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At the moment I have done stress & am now advancing rapidly on to full nervous breakdown Having suffered nearly 2 years of hostility & harassment from some of our neighbours who we had previously counted among our friends, we commenced our build last January. Just as we had finished the ground works my husband was diagnosed with cancer, inoperable & incurable but he has had some really intensive treatment & we are waiting now to find out if it has been effective and what the next step is. This has meant that I have needed to continue working full time as it is our only income. Along with dealing with illness, financial pressures, a demanding full time job and trying to manage a self build, when I don't really know what I am doing half the time, I am spread pretty thin at the moment. Still, it has given us both something to focus on. However, we have had to adapt and changed our method of building to a closed panel timber frame system. The timber frame company PYC have been great. They pulled our project in really quickly and have been so supportive. My husband really wanted to see the house built & as we may be short of time & I cannot thank them enough. The roofing contractor has not been great & has caused me a lot of sleepless nights over the last couple of weeks. Also the neighbours reported us to planning enforcement saying we had not built to the permission & had built in the wrong place, extended the footprint & built too high. Enforcement were very surprised how accurate our measurements were & wrote back to them saying 'The development as constructed is in accordance with the plans as approved.' I think we are now back on track. The windows arrive on Monday & PYC are coming to fit them & finish the airtightness detailing & a few bits of insulation that could not be completed until watertight. I think I will then be able to breathe again. I think the camaraderie & support on build hub is so helpful. It is stressful & there are times when you just want it all to go away. But there is also excitement & sense of achievement and knowing that lots of you have said it is all worth it in the end. Good luck to everyone!

@Russell griffiths Not the best photo as there are clouds but hopefully you get the idea

I am so sorry to hear of your situation Moira, and people like you that seem to be coping well with it are an inspiration to others. It shows this forum is so much more than a place to ask questions about how to build a house, and I am so glad we managed to get the forum up and running and now going from strength to strength.

Mechanical Ventilation and Heat Recovery system Test Report.pdf This is what I did and BC had no problem with it at all. It's not 100% in accordance with the guidance note for Part F https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/456656/domestic_ventilation_compliance_guide_2010.pdf , but that didn't seem to matter, as they thought that it adequately addressed every requirement.

This inspector does seem radically different from most. Years ago, building inspectors had a reputation for being a complete PITA, but I was pleasantly surprised by both the head of the LABC locally, the inspector that did the majority of our inspections and the most senior inspector they had who made a point of coming out to do the final inspection (driven by curiosity, on his part, I think). Certainly none of the inspectors had seen our form of construction before (MBC Twin Stud), nor had they ever seen a passive slab, with all the load being borne by a thick layer of EPS, and no concrete in the ground at all. However, they were keen to learn, to the extent that they asked if I could give them a short continuing professional development lecture on site, so they could better understand this particular method of construction. We did have one interim (retired and brought back part time) bloke who was old school, and a PITA (on his first visit, which was post first fix, he declared that he didn't like the lack of any "proper foundations"...........), but overall I found that they were pretty accommodating, especially when faced with details that were clearly way different from many of the standard details they were used to. However, this was pre-Grenfell, and I strongly suspect that I'd have been asked for a great deal more evidence if I was doing it now. I remember in the early stages being surprised when I asked when they wanted to do the next inspection, assuming it would be before first fix (this was just after the frame went up) and the inspector said that he thought I knew more about how the house should be built than he did and he was confident to trust me to make sure everything was done OK...............

Love the fact that the glass balustrade seems to zig zag up the steps!

Cheers JSH, I will send him that link! Declan - thanks, there was loads more nonsense we've had which I could have documented but felt it would have started to look excessive so that's nice to know how it comes over.

Might be worth pointing out this information from your manufacturer, that states that the history of SIPs goes back to 1935: https://www.kingspan.com/gb/en-gb/products/engineered-timber-systems/structural-insulated-panel-technology/knowledge-base/sips-the-history-of-a-truly-modern-method-of-cons

That is an excellent piece that even though the bco has clearly been a jobsworth you have explained all the issues without going on a rant. No way would I have been that polite and it would have ended up in a slanging match. Fair play to you and I hope it gets sorted on Monday one way or the other.

Actually I meant this week's one called Ugly House to Lovely House with that extension, which is a Chatlue Luxton George Clarke one. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/ugly-house-to-lovely-house-with-george-clarke Ooops. Lessons about budgets, and the sizes of some houses, and some budgets. The Colchester one has the architect who designed it in 196x revisiting now. This is a George Clark series, and talks about the compromises with a 150k budget faced with a architect 450k proposal that ends up at 250k after optimisation and trimming. Really good programme. Less .. imo .. pretentious at the edges than Grand Designs. We all helped @Visti cost engineering a George Clarke design here after the Quantity Surveyor produced a startling estimate. One of our best threads. Both series worth watching. My theory of architects is that you get the best from an architect by getting enough knowledge to be able to engage at as equal a level as possible. You keep their wonderful flights of imagination grounded. F

There are people yet to find plots who will finish before I do...

I’m annoying our neighbours with two weeks (and counting) of peckering, I’ve got lots of rock to shift for our basement. You can’t beat the sound of a pecker at 7:30 in a morning.

We used a radial Hep2O approach and minimised the pipe runs by (i) having our DHW + CH service area manifolds centrally positioned, and (ii) taking a near-as-practical to direct route for the pipe runs. IMO, the only thing that we got wrong was not using 10mm pipe for the HW to the low flow taps -- these 10mm runs hold a ⅓ of the dead water than the 15mm ones. You can see my total lagged pipework in the two earlier photos. My building supplier was @RandAbuild who had a couple lengths left over and that was all I needed.

I have a feeling this may well be a Grenfell Tower backlash. I'm hearing rumours that some building control organisations are significantly tightening up on anything that may possibly, under any sort of definition, be called a "new method of construction". Basically they are arse-covering. They are, apparently, running scared because the potential liability where non-standard details have been approved and it's then backfired (as in the Grenfell Tower cladding) might well be massive. Nothing has changed, but building control has been exceedingly lax in some areas in recent years, and this may well be a company, or perhaps the warranty company they are tied to, being excessively cautious as a knee-jerk reaction.