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Weeks 75 to 90 The plasters have finished the open plan vaulted area and it’s given us the boost to get going again in other areas. At the opposite end of the building is the plant room, this was the first room we started work on to enable the solar to be installed. I’m back in here to tile the floor and since it’s the first floor I have ever tiled I am very happy with it. I have left the service penetrations until all the services are in, we currently have temporary supplies from our existing home. We have a provisional date in August to close our village single track road (that goes to the school so can only be closed in school holidays) and will then have our own services coming into the building I will then seal up any air gaps and finish the tiling. Whilst the plaster was drying in the open plan lounge and kitchen we started on the MVHR installation. We made it as light as we could but it’s size was still too much for me to help with so we had to think of alternate methods of lifting it luckily our business had tools we could improvise with. I’ll let the photos show how this went. In the loft it all looks nice and neat. We could have floor mounted it but it would have taken up a lot of room and the pipes coming down would have needed boxing in. We could have put it in the loft but changing the filters would not have been so easy. This is a good compromise, once the pantry kitchen units are in you won't be looking up as much and we will be able to access it easily with our step ladders for filters and servicing etc. Once the MVHR was hung we moved on to fitting the plasterboard up in the pantry then I taped and jointed it all and painted the lounge and the pantry. Tape and Joint I had the opportunity of using a different corner tape around the velux, since this was not an area like a doorway that was going to possibly get knocked. I have previously used the corner paper tape with the metal reinforced edges. I have found you need to be careful on the corner you don’t rip or sand the paper. Traditional metal corner bead for tape and joiners is too thick and it can be hard getting plastic corner bead for tape and joiners. I do know of few places but they don’t deliver it due to its length and fragility. The tape I used was, SIME edge protection very similar to Strait Flex Tuff Tape both are on Amazon, it’s described as plastic coated and although on a roll when cut and folded for the corner it is not floppy like paper tape, and more like the metal reinforced paper tape but with a stronger corner. After using it around the Velux I decided to use it on the pantry doorway where I was matching up to the wet plasterers metal bead. I am happy with the outcome and will probably use it a lot more. When I first used it I bed it in and wiped out as usual but later found out they recommend to do the first finish coat straight away. The instructions on the tape are in Polish I think but the copy below is from an America website for Strait Flex Fold Original in half at the center crease, with the print-sides facing themselves. For outside corners, fold more than the desired angle with the print-side facing the wall. For inside corners, fold less than the desired angle with the print-side facing out. Apply all-purpose compound to the corner. Press Original into the wet compound and adjust, if necessary, to create a straight line. Wipe down tight and smooth with a taping knife. The first finishing coat of compound can be applied immediately. Let this dry completely, for several hours or overnight. This last step saves a day compared to paper tape that is covered the following day. Second fix electrics has started in the lounge and the light fittings have been put up and testing started for the electrical certification. The kitchen has been delivered and that went very smoothly all placed neatly in the middle of the room then a few days later we have spread it all out into appliances, pantry units and main kitchen units, the island was placed in its approximate location and immediately became a huge flat surface that we could fill. Whilst David is installing the kitchen we are also both test fitting and plumbing in the bathroom and putting the plasterboard up. We need to keep moving on with the bathroom as this will be mainly me painting and tiling whilst David will continue the kitchen installation on his own and second fix electrics. Going room by room works for us well as we can both work to our own strengths without waiting for other trades this will hopefully mean we get to move in later this year but with some rooms completely not started. Thanks for getting to the end of this update, if you have read my other blog entries please note that the posting date today does not match the week numbers as I am a little behind updating the blog. We have been working on the bathroom since May, lots more in the next blog and I have the build costs to update.

Weeks 91 to 105 In May we started in the Bathroom. It took us almost a month to first fix plumbing inc wet room former, create stud wall behind sink and toilet, plasterboard, tape and joint and then paint. By mid June David handed the bathroom over to me and I was dry laying the floor tiles out it took me a while as you may remember the plant room floor was the first floor I had ever tiled and I was about to cut larger, heavier, more expensive and diagonal cuts, Oh and it was a wet room. Once I was happy with the tile layout I used Impey water guard system on the walls and the floor. I chose Impey because the former has a sort of backup weep system in that should any water get through the grout on the floor it will drain on top of the membrane and has weep holes in the long trap to escape. I was a bit nervous about unrolling a sticky membrane on my own but I found that ok with the laser for guidelines and just removing a bit of the backing at a time. The sealant that you use in-between the membrane joints on the other hand was the most sticky and messy sealant I have used. Particularly on the floor I could not help getting a bit of tile on the floor/wall joint or the toes of my shoes (when kneeling down) in the sticky sealant days later. I had read on Build Hub about this being sticky but had not comprehended how messy compared to other sealants. On the 24 August I handed the bathroom back over to David to fit the shower, toilet, sink and mirror. Whilst fitting the bathroom David and I also put the plasterboard up in the front bedroom so that once the bathroom was finished I could move straight onto another room with the plasterboard jointing. I have started this and the photos are the end of the first coat so tape not covered yet, screw heads one coat. Could be a while before I carry on with this. David has fitted the kitchen and pantry and the worktop was fitted by Wren. Our water connection has been completed this required a small road closure which had to be completed during school holidays as its the main route the children use who walk to school. The 3 phase electric supply has been moved from the temporary location into the house and we will now start looking for our supplier. We are still temporary connected to the house we live in as the solar on the new build is feeding the old house this will be changed to feed the new build hopefully only a few days before we get the supply connection. Openreach are here at the moment installing our line. The original plan back in 2023 designed and plotted by Openreach was to connect to an electric pole on the border with our neighbours where our electric also comes from. The electric company have recently stopped new connections to their poles, (I don’t know if this is everywhere or just local) so although its been coiled up at the pole a few years from when we made the temporary electric connection, we now had to find a new route. This meant finding our existing connection that was underground (from a different pole) breaking into this and pulling a few meters of cable back from its coiled up position to a junction box with the existing house cable, or digging up the shared drive and laying the cable back to another pole that already had a connection on it. The timing of this meant we had only just dug a trench down the side of the drive for the water, had we known earlier about the change made on new connections to poles we would have obviously laid the cable at the same time as the water. A big thank you to open reach who I think felt sorry for us as had one of my emails been answered in June (when I wanted to check were still putting copper in the ground) we could have laid a cable down the drive, unfortunately new connections sent me round in a few circles but the current solution is ok for now. I guess eventually we will pull a fibre cable in and presumably they will use the copper cables to pull the new fibre though. It’s 2 years from the start of the foundations and we have come a long way and are happy with our progress. Of the most common hiccups that I see on TV programs we are doing OK. We didn’t have a ‘blow out’ on the ICF concrete pour, we haven’t run out of money yet, and we are not expecting a baby (I'm 57) so I think that just leaves health. I am now on a break from the build whilst I recover from surgery but as I had 6 weeks notice we planned my jobs in the build and I now have at least 6 weeks to catch up on a mountain of paper work before I can return to light duties on the build. I have two companies for which I need to complete and submit end of year accounts, the self build VAT to catch up on (see below) and a website for our new holiday rental to set up to take bookings for next year. We are on schedule to move in to the build later this year but Im not sure if I will get back in the build to finish the tape and jointing in our temporary bedroom this year or we move in as it is, but at least we will have a working bathroom and kitchen. The costs to date are: General £4230 Plastering (open Plan area) £4160 Plasterboard and jointing by us £1124 Tiling Plant room floor and bathroom walls and floor £1000 Paint £246 Carpentry £746 Kitchen/pantry £11130 Kitchen appliances £1385 MVHR £3490 Roof insulation and airtightness £4778 Electrical Connection £4969 Electrical installation £2588 Plumbing installation £4257 Water connection £4566 Services trenches £3730 UFH £909 Drainage wastewater, soakaway and guttering £8538 Floor insulation £2669 Screed £2737 Wood Cladding £5694 Render £3090 Solar 7.5kWp £8574 Roof covering £23311 Windows £20869 Shell build excl roof, inc founds £119614 Pre build costs (architect, SE, BC and surveys) £10528 Total Net £260,000 VAT to reclaim so far £9500 Cost per m2 £1900 Big costs still ongoing Plumbing, Ensuite, Tiling in hall and pantry, Wood floors in bedrooms and open plan area. Landscaping and now all the service connections are in we can resurface the drive, as part of the planning condition, for the first 10m near the road.

The key word is “reality”. These drawings are single discipline, unless you have provided a ‘line out’ of your other large bore services such as soil and waste pipework etc, so that is always the crux. Current project, CVC supporting and myself installing (and adapting the design to suit) on the fly: I changed a few bits around, and did my own thing with the manifolds to make it more sympathetic. Actual install when it was WIP: As you can see, I abandoned the square box manifolds as I had other services in some of the posi joist voids which took up too much space; these needed to take priority so needs must. It gets very busy very quickly, but this is a sizeable home (~400m2) and I had to get a lot of ‘stuff’ squeezed in. The MVHR install is considerable, but I have installed it all with ZERO impact on GIA; no boxing in etc, and CVC providing solutions to achieve this wherever I needed to reach out. It would 100% been a complete PITA to have to do this from scratch with no initial design, and I have a long history of such installations and am very capable, so any novice or DIY self-builder should defo reach out for support and CVC will do their best (based on the information you give them ).

This totally sounds like a scene on grand designs where the woman boasts about her expensive kitchen widget and kevin Mc Kevin understands how they are 10 million over budget. Sounds like a way to lock you in to only being able to buy a certain type of hob, whereas a normal one is basically the same size hole. I'd do myself a favour and just keep it simple and not create my future self another nightmare.

Availability of sensible priced plots and then the extra cost of a custom build compared to a standard box, is what limits the number of self builds. If only government were to mandate that the mass market house builders who buy up most of the building land in large blocks, must sell a certain percentage of their plots for self build, at the same per house cost as the whole site cost them.

In my day job I sometimes ask AI for it's calculations for a bit of fun! A lot of the time I find it's completely wrong! I checked a beam design against AI and found it to be a factor of ten out, on the unsafe side. One of the bits it missed was the destabilising loads ( an unrestrained load applied to the top flange) loads, the lack of adequate lateral restraint and the support conditions, all that lead to is being miles unsafe. Now AI aggregates information, you could have ten undergraduates all uploading their student projects and AI thinks.. this is right, but it's dangerous bollocks! There is good reason for BC to reject you! If you want to use AI to generate calcs then you have to be competent enough to make sure it's not rubbish. By all means use AI to do the donkey work for you, but unless you know what you are doing, have the knowledge to understand what the calculations mean then you are an idiot!

Thanks for allowing me join this self-builder community. I'm building my home, and first project of this scale, in Norfolk with my husband. We are trying to be considerate of sustainability and use local materials when possible within our rather modest budget. Our architect has designed a timber framed structure with straw bale walls. We are doing all the construction work ourselves unless it requires certification, specialists or we get stuck! Neither of us have formal building experience, so are learning as we go. I'm hoping this forum will be an invaluable source of information and advice. I'd really appreciate anything which helps us get things right first time and avoids costly mistakes! Hopefully in return I can offer some entertainment value with our dodgy DIY antics!!

There’s a material difference between something like a landscape visual assessment and structural engineering calcs. The former is a nonsensical piece of paper that needs to be produced to check a box on the planning application. Money down the drain. The latter is integral to the safety of the house and its inhabitants, and something I would gladly pay for an expert to do.

If you want (need) to micro-manage at this level then the blame lands in your lap, sorry. You 1000% should NOT have had ANY other trade on site whilst the floor was being laid. You want things done in an extremely particular way, beyond the comprehension of most ‘typical’ trades, which means you need to engage in hand-holding; each plank laid down as you wish, then it gets drawn around with a sharpie, then each plank has a piece of masking tape applied so it is numbered, when lifted the number is written on the floor (inside the sharpie rectangle), and both are complimented with an arrow so the installer knows which way around to then fit each plank. Zero ambiguity, zero personal preference, zero chance of it going any other way. History keeps repeating itself here, so either change what you’re doing or don’t expect a different outcome. Sorry to be brutal, but without this info you won’t succeed. I am principal consultant on site currently and I take this approach with the trades that require direction from me. I explain that it may sound like I am teaching my father how to (expletive deleted), but that is how it is, take it positively or walk away. The good ones actually appreciate this as they can push back, stating that the additional quality etc will add time & money, which my client agrees to and accepts. Sometimes trades just need to know (be told) if it’s a sprint or a marathon.

Your proposal invites discussion, that in itself is healthy. I think it's fair for you to ask the question, most of us on BH won't take a negative view of this as you are exploring if you can benefit the self build market, and if you can make a living out of it and a bit of money then your are justified, a fair days pay for fair work. Here is bit of context and bit of my background. The first 20 or so years of my career were spent being a builder, some of that was building houses for self builders. I had generally 6 -8 full time staff then sub contractors. Depending on the time of year I may only have had four subbies, then at times up to about twenty folk working on one site. To keep them all working I would normally run one big project and say a couple of extensions, attic conversions at the same time. This allowed me to manage resources, deal with changes, cash flow, maybe planning and BC delays. You should be pretty familiar with how this works given your background. When I got to near 40 I could see the writing on the wall personally. My wife and I parted, my German Shephard died and I was left living in my lovely self build on my own with this huge weight on my neck of the business and my duty to my employees. I shut the business, paid all my staff the redundancy, phoned my competitors, told them I was chucking in the towel and pleaded for them to take my lads on. Some did! Now I also squared up all my builders merchants.. some told me, even my accountant.. you are limited Gus, if you walk away you'll be at least £100 - 200kk better off. But I paid the money as I knew my personal reputation can't be valued. Now I was lucky as I sold everything just before the 2008 crash. I then trucked off to university to become a Structural Engineer, graduated, trained and now my consultancy is in October this year going to celebrate it's tenth anniversary. But part of my success is my contacts from the old days! I am still in contact with my old suppliers, they give me names of good creditable builders, as they remember I squared them all up. One of my ex employees is now a BC officer in my local area, his wife, who used to inspect some of my project is now a Senior in BC. They are consummate professionals and remember me as "not a chancer". In summary, my own view is that if you want to build a sustainable business in the construction industry it's going to take 5 years living on the edge, another three years to stabilise, it's really only in the last couple of years that I've felt I've arrived, lots of repeat business and a huge amount of experience under my belt now.. 40 years! Ok, the above is not a rant.. it's intended to let you see there is no fast buck here in the construction industry. Developing an app is not going to work long term, unless you have lots of contacts and an already established business that brings in the bread and butter. Let's say you are digitising and facilitating via an app the procurement and build process, that's just using modern tech, the game remains the same and the profit loss sheet still stacks up the way it pretty much has over the last 40 years. The tek has changed, but the fundamental principle of turn over is vanity, profit is sanity has not changed, you may also want ( I suspect you may not) but just look at Ruskin the common law of business. But the bottom line is that it looks like you want to project manage, use your QS skills.. with a fancy app. To make a living out of this, you need do the basics very well, get repeat business, you'll need to have lots of contacts, cash in the bank, be legitimate, have insurance etc, and be very good at what you do to be able to justify your 10%, your app ain't going to cut the mustard, the app is your potential cream, your USP that delivers that extra profit. I think you need to have look at your business model in term of the app. But if that stacks up for you then it would be welcomed by not least myself and folk on BH.

Thanks for the heads up. Could members please use the Report function for anything dodgy, as we mods then get an alert. I will now put this account on ice, thanks.

Out of interest, in addition to the architectural electrical drawings mentioned above, in France you also need schematic electrical drawings. They're normally drawn by the electrical contractor as part of their contract. Without it the Electrical Inspectorate won't test the installation and, without their certificate, you don't get a mains connection. It's also used for subsequent maintenance. Example below for 1 row of my consumer unit (still in draft, which is why there's a duplicate D2.1):

Do NOT have the connector and isolator tap behind the appliance. Fit it inside an adjacent cupboard unit so it is accessible, and does not restrict the appliance going fully back into it's recess. Same for waste fitting and electrical socket.

My self build journey, to illustrate how things have become harder. First self build 2003. Moving from England to the Highlands. A big motivation of self build Vs just buy a house, was we could buy a building plot and a static caravan for cash without having to sell our old house. If we had gone for the "simple" option of just buy a house we would have been trying to sell and buy at the same time under 2 different house buying legal systems which just sounded like a nightmare. Plus a self lbuild had been on my bucket list for a long time. That first house the only technical design input was from the timber frame company. Total cost of all drawings planning and building warrant £2K No surveys. TF company was paid to build a and watertight shell and we fitted out the inside employing trades as needed. House prices here were rising fast then, and by the time we had finished house value comfortably exceeded build cost. That all worked out well. IF ONLY it was still that simple. A few years later we decided we wanted a smaller house, (done the 5 bedroom thing) and were lucky after some searching to find a plot 2 doors up the road from the first one. The plan had always been start the new build, put the old house on the market and sell it to finish the new build. Our timing was poor. This was post 2008 crash and the market here was dead. The old house was on the market for 2 years and had just 6 viewings. My work as electrician took me all over the place, and I was seeing the same houses everywhere just stuck with a for sale board that had been there well over a year. All the agents and any "helpful" adviser could say if it's not selling, it is over priced, reduce the asking price. That would be all very well if you could reduce your asking price and then reduce the asking price of the house you bought. But self build does not work like that. Try telling a builders merchant house prices have crashed so you want all building materials reduced by a similar amount and ditto tradesmans wages. If we had reduced the price to distress sale levels, we could very well have ended up selling our 5 bedroom house for less than the build cost of the replacement 3 bed house. There was no way I was paying to downsize. Our build ground to a halt with just me doing what I could but held up by bigger things needing doing. Our saviour from this situation came in the form of a lady that wanted to buy the house and run it as a guest house, but could not get the funds to buy it without accounts, so her offer was to rent the house for a few years and then buy it. So we accepted and reluctantly went back to being landlords. That did eventually work out. It ended up being 7 years rental before she finally bought it, and those 7 years of rent, pretty much paid for the completion of the new house. So it worked out financially better just because of that. The actual sale price of the 5 bed house was only £50K more than the build cost of the new 3 bed house. As others have said a self build now likely costs more than the market value unless some house price inflation saves you. As for complications and red tape. The old pay the TF supplier not a lot for all the drawings seemed no longer available. We ended up paying an architecturtal technician and a SE to produce all the drawings that cost us £10K. We didn't have to do any surveys or that nonsense. The only other bits of paper we had to pay for (but not on the first build) were air test, and as built EPC. Building control seemed more stringent on the second build, with the added irritation that we had to keep paying an extra £100 per year to keep renewing the building warrant up to completion. And self build site insurance was a LOT more expensive second time around.

Reading a lot of these posts it's pretty clear that that many on BH don't have a high opinion of folk like me who design as a day job. I can see many professionals have lost their compass and are not delivering value for money and are not that good at running a business, hence the poor service delivery. I've been in the construction industry for over 40 years, 20 spent as a contractor running my own business' , did my own self build, really pretty much all by myself on the tools ( took me three years) then off to uni to be an Engineer, now for the last ten years I wear two hats as an Engineer and Architectural designer. Thus have a fairly rounded view of the in and outs of this. I can say that in the last 20 years there has been a race to the bottom, not just from designers, but also say the timber frame suppliers, ground works designers ( UFH and rafts etc) and designers who think that if they curtail their design brief, caveat it a lot the money is going to flow. But in the long term it doesn’t, as often the key to good business is repeat business, recommendation, even in the short term cutting you brief down often leads to problems, queries, design mistakes that just eat into your profit and leads to potential claims or Clients rightfully withholding money. Ok, lets look at some financials. The bottom line for a new self builder ( not someone who works in the trade with contacts) is the tendency to split each element into work packages, say foundations, timber frame and roof ect. Each package supplier takes the cream out of the job, leaving nothing for the self builder. Then you have planning and BC regs on top not least, that all adds to the cost. I work on a lot of projects where I'm involved holistically. I work very closely with the Client, not just as a designer but also do hand holding and participate in all of the design. Now to be blunt. Say for a self build the design fee is £10k. An experienced chippy ( joiner may cost you £250 a day, a labourer £150 as day, total 2.0k per week. All I have to do to wash my face is to save you a few weeks, just on the labour alone and I have well and truly washed my face! The pendulum is swinging back where folk are clocking that we need to "go back to the old days", but now you need someone like me who can cope with the modern code requirements for example, and the modern way of doing business., much less trust and more hard arse stuff. I get this kind of business where folk are happy to pay me a bit more as I can guide them, hold their hand and most importantly we all have fun, we do whacky designs that you only get to do on self builds! We also tend to avoid " work packages where we can, say from MBC et al and keep the cream to ourselves. This also often helps cash flow and gives the Client more control on day to day site activity. Now in the round if you want to make some money then try and find a designer like me that is local to you, with good contacts.

a better finish is achievable, but it doesn’t come flat packed, local company made these 3 doors for me.

I've now reached the happy place of 'offer and acceptance' for my subject-to-planning offer which in Scottish legal parlance means that we have a bargain and timescale agreed. I wanted 12 months to complete planning, the seller offered 3 and we compromised on 9. So I now have until April next year to get the planning I am happy with before I have to pay for the plot and take ownership of it. We've also agreed that if my application is stuck in the planning process through no fault of my own the timescale will be extended to reflect that. I'm not looking for any comments on this regarding legal safeguards just now thanks. This may be a little simplistic, but in my mind there are four possible steps to the planning process: Pre-application enquiry Planning permission in principle (same as outline planning in England). Full planning Building warrant I've opted to skip step 2 as I think I should be ok to move straight on to step 3 once I have a positive pre-application enquiry response. If you've any thoughts or advice on that then I would be interested to hear it. As you can hopefully see from the photo it is a gorgeous plot in a beautiful part of the world. The image above shows what will be the view from my future house. I feel very excited and lucky to have this opportunity.

For a set task by any trade, I am increasingly asking myself ‘what can go wrong here’ and ‘what is most important to get right’. It’s amazing how you can often predict what the f. ups will be in advance. Then make sure you’re around for that part and be firm and unapologetic. A good trade will like that you’re double checking. Listen to all the ‘we normally do it this way’ lines, decide whether you agree and, if not, explain politely why you want it done.a different way. Check in with your trades a lot at first, then less as you trust them.

Your question is fundamental. It goes to the heart of the horror that self-building can become. And is the main cause of self-build-sleep-deprivation-syndrome Humility, respect, time, trust, effort, plain speaking. And knowledge of their (the trade's) networks Self builders are - to the trades we deal with - mostly one off customers. And because we self builders have to invest so much more time , emotion and 'fizz' into our builds than those who 'simply' sign a cheque, many self builders ( not all) think we're special. To trades people, we aren't. We're one of many jobs they have on the go at any one time. Either invest in someone who can manage the situation for you or take the time to understand the trades networks so you can break through their communication blocks and accept that substandard work does occur and that some work will have to be remedied but most of all - be lucky DIY know when an error is something you just have to accept - and when not. After more than 10 years at it, I'm only just getting to know like and trust a core of people who communicate well, do what they say they will do, when they say they will do it to an acceptable standard. 10 years to many people is just too long.

This is with lights on last night

To me the barriers are many fold: Finding an affordable plot in a place you'd want to live Finding an Architect who is on the same wavelength Getting through the broken planning systems - including paying for endless reports by "experts" Dealing with endless planning conditions Dealing with endless Building Control issues Finding out enough to make an appropriate choice on construction method Finding a builder and/or trades competent in their work, affordable, and available Having to make many many decisions on little information and only idealised drawings for reference Lead time from initial idea to moving in date measured in several years. Or you can just put up with the utter c**p thrown up by the nationals and shortcut the whole thing to a few months.

The conservatives have announced their energy policy It appears to be based on this document https://ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Powering-Britain_-A-comparison-of-policy-pathways-to-2050.pdf The net effect seems to be to get a lot more of our energy from gas than the current trajectory. This makes their cost savings assumptions very dependent on their assumptions of future natural gas prices. They have assumed a stable future price around £24 per Mwh (in 2025 prices) They are also relying on building an extra 7Gw of nuclear capacity (about 2 to 3 new plants). And they will achive this by making government more focused on delivering nuclear - as if this is a magic wand. These assumptions seem to be, in the words of Sir Humphrey, "courageous". Nowhere on the document can I find anything addressing the energy security in the context of being able to source gas from abroad. There is a lot of focus on "security of supply" - which in the context it is used seems to mean firm Vs intermittent power. But nothing on how we secure the continuity of our power supply if there is an issue with gas imports eg a pipeline or LNG terminal being destroyed by sabotage.

New Tank Fitted over the weekend Grant Tank - 180L 2.7m2 coil surface area couple of errors in pipework configuration that are resulting in increased heat loss but I'll fix them over the next couple of weeks. meantime a quick experiment on boiler efficiency (compared to old tank data) revealed Boiler efficiency Old tank when heating HW - efficiency was 88.97% (condensate volume 157 grams - condensate stopped after 10 mins of a 30 min cycle due to return temp being above 54 deg) New tank when heating HW - efficiency is 93.29% (Condensate volume 332 grams was generating condensate all the way thro the 45 min cycle) Can show workings if required....... Heat Loss Old Hot water tank fully lagged pipework - london loops everywhere (U loops on any hot outlets from tank) best I could get in term of temp decay in the tank was 0.4 deg per hour (most of the time it was 0.5 to 0.6 deg per hour) so heat a tank to 50 deg and 20 hours later it would be down to 40 deg (thats a just bearable shower according to SWMBO) New Tank - no lagging on pipework yet and minimal london loops and the tank losses are down to 0.19 deg per hour - so heat a tank to 50 deg and 24 hours later it's still over 45 deg - I think I need a better hobby!!!! PS Yes I need to fit a tank stat PPS The tank is set up as a vented tank (so no G3 certification is required)

I think you have to change your expectations or nothing will suit. I don't know when I last used a decimal mm in construction. I appreciate it may be a mindset and things like cutlery laid approximately can be an issue. I'd be interested to know what measurement would have been acceptable 1mm? 0.5mm? Measuring tapes aren't even that accurate. pencils get thicker as you draw a line. Saw blades have thicknesses, materials are variable, hands are not machines. There will be many worse discrepancies in your house should you choose to look for them. Nobody else will notice.

It’s what I do / have done, in every single kitchen and bathroom job I’ve ever done. Dulux Diamond for the finish stuff in kitchens for most folk, or appropriate bathroom paint from whoever. 2 coats on brand new plaster in the same day, and customers think I’ve gone the whole 9 yards. Contract stuff is fine to leave on ceilings, but it isn’t very good on walls as it’s quite chalky and doesn’t wipe at all well. I use it sacrificially, for obliteration, and as above for use as a paint-come-filler for the very minor imperfections that you cannot see with the eye (until you pole sand lightly to show any defects). You must leave this to go bone dry before sanding, and I only say to dilute 10% water if spraying; current client is about to go full on Picasso and that’s the instructions for dilution from Wagner. Depends on how fussy you are whether you pole sand ceilings, or not, but my go-to plasterer is on site atm and he is shit hot, so very little needs doing tbh; he’s incredibly fussy in corners etc, and is pretty much the best plasterer I know or have ever met. If the plasterer is of ‘lesser finesse’ then you’ll have it “all to do” downstream and will soon regret not getting someone better. He’s Coventry based, and if anyone needs (wants) an exceptionally good spread then PM me for his contact details. He’s also an excellent external renderer, and does micro-cement and Venetian (etc) plasterwork. He has pics of some of the jobs he’s done and it’ll blow you away! Tres bien It’s all in the finish folks, and you’ll be staring at it in every room for the next couple of decades or more, and if that’s not right then what was the point in getting everything else behind it A1?

Two thoughts: 1. If designing from scratch the additional cost of adding cooling will be minimal in the overall scheme of things so put it in at the start. 2. Why on earth would anyone building a new house in 2026 NOT want to add cooling?

We moved into our new pad just as the first heatwave hit. We are epc A, well insulated, good airtightness, mvhr, ashp that cools the ufh (downstairs). We passed part O (overheating) with flying colours......our experience is that we should have put WAY more thought into our cooling strategy beforehand.....we are in the process of changing track ...(a2a rather than fan coils from ashp), so not sure whereabouts you are but..........

You ask all bonafide contractors for their RAMS too, before they step foot on site, and you also do inductions (regardless of how “busy” you are). And make the site a safe and organised place to be. Allow a lot of time clearing up, sweeping (M-class vacuum needs to be on site as you’re not supposed to kick up dust these days), festoon lighting, don’t have sharp or ‘stabby’ things poking out of ground (rebar protruding needs to be bent back over itself or a mushroom cap put on it), no unmarked or open pits or trenches or barrier around them, list goes on but not rocket science. Take risks with your own life all you like, they can’t jail you for that, but when you invite any 3rd party there then the onus is on you to make them ‘not expire’ ahead of their predetermined departure from this life.

Well done. End of story.

After a few months of delays I'm heading toward finally getting the keys to the new house. In the meantime I've been trying to unpick the house extension history and I think I finally got there. Green is the original cottage. Two (or 3 very small) bedrooms to the left, bathroom & kitchen in the middle, living room at the bottom. I suspect this pre-dates 1950s. Livingroom has raised flooring - probably about 20cm higher than the rest. The ceiling has been raised accordingly and the rafters are visible between the ceiling panels as a feature. I wonder if this was done to retrofit floor insulation at some point... Weird. Wall construction unknown, but from memory, it might be ~10cm thinner than the cavity wall of the top extension, which makes me wonder if it's a solid wall. Will need a closer inspection. Blue extensions were added probably around 1950-60s. Top extension turned the bedroom wing into 3 bedrooms + 1 study. Wheelchair-accessible toilet & wetroom was bolted on to the side of the bedroom wing. Bottom-right blue section is a single-skin flat-roof garage. Right above it is a potential garage conversion into a bedroom/dining room/study. From memory, Flat roof is raised above the garage roof, and walls were quite thick. Will need investigation. Top right pink bit is a single skin utility room. Looks like this is going to be my hobby for the next 10 years. God knows what horrors I'm going to uncover on close inspection.

Nope. It’ll fight your plasterboards until the death. Screws will wind in and pull through the boards, as they won’t be tight against the studs. Seriously, do not use 100mm, persevere and get 75mm.

Excellent. There are a couple of pairs of my Amtico planks that have grain line features that can be partially matched up if you lay them at the right offset on different rows. Sadly the fitters decision to change all my offsets has removed these. At present the plan now is for me to label selected planks that he has laid. And to select replacement planks. He will then take up the labelled planks and replace them with my alternatives. It won't get back to my own careful arrangement, but will reduce the worst of the problem. Unfortunately this means deferring finishing off the floor as my kitchen fitter is back in on Wednesday. I don't mind @Nickfromwales being so frank. I think doing his job you have to be able to be blunt sometimes - to some tradies, and perhaps sometimes beyond that. I do have to say having my sparky on the same day as the floor fitter was not by choice. The floor fitter gave me Thu/Fri as his only dates available before October for completing my job - so I had to take them. The sparky then told me the only dates he had were Thu/Fri. And with Kitchen fitter only being available this Wed before he goes on holiday for a fortnight next week, there was no alternative except yet more weeks of delay. The fitter admitted he knew what my labelling meant and deliberately changed all the offsets anyway. I suspect as a youngster the older guy has drilled him intensly - YOU MUST DO IT THIS WAY - DO NOT DEVIATE etc As a youngster he is also very quiet and shy of speaking. I have spent 40 years surrounded by bright, communicative people - it is difficult to recognise just how closely some things need to be overlooked. Interesting and helpful to see the variety of responses here on such detail and comforting to see I am not alone in seeking carefully detailed finishes, even if others are not so bothered. I will probably email Amtico on the issue. I really do think they could use a much larger image. I suspect you could even give their image to AI and ask it to generate additional similar oak grain and effects on an image and it would do a good job. If brands want to appeal to affluent buyers with claims of permium product, they ought to be doing better I think. Lots of things seem to me to make incredibly slow progress.

It's just that I did a search and that came up, showing it is common. I'm pretty sure we sourced ours through a paint merchant, and it was not a mass market make.

I think there are two big issues with the "stuff": 1- it disproportionately affects lower budget builds. 2- it mostly has to be paid out early, sometimes years before even starting the build, this can be challenging financially. A lot of this is ripe for disruption but I fear the self build market is too small to make the development costs worthwhile. @Gus Potterhas written persuasively in other threads about the savings from getting a good designer/engineer in early. It seems to me the issue is that obviously makes that professional more expensive, and how does a self builder separate someone who is offering a better service from someone who is just charging more? There is no way of knowing whether a professional has settled for the first option they found or considered 10. This is why I try to do as much as possible myself, I'd rather die by my own mistakes, at least I will have learnt something!

Double C no question. USB A will hang around but anything new will come with C and adapters are easy to get. Having said that, personally I wouldn't get socket integrated USB at all. The prices are high, standards change, the standby energy use of them adds up and the risk of them breaking/costing you more money during their life is not great either. (Some types of electrical testing done during EICRs and fault investigation would require all these sockets to be disconnected before the test is run, that's going lead to the electrician charging more). I'd rather get something along these lines for when USB is needed (not a recommendation just result of quick search - in fact not sure the foldable pins is a good idea). https://www.amazon.co.uk/TEKRAT-Charger-Foldable-iPhone-Samsung-White/dp/B0DNRLYSZ1

I'd say confidence is a big issue, most self builders are doing it for the first time and spending their life savings. This leads you to stick to what is known/common which is very often what is used by volume builders. One advantage of self building should be to build bespoke to the situation and to use innovative ideas that haven't reached or aren't suitable for the volume builders; leveraging the experience of others (e.g. this forum) is crucial. Another thing I have found is that you have to try and understand everything yourself. Any professional you employ, no matter how good, has a different set of incentives (being paid, maximising profit, reducing their risk) which are different to your own, you need to try to be an intelligent customer. Easier said than done. I'm still amazed that no one has invented a better way to finish an internal wall than to throw wet muck at it and smooth it over! Probably they have but big plaster has shut them down.

Painfully true. When I started this process 5 years ago - there was still a sliver of a chance that we would come a little bit ahead - i.e. about 10% profit if we decided to sell at the end. It was never intended to be a flip for profit, but doing the math at least keeps you sane when sinking your life savings, blood, sweat and tears into something. A whole host of things since then have happened which means there is no chance I would make the money back if I was to sell it now. The market turned, materials went up, labour went up, we up-specced the material choices (🤨), mansion tax coming and general taxation levels going through the roof. I could easily have bought something of a similar size in decent nick for cheaper than it's been to do the work myself. But, it would have still needed a lot of work to get it up to the right standard and not been exactly what I wanted - so here we are. Will definitely need to live here for at least 10-15 years to stand a chance of the markets recovering and us being able to recover our funds. Luckily, that's the plan anyway 😄

Before they start check they have the drawing. Ask them if there are any issues arising. That is their moment to explain that they disagree or agree to build it as designed. Then you have an agreement and they work to it, or you don't and you have to manage the situation. You'll often find that they haven't got the drawing, or that your workers are not the one you agreed the job with.

In the"old days" A first time self builder with no experience could save at least 15% on the build cost of a house. Now in the old days the market was rising, thus the value of the property also increased by on average, say 10%, over say a 2 year build time. You had to be a complete idiot to lose money on a self build. So even if you were not that good your self build could return a tax free return of up 25%, but nine times out of ten you would not lose your shirt. The market has changed a lot. @saveasteading who has decades of experience pointed out.. and I agree, much of the profit for the volume builders now lies in the land transaction, the actual building of the houses are not the main profit element, the house building is just a means to and end, basically a bit of a hassle! Now if you buy a serviced plot on one of these serviced schemes, the seller (developer) has already taken off the cream of the profit, you as a self building then are looking at marginal profit, but carry much more risk. Self building in this case is not going to make you lots of money, it may give you the house you love though and if that has value for you then it's viable. Now say you do a house that sells for 300k. You'll be lucky to clear 20k after all the taxes etc if you sell it on , if your motive is to make money, you'll have to risk dealing with a builder, a huge amount of personal time.. etc.. the reality is you are likely to be better off if you just do a Saturday morning shift in Aldi, you may even get a pension contribution! I've had the good fortune to talk and meet with @Square Feet who has some ideas about how we get back to making self building more attractive, not least financially. It's early stage ideas, will take time to develop, but looks promising. The reality at the moment is for your average self builder the financial risks are high vs the rewards. There are still a good few very well off self builders who don't really mind if they make money of not. But the whole idea is to encourage young folk to self build and improve their financial health which results from their own hard work. But as above.. it really is the case.. you are better off at times doing a Saturday shift at Aldi!

Town and Country planning act of 1947. Fix that and all the other dominos will fall.

Milton Keynes people. Part of the reason Milton Keynes exists is to make available serviced plots of land for self builders. There are hundreds of them in MK. The local authority in charge obviously has a different mindset and has done for very many years. Now, whether you want to live in MK is a different question but the point is, this is not a new idea and it has been done ( is being done). Why the idea has never really spread is beyond me.

Sorry, but that's not the road block to more people building custom homes.

Hi everyone! I just wanted to introduce myself, I'm Hayden. Myself and my wife have recently purchased our dream house, which is in need of a lot of TLC, and it's going to be massive DIY undertaking. I'm really excited to join this buildhub community and will input where I can. If people are interested, I will be happy to share my progress as I go along. Happy building!

Before you get too carried away, I quietened our Conder simply by placing a standard 100mm concrete block in the chamber so the pump sits on that now, not the plastic that it used to sit on. Still not silent but a LOT quieter.

That is for very special circumstances... a bridge, a block of flats. I've not done or seen one for decades.... commercial or home. (on big jobs we had a lab that did slump tests and took cubes for testing, and so did the supplier. The problem will have been the fibres. Adding them to an 'easy flowing' mix will seriously stiffen the whole thing. A vibrating poker would have made it run but obv that wasn't to hand. I've gone off fibres recently because they seem to stick together in great clumps more than they used to, and the handling issue. But it also looks very dry indeed. How did it even reach there? You have nicely laid mesh so cracking shouldn't be a problem... if they get the mix right. In fact your photo is an example of doing things right, apart from the pile of mess in the middle. Cemex you say! Worth noting.

Why are you not doing a sump test when the truck arrives one bucket full out the truck, slump test, if it fails it goes back. every video I’ve seen on scc the test it as soon as it turns up.

For comparison if it helps, in Jul 23 I got 18 cold rolled C section joists delivered, all different sizes (7.4m down to 5.3m) for £1552. And they’re relatively light.

I just used a 25mm to 22mm stop cock. Been installed 6 years - no issues at all.

I recommend all, especially critics, to consider standing for their local parish or borough. We need you. Then report back on whether it was easy, well rewarded, selfish: or hard work, not or barely rewarded, or public spirited. Or to stop criticising all councillors, politicians and public servants.