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Has anyone looked into this from a self-build perspective? I've just had a chat with them, and she says no self-builders have actually signed up yet (but they would accept them). I suspect there's a reason for that! Is it just that there are better tariffs out there, such that you can make an overall profit on your electricity if you get it right? I'm quite liking the 5 or 10 year guarantee aspect of it - other tariffs come and go, whereas this apparently offers a good degree of certainty.

Why, you don’t have to use it but it’s there in case you do 👍 and welcome to the mad house 🤯

Yes you are right Joe and to be fair I have not read the details from Octopus - but I just looked at our PHPP numbers for our PV, installing it today we were, our primary energy need is projected (by PHPP) to be 114 kWh/m2, Our Treated Floor Area is 139m2 so we would need around 15000 kWh. Meanwhile our current PV setup is projected to produce around 5000kWh/m2 so we would need 3x our current 16 panels. Which is sort of mad given that we perhaps have enough roof area for an additional 8, and would need 8 phases to take away the 21kW generation @ peek any way. So this feels like it aimed at the big builders who can build a solar farm next to the properties - feeding the home individually and dealing with the electricity infrastructure costs needed to make it possible. Jeremy did it with the Fit tariff - he generated more money than his electricity cost not enough electricity - he only had 3.8kW on the roof IIRC.

Go divining to locate the pipe. Yes I AM being serious.

[shuffles to his feet, looking intently at his own shoes while repeatedly clearing his throat, gathering courage until finally managing to look up and blurt out…] I am a self builder and I believe in thermal mass. [sits down quickly, avoiding all eye contact.]

>>> the site is about 800sqm, my main concern is to find a possible water pipe underneath the ground so that I can build at 3m away from that You'll probably get what you need straight from your local water authority - at least a rough approximation to the location. Sometimes the records are missing or not accurate though. That'll hopefully give you a rough idea for planning a house location. The doc might have already been obtained in the searches when you bought the plot. The authority should also be able to tell you what kind of pipe it is, which'll be useful so you know how fragile it is. If the pipe is going to provide your own supply, you'll make much progress by going through the 'apply for a new supply' application and get an actual bod on site. They often know stuff that's not on the plans. That's probably all you need to kick off an architect. To get it accurately though, which you'll want to do at some time, you might need to dig down to it at a few points to verify and to get the level. You might be able to locate it remotely if iron, otherwise some sleuth work and some digging. Re a proper topo - yeah, dwg / dxf CAD file is key for people to draw on (computer-wise) using it as a base. Prints / pdfs are negligible extra cost. You probably need to specify exactly what you want - here's my spec (below), but I probably missed a few things - some tree stumps, eave heights of neighbouring buildings, height of mid-point of LV line. Local firm is good, as it's probably 1/2 day for a team of two. £400-500 + VAT maybe depending on how big the site is / how much it varies in height / how many 'features' there are / what grid size you want etc. Boundaries with heights & description Pick up the gates, driveway & the relationship to the highway The position & invert level of the ditch culvert at the front of the plot and the position and top level of the culvert pipe (now exposed) at the rear of the plot (one point at each end) as marked on the plan provided. The top being ~70cm down from the surface. This is behind the Ash tree. A paint line indicates the approx line of the culvert, please pick up one other on the surface from that so we can establish the approximate track The invert points of the culvert pipe in the ditch next to the highway have been highlighted The location and height of the poles at each end of the LV line All street furniture All service covers Overhead Cables Buildings (Outlines) All changes in surface All water features Trees; Location of the four trees and, if possible, the approximate tree height & extent of the foliage. Also pick up position & heights of 3 trees on the opposite side of the road Trees fully detailed - surveyed trunk & 4 points on canopy Road markings Existing building outlines Contours (interval) Existing building heights and neighbouring buildings The ridge height (only) of the 4 nearby barns (assuming these can easily be sited reflectorless from the plot). Levels over the site - 10m grid Floor Window and Door Heights of existing buildings Visibility splays - include all nearside features with heights (trees/hedges/fences etc.), with requested distance of splays in each direction from site access

That gutter edge is surely wrong? It depends on the individual system but some have a two piece trim that sandwiches the membrane. If I recall the system we used a few years ago on a porch roof had a mechanically fixed gutter edge membrane strip that the main sheet glued onto using contact adhesive. Whatever it should be it ought to be neater. Best way is to find out who makes the edpm and look up their standard installation detail on the web. That should illustrate how it's done.

Some providers do, but its now in as a graph, which shows flow rate based upon pressure: https://www.grohe.co.uk/notepad/v1/exports/product/30489000?locale=en_gb&fallback_image=

Topo survey won't locate a water pipe. Need to contact UE... Unlikely they'll help and you might need to do some trial pits. Worth have a Topo anyway. But do things in right order. Speak to an architect first, then think about ground investigations.

That is exactly what they have. Personal opinion is not their remit, so they interpret the national criteria and the local plan as if affects each application. Of course sometimes that is debatable and either decision for or against may annoy someone. The most important advice is not to buy a plot in the hope of approval.

'Detrimental', yes that's the other great fall back. The head of planning even said to a councillor who spoke to them for us... "but they might move", like that is in anyway relevant to the job they are there to do! They just didn't want us to build it for whatever reason or precedent it might set. Too much power and not enough sense. I could make a criterion based flowchart that would do a better job of making planning descisions frankly.

I so agree with this, we have one point where we could have had slots cut in the steels and reinforced to allow for the air-out ducting that I'm almost not irritated by now. But You kind of need to understand every aspect of every element of the build structure to avoid these things or pay an architect (who probably won't understand it anyway) an exorbitant amount for over detailed drawings. This is the first and maybe only build I'll ever do, but the stuff I know now would have been really handy 24months ago! I also had that webbed floor joist system put in to make it easier to route the ducts, only to discover that that in the end the ducting ran parallel to where a standard timber joist would have laid anyway. Hey ho, it's only money!

Bizarrely we were not allowed to build down. They have you over a barrel with actual footprint, then actual volume, then deemed detriment to the greenbelt even though there was a house here already! They just wouldn't allow a cellar which is invisble! Utter madness... but it's ok Kier Starmer says he can fix planning! Good luck with that Mr Starmer 🤣

Yeah, we took 4 years to battle with planning just to replace one house with another that's virtually similar. Take a deep breath and keep on going. Lots of milestones of joy to come 😆

>>> Reolink do a stand alone 4G camera that’s solar powered. Can I ask - is that working well? Any drawbacks?

You could do worse than to get a Brinno TLC200 off ebay, I did and timelapsed the whole build give or take. You can sent the intervals and period of recording, it's quite power efficient rather than continuous feed. Mine was only set for five minute intervals between 8am and 4pm. TLC00015_MAY22_ 26.mp4

We have a 7500L tank under the patio, a pump within that is called to fill a header tank in the loft to feed the toilets and washing machine. So as long as you have the space to dig a hole anything is feasible. I caveat that whole statement with the fact that we haven't fully comissioned it yet... We are currenlty turned to mains supply in the control panel proving that if we can get the water into the header everything downstream works perfectly. I will say that it still feels like a good plan if it finally works. The header tank was not well manufactured and sprang a small leak, the controller pcb was a dud and had to be replaced, and I am yet to be brave enough to turn it on in ernest! That is literally my next and almost final job on this build.

It'll only be exempt Building Regulations if detached. Do the plans for planning approval yourself - it'll probably cost you for pre-application advice (although some Councils don't charge householders) and almost certainly they'll ask for the sort of drawings you'll need for an application anyway.

Reolink do a stand alone 4G camera that’s solar powered. I’ve been using one for a year.

There is no joined up thinking. We are building the wind farms where there is no more grid capacity, before the grid is upgraded to cope. 4 more are planned near here, soon there won't be a hilltop without a wind farm on it. The planned additional 400KV overhead north / south line is barely passed planning stage after nearly 10 years, yet to start construction. There is a hydrolyser plant about to be built. Being built to use the surplus power the grid can't take to make hydrogen to be trucked by tanker (hydrogen powered I hope) to feed local distileries. The hydrolyser needs water, a lot of it, so a new 15 mile pipeline is being built to pump it from a local river. Now my little brain says 2 things, surely it would be easier just to build a local distribution network to feed the distileries directly with electricity rather than have the losses making then transporting then burning hydrogen? And if you are going to build it, surely it would be easier to build it near the river and transport the electricity to the hydrolyser with a new cable, rather than lay a new pipe and pump the water up hill?

its actually not too bad but needs planning before you put roof on ideally to make any openings work to the panels so it looks planned. Fitting is the easy part, screws and a flashing kit dead simple. Personally wouldn't use anything else but microinverters either for the small added cost.

I've just had a PM from someone asking about our piling company. So it reminded me.... Our piling company worked in partnership with a foundations wiring team. The lads formed and shaped rebar at a speed that made it look like they were handling plastic straws. Muscles were .... well I don't think they needed steroids working that hard and that fast. East European to a man. Their price was an order of magnitude lower than the others. To the extent that I was dubious about employing them. In the context of skills shortages in the building sector, not giving well qualified workers visas will impose unnecessary costs.

Apologies. I’m quite sure I wrote it properly. Will try again… You would require Planning and should not require Building Regulations.

it negates the need for external paving to be 150mm below the outer DPC

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.

It's not a *bad* idea per se, depending on the distance from any TV to the source devices. Although you can do HDMI over CAT5/6 etc., it's often more expensive and can sometimes come with issues of compatibility. In my current house, every TV has one HDMI cable that runs back to a matrix HDMI switch where various source devices are connected, a coax that provides Digital TV and Satellite connections, and two CAT5 cables, one of which provides wired Internet to the TVs and the other allowing "expansion" with various devices. These CAT5 cables route back to the same location as the matrix HDMI switch. The HDMI matrix switch allows any TV to select from two BT HDTV boxes, a Wii, and a NAS. If I ever get to self-build, each TV location will have an HDMI cable (possibly two), two coax, four CAT6 cables, and some single-mode fibre for future-proofing.

It like asking a client to chip in towards your class 4

Red lines need to be the same from OPA to FPS. Alternatively just go straight to a full plans submission with the new boundary.

Get your own QS - NOW!

Formal refusal received today. Have already got my appeal document drafted and ready for a review by a planning consultant and our architect. The planning consultant had already initially reviewed the decision and feels it is all a bit bizarre. We are mulling whether or not to in parallel submit a revised design, but given we believe we currently comply with all policies, we may still find we are refused again without a compelling reason based on policy.

Hopefully this new gov will fast track this sort of thing.