. Helps a huge amount as both have cooling in the summer and I did not want the ASHP doing 180 degree turnarounds from cooling to heating for no ‘good’ reason.

We have just finished a self-build and as we went along I made notes of the things I had learnt during the process. What follows are those notes and I hope they will be of some use to people who are just starting out on their projects. I must of course add the caveat that all that follows is only my personal opinion. Although I now have some experience I am no expert and it is of course up to everyone building their own home to seek professional advice about their project. RED'S ADVICE FOR SELF-BUILDERS 9th September 2018 GENERAL 1. Try to work with everyone on your project via email as much as possible so that you have an audit trail of what has been said to people. If you must have a meeting, confirm everything in writing, right from the start. 2. You are about to be on the receiving end of a lot of documents, mostly in electronic form. I kept all ours and it amounted to 1,132 files (in 169 folders) consuming 2.8 Gb of data. Decide early on how and where you are going to store your documentation (electronic and paper) and stick to whatever system you are using. DESIGN 3. Make sure the house is of a specification that is appropriate to the size/type of home you are building. A big expensive house must have a high specification or else you may find its value is disproportionately affected when you come to sell it. 4. Check the local vernacular for design ideas – it can be nice to reflect local building techniques or features and you will get fewer objections from the local community and council. Imposing your personal taste on an area is unlikely to make your life easier. 5. Keep basement walls as simple as possible – they don’t have to exactly reflect the above-ground level walls. Angles and corners increase cost, sometimes unnecessarily. 6. From the design phase onwards, ask that ALL drawings of plans and elevations include a metre scale so that when measuring things you can see how big they are. Sounds obvious but they were not included on ours. 7. Drainage issues can present huge problems in the future if you’re not careful. Look at your plans and see how close your sinks, baths, showers and toilets are going to be away from the soil and vent pipes (probably in the perimeter walls). The longer the distance the more difficult things get and the more likely you are to be plagued by blocked drains in the future. Additionally, be aware that the higher the volume of water, the steeper the gradient of the pipe and the larger its diameter should be. Otherwise you can end up with gurgling sounds, low water exit flow and blockages. This is all in BS5572 and is not that difficult to understand. In short, if you possibly can, keep plugs close to soil and vent pipes and make sure you can access/rod the pipework when it gets blocked! 8. Think twice before selecting fancy plug fittings for sinks. Ask yourself “How is anyone going to be able to fix this when it’s installed and covered in limescale/dirt/etc?" 9. With all fittings/equipment that may need servicing at some point in the future, will you know who the manufacturer was and will you be able to get spares? 10. Decide early on what type of cupboards you are going to have – don’t leave it until later on in the build. Ikea do a great range of cupboard carcases. If you want to go for these cheaper, pre-made type then the rooms can be sized to accommodate the standard sizes these units come in. 11. Be prepared for the fact that contractors involved in the building process rarely have any visibility of or interest in innovation. You may hear them say that that have been in the business for x years and have a wealth of experience but the problem is that what they actually have is a lot of experience doing the same thing over and over again – they tend not to be interested in new products, techniques or materials. Although it’s boring, the more standard your design is the easier your build will be. 12. In your design pay attention to the direction doors open and the positioning of light switches. 13. Ask how your architect/designer/builder wants you to provide information on the locations for items in rooms, e.g. sockets, switches, lights, etc. What symbol scheme should you use? 14. Check that the sanitary ware works together properly. Our toilet flush buttons are (annoyingly) hidden by the seat when it’s up. 15. A good rule for exterior tile and brick colours is ‘dark at the top, lighter at the bottom’. 16. Don’t use small stones on the driveway – it gets picked up on shoes and taken into the house. 17. Wood-effect porcelain floor tiles are very good – very hard-wearing and they look realistic. 18. If you're running water supply pipes some distance from the road, pay a bit extra and have the largest diameter fitted (63mm outside diameter?). Whilst static pressure may not be affected by narrow pipes when the water is not flowing, the pressure may drop substantially once flow starts. Trying to fix poor water pressure is expensive - fitting a large diameter pipe is cheap. Note that the connection to the main at the road will be a 'standard' size and will certainly be smaller than 63mm! PLANNING PERMISSION 19. The planning process is not nearly as hard as it sounds. Consider doing it yourself – don’t pay someone to do it if you feel you can. 20. If there are any trees that need to be cut down for your development, do it before you apply for planning permission but of course ensure that there are no Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) or other restrictions in place. 21. Check that there are no restrictive covenants covering your property. You can check this to some degree of certainty by ordering the electronics deeds to your property (you can download them from the web for a few pounds). You can get restrictive covenant protection insurance just in case someone surprises you! It is reasonably cheap. All covenants are for the benefit of someone – and it is these people who can make a claim against you if you break the terms of the covenant. 22. Try to work with your local planning department rather than against them. Their aim is to build as many houses as possible (to meet government targets). Believe it or not they are on your side but they have the local residents at their throats trying to stop any building in their area. Give them reasons to allow your development. 23. Make your design a little bigger than you want and negotiate down. 24. During the planning process, all the documents that you submit to the council are likely to be published on their website. This in turn will be indexed by Google and other search engines. If you have submitted electronic copies this will mean that details such as your name and address will be instantly retrievable by anyone in the world. Therefore, if you want to retain some degree of privacy, always try to submit paper, hand-written copies of all documentation. 25. Keep records of everything that appears on the Council website – particularly the letters written by local residents. They will probably get deleted after a few months but having them in your possession can be extremely useful. 26. Planning departments express opinions on planning decisions to be made by councillors based on local and national policy. Highways departments do not have opinions – they have rules which allow them to provide planners with information about the way that a scheme will or will not meet Highways requirements. However, note that planners are allowed to ignore this guidance if they wish. 27. Back up everything you agree in person or on the phone with the planners with an email. PROJECT PRICE 28. Your project is going to cost you a lot more than you thought. There are several reasons for this: - Your contractors will not be motivated to watch your costs as closely as their own and so will find that things are more expensive than they thought they would be; - Contractors are not necessarily perfect at planning – they may be genuinely unaware of costs that emerge during the build and this ends up costing you money; - Prices tend to rise rather than fall; - You can’t remember everything and there will be things that you decide you want that you hadn’t budgeted for. 29. We found that ‘PC Sums’ (see Explanatory Note below), i.e. the non-fixed sums that amount to whatever the builder has to pay, were nearly always over the estimate, between 20-60% (and that’s without any extravagance!). If you decide that you want a more expensive option than a ‘normal’ item which would represent ‘par’ for the project then it is fair that you should pay more. However, on a fixed-price job, make sure you agree that PC sums are not allowed to escalate when you only want the ‘standard’ level of item. My recommendation here is: - Try to get rid of as many PC sums as possible. - Obtain some sort of agreement that the PC sums will remain within control. It is very important that they have some focus on giving you a REALISTIC idea of what your costs are likely to be rather than just minimum figures. Note that it not in their interests: -- to price up to a reasonable amount for PC sums (because it reduces the chance of getting the contract) -- to expend work to reduce over-spends on PC sums. - Set default prices for items of the most basic specification which could be installed for the PC sum if you have run out of money. For example, ask for a price for a specific fireplace that you would be happy with if you were running out of money. - Make a rule with your builder that whenever an item is quoted for against a ‘Prime Cost’ (or PC) sum item, that the PC sum is also given, otherwise you end up being asked “Is x thousand pounds ok to pay for item y?” when you don’t know how much the PC cost was for that item. 30. For an expensive product which is relatively easy to specify, get lots of quotes. This is more difficult with a custom-designed object like a staircase – you are really buying into the company that will design and make it for you and this may be a long process. 31. Ask your builder if they intend to charge an additional sum for some amount they have to pay to the builders’ association or something similar. This can occur if you ask them for a more expensive item, e.g. a better roof, and the cost of installing it is higher than you expect because the builder has to pay a premium to an association based on costs. 32. A significant cost will be the various charges and levies that the council will make against your project. Planning permission will be granted subject to the council receiving this money. 33. Check to make sure that ALL the costs are included in the price. We had to pay thousands of pounds extra for things like fitting a new gas connection, air circulation system and digging up the road for the water main. Make sure there are no (predictable) hidden costs. 34. Ask what the contractors will add on for anything that they buy (often 10%). You might be able to save money by ordering some things yourself. ARCHITECTS 35. Undoubtedly architects can assist a self-builder but we didn’t use one. There were several reasons for this: - We knew pretty much exactly what design of house we wanted - Architects are generally VERY expensive - They often have their own vision of the house which they try to impose on the client. A frequent complaint from clients is that they feel that they have had to persuade their architect to give them what they want! - By having a contractor and a separate architect you run the risk of being caught in the middle of disputes between the two. If there is only one contractor then everything is down to them. In hindsight I am very pleased we didn’t use an architect (we created our own drawings and an architectural technician drew them up for us ready for the structural engineers). SELECTING CONTRACTORS 36. When selecting a builder, ask them to bring all the process documents and templates that you would be expected to be involved in or provided with to a meeting. If they bluster and make excuses about ‘working on an individual basis with each customer’ you know that they don’t have any processes. This is NOT good and it means they will probably repeat all the mistakes they made on the last job on yours. 37. Have your house built on the basis of a contract with your builders for which they are responsible for EVERYTHING. If you allow a situation to arise where a builder can blame someone you hired then you are heading for problems. 38. If you are planning to specify a particular company to perform a special task in the build, make sure right from the outset that they are prepared to meet any associated contractors on site and go through the plan, stating who will do what and when. Make sure that the overall project manager will take responsibility for co-ordinating the various parties. 39. Make sure that concrete form-worker contractors are chosen with care and ensure you know exactly what they are promising in terms of quality before you start. 40. Avoid situations where two or more contractors are responsible to you for the delivery of an item. 41. Above all, when you build a house, the selection of the main contractor will create a relationship where you have to place a lot of trust in them so you must convince yourself that they are worth that trust. I think we were very lucky to have our builders. BEFORE THE BUILD 42. Satisfy yourselves that you understand who is liable if something goes wrong with your house. For example, if an architect specifies some material to cover a wall, what happens if it falls off? The architect may blame the builder for not using the correct adhesive, the builder may then claim that he did or that he wasn’t told. In cases like this, who pays to have it fixed? What happens if a foundation shifts due to ground movement? Whose responsibility is it to fix it and pay for it? 43. Before the build starts state explicitly what trees, etc. that you don’t want damaged. Digger drivers must be briefed on what to avoid. Sensitive areas MUST be taped off at least. If it can possibly be damaged it will be – watch Grand Designs! 44. Agree a length of time that you must be given to make a decision from first hearing about it. You don’t want to walk on site one day and be asked how big the window sills have got to be with an answer to be given within hours. 45. Agree a process for dealing with serious issues. Note that an issue which is serious to you may not seem serious to your builder and vice versa. This could lead to accusations of either over- or under-reacting to a perceived problem. If you agree a process before you start the build this should not be a problem. 46. There are guides for good practice in the building industry. For example, the LABC have an excellent manual and there are British Standards such as BS5572 (Code of Practice for Sanitary Pipework). The problem is that the British Standards documents can be expensive to buy (e.g. over £200) but they are often available for free on the Internet as PDFs. Ask to see the standards to which the tradesmen are working. Seek assurance that a) the tradesmen have a copy of the relevant standards and b) will stick to them. If you have a copy of the standards it isn’t difficult to go around and check simple things. 47. Make sure that your contractors agree that any concrete surfaces or steps will have a slight slope on them so that water will run off them and that they will fix any which don’t, no matter how difficult. 48. Ask your builders (in writing) if they have any interests in/relationships with any suppliers. This is not necessarily a bad thing – it may work to your advantage. Anyway, it’s worth knowing what the relationships are. 49. Agree what happens to materials that leave the site, e.g. waste wood. Will it be sold? 50. Ask yourself where you are going to store the things you buy for your house along the way, e.g. taps, electrical equipment, etc. Consider buying a small, secure container and putting it on site for the duration of the build (you can easily sell it again on eBay) or ask your builder if they can provide you with storage. 51. If your builder hires a contractor such as a painter or architect to work on your build then (unless they provide a transferable guarantee of some kind) they are not answerable to you at all – they are only responsible to the builder. Keep this in mind in terms of your agreement with your builder and any guarantees or indemnity that you may in future rely on. 52. Regarding stage payments, it would be good to agree that if faults are found in a stage that has already been paid for, then an amount from the next stage payment is withheld until the problem is fixed. If you don’t do this, there is no real incentive to fix problems when they arise. 53. Agree in writing with your builder that they will tell you if an item that you are deciding upon has any criticalities – e.g. will the flooring have to be less than a certain thickness, does a fireplace have to be of a certain type, etc.? Also agree that they will not allow you to drift into a situation where you get the blame for something like this. 54. Plan for the fact that concrete screed can take months to dry to the point where wooden flooring can safely be laid on top. 55. Make sure the builders are signed up to pay for any heating and electricity that they use prior to you moving in. Our bills for electricity and gas came to nearly £1,000! If they won’t agree to this, make them agree to cap the spend at a fixed amount. 56. Tell your contractor that you want all of the documentation for every item that is installed into your house. It is best to get it as you go along – when the house is finished all the people working on it will evaporate and the last thing on their priority list will be finding the paperwork that came with your shower mixers. DURING THE BUILD 57. Builders are not always right. Keep checking what they are doing! 58. Watch for quality issues involving techniques that your builders aren’t experts in. This will be anything that is slightly out of the ordinary. With us it was (surprisingly) the concrete basement. They didn’t know what to look for in good concrete or what standard to demand from the concrete suppliers. I was surprised to see unmixed concrete coming out of the lorry so I videoed it. Our supplier denied that there was a problem until they saw the evidence. In the end, several areas of bad concrete had to be hammered out of the walls and redone. Keep an eye out for this sort of thing if you can. Incidentally, the reason the concrete wasn’t mixed very well was probably because the concrete plant was only a couple of miles from our site and the materials hadn’t had enough 'spinning' on the journey to properly mix them. 59. If you have valuable items of your own on site, make sure there is adequate security and that rules for the site are established and adhered to, e.g. keeping gates locked. In my experience builders are not very good at shutting gates. 60. Be prepared to make decisions. I know this sounds obvious but there will be thousands. Ask for a decision schedule and stay ahead of it. Work hardest on the big decisions – floors, bricks, windows, tiles. Don’t get overwhelmed – just start working your way through it and you’ll get there in the end. 61. One often hears builders complain that the client doesn’t know what they want or that they won’t make a decision. However, this isn’t always the whole story and knowing what you want isn’t always enough. If the contractors shrug their shoulders and say that they’ve no experience of some product or technique that you want they may not show much interest in finding out. This can make choosing features/fixtures difficult. 62. Keep looking – or have someone you trust with an engineering background to look – at the important parts of the structure and be satisfied that they ‘look right’. Amongst several serious faults that we noticed we averted an extremely dangerous, possibly fatal structural error when we discovered that a load-bearing element had been mounted on a non-load-bearing support. This was a genuine mistake but it showed that another set of eyes can reveal all sorts of things that the builders may have missed. I was also amazed (and very thankful) for what others spotted that we missed. 63. It is possible (for reasons that are not foreseeable) that a change may be necessary to the design/spec of the building and that new prices will have to be obtained. For example, if electric garage doors were specified but these cannot be fitted for some reason and ordinary garage doors have to be fitted instead. A quote will have to be obtained for the ordinary garage doors and the difference between that cost and the cost of the (more expensive) electric ones should be removed from the amount you will be paying for. You should agree with your builder that prior to obtaining the quote for the new doors, that the actual cost for the original ones is disclosed so that you are sure to get a proper rebate. 64. Be prepared for the fact that the suppliers of building materials have not moved with the times when it comes to quality control. In fact in some cases, technologies that have been with us since before Roman times seem to have advanced little! Take for example bricks – you cannot pick brick colours from a board of brick ‘slip’ samples and then expect to get the same colours delivered. Ask any bricklayer. The only way to guarantee colours is to go down to the brick yard, select the ones you want and take them away with you. The same applies to exterior tiles. The quality control is nowhere near the standard applied to other areas of modern production (e.g. farm produce at supermarkets). The quality of concrete is incredibly variable in both consistency and mix. If you are looking for ‘fair-faced’ concrete surfaces, i.e. ones that are good enough to be visible, it may be a good idea to have a back-up plan in case it goes wrong. Note that the choice of concrete is often limited to those plants that are nearby – your builders may have little choice on which one they can use. 65. If you are working from samples then keep the samples of the things that you used to make choices and make it clear that the colours shown are the ones you expect to see delivered. If the supplier can’t guarantee that then pick another supplier. 66. Take lots of photographs of everything, no matter how boring. When the structure is finished and you need to know what’s behind a wall you’ll be grateful. Particularly useful is where pipes and other services are running behind walls and under floors. 67. Make sure that you decide and say where you need wood behind the plasterboard to support pictures, curtain rails and televisions, cupboards, etc. and then take photographs of where it is before the plasterboard is put on. 68. Keep a VERY close eye on what you are paying out. It’s a very good idea to create a spreadsheet which documents all the costs and then when they have been paid. AND FINALLY SOME OTHER NOTES… 69. In my experience professional bodies such as the Chartered Institute of Engineers are only there to protect their members, not the public. In my experience they will always maintain that their members are right and you are wrong – the member is the one paying them – not you. Always have in the back of your mind that you cannot rely on any professional body to protect you from their members. 70. Don’t expect the Local Government Ombudsman to uphold any complaint you make against the local authority. In my experience they rarely take any complaint seriously. Take a look at their website and try to find a dispute that has ended up in the resident’s favour. Even those labelled as ‘upheld’ often don’t force the local authority to do anything to rectify the matter. 71. If you are using a home automation system which controls the lights, make sure you put an ordinary light switch in the cupboard/room where system is. If it goes wrong you’ll need some light to fix it! Also, think carefully before using mechanical retractive light switches. For a simple on/off they should be fine but for special uses (e.g. double tapping for switching a light scene off) they are not very easy to use. Consider the touch-sensitive (capacitative) type - they are far easier to use. 72. Don't allow things which will need replacement or servicing to be boxed in with decorative panels, etc. Make sure it is easily accessible. 73. If you're building a basement in impermeable ground (e.g. clay) remember that basements can easily 'float out', i.e. rainwater can flow down the sides of the concrete, collect under it and then cause the basement to float. Yes, it sounds incredible and yes, basements are very heavy but so are battleships and the Archimedes' principle holds true for both of them. Make certain that a) that your builders have spoken to the engineer about this and fully understand and will mitigate the risks, b) that there is adequate drainage from the bottom of the basement during the build to prevent water collecting around the concrete 'ship' and c) obtain written confirmation from your engineer, backed up by his professional insurance, to confirm that the weight of the house's structure above will be sufficient to keep the house firmly in the ground when the project is finished. 74. I started with this but I’ll say it again – get all decisions in writing. If you make a decision verbally with anyone, back it up with an email. Explanatory Note: A PC Sum (Prime Cost Sum) is an allowance made by an architect or a builder in the price for a specialist contractor or specialist supplier. In most cases a PC Sum is allowed for electrics, plumbing, heating, kitchens, windows, etc. It is allowed on a lump sum provisional basis and the client is responsible for the actual end cost of the item plus a small percentage for the main contractor. It is in the contractor’s interest in the tender process to keep this figure as low as possible as it makes his overall figure lower even if it is well known that the provisional cost is insufficient.

@Pocster, please, just for me, show us a photograph of something - anything - you've finished. Just the one'll do. Ta!

Turns out my son was going for a shower for over 20 minutes after school. This was emptying the tank. I've kept the Circulating Pump off and might just remove it. I've set the tank to warn once at night and once in the day. Also restricted my sons shower to less than 10 minutes. Not sure this is being fully followed though! We are getting through 24 hours with just 2 cylinder head ups. Thanks for all your help on this.

My suggestion above will mitigate that .

Pretty sure no notches are allowable to the underside of joists. Only to the top