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Received VAT reclaim in my bank account today & as the online process is relatively new (it may be mandatory now?) I thought that the timescale might be helpful for others who are about to go through this. 29 May - submitted claim. I had been keeping track of all my invoices on a spreadsheet so it was an easy procedure to upload these to HMRC in the format requested, along with the various supporting docs. Received email response from HMRC with a claim ref number. 11 June - email from HMRC confirming my claim is valid & requesting copies of 10 specific invoices (my claim had 117 invoices) which I scanned & uploaded. The 10 invoices were all relatively high amounts but I'm unsure whether they were picked randomly or specifically. 13 June - email from HMRC confirming receipt of 'additional info' i.e. the 10 invoices & stating they aim to process payment within 3 weeks. 10 July - payment received. The amount paid is approx £300 less than I claimed which I assume is due either to claiming for invalid items or miscalculation of VAT on my part (the latter possibly happened where invoices included both reclaimable & non-claimable items). In due course I expect to receive an explanation of the underpayment from HMRC & will update this post then. All in all, I found the reclaim process straightforward & I should think the online process is a great improvement on the previous paper/postal one.

Back in ‘91 we self built the house we now live in. Block, render and pantiles. We were both working full time in those days and we did as much as we could, but that doesn’t include groundwork, blockwork, structural carpentry or plastering. Rural location, fields front and back, nice big garden. A third of a century later, at the end of September ‘23, we found ourselves in the back garden of a small, run down 1920s or 1930s timber framed bungalow. It’s in easy walking distance of the centre of a small market town, even closer is a lovely riverside walk, on a quiet-ish road, near a park, and the long, narrow, over run back garden in a quiet little oasis made of half a dozen other long back gardens. For us it’s the location to die for. Especially with our first floor bedroom overlooking the back garden. But the dark and sad and unmortgageable bungalow is not to our taste and crucially, it doesn’t have a first floor. Yet. On one side is another bungalow (a matching pair to ours) but fortunately on the other side is a two storey house (phew!). So we bought it, and put in a pre app during the buying process. The feedback came in (with some gentle, respectful encouragement) just before exchange and that feedback was generally very positive. Between exchange and completion we worked out what we wanted to live in and we met a couple of architects on site, one of which we were happy to work with so we engaged them. As soon as we completed in mid January we submitted our planning app, and we felled some trees and cleared lots of shrubs so we could start to see the garden. I quickly got to know the guys at the tip and I got much better at reversing Trevor the trailer. Our planning design is v close to the pre app design save changes hinted at by the planners, and in early May it was permitted without modification. Woo hoo. A few conditions (e.g. can’t start till September) but nothing too onerous. So, that means lots of time to research, plan, analyse and generally overthink just about everything! Now all we need to do is sell our house….

Mine is a ground bearing slab, insulation and the concrete floor, instead of block and beam. My drainage is under the slab and brought through the insulation. Used insulation formers where drain runs under showers and bath would go to stop concrete getting there. Then once drains were sorted I back filled with concrete. Not sure if the exact logistics of drains and block and beam, but suspect similar.

Architect is happy to go down the gravelboard/drain route. I suggested perforated pipe wrapped in a geotextile to prevent the channel silting up which he's also happy with. I can then top that with stones too. Thanks for all your help guys 🙏

It will need planning permission, but the fact you already have a tall brick wall on the boundary should make that much easier.

Fiterra mothballed our local brick works (Claughton) a year or so ago. The local clay makes beautiful bricks. https://www.lancasterguardian.co.uk/business/iconic-lancaster-brickworks-to-be-mothballed-as-housebuilding-slump-hits-demand-4376219

If you can get the screed pourers to float it level then you might be able to lay flooring directly. Otherwise, a little levelling screed mixed as runny as feasible 🙂 to make sure it finds the dips

My floor is 100mm fibre reinforced (think I did C30), paddle floated. Had a few low areas so just used self leveling screed where needed to get it level. Wet rooms are tiles, nearly everywhere else is wood glued down, bedrooms are carpet. My floor was done before any walls were built, easy access, no walls in the way.

No reason why you can’t do your own drawings, it’s not rocket science. If it’s less than 30 sq m then building regs don’t apply. Some bedtime reading fir you. https://ecab.planningportal.co.uk/uploads/1app/maps_plans_and_planning_apps.pdf

Add more insulation if you can. Use the 75mm as your floor and clip the UFH pipes to the insulation, prior to pouring the concrete.

id want a minimum of 300mm eps or 150 celotex

That sounds like a reasonable way to do it. It will work. The key is whether there is enough insulation. Can you add 50mm PIR on top of the EPS and then the screed with the UFH pipes. This would increase your overall U-value and make the heating a little more efficient (= cheaper to run). Insulate as much as you can now before the screed is poured

In my opinion drainage fields are oversized under the building regs. They are designed to treat sewage but only allow 25% reduction when it is already fully (98%) treated. All it really needs is a soakaway for the small amount of liquid. We hired a jcb and digger fof the big hole, gravel and hoisting in the tank. The driver said he had put in maybe 30, and always with a 1m3 ish rubble soakaway. We divided our complying drainage field into phases 1 and 2. Bco accepted phase 1. On our next project I will discuss it with the bco and propose a French drain of the right design for the quantity and porosity. I suggest you try that. Marsh are good. You order through a builders merchant but Marsh deliver and offload. About £3k. £5k all up? If you diy you will need a digger or a lot of manpower/ barrows.

HDMI over CAT6[A] is always a compromise vs having genuine cable installed; features like ARC, ethernet over HDMI, highest resolution/frame rates etc tend to be limited, not to mention adds extra hurdles for the HDCP copy protection to fall over on.On the flip side, my experience of putting a few HDMI cables in (again, back to the central AV/comms cupboard) was not good: not one of them actually worked when I came to use them 😞. My understanding is despite not exceeding (or, barely exceeding) the HDMI max length, the cables used are long enough x poor enough quality they interfere with HDCP anyway. (In most instances, 1080p would play, but not 4K, over these longer cables). What I really wished was I'd put in a spare optical fibre or two, that could be used for HDMI extension, or for simple audio return path (my multi-room amplifier is in the central AV cupboard and having the "actual" sounds from the TV sent back there would be handy in a number of scenarios) If you do install HDMI, make sure to buy the cables in plenty of time and test with the exact kit intended to be used with. Also, if at all possible run it through oversized ducts so they can be replaced in case of failure, or HDMI being superseded by something else in future... (ours was a retrofit project, so it wasn't possible to the main TV, alas)

Depends where you are. However, we were £5k for all of that. That was a Graf One2Clean, remote air blower, drainage field (24m2) plus pipework. That was part of the overall groundwork though so I could have overpaid elsewhere.

As the forum search isn't the best, here's the link

only the height of the panel changes, the trays are in 2 parts so you just increase/decrease the overlap to suit whatever size panel you have. GSE have an app on their website which plans the whole thing for you.

Don’t assume that logic that is self evident to us mortals applies to underwriters. It’s a bit like tax law, there will always have been a reason but it’s so buried in history you could never second guess it.

Have you read ‘How a planner got planning’ on here? It’s very good. Many people count the planning as the most difficult bit of self building. It can feel like a game of chess with constantly changing rules.

pick any non standard construction and it will cost more. stick to tried and tested to keep costs down.

Please read the discussion about a responsible person in the thread linked to in my previous post. It's about 6 paragraphs from the start. I am not an expert. But I am watching your back.

How about a tweak to the Start Within 3 Years rule? How about Finish Within 3 Years or face a fine? Oops, except for self builders 😡

We have put two 4K (8K to the very local) HDMI and two CAT6 cables and a terrestrial Arial cable to each TV point and fed the HDMI, only cost £150 for the cables, back to the media panel - not really sure why but it seemed like belt and braces. We can stream the same image / sound to all the TVs in synch (nearly) via the HDMI.

OK, unit finished except for shelves, doors and trim. Sink is arriving tomorrow, so I get to start fitting services soon. I figure I'll make them all temporary and pluggable until I can dig a trench and get a Real Electrician™ out for that side of things. Got a second coat on the east wall, and it's looking much better than I expected it to. It still undulates, but most of the smaller-scale variation is just... gone. Trowelling it on is much harder and slower than slapping it on with my hands though ^^. One bag went pretty far; the remaining seven ought to be enough to finish this coat everywhere, but I'll definitely need more for the final coat.

Flexi ducting for the shortest length possible onto solid ducting

Yes, agree, my sympathies, usual LPA BS in my view. Insufficient detail on what constitutes a valid application - check. Inability to locate information on drawings - check. Obvious that the rules don't apply equally to their regular applicants - check. Silly overreach on requirements that may never be needed if the application is turned down - check. Each LPA's requirements are different - check. Universal list irrespective of whether the applicant is applying for one dwelling, 10 or 100 - check. 'Validation' done by least qualified and most junior member of staff with no common sense - check. At least your validation response was probably signed by an actual human, the inspectorate takes, say 15 weeks, can't see stuff on the drawings and then sign themselves Validation Officer A8 or some such nonsense. These should probably all be added to the 'reform the planning system' list.

if it was mine I would put a wraparound DPC below the beam and block and bring it up the external face of the masonry and back in on top of the marmot block below the sole plate.

Gas safe certificate from gas safe installer, just like any other gas installation. Note not all gas safe engineers are register for LPG.

A couple of suggestions; - whack some lengths of thick re-bar in and wire the pergola to that. - plant the clematis in the ground; it will hold the pergola in position once it's established.

Get that JCB fired up and dig lots of holes 🤞

Just as an update - they accepted my PV solar invoice as additional and are paying it. Fairly straightforward process, which I'm pleased with.

First I have heard of that. Mine is mounted to the front wall of the house under the kitchen window but will be screened from the road by shrubs when the landscaping is finished. Nobody mentioned planning requirements to me when siting it, and it was part of a major extension project with planning officers' involvement.

You would require and should not require Building Regulations.

+1. I've tried clever stuff with long cables and feeding multiple displays but 3D works best with the source close to the tv/projector with dedicated and short (and actually cheap) HDMI cables. Sometimes I’m so busy being ‘clever’ I miss the bleedin obvious simple solution.

>>> were in Norfolk OMG - that far away!

hasnt been a true conservative government since 1990. Looking like Nigel Farage will be remedying that.

Nobody lives in Milton Keynes ; they simply exist .