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The brick is still in the form of moist clay in a bin bag and will stay that way for a little while yet. But I have had a productive day laying a curved retaining wall in the baking sun. (it's getting rendered)

I think you need the automated version, perhaps:

Well ! An amazing showroom ! Product seems excellent!! Lots of other things to see !!

We have a lot of roof and the only planning condition we have, is that we use local slate, 18 tonnes of it at a cost of £22k. So here’s the front roof of the house. And the rear roof of the house. A total of 18 separate roof planes in all! Why oh why did I let the architect talk me into this design? Once the Timber Frame company left a local roofer started to batten our the roofs for our random width, diminishing course roof. Everything was going swimmingly, however he complained of feeling dizzy whilst on the three storey section, so i sent him to the doctors. He’s very old school of farming stock and would probably be more comfortable going to the vets! The upshot is he was signed off sick and needed hospital tests. The doctor has told him no more roofs. So that’s it, he’s told me to find someone else! I’ve wished him a speedy recovery, he is a really nice local guy and I’m gutted for him as he’s no pension, so relies on local roofing and small building jobs. He’s irreplaceable, but somehow I had to find a replacement. If only I had a magic wand, I’d wave it for him.  Gutted!  Went to seek the advice of a neighbours regarding good local roofers. The upshot being, I’ve was told to hunt down a guy known locally as “Old Fruit”. I asked the neighbour “don’t you know his real name” the answer, “NO” I’ve only ever known him as Old Fruit” So I have no phone number and only a vague idea where he lives.  As luck would have it, the third house I tried was Old Fruits parents house. So I now know he’s called Chris and having looked at the job and agreed an hourly rate, he’s start battening the roof out. Fast forward a couple of weeks and he’s back and this morning the slates started going on in the pouring rain, Old Fruit is keen to get on with the job! More to follow........

We’ve been using K Rend for about 20 year Cem 10 years before that We do work for a large company that specified Weber and we had issues with colour match on two jobs One was a synagog Over 2000 mtrs with a lot of detail There Rep came out and immediately said we had used contaminated water Left it uncovered in the sun tubed it to wet to dry Caused a load of hassle 12 months later different rep same excuses There batches vary wildly especially the darker colours K rends reps Total opposite I don’t know if it’s an Irish thing They are just very reassuring to the customer Never look to blame the contractor We use all the through coloured renders K rend is the best Fantastic back service also

Did she make you an offer for your glass?

I disagree If asked to quote for a (wiring) job and give a fixed price, I have to assume the job us going to be a b*****d and I am going to have lots of hassle taking floorboards up, and anything that can get in the way will. On the other hand I much prefer to give an estimate and charge the job by the hour it actually takes. Almost always the hourly rate job is less than it would have been as a fixed price and the customer is happy. It is trust. I am honest and don't just skive and charge them by the hour for doing nothing. I would be very annoyed if my mechanic charged by the hour to skive and he would not get any repeat business. It is no accident I have been taking my car to the same garage for the last 13 years, and it is not the closest garage, it is the one I trust. If you mistrust your tradesman to the point of thinking he is goinf to deliberately rip you off, you probably need to find another tradesman who comes with a recommendation so you can trust him to be fair.

I don’t think there is a clear answer when it comes to fixed price vs time and materials. I’ve had good experiences with both and poor ones too. Ultimately it comes down to the tradesman IMO. There are those that drag out a job to get paid more if it’s T&M and those who rush a fixed price job to get it done quickly and demonstrate lack of care. The best thing you can do when building is try to employ recommended trades and keep hold of the ones you trust that do a good job.

Definitely agree with that @scottishjohn, in our last build we got into a situation and had to dispense with the services of our main builder, suddenly we had half a house and were desperate to get it to w&w so employed a joiner on an hourly rate- bad idea he totally took the p , after we got to that stage we told him we could no longer pay him that way and that if he wanted the rest of the work he’d have to give us a price for the job, he wasn’t long getting the rest done! as for @selfbuildaberdeen if you are confident in doing the work you’ve mentioned just ask for a quote for the work you do want done, we employed our builders on a labour only basis and they knew from the outset that we would be doing ourselves or employing someone else to do certain things and they were fine with that, funnily enough when we started pricing up what we needed doing I had guesstimated prices for each thing and I was pleasantly surprised when their quote came back within the guesstimate!

It is a question of trust. I did a lot of my build this way, I may have been lucky but in my experience local builders and other trades are not out to rip you off, they take pride in their work plus need to hold their head up high in the community. At the other extreme you can fix price, but the builder is going to add their x% contingency to any such deal, plus you end up with a bunch of variations. I suspect x might be 15 to 20%?

The 2 builders I spoke to were charging a day rate (skill based) so not a case of what is more profitable. They wanted a margin on materials, which seems fair, but I believe this is an area where a determined person can make a significant saving e.g. by scouring internet or ringing around for best prices. Builders just get stuff from the local build merchant, generally more expensive even before you add the margin and time. Some might argue that buying materials will impact your cash flow as you have to pay vat then reclaim it, but your price plus vat is likely to be no higher then the builders price less vat, then the reclaim vat payment at the end becomes a nice bonus.

And if you intend on adding PV then running cost of ASHP has the potential to be lower.

Bugger...have I given him a bum steer? Sorry @8ball! Literally just done mine at Xmas will. My mixer and the offset fittings above were Bristan I think but I didn't use them hence having them loose to photograph. Remember now having to get new, straight ones off eBay to replace the originals. Pic on here somewhere.. My old bar mixer. You can just see the copper pipe into the 1/2" side of yhd adapter.

£2 and 5 mins... Get a couple of each of these, PTFE and a spanner and thread into your wallplate fitting and Robert is your grandmothers son in law...

We've just had window film installed and it seems to be working successfully in controlling heat gain. We had 43m2 installed, on South and West facing windows at about £64/m2. We looked at the 3M window film and that was £127/m2. Happy to share details!

@Christine Walker sent you details.

About 50% of total build cost, maybe more if ground conditions are poor, service connection cost are high or you have a steep plot gradient.

Up here we use loo roll...

A house half the size doesn’t generally halve the cost as there are economies of scale to a degree. Service connections of 20k for example add double the amount per m2 to a 150m2 house compared to a 300m2 one. But you have to compare like with like so the same type of finish etc. As others have said it depends on many things including where you are in the country, availability of trades, how much you decide to do yourself, the shape / complexity of the design etc. Timber frame and brick and block tend to be specialist skills so not that many people tackle those jobs on their own (there are a few who do but they are generally pretty skilled beforehand). There seem to be quite a few people giving ICF a go on their own though. There are loads of things you can do yourself inside though if you have the will to learn and accept that the build may take longer as a result.

The cost to watertight depends a bit on the build method. For example, some methods (like ours) would include the insulation and airtightness in the erection to watertight stage, whereas other build methods might literally be a bare shell with just the roofing, doors and windows fitted at that stage. Ignoring the site-specific ground works costs we had, which were really just knocked off the price we paid for the plot anyway, then the cost (excluding the plot cost) to get to the watertight stage (including insulation and airtightness testing) came to about £650/m², so a bit under half the final build cost. I've no doubt that some may well get to the watertight shell stage for less than this and some maybe more, as there's a fair degree of variability. There's also a scale factor to take into account, in that a fair bit of the cost of some work is tied up in things like mobilisation costs. For example, crane hire for lifting a timber frame, or glazing, will be much the same for a small house as it would for a large house, so the cost per m² of this for the large house will be a bit less. The same goes for stuff like transporting diggers, or scaffolding, and pretty much anything where there is an initial overhead incurred to get something to site.

New forest national park don’t allow splitting of plots etc all really strict, only allowed over the 30% in extreme cases ie if needed for disability etc i think it’s a good thing in some respect as nothing worse than having a nice garden then the next minute another house is over looking you etc

Thanks @lizziethat would be good if you could let me have their details, we’ve only had a few days of sunshine so far but I can imagine what it will be like during summer!

An over hang looks really slick on a contemporary look we decided to sit the joists on the inner leaf and cap with copings

the original, for people with more money than sense 'wow factor', is for sale for 7K as is the rest of the 'stuff' if you like it sorry, i've had a few friday night reds.

Me plastering the kitchen and dinning room LINE_MOVIE_1559307156544.mp4 LINE_MOVIE_1559310773535.mp4

Not bad for a 60 year old

I used 4" x 3" timber sliced to make furrings. Where they reduce to near zero is the unseen back of my house so the roof deck just rolls into standard gutter. At the front I have the benefit of the chunky 4 x 3" atop the joists. I stopped the joists at the inner leaf but continued the furrings to create a small overhang and brought the deck to the furrings edge. I fixed upward through furring and deck into 8" x 2" to make a perimeter to the deck (I needed the 8" height to contain green roof materials). This and the furrings provided ample structure to create a batoned base for my horizontal cedar fascia. The outer leaf was built up (almost) to underside of furring and the facia overlaps by hanging lower. If it's a warm roof plan early for airtightness, perhaps using a 'tony tray' that envelopes the furring extensions. This approach only worked though thanks to my only needing overhang at the fat end of the furrings...so it's limited.

One one of mine the joists simply continue through the wall and form a 1m overhang, which I really like - but which might have thermal-break issues in 2019 which were not perceived in 1970. It was a flat roof but now has cathedral ceilings and joists crossing at the former ceiling height - really attractive. For roof overhangs I really don't like the idea of building outriggers or extensions because the rafters are in some way unsuitable. It is what it is and we don't imo really want to add a pastiche overhang. It makes me think of those grand designs which have attempted to recreate Mies van der Rohe by design bodgery rather than doing it a la Mies. I would find the idea of longer rafters with the corners cut back on a diagonal to be more attractive. (No - I have no idea how I would solve this for a flat roof in 2019. I would need to think of something.) On "solar sheltering" overhands - yes but make sure they are big enough. Mine mentioned above was done to provide relief from Southern Sun, and at 1m approx 2.7m off the ground it is a little too short. Best of luck, all. Ferdinand

Pussy