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As a literal self builder everything delays us, but we continue to slog away. There is a field where the footpath is going past our build as the farmer won't clear the proper one. But, you know you are progressing when the church people on the palm Sunday walk all commented on how much we've done. Since my last update last summer (remember that - heat) when it looked like this. It now looks like this We had a pretty major disaster last Autumn when a 70 mph storm came right over the field and a wall came tumbling down. For context that's the wall by HID and dog. To say that was a low point is a huge understatement. Comments over the dinner table included knocking everything down and reinstating the stables. The corner was left but we just knocked that down as well and when it was rebuilt then we've only gone up to 5 blocks so it's not such a wind target. Obviously, in hindsight we shouldn't have built one wall so high with no support and we are now going up one layer at a time all round. This disaster also cost us lots in money as the 'wall' is now on the rubbish heap along with the lintels. I've not got any photos after it fell as I was just too peed off. We also lost another month because the BCO wanted some technical details of the slab confirmed by the SE as he was concerned that we didn't have the right grade of mesh and it turns out that this was a verbal discussion and I couldn't find anything written down. It turned out fine, but it took weeks for the SE to get around to confirming this. It was only when I threatened to go to his office to discuss that they suddenly arrived. One corner of the site (not yet touched) is clay, everything else is sand and the SE had originally specced for all clay when the BCO said not necessary. The SE came to site and met with the BCO, but it was all a conversation with no official documentation. To replace the look of the barn we have a sloping flat roof and this middle wall is going to hold the joists for each side. These are 140 wide rather than 100. We are looking forward to having the temp window and internal door frames in place soon as that will really start to look like a house. We reckon that at our usual rate of progress that the walls will be up by end Sept. As we want to put the whole roof on at the same time we are going to put up temp joists to ensure that all walls are held together. Then we have a lot more concrete to break and the clay area to consider. Being a hands on builder can be satisfying, but it can also be very stressful and slow. Back again at some point in the future with another update.

Decided to buy the materials I need to finish the direct surround of my house before Diesel shortages and goodness knows what else takes hold! 50+m2 of paving blocks, 3 tons of paving grit and a full load of type 2 MOT to spread around the house next month!! I plan to get bound resin for the driveway, either do it myself or pay someone (£150 per square meter though and 50 m2 so 7.5K and thats with me doing all the edging and subbase prep!!). Still there's a couple of wheelbarrows in the materials above to do in the meantime and I did the driveway in my old house next door (fully paved) and it's stood up well. Plan on having a step up to the front door but a ramp off to the right as an alternate path. Have been working upstairs getting things finished. Currently have the stairwell, landing and office room completed and kitted out. Just starting the Master bedroom this week. Then it's off to the outside! I bought a pull out sofa bed, extra computer desk and some IKEA PAX wardrobes for the office room. There wasn't space for 4 Ikea units (500m wide each) so I put in 400mm wide shelving instead - I'll paint at some point. I forgot to level the sides of the double wardrobe before tacking on the back so while the sides are parallel, it's more like a parallelogram and one door is offline. Oh well!! That'll teach me to measure twice!! I'm gluing the bamboo floor upstairs also and Iove the look of it. I can now move into it as a full time office and save the space in my bedroom for the first time ever in nearly 30 years (i.e. no computer in my bedroom anymore!). the two skylights at the top of the stairwell work well. I forgot to clean the upper window and take off the Velux protective tape before taking down the temporary platform and finish the sides. I won't tell you what I did with a ladder to fix this on all fours and ended up heading back to the Chiropractor the next day!! The Master bedroom is a bit tighter but I measured it and think I have a bit of room to play around with 2.85m x 3.5m so a double bed and 500mm lockers either side still gives me a meter on one side or the other to add a dresser or something like that, fitted wardrobes over and around the bed and another at the end of the bed. How to fit a locker into an IKEA system? You can build in space with the PLATSA - I did a free design session with an IKEA rep who showed me how. I'll have to move the plug sockets up or they'll get buried but should be ok otherwise. I plan to fit a table above where the soil pipe boxing protrudes. If you spotted a hole in the wall above the light socket, the door lining screw pierced the electrical wire at that location and all the lights upstairs went out!! Wago repair done. Electrician is out later this week so will have a word!! Energy usage (last 2 months) so far is 11pm-8am 3562 kWh, 5pm-7pm 71 kWh and daytime 316 kWh. I've been fine tuning my usage with the SigEnergy system and tried using AI for a few weeks but it kept taking from the grid during peak times which was very annoying even when being told not to so I went back to manual and fixed time schedules so that's helped a bit. I hope to get peak to 0 if possible. My overall usage is up but my bill is €60 down from the last one two months ago which is from PV Export, the one thing the AI system was good at! I'll have to have a talk with it at some point! Each export unit equates to 1/2 a peak unit that should have been avoided!! Ah, technology!! I just figured out today how to send excess PV to my car when it's plugged in. I had Givenergy in my old house which went into Administration this week, glad I'm not with them anymore! I finally got the glazing for the internal window installed. It's double glazed but with a large airgap for sound proofing. I did considered fire rating it but the price would have been crazy. It's comprised of: 6mm Toughened x 20mm black spacer x 6.4 Laminate for safety. The seat worked out well, just need a few cushions!! My Sigenergy Gateway is being upgraded to 100A from 63A this week. I have an uprated mains supply but it wasn't picked up by the Solar supplier - unlikely I'll draw that much but still nice to have the extra room in Amps if I ever needed it! Unexpected but hope all goes well! Anyway, that's it for now, lots of joint filling on the Fermacell to do this week and sanding....!

After the debacle of the last builder, who just couldn’t admit his work was rough, I decided to get https://www.tmcoatesjcbplanthire.co.uk/ back in to dig down the oversite ready for the next brickie that we have managed to get on board. Tim is an absolute legend and goes above and beyond when it comes to excavation tasks! here is a picture of our site (I’ve demolished the abomination left by the last incumbent)

Hey everyone. I've been a forum member for a number of years as a renovator of properties in Scotland. I joined with the goal of one day building my own house but as happens to many, this has been postponed and pushed back many times. In the interim I have really enjoyed reading your blogs and posts and I have learned an enormous amount about self-building. I am now at the point where my ducks are sufficiently in a row to embark upon my own self-build, which is scary but very exciting. I've found a plot I want to buy, which has brought things into sharper focus. As ever, I have a million questions and decisions to make to ensure I get this right. I'm aware that some of this could be questions in various different forums ie design, planning etc but I thought it would be easier to start this blog from the very beginning in case it helps others by keeping everything in one place. So here we go..... The house I want to build The house I want to build is c.150sqm, two storey, passivhaus standard with enough eco features so that it is as off-grid as is practicable. I currently live in a top-floor flat that has been extended into the attic - a 'double upper'. It feels like a house when inside, but lacks the amenities such as driveway parking for my EV, private garden etc that a house would bring. It's also in a town and I want to live in the countryside. My flat is 150sqm in size and is costly to run. It feels like a good size, albeit with a rubbish layout. So I'd like my new house to be similar in size but with a better layout and good insulation, eco heating etc. Downstairs would be the usual - kitchen, dining, living rooms plus a small office/spare bedroom with downstairs shower room for guests or future proofing. Upstairs would be two/three bedrooms and the main bathroom. I'd like a separate garage/workshop. This would perform a lot of different functions and hopefully keep a lot of the mess of my work and hobbies out of the house as this is a problem currently in the flat. The plan The 'back of an envelope' plan is to buy the plot, move onto it in a touring caravan and first build the garage/workshop. This would be fitted with solar panels and a battery, inverter etc to generate electricity for the build and to charge my electric van. It would also house a small basic kitchen, lunch room, toilet and shower room which would operate as the welfare facilities for the build, plus a small site office for delivery notes, plans on the wall, etc. If allowed I would sleep in an attic floor above this, but if not then I would continue sleeping in the caravan. If needs be I would remove the welfare facilities after the build in order to not create a habitable building out of the garage. I would then build the house while living on site, with the main goal to get it wind and water-tight as quickly as possible. If funds have run out by that stage then I will have to earn some more to finish the inside but it's absolutely imperative that I can get a sealed house before that happens. The house The house will be around 120-150sqm, 3/4 bedroom, near-passive house. It will be stick-built on site. I would like it to be 150sqm but might only be able to afford to build a 120sqm house. I would like a two storey house, but planning might only allow a 1.5 storey to fit the local vernacular. I like wooden finishes but I have heard what has been said in here re timber cladding and insurance etc so I am aware that some of it will need probably need to be render externally. The plot I am going to be deliberately coy about the plot at this stage as I haven't yet signed on the dotted line for it and don't want someone stealing it out from under me. Plots don't come on the market very often so I have been shopping for one for years. These were my criteria: In a specific Scottish rural area which I love and know well (I work there and have lived there in the past). South facing for passive solar gain and solar generation, also a sunny garden. Rural outlook Space for a separate workshop/garage building Space to park my EV and charge it at home I also had the idea that I wanted to find a plot with planning consent for more than one house so that I could build a second one to sell on to help pay for the house I keep and live in. This may change however as I know there's complications with this! I have now found a plot that ticks all these boxes. It has planning for two 4 bed detached houses with a separate detached garage building shared between them. The planning lapsed over 10 years ago. It is south-facing, in the area I want to be and has an outlook to die for. I can afford it now if I just buy one plot (the sellers are willing to split) or I can buy both plots together if I sell my flat quickly or get creative with finances. The budget After buying the plot I should have around £1,500 per sqm for the build. This includes the workshop. I'm very aware that this isn't a great deal, which is why I have opted for stick-built on site for the construction method. The plan is to do as much of this as I can myself, with the help of unskilled labourers, plus skilled trades only where absolutely needed ie spark, plastering, heating engineer etc. I have an idea of how I want to do this, but I haven't seen anyone else do it yet! So I am not sure if it's a brilliant idea or a really stupid one As I said above - the main focus is to get to wind-and-watertight within budget and I can figure out the rest from there. I've waited over 20 years for the chance to do this so if I have to wait an additional couple of years in order to get it finished inside it won't be too much of a hardship. The first issue to make a decision on: Do I buy both plots or just one? My finances are tight, so it would be better for me to buy just one, but buying two ensures I can control who my neighbours are to some extent and ensure I get the best bit of the land. I could build the first house and sell it and that would give me enough money to build the second one for me to keep and live in with less need for compromise. I would also have the opportunity to learn a lot by building the first house and could put these lessons into practice in the second (keeper) house. All of which sounds good, but it means a lot longer to wait until I am living in my own house. I might be completely done-in by the time I've built one house and not want to go ahead and build another. There may be CGT, VAT implications etc which would make things unworkable. There's no CIL in Scotland but my area does have a railway contribution that developers need to pay. If I have to live in the first house for 3 years before I can sell it this would stretch the whole scheme a bit too far into my old age (I'm 55) and would impact my ability to cope with build 2. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I've spent the last few days carrying out some desktop due diligence on the plot I want to buy. I thought I would detail it here in case it helps anyone else on their plot buying journey in Scotland. I've accessed as much information as I possibly can about the plot from the following sources. Most were free, but two were paid. In total I have spent £9.60 on this. ScotLIS - Scotland's land registry. You can search the index for free and may glean some information, but for to access the title sheet, deeds and owner info you need to pay £3.60 (£3 plus VAT). The download to your email is instant. WhoOwnsScotland. This is a privately run website that allows you to map search for the details of significant landowners. I used it in addition to the above as the plot I am interested in is in the countryside and surrounded by farmland. It costs £6 for one month. (I happen to have an annual subscription for this already which works out at £1 a month, but if you just want it for one thing it's £6). It doesn't show small plots below a certain size which is why I needed the land registry info too. Council planning portal. Free. From this I have been able to view the existing (lapsed planning), and read all the documents, view plans etc. I did the same for earlier planning applications on the same plot and also neighbouring houses. There's a vast amount of information available. I now have a pretty good idea of what kind of house will be allowed and what won't and also a steer on the council's likely response to road access, archaeology, environmental, services etc. I also found the owner's email address which they had neglected to redact. National Library of Scotland. Free. I used their 'side by side' feature to view historical maps alongside the existing google aerial view. This allowed me to compare the 1800's map with the present day to get some insight as to any old buildings that might be on the site. Google Earth. Free. I used the Historical Imagery button to enable me to go back through earlier satellite images of the plot. This allowed me to see if any modern buildings had been on the site since Google Earth started recording imagery in 2009. Companies House. Free. The plot is owned by a limited company so I was able to find the owner's details including age and address. This allowed me to get a better idea of who is selling the plot and why. I could also see what value had been given to the plot in the company's balance sheet. I now feel as though I have a much better feel for the plot and the reasons why it hasn't sold so far. I still haven't heard back from the agents but I will try again with the benefit of feeling better informed to begin negotiations in order to make an offer subject to planning. Of all I've read today, the only thing that concerns me is some of the clauses in the deeds, which I can't interpret without the help of my lawyer anyway. I won't bother them though until I have an informal price agreed with the agents as there's no point getting carried away if the seller won't budge on the price. There were some things that I learned today that I hope will give me leverage though. Please don't tell me that I have to be careful regarding a plot that doesn't have planning - I know this already. I'm not about to throw a large wedge of cash away on a plot that can't be built on so of course I will make sure I am completely covered and have plenty of legally binding get-out clauses before I formally offer on it. If I missed a useful source then please feel free to add it to the comments below.

Yes, we moved into our new house on Monday last week, pretty much 9 months to the day since we broke ground and 15 months after we purchased the plot. We know we’ve been very lucky with our build. The weather has generally been in our favour and we had no supply issues or delays. Above all, we’ve had some excellent people working for us without whom we could not have achieved the build. There are too many stars to mention here but if you look through the blog you will see them all get a shout out for their excellent work as it happened. Ahead of the move, Mrs P. did a superhuman job getting everything packed, and the move itself went relatively smoothly, with dry weather and no mishaps. Amazingly, Mrs P. also managed to unpack most of those boxes within a few days, though we do still have some residual boxes to deal with in due course. Moving in day: As we all know, moving house is always a stressful business and moving to a new house is no different. But it is a relief to finally get in - there is always the nagging fear that some disaster will strike at the last minute while the house remains unoccupied. But of course, all was fine. Is our build complete? Not quite. We have some minor electrical and joinery items outstanding, both inside and outside; we have the garden landscaping well under way but some distance from completion as you will see from the photos below. Beyond that, there is a list of jobs of the sort you’ll have following any house move: curtains, blinds, wardrobes, shelving, etc. - but these are ‘house move’ rather than ‘house build’ tasks imo. We do still have to obtain Building Control sign-off and there’s a VAT reclaim to do. On the BC front we had our ‘As Built’ air-tightness test performed by Richard Harris of Peninsular Energy Compliance this week (highly recommended). The result is 1.16m m3/m2 at 50hPa on the envelope basis. Virtually the same figure for Air Changes per Hour , as our envelope area is 583m2 and our volume is coincidentally 580m3. We are very happy with 1.2 ACH. Air-tightness test under way: We have been in the house for a week now and we are really happy with the way it feels and works for us. It’s warm, draft-free, well-lit, quiet, and comfortable; the layout and spaces are working just as we hoped. We are both sure we are going to really love living here. The plant room is (to me) surprisingly warm, running at 25-26 deg C due presumably to the amount of heat-generating equipment in there. I raised this as a separate Build Hub topic but the consensus seems to be that it's not an issue, so I shan't worry. As a side benefit, it does make a splendid clothes airing room. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/46744-hot-plant-room/ Energy use The combination of solar panels, batteries, ASHP and insulation levels seems to be working well - in our first week we used 0.7kWh from the grid and exported 63kWh. Not bad for February. I need to work out our best tariff option but that’s a job for the future. Enough talk, time for some more photos (some taken just before we moved in)... Kitchen/dining/lounge: Hall: Bathrooms - master ensuite: Shower room: Guest ensuite: Bedrooms Master bedroom: Guest bedroom: Bed 3 / hobby room (Ok, so we still have some unpacking to do.) Landscaping - plenty to do yet. The layout is literally as clear as mud to me... I'm sure it will all be fine in the end(!) And finally... Troy likes the new house - it still has yogurt pots that need licking out Dashboard: Contractor days on site this past two weeks: 15 Contractor days on site since build start: 587 person days That 587 days is well over the 500 days which requires HSE being notified of the build using form F10 (which we did). HSE have not spoken to us or troubled us at all and the F10 notification is simple and costs nothing, so I would recommend any self-builder do so - if you are unfortunate and have an incident it’s surely means less chance of getting into hot water if you registered properly. Budget: I confess that in the final weeks we have gone a bit beyond our self-imposed budget contingency and dipped slightly into savings, but that is really down to choices we have made about the quality of the fit, e.g joinery, kitchen, bathroom equipment etc., and also the extent of the landscaping we have chosen to do. We could probably have remained well within contingency had we needed to but luckily we had some leeway. Plan: We did it! Conclusion: Overall, we set out to use the entire proceeds of our previous house sale to buy a plot and build a better house, and we believe we have achieved that. Thanks once again to all the dedicated and skilled people who have worked on our house and made the build a success. Especial thanks to Mrs P. who indulged my yearning to do a build provided brilliant design input and kept the whole show on the road throughout - a truly wonderful person! That then dear friends is the final blog! Thank you for following us and for your kind words of encouragement and support through our project.

As promised, I spared you a Week 14 blog due to our visit to Yorkshire for a wedding and catch-up with old friends. It was lovely to do something unrelated to the house and it made us realise how all-consuming our build has become. We will definitely try to have some more non-house time through the rest of the build. That said, it’s back to the matter in hand: UFH Two weeks ago the guys were battling through laying the floor insulation in preparation for laying the UFH pipes, ahead of the screed pour which was booked for 3rd September. In the end it was a very close-run thing - the UFH pipes were ready by 13:30 and the screed arrived 10 minutes later. Too close for comfort really: Tight project scheduling is one thing but the stress of 11 cubic metres of unusable liquid screed potentially being dumped on the site was a very uncomfortable feeling. Screed Once started, the screed pour itself (by Williams Walls and Floors) seemed to go very smoothly (hah!) and it looks fantastic. We have had 65mm of Cemfloor Therm liquid screed laid. Still in stressed-out mode I woke up before 4:00am the next day worrying about what would happen if the pipes floated up or the screed was laid too high (they didn’t; it wasn’t). (I helpfully woke Mrs P. too just so that she could share the experience - she seemed not to appreciate it.) We left the house shut up for 24 hours as instructed by the screed man Rob Williams. On Friday morning I went over and opened up to find we had a sauna! All perfectly normal apparently, but the combination of heat from the screed setting reaction, the well-insulated relatively air-tight house and (presumably) 1000’s of gallons of water created an atmosphere that made Singapore seem like a desert. Sadly, I failed to get any photos of the clouds created as the windows were opened and the saturated ‘sauna’ atmosphere hit the September morning. By the afternoon, with all the windows and doors open the inside of the house seemed perfectly normal again. Seeing the screed poured in a few hours and reflecting on how fiddly all the underfloor insulation had been to lay, made me wish there was an option for a poured floor insulation - it would surely have been so much less effort and faster? Edit: There is apparently - https://www.rtu.co.uk/assets/documents/RTU-Ultrabead-Brochure.pdf. I have no idea if it is any good, what the pros and cons are etc, and it is too late for us but if we were doing another build (Mrs P: “We’re not!”), I’d certainly look into it. Render Just to make sure we weren’t missing an opportunity to get some outside work done while the focus was on the floor, we had booked our render team (Caesar Spray-rend and Plastering) to start boarding up the 50% or so of the external walls that are to be rendered (the other 50% will be vertically clad in Brimstone Ash). So on week 14 the STS construction boards were fixed to battens and last week the base coat was sprayed and smoothed out. It already looks a lot better just for some of the shiny breather membrane walls being covered up. We now have to wait a week before the top coat can be applied. We’re using EcoRend Thincoat for anyone who is interested. And finally… Marcus from our super groundworks team came in on Thursday to set all the stainless steel oak post brackets in concrete on top of their support pillars, and also to lay the smoothest, tidiest concrete slab you have ever seen to rest our ASHP on. …Which is just as well because the ASHP arrives on Monday! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this week: 22 Contractor days on site previous week: 16 Contractor days on site since build start: 249 Budget: Getting more challenging tbh - beginning to eat into the contingency - mainly costs I hadn't properly estimated. 😱 Plan: Still on track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this week: UFH pipes laid. Screed down! Current top issues and worries: Insulation - the additional ceiling insulation is still a worry - scheduled for w/c 15th September.

Two weeks since the last blog and there’s a lot to cover - but lots of pictures too, so persevere! The main issues and concerns two weeks ago were 1. how well the airtightness test would go, and 2. keeping ahead of the plasterers. The good news is: both of those concerns can be consigned to the bin. Airtightness As previously reported, we had engaged Aerobarrier to test, spray their magic mist, then retest the airtightness of our house. Prior to their visit they asked us to send video walkthroughs of the house. Because of concerns we had about how well the airtight membrane had been fitted and taped, which the videos did nothing to dispel, I asked Josh from Aerobarrier to plan some extra time for them to re-tape some of the wall ceiling interfaces, for an agreed price. The Aerobarrier team duly turned up as planned - Josh plus two others. After a few hours taping the house, the initial airtightness test gave a disappointing if not entirely surprising 3.2 ACH - go enough to satisfy Building Regulations but above our target of 1 ACH. But after running the acrylic misters for a couple of hours the airtightness improved to 0.8 ACH - an 80% improvement which we are obviously very pleased with. Aerobarrier left the place quite tidy, they had masked the horizontal surface on window frames, door handles etc. The only weird result was the screed floor was left as sticky as a dodgy Wetherspoons. A week later and the stickiness has more or less gone though. No photos of the process in action I’m afraid, tricky to get inside with all that mist flying around. First fix electrics …is now complete! Power, lighting, PIRs, smoke detectors, data cables, room stats, TV… there are a lot of cables threaded round our walls. We’ve had a great team plugging away at this for a few weeks - Nick, Martin, but especially Darren, who installed the majority of cables and boxes, have done a super job. Carpentry In parallel our two chippies Chris and Alan have been making sure various false walls and ceilings have been put in place ready for the plasterers. They have also fitted three of our four pocket door frames - just one more to install next week. Somebody also needed to run the MVHR ducts and fit the vent plenums to the rooms the plasterers were planning to start with. This seemed like a golden opportunity for Chris and Alan to acquire some new skills. I am not sure it was high on their wish list to be honest but they cracked on with it nonetheless. Regular free breakfast baps still works wonders when you’re asking people to go the extra mile. Acoustic insulation I could see that Mrs P. was itching to get involved with something and fortunately someone needed to push all the Rockwall acoustic insulation in to the internal stud walls. Luckily as it’s Rockwall rather than glasswool no further itching was involved. Anyway, Mrs. P has done a great job, as you can see. Plastering All of the above were things we needed to have done (or at least done enough) for the 8th of October, which is when our plasterers Dan, Sam and Brandon were booked to start. They duly turned up as planned and we had enough of the rooms ready for them to get started. In the plan, all the carpentry work would have been completed before the plasterers started but they seem happy enough to board out then skim one room at a time as the carpenters keep ahead of them. The initial focus has been on the boarding out bedrooms 1 and 2 and the bathrooms and the early progress bodes well for the rest of the task which we aim to complete by the end of October… ready for the floor tiler! In other news… Our timber cladding has been delivered. We’re using Brimstone Ash from Vastern near Swindon https://www.vastern.co.uk/timber-cladding/brimstone-ash/ which we will be having fixed vertically. Once Alan and Chris have finished all the internal work required for the plasterers the plan is for them to move on to the external cladding - assuming they haven’t had enough of us by that stage. More breakfast baps may be required! We have also had a number of trees delivered, which Mrs. P. was strangely much more interested in than she was in the pallets of plasterboard or multi-finish skim! 🤷‍♂️ And finally, I have bought a new toy… a Topdon infrared camera to plug in to the iPhone. Cue quizzical look from Mrs P. “er… and you needed this for what exactly?” Good question Mrs. P, but I have at least been able to check that the UFH loops are all working: During the next two weeks... … we hope to be getting plastered! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this fortnight: 32 Contractor days on site since build start: 311 Budget: No change - still over budget but within contingency. Plan: Still on track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: How well the airtightness test will go. Keeping ahead of the plasterers. Current top issues and worries: Nothing too pressing - it'll be something we haven’t thought of, probably.

Floor The main focus this week has been laying the DPM + 220mm PIR floor insulation + 50mm upstand insulation round all the walls, then the UFH perimeter expansion strips and the vapour separation layer ready for the UFH pipes. It’s proved intricate work. Ken our first fix plumber assisted by local builders Barry and Jordan together have been working hard to complete the task by the end of August so that the liquid screed can go down during the first week in September. Early this week it looked like there was too much to do in the time available which added to everyone’s stress levels but by the end of the week the guys have made good progress and appear to be over half way through. We have a little bit of contingency with the screed team who are happy at this stage to leave the pour date a bit flexible during w/c 1st September, so we are hoping we will be alright. One thing that is particularly pleasing is the meticulous attention to detail being applied by Ken, Barry and Jordan. The PIR boards are being cut and fitted really tightly and the taping of joins and of the DPM is being done with real care. If we were doing this again (Mrs P: “We’re not”), I’d consider building the non load-bearing internal walls later, on top of the screed, which would have saved a lot of effort intricately cutting, fitting and taping DMP and insulation to those internal walls. But no doubt a different series of problems would have ensued. Electricity supply Also this week, SSE came in and moved our electric supply from a meter box which used to cling to the side of a now-demolished wooden garage, inside to the plant room. Two SSE engineers for two hours = 3p change from £700(!) Hey-ho, it’s done now. External battens I reported that these were all done last week but I forgot about the cross-battening required for the vertical timber cladding. Anyway, that was duly completed by Alan and Chris this week and the walls are ready to receive STS construction boards plus Ecorend thin coat render (for the rendered sections), and Brimstone Ash vertical timber cladding on the other areas. I need to arrange delivery of the latter when we have sufficient space (the cladding is bought and being held by Vastern Timber pending delivery). But work on the backing boards for the render starts on Monday - yes I know it’s a bank holiday but the render people are keen, so who am I to stop them? Carpenter Chris also sorted out the ply protection for the front door and here's our lovely temporary door - the real one is safely wrapped up in the workshop. Scaffold Also keen to work the bank holiday weekend (well, ok, after a bit of encouragement) were the scaffolders, who arrived on Saturday morning to remove the scaffold, which they did in a few hours with no dramas. So we can now see the house! although it’s still looking very shiny-silver. The plastic protection is remaining on part of the zinc pending the completion of the vertical cladding of the wall on the left And finally… Remember this rogue beam from last week’s blog? Too close to the window reveal to allow us to fit an external blind… Well, I asked Matt at Turner Timber Frames to check with the engineers whether it and the one at the other end of that roof canopy are structural and it turns out they are not, they are purely 'cosmetic' and can be removed if we wish. However, in the meantime we are wondering if we really need and external blind anyway(!) Also, we need to talk to Alan the carpenter about how we are going to finish the roof in that area, and he’s away until next Wednesday. The soffit will be clad with some of the Brimstone Ash but should the soffits be horizontal or follow the slope of the rafters? Do we need some kind of clad gable at the end? Also, how easy will it be to take that beam out? It’s on joist hangers at the wall end but how is it fixed to the top of the oak posts? At least we have options to consider now though. Dashboard: Contractor days on site this week: 19 Contractor days on site since build start: 211 Budget: No change, running slightly over. Plan: On track to move in by Easter 2026. New measure - Number of bacon baps bought: 8 this week; 41 to date. These are ‘keeping people happy’ baps. Unfortunately there is no entry in the budget for them so I have explained to Mrs P. that they’ll have to come out of the kitchen budget. Kitchen -> food, it’s obvious! (Although as Mrs P. points out: "No kitchen; no food" which is a concern.) At any rate bacon baps from time to time feel like a worthwhile investment to keep everyone happy. Issues and worries closed this week: Scaffold is now down; the renderers can get at the walls! Current top issues and worries: Insulation - the additional ceiling insulation is still a worry - going to need to schedule it in after the screed now. PS We’re at a wedding next weekend so the weekly blog may be delayed or skipped. I imagine you’ll all survive the blow.

A quieter week this week but good progress nonetheless. The main build focus this week has been on the south-facing single pitch roof which is to be covered using in-roof solar panels with slates around the boundary, then zinc facias to match the rest of the roof. It seems the zinc roof guys don’t do slate roofs and the slate roofers don’t do zinc, so two roofing teams required. Fortunately, both teams have been excellent: professional, tidy, friendly and turning up when they say they will. All you could ask for really. Also fortunately, the slate roofers (Pete and Dave from G M Spicers) will fit the solar PV panels under the guidance of our electrician Nick. And that has been the main activity this week - roofing battens and then the solar PV panels. (I should just give a mention to Travis Perkins who supplied the cleanest, straightest 2 x 1 battens I have ever seen, barely a knot anywhere. It’s a shame they’re florescent yellow - I wouldn’t be surprised if they glow in the dark.) The solar panels are by Solfit and clip together to form a watertight roofing surface - no trays, they just fit straight on the roofing battens. They’re about 1790 x 1220mm and weigh 26kg each, so getting them on roof is no easy matter but the Pete and Dave seemed to manage ok. We have 35 landscape format panels (5 rows of 7) at 425w each giving 14.8kW total generating capacity. There are no doubt cheaper panels available but we have saved 77m2 of slate or zinc roofing, so that helps the economic case. By the end of the week, all the panels were on and the team had started to fix the slates around the edge so we can see how that will look. Also this week the zinc roofers stripped off the protective film from most of the roof so we can see that now and I have to say it looks really smart. Aside from the actual build work, we’ve made good progress on planning future activity with an number of trades now provisionally booked in including: UFH fix, screed, floor tiling, external rendering, airtightness test, decorating (single-colour spray all through), and bathroom fix, courtesy of my brother Chris! (Yes, there are lots of other activities booked in too - but we didn’t book them this week!) The next few weeks remain very busy (hopefully) so watch this space for more progress… Our windows and doors are due to be installed on Thursday and Friday, so if you see Kevin McCloud in the vicinity of north Dorset, please send him away! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this week: 10 Contractor days on site since build start: 166 Budget: No real change, running slightly over. I keep finding things I’d forgotten to include (e.g. decorating!). But I also realise I haven’t factored in our VAT reclaim yet. So overall, all ok good. Plan: On track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this week: Velux flashings. At last, we have solved the mystery worry of the Velux flashings. More detail here for those really interested https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/44742-velux-flashings-for-standing-seam-zinc-roof/#comment-626128 but in summary: Velux twice got it wrong and the second time tried to sell us some flashings at £588 + VAT each, when we actually needed some £43 kits…also made by Velux. The latter are now fitted, so all is resolved. Current top issues and worries: Scaffolding - unresponsive scaffolding company. The scaffolding needs to come down in two weeks time but I’m worried that we’ll be used as free storage and thus be held up. Scheduling future deliveries: insulation, battening, cladding, render boards, MVHR, UFH kit, ASHP, HW cylinder… all due in the next six five weeks.

As mentioned last week, the zinc roofers asked if they could start a week early(!) and so, on Monday morning along they came - Brian and Tom from Wessex Metal Roofing in Salisbury. The first couple of days were mainly rolling out long zinc profile sections from the back of their van, then these proceeded to be fixed on to the 18mm ply sheeting that Alan the Chippie had laid the previous week. Three triple-glazed electric Veluxes arrived from the builders’ merchants (I forgot they were coming last week tbh) and while I spent ages looking on the (frankly rather terrible) Velux website for installation instructions and videos, Mrs P. pointed out to me the the CCTV seemed to show the guys had already fitted them in. “Oh, I’ll stop looking then.” The moment the roofers realised we have CCTV 😂 : By the end of the week most of the zinc panels have been fitted, plus some facias and gutters. I must admit that when we signed up for a standing seam zinc roof I assumed it would actually be ‘zinc’ - but it appears to be white plastic, with ‘zinc’ written on it - we've been done! Apparently it’s best to take off all the protective film at once otherwise it can start to age differently. For those interested, we’ve opted for VMZinc Plus in ‘Quartz’. We can’t wait to see it ‘undressed’. Although most of the zinc panels are now on, there is still a fair bit for Brian and Tom to do including some vertical clad sections on the far side of the house, plus facias, verges, and a ventilated ridge for the south-facing monopitch roof (on the left of the photos). Also they have the zinc gutters and downpipes to fit. They are expecting to finish the week after next. We’re also hoping that the work on south-facing roof, which is mainly 30 in-roof SolFit solar panels with a band of slate tiles around them, will start w/c 4th August. So with luck by the end of that week, all the roofing, gutters and downpipes will be done. While the roofing carries on through next week we also have South West Insulating (SWI) from Redruth on-site to start fitting the VCL/Airtightness membrane and the additional internal wall and roof insulation . The sequence for the next three weeks inside should be: Week 1 - South West Insulating - VCL to roof, then VCL + 50mm PIR + service cavity battens to walls. Week 2 - JW Insulation arrive from Essex to blow cellulose into the roof (a 254mm cavity formed by the Posi-joist open web rafters). Week 3 - SWI back to finish roof works (100m PIR + service cavity battens). Let’s see how well that masterplan survives the heat of battle 😬. And finally… On Friday, evening, after yet another huge tidy-up of the site by Mrs P., we hosted about 20 local friends for beers and a chance to look around the skeleton of our house. We had beautiful weather and of course everyone was very kind about the house and what we are doing. A lot of really great questions as well about the technical detail of the build - I was surprised how genuinely interested many people were and I suspect a few were thinking they might have a go at self-build themselves.

Last week our timber frame structure shot up. This week was supposed to be the second week of a two-week frame installation but the team finished on Tuesday, having worked through the weekend. And off they went, but not before I persuaded them to stand still for 30 seconds for a snap for posterity. So here they are: Brandon, Jake and Callum - Great work guys! Their early finish allowed our chippie Alan to press on with the 18mm ply required over the roof for the zinc roofing. 60+ sheets of 18mm class-3 exterior ply were put up amazingly quickly by Alan with a bit of assistance from his pals on a couple of days. The only lifting gear on site at present is a Genie lift we bought, guessing it would come in useful, and Alan made great use of it to create a novel “Ply Sheet Lift 'n' Slide Sledge”. I pointed out to him that I’ll be patenting that idea, since all intellectual property rights obviously sit with us as site owners. He seemed unbothered. Next week Alan is away on hols (not in my plan, are you sure Alan?!). Thus we were going to have a quiet week which I labelled ‘contingency’ to make it sound more important. But Brian from Wessex Metal Roofing phoned me today (yep, Sunday) and asked if they can start the zinc roof a week early... “Oh, go on then.” So off we go again - more fridge-stocking required! Timber frame details Last week I promised to say some more about the frame structure, so at the risk of boring those not wrestling with the same choices we faced,t here’s some more detail (skip to the 'And finally...' section if you’re not interested): We decided early on that we wanted a factory-built SIPS or insulated Timber Frame structure. We’d used SIPS on our previous house with positive results. I contacted a dozen or so companies and received quotes from eight companies for supply and installation of the insulated structure: four SIPS companies and four Timber Frame. The price range was surprising: the most expensive was 240% the price of the cheapest. Of course each quote had a slightly different scope but factoring in the work we’d need to do to get them all to the same level of insulation and airtightness, the price range was still over 200%. In the end, shortlisted Turner Timber Frames, whose price was near the lower end but leaving us with a fair bit to do once the structure was up, and MBC who unsurprisingly were at the top end for an impressive approach and structure. After talking it through with Geoff our architect, he agreed with us that the price difference was so big it was hard to justify the MBC approach. Therefore we opted for Turners… And they have been really great to work with throughout. Matt, their Timber Frame Manager, has been very helpful and responsive. Their price has not gone up at all as we moved from initial quote through to signed-off design (in fact they came in below their initial estimates for steels and crane hire). They kept to the agreed timescales. Their sub-contracted installation team were really good, as previously noted. The quality of the frame appears very good to my untrained eye… and Alan our chippie seems impressed as well. The structure we bought is Turner’s Super Advanced timber frame: 140 × 38mm studs at 600mm centres with 9mm OSB sheathing and a breather membrane on the outside. The pre-fitted insulation is 120mm PIR and it fits really precisely everywhere. We opted for an additional 50mm PIR inside to give us a wall u-value of 0.13, recognising that in so doing that we had to fit the VCL, 50mm PIR, and 25mm service cavity battens ourselves (though all are supplied by Turners as part of the package). Some other frame or SIPS suppliers do all that for you, but at a cost. What you see in the pictures is the frame before we fit the VCL and additional insulation - I think you can see how tight that pre-fitted insulation is - it’s really very snug all round. I was worried we might have gaps to fill but there are none. The roof is open-web 254mm Easi-joist rafters with 11mm OSB, which we paid Turners an agreed addition to have their installation team cover with breather membrane and vertical 50mm battens to create the ventilation space we need for our zinc roof. Turner’s approach means we have no unsightly purlins to interfere with our vaulted ceilings. But the roof does present a challenge for insulation. We decided to opt for blown cellulose within the roof space which should fill the open web joists, plus 100mm PIR below the ceiling, to get to a u=-value of 0.09. It meant we had to find someone to fit the VCL below rafters and make it airtight (see below). We also have to fill in all the roof perimeter gaps to stop the cellulose blowing out, and we have volunteered Alan for that. He’s delighted (I assume). We always knew the blown cellulose was going to cost a fair bit. J W Insulation from Halstead in Essex came in with a good price and are lined up to do the work w/c 4th August. Before that we need the VCL membrane fixed the roof. In the end we decided that a specialist company would be best for fitting the ceiling VCL, the airtight wall membranes, and additional internal insulation. We have South West Insulating from Redruth coming along from 28th July to do that work. So we have a busy few weeks ahead - I am hoping all that activity meshes together and the various teams don’t get in each other’s way (and the drinks fridge is big enough!). And finally (for this week)… Frustratingly, despite the frame being up for a week now, as a wheelchair user with a 300mm high perimeter foundation wall to get over I have not been able to see inside. Until today… Although I promised Mrs P. that this build would involve no heavy lifting or lugging on our (i.e. her) part, today she has been heroically moving pallets, ply sheets, and 4m scaffold boards into place, which we have screwed together make a wheelchair ramp! So today for the first time we could both enjoy the shape of our new house from inside. And we love it! It's impossible to capture in photos but we are both really pleased with how it feels, the room sizes, the vaulted ceilings, the overall layout… everything. Which is just as well really as it’s a bit late to change the design now 🙂