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No apologies needed. As self builders sometimes the pressure of managing everything just gets too much and when things go wrong it's usually our closest that bear the brunt. I recall a renovation where we had sunk everything we had into it and needed it finished desperately in order to sell it before we ran out of money just for day to day living. Our 10 year old had got used to coming to site with us most weekends as we scrabbled to get done. I gave her the job of painting a short length of cast iron downpipe with some black gloss. She did ok with that but didn't put the lid back on the tin. I picked up the dust sheet without noticing and poured black gloss all over the indian sandstone patio that had been freshly laid only a couple of weeks before. I do admit to ranting excessively, not directly at her but just how unfair life, god, the world and everything was. It was the straw that broke the camels back so to speak. Later that day, having dropped her back home and returned to site, her elder brother rang to say he couldn't find her in the house. A frantic search all over the village ensued to no avail. As we widened the search with the help of neighbours and decided to alert the police, a call came in from a nice lady in Cambridge who had found her wandering the streets. It seems she had packed a bag (including an OS map for reference!), boarded a train (unmanned village station) and traveled a few stops into Cambridge with the intention of going to her aunt's house. She had got upset and thought all the problems were her fault. Boy did that bring home the important things in life and certainly gave me a new perspective. We never let ourselves get into that situation again and despite many a frustration over the years you just have to press on through it - worse things happen at sea!

Well, I bit the bullet : 1 tonne moved a hundred meters or so . Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Age Appropriate Wheelbarrow (Branding deliberately removed by AI )

Mainly watertight now. Almost finished the front section and one gable

Don't do as I do - do as I say, comes to mind. Not much different from a multi millionaire pop star, movie stars, telling everyone to dip their hands in the pockets to give to charity.

DON'T PAY ANY MORE! Write to them explaining that the work is not satisfactory and you will be withholding all further payments. Attach the photos. Reserve the right to claim all expense to rectify.

Well I'm chuffed to bits with the performance of our new self-build house. With another 6 weeks to go before mid-year our 2026 electric bill has balanced out. By mid-year we should be in credit by about £150, so maybe £300 for the whole year. That is for DHW, heating and domestic load. 2 people in permanent residence, with guests, 200m^2, thermostat set at 21.5c throughout. We run a sauna but not an EV. Contributing factors in approximate order of importance: High levels of insulation in floor, walls, and roof (MBC high performance timber frame) Very good air tightness (0.8) Large solar array 3kw facing SE and 6kw facing SW with no overshading from trees / chimneys etc Octopus Flux tariff Tesla Powerwall 3 battery 5kW ASHP UFH Triple glazing Each item has value in itself, but they also complement each other e.g. the UFH reduces heating temps which increases the efficiency of the ASHP which reduces demand which . . . I just need to tell Octopus that they need to set up a Direct Debit to pay me : )

Vanity was an Italian import, but imo the hung pans look very exclusive. Plenty of shapes and sizes to choose from.

I know CVC are crazy busy atm. Just swap from 92mm round to ‘oval’ (rectangular) duct to pass the steel and then covert back to round. Done it plenty of times. Some examples of my MVHR installs… Hope these examples help. 👍

Can you move another 400mm away from your neighbour?! That would simplify things greatly.

Hiya. To provide a bit of context, much of my initial SE training and Masters research was on portal frames. I know enough to make a contribution on this type of design. Here is my offer. You can call me on the phone on (mobile number removed, PM for contact details) for a 15 -30 min chat. It's free for BH folks! This forms part of my pro bono work that is good for my soul, my primary qualification is in Civil Engineering, you work for the public. Text me first so I know it's you. I'm pretty deaf so sometimes miss calls. I use my own name and can be easily found on the internet.. I get some interesting calls and offers, these range from "massages" to lots of "financial" offers and other "stuff" that actually breaks up my day, hence me filtering calls. The section sizes you quote might be dependent on your eaves height, wind loading and the types of finishes. That the best I can do for now.

Yeah, that's not great. It should be fully insulated and the insulation should go all the way through the wall. Just resting like that isn't good either. I would personally probably have 2 clips - one just after the bend as it exits the wall and the second before it enters the down pipe. Also, wtf were they thinking with the black? Just looks crap. Not very good standard at all and enough to question the rest of the installation, frankly. Get them back to sort it out as it doesn't comply with the regs or with the manufacturer's instructions on condensate drainage for a start. They should know better.

Local Authorities have no idea what things should cost, so selling them a £300 wind turbine made for a boat, a fifty quid PV panel, a small battery system for say £500 and a person to put it all together, should probably be about £1000. Councils will probably pay 5 to 6 times that amount. Then, where there is a meeting to fit renewables to council buildings, someone in accounts, will drag out the £5000/kW number and say 'it is too expensive'.

Our last house had a fully insurance approved and maintained alarm. Out of interest, at one renewal time for insurance, I asked to quote with and without alarm and got the same cost. All these things were true if I declared the alarm. Kept the alarm, didn't declare it any more.

Just download ChatGPT and take all the effort out of it.

As above. As soon as outdoor temp exceeds desired indoor temp we shut all doors/windows and turn the MVHR down to its minimum setting. When the outdoor temp drops below indoor temp of an evening, we open all doors/windows and turn the MVHR up to max. Currently 33.7 degrees outside and 22.5 degrees inside. No active cooling but we do have external blinds which are game changers I reckon.

I have followed this exact advice. Job's a good 'un.

I've refrained from posting on here for fear of asking stupid questions, but I have concluded that on this occasion, I really could do with some guidance. As you know, we let our first brickie go as his work was substandard. We waited nearly 8 weeks for the new one to start and he started Monday. He is making good progress and aside from not listening to me or reading drawings where service lintels are supposed to go, it's ok. However, when he started, I was really surprised that he did not build up the corners of the house using a laser level, to ensure that the height of the first course would be correct. Instead, he started at one end and made his way down the 24m length. He is now at dpc level on the internal leaf and he is 22mm out from one end of the house (excluding garage) 17m to the other end. Alarm bells are ringing in my head again and I don't know whether I should raise the issue. It's driving me mad that I have to deal with such incompetent individuals. I also had to explain to him that he had missed out the lintel for a back inlet gulley. His response "you don't run a soil pipe into the back of a bottle gulley. You put the sink waste through the wall and into it." Clearly, he is wrong, but I am just the dumb IT Programmer who knows feck all. Just after some help here, as I really don't want to sack another builder and start again.

Anyone thinking this will happen in a few weeks appears likely to be disappointed. The latest NICEIC trade rag just came through and had this to say. It also doesn’t mention the problem of uni or bi directional switchgear. Anyone who has had an RCBO consumer unit fitted in the last decade is very very likely to have it full of uni directional devices. These are not permitted to be used where current potentially flows in both directions. Bi directional rcbos have only been readily available for a couple of years, if that. They are still not standard fit for most people. Usually only fitted to solar pv or EV charging. Europe has very different switchgear to us.

1200mm gives me this dream scenario, much like Dave.

Diplomacy isn't working. You can't repeat the action and expect a different result, so stop him from doing any more work and ask him if he's interested in the rest of the job (or not). His response will be what decides your new direction / next decision. Tell him straight, no quivery top lip, that you have slept on it and cannot accept the discrepancy. End of feckin chat. If he shrugs his shoulders and packs up and fecks off, good riddance. If he decides to offer up a solution to rectify, then tell him it has to be removed on his time and not yours as it should have been right first time. Stop tolerating useless assholes. I wouldn't get away with this, how can he????

There was a recent article in the IStructE magazine just about this and promoting the use of C16 timber. It's pretty well available in Scotland (in EU metric sizes, CLS Canadian lumber standards are slightly diferent in dimensions for example) and for years I've used it where I can. The U value regs in Scotalnd quite often drive the timber external wall stud thickness on a basic timber frame house, call that a major developer type house. You can use C16 at a deeper depth so you can fit a decent thickness of insulation between the studs. The deeper stud in C16 still delivers the strength and deflection limits you need. The problem can be that C16 significantly reduces timber connection performance one you get into transfer beams and anything (say goal posts around openings) that needs to resist sideways wind loading. There is a practical side to this. What you don't want to happen is that the builder mixes up the timber grades on site. When I'm designing I try and make sure that the deep timbers are C24 if I have to use that grade, the shallower ones C16. You never mix grades of timber of the same size. The same applies to steel buildings in terms of bolt grades., you make sure it's not possible to fit the wrong grade of bolt into same sized holes. You can't make it totally idiot proof as a designer but you can try your best.

But it is not. It is a very big water tank, and if the ground moves a tiny bit, the slab and or walls could break and it gets very messy and expensive. And you will be indoors now, not outside., so damage and repairs are x3. There are a lot of failures of swimming pools and contractors have gone bust and Engineers had very expensive claims. And some of these are for proper designs: the ground we live on is very mobile. If the results of the boreholes are encouraging then you will save cost on the amount of concrete and of reinforcememnt. If they show poor ground then it really is essential to know that and design to suit. Is it still 27m long as previous posts? that is big and not to be dabbled with. How much do you want it?

They are, though I don't think this is really an argument that can be used against wind turbines or similar. The amount of concrete used in them (even if massively expanded) pales into insignificance compared to other big projects. Concrete + steel are pertty good in the end. Steel can be endlessly recycled pretty much. Using ground concrete as filler for other things is relatively good compared to many of the other things we do in terms of materials recycling. I believe ground concrete can be used in place of virgin sand/aggregate when making new concrete at least in a decent percentage of use cases. Concrete over its life absorbs a lot of the CO2 put out during manufacture and if we can switch from gas firing to renewable heat we lower the carbon footprint a decent chunk. A lot of more renewable building methods have overinflated/misreported environmental credentials once the full lifecycle is considered and once those things are considered concrete really doesn't seem that bad, especially given it's about the cheapest construction method. At a societal level spending more for a more environmental construction method may mean less money for more beneficial environmental spending.

Thanks for all the advice. In defiance of @dpmiller I bought the Bosch pair for £110 which I think is a pretty good price. I might get some bigger batteries but I quite like the light weight 2ah ones given that I am no spring chicken these days.

You are going to gasp in horror, but this is my absolute favourite tool storage box (now bear in mind they're being used almost on a daily basis). It's something that does just work. https://hultafors.com/en-gb/products/tool-bucket It's been so popular, they now sell a tool organiser to go in the bucket. I have 6 of these buckets 😲 I've even had customer say what a good idea as their other trades are coming in and out with loads of boxes. For example, one of mine just has the drill/driver/screwdrivers with bit sets and a drill roll, the other with have the sds & multi-tool etc. While I'm working away I'll have an empty one where I throw bits of rubbish as I go, including pipe off cuts, old screws etc. and then it's brilliant for the odd emergency when I'm removing old pipework where I can grab the bucket to collect the always expected run out of water from said pipework.

I would agree with this and the need to evolve ever more effective prompts. Naturally AI supported prompt engineering is a thing as well although, so far, the Human in the loop remains - once they start prompting themselves who knows. However, I am not sure of the exponential growth in the model's capabilities themselves. Three other things seem to be emerging in the region of AI that also merit our attention: Firstly, it seems to me that the eco system is perhaps where the real explosion is. The number of other technologies, techniques and spinout applications is growing very fast EG in the areas like increasing use and application of vector DBs and all its variants (Hybrid Indexing etc), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and all its variants (Embedding free RAG, Chain of thought RAG), agent frameworks ( Swarm etc), structured knowledge stores, synthetic data engines and model side retrieval. Of those variants today not all will survive contact with reality and many more will emerge. Interestingly some of the early front runners in this sphere are reaching the end of their useful lifer already - Langchain is, for instance, being shunned because it is seen unstable and poorly documented as developers move over the likes of PydanticAI, Pocketflow & LlamaIndex. This tells you a second order story around the rush to get eco systems tools out quickly but skipping essential QA steps which leads to a broadly experimental feel rather than a sound production basis. Some argue that this because the LLMs, in the hands of developers, can create tools at an alarming rate but few are built well enough to live long! Secondly, although we still live in a gas guzzling age where the size and power of the global scale models makes huge demands on memory & energy the size of really powerful, sometimes task specialised, models is falling fast as mathematicians and engineers work out ways of squeezing them into ever smaller memory spaces. This will, admittedly somewhat hyperbolically, eventually bring the full power of the models onto our watches. Thirdly, as the HAL - "I can't do that Dave", example above illustrates some would argue that the control of this technology is getting further and further behind the bleeding edge. Perhaps we might conclude that while there are burgeoning combinatorial opportunities in the first two, eco system and small models, the third is somewhat being neglected, pushed into the too difficult box by politicians or being briefed against by the tech companies. It always was and always will be ..... until AGI!

I just expanded for a bit of fun. The building industry is not full of nice folk. I'm representing a Building Contractor and Client in Scotland at the moment that has been pretty much been ripped off by a small bunch of very well known designers and one " SE? Engineer". This bunch have been on my radar for a while with designs that I've checked and found them wanting as they are incompetent and downright dangerous. The Engineer is puporting to run a limited consultancy company..but there is no record on companies house? The "Architect" is moonlighting it appears.. I'l find out in due course if he and any of the others involved are insured or not. So yes my suspicion is at the moment that my poor Client is a victim of a bunch of chancers puporting to be Engineers and Designers. The Engineer in question is well known in Scotland, big player..in the business papers and so on.. hiding in plain sight, seems he may be a chancer and a fraudulant actor! I'll catch the fu.ker and have his house off him if I can to get some of my young Clients money back. This could be one of your kids, excuse my lack of mercy.

You make a good point about the skills you have, I accept that. The regs have become a lot more stringent particularly in relation to portal frames on or near boundaries. Best thing you can do is to give your SE a call and discuss.

Yeah, we’re just starting the basement part of our build. This is ‘not easy’ (basements are quite unusual in the UK remember) unless you’re very comfortable with risk and/or have deep pockets. Most UK suppliers won’t want to guarantee water-tightness, the odd European supplier might, but my experience is that they are v difficult to deal with. As others have said, without some kind of sketch - to give an idea of size & shape & ground levels, we’re fairly much in the dark, so can’t say much.

Obviously it has its limitations, but this is exactly the sort of question that AI very good at answering. I just put the following prompt into Claude: This was the reply: Try modifying the prompt if you want something different. I just bunged in what I thought were some reasonable assumptions.

i'd have thought start with a list of the objectives that you are actually trying to achieve. What is the goal of this security system ? We appear to live in a world where the police are more interested in responding to thought crime accusations than actual break ins. The prisons are full and so there is limited interest in punishing offenders. Security systems are typically about monitoring and response, but don't necessarily substitute for high levels of physical security measures. There are a plethora of DIY solutions around. If really going the professional route then an overall assessment from a security professional might be better than just selecting an alarm vendor.

If you are mixing in a gorilla tub, let it go off a bit, then empty the bucket and smash the stuff into smaller bits.

That looks like dogshit. Flashing should be up behind the wood cladding, so that needed cutting back, lifting away, and the lead offered up behind it. Woodwork and ridge tile etc is abysmal. Shocking how anyone can say they can do a job like this for someone, when they clearly have zero clue what to do or how to do. 2/10 at best, more like a 1/10 though.

Uncomplicated, small buildings should be dropped in one continuous sitting. Start on a Monday not a Thursday, and avoid the weekend so nothing is left unsafe. Have a plan and 1 person in charge, not a family day of chipping bricks, to reduce the risk of anyone unaccounted being somewhere they shouldn’t be, when things fall unexpectedly. Obvs absolutely ZERO children or pets on site, and fence off access whilst the works go on.

When I did some Googling around regarding this I quickly noticed that each local council seems to take a different approach to the process and what requirements they want (probably proportional to the feeling of self-importance the council officer dreams of). I put myself down as the owner and the 'company' doing the work, kept detail to an absolute minimum, and just got an approval email a few days later.

Good point Actually, that's probably working as expected as 20° is the 'normal' supply air temperature in 'fixed mode', and the Q series has an adaptive bypass (it can be partly open, not just on or off) However there are a couple of ways you can change that in the advanced settings - see this user manual extract :

By the looks of that, you really do need to find yourself someone else to do the work. You don't add DHW cylinder demand to a system with a heat pump as it's priority hot water - the heat pump switches from doing heating to doing hot water, so even if your house needed 8kW for heating, which I seriously doubt, this would be fine for your hot water. How big are your kitchen/dining, living & upstairs bed? They must be massive. You can go and use my tool at https://openheatloss.com to create your own heat loss and system design. This is supported by a number of videos at https://youtube.com/@OpenHeatLoss taking you through how to use the tool and what to input - the video library is developing day-to-day

Probably lots more to come, scuttlebut on the street is that complex system coding with LLMs is not as effective a professional team almost no matter how much compute you apply the directional control takes vast amounts of work, the smells are far greater, the code is much more complex - longer and much harder to maintain and it looks like you are finding similar challenges.

Hmm. Is this not an (expensive) solution looking for a problem?

Slate and tiled roofs let water in but then it stops at the underlapping slate and gradually goes down to the gutter. If there is an underfloor, then that can catch any rogue drips that escape. That looks a decent job, but at your vent i suspect that water can blow up over the top or side of the zinc and has nothing under it. Or some tiny gap where the slates are cut. It would be necessary to take the ridge off to see how far the metal goes.. I think it should go all the way to the apex OR have another overlapping piece to intercept it. And wider too, hidden under the top slate. Wind is the likely culprit. Gusts generally last just a few seconds, firing water upwards, but then releasing it. Hence a longer flashing might suffice. Mastic exists for flues but that should not be very hot there. It is not very flexible so won't last long. Try a local stove shop. There are special and foolproof rubber flashings for flues througb metal roofs but they are ugly and not appropriate to your lovely roof.

Might be the way the photo is, but its 900mm at that point.

They are brittle and have far less tolerance to snapping, vs regular wood screws. If he put plenty in then I think you'd be Ok, but if few and far between, then it could be a problem. Are these still exposed? If so, just pump a woodscrew in next to each one.

The rough work should be underground, by the time he’s at dpc I would want it within 5mm from corner to corner. so if you have a box one corner can go down 5mm and then up to the other corner, I don’t mean it progresses down or up around the building until he is 20 mm out. 5mm overall. why don’t you put a stake in with dpc marked on it at every corner. he should work from that height down not from the concrete up.

Lovely house and design. Interesting Insta account. Your question may well be better directed to legal experts.

Make sure the door to the bathroom has either a transfer grille, or an 8-10mm undercut on the bottom of the door, to let air in at the same volume that the extractor wants to remove it. Overrun timer is a must, my bathroom fan runs for 30-40 mins after each activation, to completely remove any moisture; it was shite at first, then I realised I'd no air coming in to the room, so chopped 10mm off the bottom of the door and then the magic happened. I'm always rushed doing any work in my own house so often don't see the woods for the trees.

Have you considered swapping the toilet and sink positions? Shorter soil run, keeps toilet tucked away, better access to stuff on shelves when at the sink. Maybe run 32mm basin waste into the 50mm shower waste for one less connection at the stack. Personally I'd lean towards a rectangular shower following the room shape.

Please do not omit the fixing(s) - it's only one or 2 per board (check MIs). In a fire any plastic insulation attached to the plasterboard will melt or soften and the plasterboard may fall off the wall. This exposes more fuel to a fire (combustible insulation) and blocks possible escape routes. Additionally it could be a major hazard for fire fighters if they have to enter the building if people reported in there.

I don’t think you need to lurk around pubs hoping to pick up the oily working classes lol. Nearly 20 years in architecture has given me a good network of reliable contractors and skilled workers. We do the checks and contact on behalf of the client, absorb the problems if they arise. That’s why architects are pretty useful for self builders. Plus we’ve all made the mistakes on other jobs that you’re going to make on the first one you do.

Oh absolutely! Remember “ i’m free “ not in an are you being served way ! 😂 . No budget limit ( well maybe a bit ) , no time constraint , no boss ( like my build ) so able to explore and experiment! . Create what I want . Equally my house is the sandbox and I’m the guinea pig ! . Perfect setup for the experiment!!

One element of your build calculus appears to be missing from this thread. It's what I fell over multiple times on ours. Networks. Knowing who does what well and who is available when Knowing who knows someone who has experience and dealt with [...] before Knowing which other trades person knows the tradesman you're trying to contact - and failing. Because his phone appears not to be working. Knowing where that tradesman drinks. It's as restrictive a network as the so called Upper Classes, or the Landed Gentry. The White Van Class makes or breaks selfbuilding. It's taken me 10 years to nurture a core of solid trustworthy people. They're pure gold. They lower blood pressure, soothe the psyche, provide military grade one liners. So, since today is a Friday, get down the pub - about 4 ish- because they will be there, swapping war stories, oiling wheels, making stuff happen. How do I know? My son is a chef and runs a local. Why 4 ish ? Because by 6, they've all gone home for their evening meal. Her indoors oils wheels too.