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I plan to renovate a relatively small three bedroom terraced house. The renovation consists of a 19.25 m2 two story infill yard extension and a back single story 9.78 m2 extension which will have wall to wall sliding doors and a glazed roof. I will be creating a separate downstairs toilet/shower room & utility room within the existing non extended house. For the garden I will be creating a reclaimed brick boundary wall, patio area with a wooden pergola and raised planters. Please see the below before and after plans to get a better idea of what I hope to achieve. I have worked with an architect who has gained building control approval and have agreed via email for the architect to project manage the build. The architect is charging 10% of the final construction cost for project management plus 2% VAT on top. The architect has only recently become VAT registered so I will be paying VAT for the project management having not expected to when I initially signed up with the architect. I have paid the architect £6,875 to date, this amount excludes VAT as no VAT was applicable at the time of the invoices. There is £375 outstanding on the tender process as I have put a hold to it while I wait for the covid situation to become clear. Please see the image below for the break down of costs so far. I seem to have been invoiced for 1/3rd the projected cost of the project management fee. I have a feeling from speaking with the architect that my final build cost will be £140,000. Since my pause on the project I have had time to reflect and I am wondering if I would be better project managing the build myself to save on the remaining 12% fee the architect would be charging me. I have no building experience but have a friend who has some experience when it comes to building work. I have also decided to make use of the Empty building reduced rate VAT scheme. This would save me 15% in VAT if I did the build through a single contractor. The building has not been lived in for a year so I would only have to wait one more year to start the build. I have Aspergers so I am wondering would I be suited to project management. My ability to be detailed and analytic would be my strengths but my weaknesses would be the social aspect of interacting with the various trades in person. From my rough calculations based on a final build cost of £140k including fittings/garden/kitchen my architect would be getting a cut of £110k from that total. This would amount to £13.2k minus the £2,125 I have already paid would give a potential total saving of £11,075 if I project managed the build myself. I have a few worries on ditching the architect. 1. Can the architect sue me for the remainder of the project management fee? as I agreed via email for them to carry out the project management. 2. Do I own the building control plans? I am also wondering should I pay the remaining £375 of the final invoice to get the architect to provide quotes from their list of contractors. Once I receive the quotes from them I could then inform the architect I no longer need them to project manage the build. I do worry about kickbacks the architect would be getting from their chosen list of contractors but I believe this would break the Architects code of conduct. Many thanks

Good Evening, we are second time buyers but coming back to the house buying world without a huge deposit which I am sure you can guess in our area it doesn't equate to much, especially as at times we are housing 7 of us. Both of us have always considered the Self Builder route but never felt brave enough or that we would ever be able to consider it. Not for the lack of imagination, as quite honestly between the two of us we have "designed" and "built" so many different plots that we have seen and "rebuilt/renovated" equally as many houses. Sadly here the problem of cost continues, plots here sell for a considerably bigger amount than in many other areas (trust us to choose the expensive place to live) but also plots we can afford have so many restrictions with AONB and keeping in fitting with the area, so most seem to be similar Cotswold stone builds, and we just don't want to do that. We want to think out of the box and create an eye pleasing house that can take interesting design cues, using windows, a range of natural materials and green roofs and living walls just to get you started. The hunt for the right plot has moved further afield and is spread out to Warwickshire/Worcestershire/Gloucestershire and Hertfordshire all in the bid to find our family the best plot....wish us luck.

Didn't do Latin mate

Pictures might help? It's a box which you put in the ceiling like a smoke alarm. The cable goes in the back where you can't see it, and it gives you WiFi. You can also get waterproof ones, which if you have a big garden like me might well be worth it - my normal WiFi is rubbish at the end of the garden.

Jeez - that all feels like a million years ago, you should see the state of those bathrooms now teenagers have had free reign for the last 3 years. Can someone invent the self hanging towel...?

No just the one on the incoming. and one on the site stand pipe. And one on the feed to the static caravan.

At the time of planning our build I was plastering and rendering two self builds in the lake district When I initially went to quote Both where water tight shells Being so close to starting our I asked both what they had spent Traditional was 62k TF over 100K From then on the costs should be identical We have built a 286m2 house which is as well insulated as we will need We rarely use the UFH TF is quicker and more convenient But that comes at a cost

Wasnt sure where this thread should go- hopefully this is a suitable place. I had been chatting to someone about the new government Green Homes Grant (due to start this September). Details arent completely clear at the moment but vouchers up to £5000 are being made available to support improvements made to homes in the form of insulation or low carbon heating. Was just wondering if anyone knew where self builders stand in all this? Would we have to complete the build- THEN apply for a grant to help pay to install something e.g. ASHP? Cheers!

I will echo that plan changing is a significant cost increaser. Scruitinize the design carefully and cost everything before hitting "go". To give an example, one of my mistakes was to assume 2 metre wide windows were just going to work. I found that while they are available, either the maker will not warranty the style I want (stress on the hinges) or I must go to a more expensive product range. This wouldn't have happened at 1.8 metres. The piling works and SIPS were work packages I obviously couldn't contribute much to once the design work was complete. But don't underestimate the savings possible from a little knowledge of what the products will do at design time. We cut £10k from the SIPS cost by reducing the roof pitch by a couple of degrees - it cut out 2 large glulam purlins and made the roof into a single panel span. I have done a lot of mine on site, from digging trenches to laying blocks and installing beam and blocks. It's saved me a fair bit of cost, allowing me to spend it in other areas. I have a couple of good friends in various trades who have helped on an agreed day rate basis when more bodies were needed or stage deadlines loomed large. Now working on the roof battening ready for slates. The downside of doing things yourself is the tool bill. Over £500 this month alone. But afterwards I'll still have a lot of good tools! My experience is that local authority building control people could not be more helpful to a self builder provided you listen to them a bit. This has given me a lot of confidence to undertake and manage the work myself. This is obviously not guaranteed from area to area!

It is an Ebico zero tariff. As said previously, it's about the only one left.

MSE has this article about the Green Homes Grant which might shed some light. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/07/homeowners-to-receive-p5-000-vouchers-to-improve-energy-efficien/

The broken meter box door is a common issue. The design is really really rubbish. Leave it unlocked on a windy day and the door won't last 5 minutes. You can buy replacement doors easy enough.

I would just put a small, say 4 way CU right in the very top right of the meter box. Use that to feed your site power, remembering that the site power sockets need to be fed from a TT earth (local earth rod) Then get your chosen supplier to install a meter. Once they have done that, you will have a better idea how much space you have left in the meter box. For the permanent house supply, you will need to feed that via a switch fuse with an 80A fuse in it. Hopefully once the meter is in you will still have room for that.

Lucky there's no crap on the floor for it to get lost in!

try https://ebico-energy.org.uk/energy-plans/#ebico-zero I don't think there are many who do these any more.

I don't think you are far off on your to do list. I found that I needed to sign up for a tariff and this caused the meter to arrive. I went for a tariff without standing charge because I wasn't going to be on site most of the time. You'll need a small consumer unit and a couple of sockets installed. I was speaking to my electrician over the weekend about similar things. He reminded me that there's a guideline about the meter being no more than 3 metres from the main consumer unit, and that the powers that be don't like anything other than the meter and main switch inside "their" box.

Yes, your 3 points are spot on. Usually simpler to combine steps 1 and 2 (I got British Gas to put me on a standard tariff and fit the meter). You order of execution will be:- 1) Get your electrician to fit consumer unit and sockets, and tails to reach the meter 2) Select a supplier to get you on a standard tariff and to fit a meter Once the meter is fitted you can change your tariff from the standard one

this thing is will the french allow you to take out any or all the original features certainly in this country you would not be allowed to remove those nice stone features-- not a chance Is it a listed building ?--suprised if its not i would suggest you ask lots of questions of the planning /building control there before touching anything If you have not bought it yet --then do that first there maybe good reasons why its still a ruin i can say now it would probably be simpler to flatten and rebuild and stone clad it after -rather than working round all the problems there will be

Hi and welcome to the forum. That looks like a "challenge" There is an old saying "If I wanted to get to there, I would not start from here" Don't let that put you off. I would say the first thing is repair that roof. then you will have a dry building to work with. Nothing wrong with creating a free standing well insulated "box" within the building if you can afford to lose some space. windows will be a challenge and where your insulated box will be compromised.

Watch your lighting scheme with that sort of shower head...

My only hidden joints are behind the shower in a stud wall, no way to get round it in my case, but hep20 are the dogs bollocks ?

nice

That looks a lot better. What is the height now?

Hello all. Bri44, I feel for you, it's torture when stuff like this happens. Unfortunately, I see this type of problem more often than I wish. I hope the following will help crystalise your thought process. For all, when faced with a problem it can help to rule things out if you don't know what to do next. This leaves you with a short list of your options and this can make the decision making process easier. A lot of folk buy a property in good faith, if there is no trust then life is pretty poor for all of us. I'll leave out quality of workmanship / competency of design, detailing and so on here as others with more specific knowledge and experience have touched on this already. Suffice to say some of the briefs realting to build problems (which relate to warranties) I have seen are frankly unbelievable, a bit like Harry Potter... That is fun this is not. It does not reflect well on the building industry. I'll run through the previous posts and chip in my thoughts. Bri44.. will a developer buy back a house? .. yes they will. I have seen this offer tabled.. Mr Punter.. good point.. in fairness it's not always true that small builders won't step up to the plate when they get it wrong. In terms of quality of work and so on the big builders can be just as bad as small ones. Don't forget that often a big builder will perhaps get a better offer from say a timber frame manufacturer half way through a development. Someone will make a commercial decision but often no one will make sure the cheaper frame is still compatible with say the founds and the original design.. It’s often a case of "well I'm only paid from the neck down"... not my problem. Russell... I would council not to appoint a Solicitor at this stage. That is actually what I often think they want you to do. I may be that they just want to shift something onto next year’s financial balance sheet! If you get a solicitor it will cost you. For the warranty provider/ big builder it essentially becomes some sort of accountancy problem until they actually need to cough up? At the top end, remember that the warranty providers are an insurance company. The NHBC started out in the public interest when the government set out to improve the housing stock after the war.. Whether they are still doing so and by how much is for them to answer. My experience with the NHBC differs from their original statutory brief and I'm happy to stand by the statement I have just made. In summary I often form the view that this enables them to wage a war of attrition, use their financial clout etc and this can head off having to settle for large amounts... they ( NHBC and Developers etc) know that a lot of people will give up or can't afford to seek professional advice. This is a way of mitigating the number of claims that need to be paid in full if at all. Mike makes some good points. As I roughed out earlier, small cracks are hard to diagnose. If you can be sure that the movement does not pose a structural / safety risk then you maybe want to just look at ways of managing the small cracks that will appear from time to time as the building moves about, over the seasons say. The are a good few expert folk on this site that know about rendering systems and so on so hopefully they will chip in with some advice on how you can apply render systems that can cope with a bit of movement. Declan also make good practical points.. all very well on paper and sitting in an office but practical experience counts for a lot and is intrinsic to any build. Experience counts! Mike Graham.. Mike makes good salient points, material behavoir and the importance of looking after the materials before installation. Onoff.. good forensic question as expected! No mucking about here! Bassanclan touches on the NHBC...I've said enough for now and await developments. Turning back to BRI44. Bri. Advice I often give is once you get to this stage where you have battled away, got a bit of a result but no conclusion is to seek out someone who can take the time to undestand your particular circumstances. As a word of encouragement the email chain in this type of case can extend to more than a thousand so you're not alone. If you can find and SE for eaxmple who has some experience with warranty providers, knows how they operate and can get under the bonnet then your are off to a good start. I have found that once you drill down, cut through all the periferal sales and quality guff and really poke them on the technical and structural safety side of things they start to engage. They may be great on damp proof membranes but generally they are not so strong and also less resourced else where.. this can help bring them to the table. It's not a technical thing per say. You use the technical side to appeal to their bottom line and it is this that get results. It make them nervous as some.. don't have a well resourced solid structural / technical side. The argument I make is that this is going to cost you a lot more than you think! So get serious and start negotiating as adults. I'll caveat that by saying that there are some that don't take this commercial and cynical view. I don't want to prod too many bears at the one time. If you want to do a bit of research look at where most of the warranty providers funds come from and draw your conclusions from that. Lastly Bri, although I laid in a bit much of this is to do with people skills. There are say SE's, Surveyors, Contractors and so on that have seen it all... or most of it They are old salts at dealing with this. Often what you may need is just half a day to sit down with them. They will charge you for their advice and for listening to you but for a relatively small fee they could unlock the door. I find that sometimes when dealing with builders, developers and warranty providers that rather than confronting a problem head on and playing against their strengths it's easier to just back door them.. cynical yes.. but hey it was them that let you down so what do they expect.. no friends in the desert I think is the expression.

Ok so it’s serviced - that is a lot of your unknowns done. Foundations and frame are your big costs and then things like insulation you can DIY. Plumbing isn’t too bad if you take your time; leave the electrics to the professionals as it’s simpler and usually quicker. Find a friendly plasterer and get a price to get the house fully skimmed - that way you can do the boarding out and they can cover up your errors ...! Doors can be as simple as £15 MDF ones that you can replace in the future, skirts and archs don’t need to be expensive and they are easy to DIY. Leave the frames and doors to someone who knows how to do them properly. In terms of design, a simple box is cheapest. Start adding curves and lots of roof details and your prices go up. The biggest thing is to get the design on paper, make all your changes to it and then that’s it - you stick to the design and build it. Where costs get out of control is when you start making changes on the fly.

So you are right to be looking at solar glass, blinds and SageGlass! My guess is that blinds or SageGlass would probably be sufficient on their own. Solar glass might not be, unless you went for a 0.23 g-value variant maybe, but that would impact light-transmittence fairly significantly which might not be ideal in winter. Quick look at some of the spec sheets: - Good blinds will reduce solar gain by 70%+ and can be raised/lowered/tilted. - SageGlass will reduce solar gain by 25% all-year (which may be beneficial given amount of glass), and up to 95% when activated. (25%, 70%, 80% or 95% by the look of it) https://www.sageglass.com/sites/default/files/sageglass_datasheet_climatop_42.1ec-12-4-12-4_classic_en.pdf - Solar glass will reduce solar gain by 25%-55% depending which coating you get. The more reduction in solar gain, the lower the light tranmission. Can't be adjusted. (all vs. standard 0.5 g-value for triple-glazing) On the forum there are people that have used/using both options: blinds (me and others) and SageGlass too (@NSS)

After around 18 months of planning things have finally been moving a lot faster over the last couple of weeks which is great! I'll try to summarise the interesting bits: Type 2 vs. Type 3 Our EPS was installed on a sub-base of 150mm MOT Type 2 and 50mm sharp sand for blinding. Structurally this is absolutely fine, but there was an awful lot of and fro with the foundation designers about if permeable type 3 + grit should actually have been used as specified in the system certificates. I believe the only potential down-side of this approach is the potential for capillary action causing water uptake in the EPS and reduced thermal performance, but, given we upgraded to 300/400mm EPS this shouldn't be a significant concern. Drainage below EPS While it was a challenge with the invert levels (especially with the 400mm EPS) we decided to try and ensure that all drainage went through the sub-base and not through the EPS. This resulted in a redesigning the drainage runs as well as ensuring we use inspection chambers without drops, but it all works in the end, with just small notches being required in the underside of the bottom 100mm of EPS in a couple of isolated locations. "The bend at the foot of the stack should have as large a radius as possible and at least 200mm at the centre line" One warning when putting drainage in. Make sure the correct shallow bends are used! Our building inspector had, in theory, given us a pre-pour approval, but then when he got the drainage photos it was clear that the correct bends hadn't been used for first floor SVP's which he flagged up, so we had no choice but to mine through 300-400mm EPS and change them! Why so much EPS? Given our house design has stepped sides (something to do with street scene according to our architect) this means there are numerous steels and load-bearing walls internally. What this meant in practice for the foundation design was that around 60% of the slab needed reinforcing and would have 250mm concrete and only 200mm EPS. We had a u-value calculation done based on our actual foundation design and as we expected the u-value wasn't great, so we decided to go ahead and upgrade the EPS to 400mm which ensure there is a minimum of 300mm EPS across the while slab. It might have been overkill, but the price to upgrade wasn't that much and our PHPP calculation was already assuming 0.10.

If you're doing a new build then you will need to have done a SAP calculation to satisfy building control that you'll meet the minimum standard. You can do this once you have decided the fabric and design of your floor, walls, roof and windows, plus your heating system. This is where you can see how improvements to the fabric impact on heating requirements etc. and figure out whether its a good investment or not. As Declan says, a standard raft is reinforced concrete, with additional strengthening where there are load bearing points, usually cast onto a compacted layer of type 1 with a membrane on top. Normal shuttering methods used to cast it. It is a cold slab, directly connected to the ground below so any heating upon it (UFH) needs to be thermally disconnected from it by means of insulation, usually 100-150 XPS. The UFH pipes are clipped to this insulation and a screed is poured on- top of that. When the UFH comes on, only the screed layer heats up which means response times are quicker but you tend to need to run the system hotter and the insulation under the screed is isolated from that in the walls, so less thermally efficient all round. However you can still get a decent standard. An insulated raft is built out of 200-300mm thick EPS formwork which acts as both insulation and shuttering. the UFH pipes are connected to the slab reinforcement steel (whether bar or mesh) and the concrete is taken up to near the finished floor level - sometimes power floated to give it a finished surface. This is a warm slab, completely insulated from the ground and with good design, the perimeter insulation can be tied into the wall cavity insulation to give a highly insulated envelope for the whole house which will greatly reduce energy requirements. The UFH is usually run at a low temp (usually 35o) as one big zone and the slab has a slow response time, but if very little heat is required then this is not an issue. if you're using an ASHP vs gas, this can nicely drive the slab heat requirement and some people here run it in a cooling mode in summer, keeping the slab just above dew point. Even when heating is not required, running the UFH pump can distribute heat away from areas that get direct sun and even out the temp. Downside of an insulated slab is the increased cost of the formwork and labour to place it properly, plus additional excavation. You save on avoiding the traditional screed sandwich though so needs thinking through.

I think we should start up a TF house factory. There is enough community knowledge and way too much free time. There is a company called Frame down here, not sure if they do one offs now though. www.framehomes.co.uk/

Hi @ProDave This is exactly why I am doing a "blog" detailing my experiences and routes for various aspects of the self build. We will never be embarking on such a project again which is a great shame when you consider the "learning" one gains from such a venture. Yes, I can sit back and reflect on where I could have made a saving and or used a different approach but as long as we get over the finish line without breaking the bank, I shall consider it a successful mission. I just hope others reading this record will be able to consider options they may not have considered, as explained by either myself or contributors such as yourself.

Splash zones are best managed by good tiling and grouting tbh. Pointless tanking behind there IMO. Only worth tanking when a drip of water can follow the tanking / water tight layer and eventually get to a waste / drain. Other than that it'll just sit there and pool. In a TF house the one point that will let you down there will be the junction between the wall tiles and the floor tiles. That'll develop a hairline crack, which will open very slightly when the bath is full and you get in it, so make sure your tiler runs a bead of CLEAR CT 1 along that line after it's been grouted. Sealing the grout in that area will probably be beneficial too.

Too many strange words. KISS

Not sure whatever language it is in I will understand it. I have a mate who does the tech for me. My son just looks at me in disgust when he tries to explain it to me

If only he'd read this before fitting!

Well I clicked ‘next’ 28 times on your life story thread . Erm , not sure what I’m meant to be looking at . Brought back a nostalgic tear to my eye , the good old days before CV and brexit . When life was simpler and grout lines were uneven .