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Get an induction hob anyway, far better job.

Evening all, New here but I've been following this forum for over a year. We're currently making baby steps toward building our first self-build and still trying to leave the dreaming stages; it's all a little overwhelming. We plan to build a 230m2 bungalow (190m2 heated) in Perthshire. I've attached plans and renders I created using Floorplanner for anyone interested. We've spent several hundred hours over the two years redrafting our floorplan based on our findings and recommendations, and learning what is most important to us. I will admit the current flaws I can see are: the bathrooms are far apart and will create additional cost, the utility next to the office isn't ideal, no mech room (we will likely use the garage), and the kid's rooms are slightly smaller than I had hoped. We're on a pretty lean budget for the construction, at around £1300 per m2 for the total build. I've renovated a few properties previously and will be doing some of the work myself, using friends & family to help where appropriate, and managing the project myself. Glad to finally have taken the plunge to sign up and share the above. It makes things more real. Next step is to find a plot and hopefully figure out a way to work out plans in (though appreciate we may have to start again!) Cheers J

I don't entirely disagree with you re the £7.5k grant, however its available so why not use it. What they need to do is reduce the grant to say £3-4k but remove requirement for it to be installed by MCS certified companies. They are simpler to install than gas boilers so why tie the process up in red tape which a limited number of companies profit from. Its the same with removing vat from insulation as an incentive, you can only access vat free insulation if you then pay through the nose for a certified company to install it. Why can't I simply purchase 10 rolls of insulation myself from say B&Q and not pay the VAT on it.

I like this approach, was a very enjoyable (long) part of my build. Last shot before Cedar cladding fixed.

Ok to disagree. My own feeling is that it's worth while paying the SE for a visit. This achieves a number of things. 1/ It lets the builder know that you the Client are not alone. 2/ I can say that I can't remember the time when I went to inspect a job and found nothing wrong. Builders often swap materials, hangers, connections, nail types and don't follow the nailing schedule on TF. Then you have fire stopping, vapour barriers etc... long list 3/ When I go to site I also look at fit up and if everything looks ok for the next stages say.. the insulation, how are the drains looking and so on. Now is the time to nip things in the bud. As a project goes on builders tend to come under more financial pressure as they like to get as much profit out the job early on. If they feel they have a weak Client it's human nature that they tend to let things slip as the project goes on. Ok @joe90 I agree with you that you should tell the builder to get it right.. but sometimes the presence of an SE, Architect or QS say can concentrate the mind..avoid later serious disputes.. especially if any visit is at short notice or unannounced.

It's probably nothing to do with you house so. Mould from timber storage. I'd just ignore it. It'll die when there's no more moisture present.

20 years ago we built the house 2 doors down that you can just see the edge of the roof in that picture. That did not get the mountain view due to all the trees in the neighbours garden. Then we managed to buy this plot 2 doors up the same road but with a better view.

Overall size of house 11m by 7m. Living room, kitchen diner and utility / WC (another story) downstairs and 3 bedrooms (one en-suite) and a bathroom upstairs. Then a single garage and the room above accesed via a bedroom, is a workshop / office. About 150 square metres in total.

We did that. When designing room in roof, most people opt for some variation on conventional dormers. But I do not like them, usually the cheeks are hard to detail in both terms of appearance and insulation detail. Then while on the Isle of Skye I saw what I have termed "gable ends" instead (there is probably a proper name for them) that we used. With this roof design, and with a roof hung from ridge beams, you can create a totally open room in roof space without many or the limitations of conventional dormers and attic trusses.

View to the west from our kitchen window. Best viewed from the seating on the kitchen island. Not a bad view while washing up at the sink either.

Thanks. Unusual, but I like it. I've also recently seen someone mount a dishwasher at a higher level so that you don't need to bend down to load/unload it.

So this is a concept of the accommodation you would like. Not much point going much further until you actually have a plot. Some key things with a plot are where south is, to get the sun, and where the views are. Until you know that you don't even know which room wants to face where. Don't assume you must have rooms facing front and back, our best view is out of the side to the west down the glen to the mountains. Part of the positioning and angling of the house on the plot was so we could see down the glen in front of the house next door to achieve that. Point taken about stairs being "non productive" space, but we had already decided on a 1.5 storey house so stairs is a given, it was a case of make all rooms open to the hall or landing in the most efficient way (i.e. directly) without corridors or multiple doors to pass through. Try to imagine a lot of rooms might have notional names assigned to them, but a downstairs bedroom could equally make a good office or additional reception room if not actually needed as a bedroom. And it is important to either try and follow the local vernacular, or design something totally different (like the examples above) Re cheap to build on plots, dead flat is not always the best. Our plot was on a slope, which gave a perfect place to use all the excavated soil to make it less of a slope for the finished garden. No muck away costs.

A couple of sketches I’ve done in the past.

Definitely SE is a must Most will do your BC submission if required A lot cheaper than an Architect

There’s nothing wrong with your concept - take a look at contemporary Scottish vernacular architecture - here in Ireland the development of the home started off in a linear fashion - a central living space - much like what you have with bedrooms off the room and a long front corridor. Leave it with me. I’ll sketch a few ideas.

So much great Scottish architecture out there.

Slightly surprised that you have spent so long designing for a plot you haven't got yet! From our point of view the plot came first and then design to fit the plot. I can't quite read the dimensions properly but it is around 10m x 23m? Pretty wide so would require a particular shape of plot. Was there a reason that you have done it this way around?

3 pieces of advice from me ….. 🤔 Ok ! 1) You’d be surprised at what you can do . I mean literally it’s possible to do 90% + of it yourself ( with help from forums like here ) 2) Creative solutions can save you £1000’s …. Every problem has multiple solutions ( in life and self builds ) 3) Take forever doing it and have no budget . Welcome to the infinite build

only recently found this forum, so ................ have completed 3 self builds and renovated other places, but still struggle along. You would think I would have learnt something along the way, but probably too stupid to do that. Just starting out on a single storey extension and alterations to latest, and likely last, property (getting old). Hopefully I shall last long enough to finish the job.

The key to our low £ / square metre cost was building slowly doing a lot of the work ourselves to save labour, and careful buying of everything. Great advise Fast =£££ Lots of labour that we can all do Buying materials There can be a massive difference in costs of exactly the same materials Suppliers have got used to us excepting that things cost more due to inflation Un less you are governed by planning I would consider 1.5 floors £1300 m2 is definitely doable if you consider all of the above To add Try and get a plot that is reasonably straight forward No overhead cables Flat as possible Reasonably near to utility Conections and and some means of run off for tip water and discharge from Treatment Plant Jeep professional fees as low as possible

Think about vaulted living space at one end, and 1.75 storey over the rest of the downstairs and over the garage for upstairs rooms.

Not necessarily. As you say later, there is the space taken by the stair and landing x 2 levels. so take that out of the useful m2 and it all changes. It depends on a lot of other factors too. slate roof would be expensive, metal much cheaper, tiles in between. To me that is an economical shape and easy to build, and everywhere is near a window. Plus it is totally accessible for the future......the owner ageing, visitors, future purchasers.

My wife and I did our window installations ourselves using some Illbruck products. We used TP651 Trio expanding tape, which is 35mm depth on 47mm depth window frames. We used the FM330 Pro Foam Air Seal expanding foam to fill the gap left behind the tape. I really rate the FM330 expanding foam. We then used Siga Fentrim IS20 airtightness tape, 10mm on the window frame, connecting across the foam to the ICF EPS reveal. Siga are one of the few airtightness brands that explicitly state their tape will bond with EPS. This was probably overkill, but we wanted to be sure that the windows were airtight. The Thermohouse ICF window blocks have a “Check Reveal”, which means the edge of the window frame is protected by 100mm of EPS. This is another layer of insulation and weather protection. Our renderer then fitted on the outside of the frame a window reveal bead, with a rubber seal. https://ewistore.co.uk/shop/external-wall-insulation/anthracite-window-reveal-bead-with-mesh/ I doubt any of this additional work will be reflected in our SAP score, but I am pretty confident that we have detailed the junction between the window frame and the rough opening in a way to provide us with a lot of long term benefits.

Love this haha! Cheers, Pocster. Top 3 pieces of advice you could offer for someone in the very early stages?

Hello all New to self build and have a plot with permission for a replacement house. We (my wife and I) are currently looking at an oak frame build. Hopefully we can get some useful information from others and can also provide some to newbies too. Thanks Richard

Very Interesting build. I would avoid multi tooling anything. It's too slow and getting a very consistent cut would require too much attention. This would be my solution. Cut say a 300 mm strip of proclima and staple it to the racking board as shown in orange. Then run the breather membrane over the top as shown in blue to below the level of the orange. Tape the blue to the isoquick with an appropriate tape and primer. This will be a safe design if the tape fails, or the external membrane. However getting the external membrane and tape right is your primary objective..

The pizza oven has arrived - all 380kg of it. I now have the challenge of getting it into position in one piece. Got and engine hoist coming in a few weeks.

Going down the second inverter route likely means another G99 application so a tad more involved. Are all the panels going to be facing the same direction as that has a big bearing on peak generation and hence what you can have on each of the existing MPPTs. How many new panels do you want to add?

Thanks, sorry, missed the replies to this. Will give the Gloomsbury place a miss and visit the Swindon centre. And yes we're in north Dorset, just trying to close out our plot purchase near Shaftesbury. Thanks all

.. if youre set on hot water ...try an LPG portable water heater with battery ignition.

Is that MBC? We had a similar requirement in our contract and provided hot water through an instantaneous hot water tap. The frame erectors could not have been less impressed or interested and it was never used once. Provide a camping gas hob and a kettle, that will partially satisfy the requirement I should think and will never be used for anything other than making a brew. I don’t suspect they will ‘down tools’ because the hot water isn’t running.

In short, get a second inverter to suit the new panels (?higher voltage rating). The interface to yr existing system will then be at 230V AC so the exact rating of the panels themselves is not important, only that they are matched to one another. It is clear from yr table reproduced below that the old and new panel voltages are almost identical. From this we can deduce (i) they probably both have the same number of cells as the volts per cell is pretty much a constant (ii) it is the current capability that is different in order to account for the different nominal power (iii) so you will not be able to mix old and new in a series string. I don't see a way of connecting the new panels to your existing inverter to make use of its spare capacity, so you will have to replace it or, cheaper, add a second one. There is a company somewhere in the SW that advertises second hand ones on ebay. If you have a battery system you could alternatively - depending on the capabilties of yr existing inverter - add the new panels on the DC side (I have 16 x 230W panels installed in 2011 on a grid-tied inverter and 8 x 405W installed in 2022 on the 48V DC bus via a Victron DC-DC MPPT). 320Watts panels 435Watt panels STC NOCT STC NOCT Power 320 237.1 Power 435 325 Voc\V 40.9 38.2 Voc\V 39.33 36.93 Vmp\V 33.9 31.3 Vmp\V 33.04 30.15

That seems new. It is however for load bearing walls only. You can’t build a load bearing wall on top of PIR.

Best thing you’ll ever do, MVHR

You won't know for sure until you move in, but typically on top of the closed panels you would create a service void typically with 25mm battens and then the plasterboard over that. It is then relatively easy to make alterations.

I would want to clean that mortar off and see what the bricks orientation are and if they are supported at all before deciding how to proceed

Agreed, pay one to visit the site for a couple of hours. If you're super lucky someone qualified like @Gus Potter may point you in the right direction first. You've got an off the shelf ridge beam design from an architect, who hasn't drawn it that clearly and isn't taking much responsibility, then it hasn't been constructed as designed, and now your surveyor doesn't seem to fully understand or can't explain to you the design or construction. Nobody is trying to worry you unnecessarily, but a couple of hundred pounds spent now could be a wise investment

Catching up with this after some time away, if this is the end of the ridge then it doesn't look good. In the absence of an alternative solution, the top of the rafter should be notched over the beam (or a timber sitting on the beam), so that notch transmits the load from the roof vertically onto the beam. The timber ties beneath the beam are normally there to stop horizontal movement - that is, to keep the notches in their intended place on the beam - not to stop the rafters sliding down towards the wall plates which, they will otherwise tend to do. I would strongly suggest that you get a Structural Engineer involved before proceeding.

All comments accepted. I went a bit overboard right enough. Interesting you are an Engineer that now flies for a day job... how did you get from A to B? There is another member on BH that does the same as yourself. Great bloke.. attention to detail is impressive. One of my family flies fast jets.. retired, appreciate the way you filter stuff. Golden rule seems to be.. don't crash. Well done with the oven.. it's all about the food.. who cares what the render looks like.

But you do. It's the supposed experts that either don't understand or are covering for each other.

I don't know the answer to the question. But here's what one of our most respected contributors had to say about retaining walls - he had to solve the same problem as yours..... From a very simplistic (and therefore possibly wrong) point of view - if anyone digs in such a way as to possibly compromise the safety of a property that already exists, then it is the responsibility of any builder to preserve what already exists. '...looks like ... isn't '...is...' until you obtain a qualified opinion. We (Buildhub contributors) are neither qualified, nor expert - nor local to you. Please ask for a properly qualified Structural Engineer's report.

It’s my opinion that it’s the lower plot that has dug out is responsible for erecting a retaining wall.

That steel is a ridge beam supporting the weight of the roof. If you took it away, then the weight of the roof would be supported on the timber rafters which would transfer the load to the walls, but in doing so would push outwards and the rood would spread. Those ties at the top are not enough to stop the roof spreading.

This is a major purchase, usually your house is the most expensive thing you ever buy. It IS worth a good long day trip to thoroughly look yourself. Depending where you are anything from 3 to 6 hours driving. If you don't think you can do it in a day, book a B&B. Get that carpet up and look at the slab, in particular look for crack. and as I say buy or borrow a good long spirit level.

Subsidence is a loaded word more commonly taken to mean the dropping of the ground, taking foundations wall and floor with it. If only a localised part the floor has moved that may be why the surveyor didn't want to use the term, even if it has, in linguistic terms, subsided. It could have been the tree. Or maybe poor compaction of the soil or hardcore beneath the floor slab. Maybe there was an old well / bomb shelter / tree root / something else just there. BTW, as I recall, there isn't much clay in Norfork, is there? It wouldn't hurt, and they're not unduly expensive. A structural engineer's survey of the building may be better though, if you want additional reassurance. That depends how keen you are to buy and how competitive the market is. It wasn't necessarily the tree... It's more a case of whether your surveyor has missed anything. If that's really the only fault, and building's been there since 1969, then I'd not worry that much, but my risk aversion may be different to yours. And, budget permitting, I'd be tempted to take up all the ground floors anyway, then insulate them and install underfloor heating.

The NSBRC in Swindon is a lot better. Are you in Dorset?

If you live in Dorset then you need to go to the self build centre in Swindon Wiltshire. amazing place that doesn’t get the praise it deserves.

I know the feeling: my builders used the wrong strength blocks under the block and beam in my extension. Once I realised, I made them dismantle their work and use the correct ones, despite their protestations that it was ‘fine’. As with your error, I realised in good time, and the situation was recoverable. It’s frustrating on so many levels, but there are some things which you can let go and some things you can’t, (which is why I have wonky plastering). On a windy site what you are describing would trigger my alarm bells.

All the info from the tour can be found at...