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Yesterday we moved into our place, started in 2018 still not 100% finished in 2026, I estimated it would take me 2 years, 🤣🤣 thanks for all the advice from fellow buildhubbers. What we bought, what we have now.

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.

Dear forum members, Our house is complete and we have been resident for three months. I thought to post some pictures and I offer to answer any questions people might have. I don't put ourselves on a pedestal as being any better than other projects, only to say that we have done it. Our primary decisions: We chose a RIBA architect given the importance of the initial concept The layout is somewhat novel, having an H footprint with a single storey 'extension' to reduce the mass of the main house for planning purposes and to help project the rear of the house beyond the shade of the ridge line We chose timber frame (we have built with timber frame, brick and block and ICF in the past) because of speed of construction, and thermal performance We selected MBC from a shortlist of three TF suppliers, and chose MBC's insulated slab We are very pleased to have chosen a large solar array (9KW) and Tesla battery. We have used no grid electricity since commissioning. We have a Valliant ASHP with UFH but haven't had need to heat the house yet We have MVHR which works very well with our air tightness of 0.89 We have no fireplace or chimney We project managed ourselves, and were onsite every day and I did a lot of carpentry / general work alongside the proper trades Project timing: groundwork prep Dec 24, slab Jan 25, frame erection February, windows March, resident 4th July, finished end of August.

I appreciate very few will have read, let alone remembered, my original post in this thread (hence I've quoted it for context), but i thought some may be interested in an update, 8 years on. Just before we moved in in October 2017, my wife had a spirometry test on her lung function. It showed, despite having nebulised antibiotics for 18 months, that her lungs had worsened, with capacity having deteriorated to 50% (from 65% three years earlier). She stopped using the nebuliser around three weeks after moving in, and has only used it for a few days in total in the 8 years since. In late December, as part of a pre-assessment for surgery for an unrelated condition, the anaesthetist requested a new spirometry test. Remarkably, it shows that her lungs have not measurably deteriorated since 2017. I can't say for certain that the house can be credited entirely for this result, but it has certainly played a massive part, and this is one bubble that refuses to burst.

We've nearly finished our lovely Somerset barn conversion. The parents in law and my 99 year old mother have moved into two separate annexes. It all started 8 years ago and we've been building ever since inspite of lockdown and a nasty bout of cancer.

One of the things we paid someone to do for us. Spines are powder coated. Cabling for lights runs inside the spines. Steps made from walnut kitchen worktops. Spindles are solid walnut. Glass is 10mm toughened from Cornwall Glass. Why walnut? It goes with the breakfast bar made from the walnut tree we cut down, also made by same person (Principle Constructions based in Cornwall).

I'm actually not sure where the best place is to post this but as it's primarily about heat pump system design, I'll put it here. @marshian and @mads ,and maybe @MikeSharp01? you've expressed your interest so mentioning you here too. I hope the admins don't mind me putting this up here, but maybe if it is found to be useful, could be pinned to help so many of the people who come here struggling with poor heat loss calcs and designs and want to complete their own. I've finally deployed the tool I've been working on for initial public use. It's available free and open source, so repository on GitHub if anyone wants to host locally. It's currently in a bit of a test mode so I can get some feedback and bug reports to refine it and add further important functions. Just bear in mind I've been developing this myself along with everything else in life and it's been quite a major piece of work since last summer. It is now based on the CIBSE 2026 Domestic Heating Design Guide implementation of BS EN 12831:2017 and BS EN12831:2017 so complies with MCS design requirements. I have been using this tool for MCS heat pump projects in house that I'm doing. It's at https://openheatloss.com Important user notes: At the moment when you arrive, you can complete a whole project anonymously without logging in but this persists only for 48 hours or until you close the browser. The save a project, just register using name and email, nothing else. If you want to remain largely anonymous, you can just add the post code prefix to the installation address to set outdoor design temperature and Typical reference temperature. No need to put in loads of personal information. The workflow design is to work you way from left to right across the app tabs. Current limitations: I have not populated the database with standard wall build-ups and U-values. If you're a self-builder or doing major diy hopefully you'll have this info already for your project, otherwise you'll need to look it up manually. There is, however, a comprehensive floor u-value calculator and a simplified one in the room elements input too, so these can be calculated for you. Same thing with radiators - no standard sizes or outputs in a global database yet. I will do a scrape at some point. All outputs entered should be the Delta T 50 catalogue values and if you want system volume calcs, also input the radiator water volume. The UFH sizing calculates volume automatically based on your set pipe diameter, spacing and room area. Text based design - I've tried some of the design tools that are trying to be like cad design software, so you've got do draw your project. Having used cad software, I didn't warm to any of them because they're not proper cad software but in house bespoke design. As I also found out they have limitations so you have to fudge some shapes - roofs in particular. Text based means you can input elements more flexibly according to your needs. Well, I hope so anyway. What you will find different if you've used other tools, although I'm sure they'll either be doing it already or soon, is that the tool provides 2 different heat load figures. is for the heat generator which calculates the whole house fabric and normal ventilation includes a full fabric air infiltration calculation and is usually higher than the generator load To explain this, the new heat loss calculation methods according to BS EN 12931:2017 and specifically those implemented in CIBSE 2026, with wind load under certain conditions, parts of the building and rooms may require higher heat outputs, whilst other parts may need less. This 'total' value comes to a higher result than the generator. In my own test projects that I've run through the new software, I can attest to this working quite well. For example, in one design and installation project of mine, one particular room in the house was designed for 23C but over the winter, whilst never cold, the room never managed more than 21C. I had thought it was a balancing issue, but no. When I ran this project through the new software it predicted that I would need larger radiators in this particular room, base on the new ventilation infiltration calculation, so that is what I will be installing before next winter. Anyway, please have a go and let me know what you think, and ask any questions you have here, or email me at the tool - [email protected] Does anyone need a user guide to the design workflow and inputs? Let me know..

Back by popular demand! (Well, one person asked.) I said the previous blog was my last. I lied. This bonus edition focuses our efforts to landscape the garden. Just before we moved in in February the rear ‘garden’ looked a bit like this: Fortunately, we’d stayed close enough to the build budget to have some funds still reserved for landscaping. It turns out that landscaping is expensive - similar costs to groundworks in our experience. Last year, while waiting for planning and itching to do something, we’d engaged a garden designer to help us meet some key requirements. We wanted to create a small garden with multiple planting and seating areas with level access from the house and wheelchair access to all areas. The designer came up with a design we liked - an interesting mixture of curves and angles, with planting and seating areas as requested. We ended up adapting this design to form the skeleton of the garden. In truth we were never likely to take any design without tweaking it but if we attempted the design ourselves it would have been very boring compared with the garden we now have. (We also ditched the designers planting list suggestion but Mrs P. was always going to have the plants she wanted, and why not?) One reason we had to adapt the design was that the fall in height was more than we planned for at 1.6m, and we only had about 12m distance to manage it given we wanted a terrace with level access next to the house. For comfortable wheelchair access I find it’s best to limit ramps to no more than 1:20 gradient, which implies we needed to fit in 32m of ramps in a 12m x 15m area. So the paths became a bit more meandering. Here’s my amateur attempt at trying to gauge shape and fall of the paths. Our excellent local landscape gardener Ashley Ralph (Ashely Ralph Landscaping - I’m not on commission!) started work in February to turn our amended plan into reality. Marking out was fun! This photo shows just how tight a space Ashley was working with. Cern Abbas Giant eat your heart out! Anyway... we needed quite a few retaining walls, which means a lot of trenches and footings. It rained a lot in February too, which added to the challenge. It would have been nice to achieve this with less concrete and fewer concrete blocks but I can’t think how that could have been done. Ashley, with Francis driving the dumper. The block walls were capped with sandstone copings and given a sand and cement render finish. We remembered to run some armoured cables and blue water pipe to allow couple of electric sockets and water taps. In the end we decided not to bother with external lighting even though we’d got planning permission approval because we rarely need it and are happy to use portable rechargeable lamps when we do. The paths and seating areas are in resin bound gravel; here are the paths edged in red setts then with and a concrete sub-base on type 1. Here’s the scene before the resin top-coat is laid but after the planting beds have had their topsoil put in. Troy's taken the idea of 'beds' too literally: For the terrace we used the external version of the internal 900 x 600 porcelain tiles we use throughout the house. The external tiles are 20mm thick rather than 10mm and have a slightly rougher surface for slip resistance. We used the same tiles for the front porch area. The walls at either side of the rear garden have drops of over 600mm so our building inspector insisted we put up ‘fall protection’ which we did using locally sourced cedar slats, fixed horizontally to posts ‘resin-studded’ to the walls. This doubles as screening from our neighbours and provides extra shelter and structure for climbing plants, so we were not too upset at having to do this. (The wider gaps at the bottom are deliberate here, to allow jasmine to grow through from the other side. Beer at bottom right is entirely incidental!) The final step for all that hard landscaping: the resin bound gravel surface. We think it looks great. It’s very smooth to wheel on and all the gradients are good too! For the planting beds we imported a fair amount of loamy topsoil to go over the existing heavy clay. Hopefully this will give a good balance with the underlying clay retaining water whilst the surface soil doesn’t get waterlogged. The beds are not enormous but it is going to take a lot of plants to fill them. That, and time to allow the plants to grow and establish themselves. Er… planting beds Troy! Obviously Mrs P. is in charge of the planting as I haven’t got a clue. The beauty of raised beds is that you can put the soil you want in them. One of the beds closer to the house will have sharper drainage and is going to become a Mediterranean garden. Another has been filled with ericaceous soil for acid-loving plants. I do know that we have some of our favourite plants already planted or planned, including roses: Nye Bevan, Claire Austen, Queen of Sweden, Champagne Moments, Donahue; also various peonies, hydrangeas eryngiums, achillia, lavenders… and lots of others. But plenty more planting opportunities according to Mrs P. - I’d better check that budget again! Well, that’s it for this bonus edition garden landscaping blog. A big thank you to Ashley and Francis for all their incredible work building our garden, and to Mrs P. of course for great plant choices, all that planting, and green fingers. After all, what is a garden without plants? That’s definitely it now… …until the epilogue maybe. Ben

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 56 to 74 The UFH is laid and the screed is providing a lovely wobble free surface for the ladders and makes brushing up so much nicer. Our neighbour kindly lent us his scaffold tower so that we could insulate the vaulted ceiling in the open plan area which is approx 5m high. This has enabled me to finish insulating between the rafters with 140mm of Rockwool and I have PIR sheets to put up under the rafters. For cutting both the Rockwool and the PIR I created a few templates of different angles and had them ready for when my husband came to help pass them up to me. Once the Rockwool was finished we both took it in turns on the scaffold tower fitting the PIR. Having a vaulted ceiling in the openplan area and partially vaulted elsewhere will give us plenty of light and nice high ceilings but for now they are awkward to cut around to insulate and ensure the VCL is tight around the junctions. The time spent doing this will no doubt be forgotten once we move in and it is starting to feel closer. We marked out the kitchen island location and dining room table location to get first fix electic lighting located and measured for the kitchen units. For my birthday treat our daughter came to stay and dog sit our elderly Greyhound so that we could go shopping looking at kitchens. We spent almost 4 hours in Wren Exeter with Harvinder but we think we have ordered a lovely kitchen and pantry. Unfortunately our neighbour needed the scaffold tower back but said we could borrow it again as soon as he had finished with it. We then decided we should book in the plasterer as things were starting to come together, rather luckily for us our plasterer had just had a job cancel on him and when we spoke to him on a Thursday he said he could start next week either Tuesday or Wednesday. As we hadn’t finished insulating one side of the vaulted ceiling we said we couldn’t be ready that quick unless he wanted to quote for fitting the PIR and the VCL, which I had already purchased most of. We then spent the weekend and Monday getting first fix electrics in the kitchen and mocking up where the TV was going to get the electrics and room wall lighting ready. Things have therefore started to move on quicker than we expected, so we are hopeful of moving in by winter this year with a working kitchen, one bathroom and one bedroom finished at least. Kitchen design render. Testing TV and speaker location. Even with the plasterboard lifter its hard with 3 on the scaff and one on the lifter, so glad I'm not doing it. Taking time off the insulation has meant I can tidy the UFH expansion foam up in all the rooms and the trip hazards we kept ignoring at door room openings, whilst being on hand for the plasterers if they need more tape etc or have any questions. Once they have finished with the VCL membrane I might finish the VCL I started before we borrowed the scaffold tower or I could take a rest from the build and catch up on so many other things, even paint schemes maybe. I have caught up on the build paperwork this weekend. The total spend to date including the provisional kitchen figure of £15,000 which includes VAT, units, worktop, tiles and some appliances so not the reclaim amount. Total to date £238917 over 135m2 is £1770 m2 for a 3 bed, 2 bath, bungalow This is broken down as follows. General £4200 Carpentry £500 Kitchen £15100 Roof insulation, inc membrane and tapes etc £4500 First Fix Electrical £1230 First fix plumbing and partial bathroom costs (ongoing) £1430 UFH £900 Drainage and gutering £8540 Floor insulation inc tape and membranes £2670 Screed £2740 Cladding (over ordered but ideas are developing) £5690 Render £3090 Solar 7.5 KWp £8570 Roof £23300 Windows £20870 no front door yet. ICF Construction £119600 Pre build costs and fees etc £15830 The back of envelope guesstimate of future spend is £35k to finish apx £2k per m2

Quite a sobering thread this tbf. I was not aware that this grinds folk down quite as much as it seems to, the old "self-build" malarkey....... I use BH to shed my brain of the excess energy floating around between my ears, quite bad ADHD etc, and an interest shared here and on eBuild, our home before Buildhub, where it's just nice to see and hear people ask questions and then have us lot intervene so they then don't have things go "tits-up". I'ts nice to have a hand in the prevention of such events. For any folk who are a bit befuddled or overwhelmed and want to get off the starting blocks with their projects, if this helps, I'm happy to do so some 30 mins Teams / phone chats FOC. I can offer advice for groundworks / substructures / superstructures, insulation and airtightness, right through to fenestration, roof and solar etc, or ask me which ASHP or MVHR is the best one to go for etc. 60 min chats not a prob, with maybe members then offering up a small donation to the Buildhub coffers for our annual running costs or whatever. Buildhub is a free-to-join forum that is completely volunteer run and operated, and is not for profit btw. Without donations, it would not exist. I cover pretty much A-Z, so quite comprehensive, and if anyone is interested just ping me a PM and I'll slot you in when I'm between doing other stuff I imagine it'll be like a really coarse, Welsh AI lol. The caveat is, it'll be offered to contributing members only, so no piss-takers need apply IIRC @ETC offers up a bit of selfless support here and there, so it's not uncommon for good folk on here to give up their time to give struggling members an occasional leg-up. I'm sure a few other regulars help, such as @craig, other maybe going unsung so sorry if I missed anyone also deserving of a mention here. "Long live the Hub".

I was drawn to this thread as I was badly struggling for motivation in the couple of months before Christmas, especially trying to undertake tasks single handedly that really required someone with 8 arms, and a lot more height and strength than I have. I eventually got to the point where I was barely achieving anything, and getting more and more self-critical and fed up. Constantly tired, frustrated, and aching. I decided to speak to my GP and started taking anti-depressant medication, which has made a tremendous difference already. In addition, I decided to take up the offers of help that people have given me, and aimed to structure activities around that help in a way that makes it feel the most effective, eg. getting some large boards up on the wall with a few screws so that when I'm back to working alone I can do the simple task of filling in the remaining screws. It isn't even slightly surprising that the pressures of undertaking a self building project can have a negative impact on mental wellbeing. Even the most optimistic of us can get worn down by the feeling of it being relentless and interminable. Asking for help can be transformative.

Last night was my first night sleeping in my new house, finally! Got 1 bedroom mostly finished. Ikea wardrobes, painted, blind and floor installed. Just enough to call it a home! Lots more to do but it saves rent and commuting time. I plan to take it easy for the next fortnight as the last two years have been creeping up on me. Small projects for the short term. Getting internal doors installed (by someone else!) currently. Put some acoustic insulation around the linings and cut it back. I like the look of the wood/oak veneer. Been chasing documentation for the BER (SAP) assessor. It adds up to quite a lot. Doors, Windows, Heating systems, section plans, U value calcs. Think I have all of it now - hopefully they'll issue a BER Cert soon! My airtightness commission went sideways, lots of leaks. So one of my snags is to put air tightness tape around all the ducts to the MVHR unit and outdoors and also between it and the manifolds. The testing unit is very sensitive (even dropping it puts it out of commission for two weeks!) so I've a bit of work to do before I call them back. The Renson Endura Delta 330 has a few levels of ventilation and they upped the minimums from 50m3/hr to 127. Will see with single occupancy if I adjust this down a bit. I can monitor the unit with an app only, there's no display. I noticed when I ran the supersayer gas heater for a few hours to warm the house (as the gas bottles had been unused for the last two years) the CO2 levels hit the roof and it went to max flow rate to clear it out. Anyway, I plan to use the Air to air system more going forward and that won't cause the same issue. Had two floods to deal with. I've a japanese bath I was trying out. We'd filled the bath with a little water to check for leaks a few weeks ago and it drained fine. The bath is on a platform to allow for a trap to be installed below it. The drain for the bath just fits into a grill so it's open and can potentially overflow which is what happened after I fully filled it, used it and two days later pulled the plug! Luckily I put the plug back in and used towels to keep the water in the bathroom as it's tanked / is a wetroom so no damage was caused to the rest of the house. There is a seat in the bath so I was trying to get the most comfortable position and removed the seat. I'll probably put it back as it's a short bath and my back didn't like the sitting position on the floor of that bath all scrunched up. The seat means you only get heat around your hips so will have to have a think about it more at some stage. Or get a bigger bath! The second incident was with the washing machine last night. The discharge pipe isn't big enough for the tumble dryer, air to air condensate and the washing machine so I got an adapter that taps into the side of the pipe with a spigot for the washing machine discharge. This didn't seal/hold so it spilled everywhere. I think I'll go back to basics, replace that section of pipe and glue on a y bend to create two parallel discharge pipes and this way I can get everything connected at once and no risk of floods! My car charger won't reach the car as it's about a meter short but that's due to a big hole I've to backfill with MOT. The dust is everywhere but at least with the internal doors I can mitigate this a bit going forward! So not finished yet but I have a doorbell, hot water, heating and an amazing house to walk around in and rest a bit before finishing the final list of projects and call it a day!

This day has been on my mind for months. We really struggled to find a company that would visit the site and confirm whether we could get a static down the lane. In the end we took an educated guess and purchased a 2023 37x13 unit from a private seller. So at 1100hrs today, the wife of the driver (Greg Caravan Haulage) appeared in the driveway telling me I needed to go and cut some low hanging branches. We got the static on site relatively easy, but then it got bogged down twice whilst reversing it over the type 3 MOT. We had to Jack it up and then finally decided that sheets of 18mm shuttering ply under the wheels might be the way forward. In a nutshell , if we’d done that from the start we’d have got it done much quicker. It’s in position and I just need to get it levelled and on blocks now. A bit too stressful for my liking, but relieved. I’ve been more concerned about getting the static on site, than building the house.

Once upon a time a deluded wrinkly, his much less wrinkly wife and their noisy little dog left their almost fairy tale rural retreat to live in a freezing rented bungalow while they buggered about trying to build a new semi-urban retreat nearby. (How clever am I avoiding the word suburban!). Everything would have gone swimmingly but for the fact that the head of the wrinkly was just too full. It sort of still is I think. In the four months since the last post (stop thinking of a bugler at sunset even though some days that feels appropriate) much has been done: We’ve built a garage and the front of site is much less of a moonscape. All our blockwork is in, much of it rendered. We’ve now got one flat roof and two slated rooves, one with loads of solar panels. All our windows and some of our doors are in. We’ve got 240mm of underfloor insulation and a circa 100mm sand and cement screed with lots of buried pipes, of both the heating and soil varieties. The screed alone changed things to more house than warehouse - fabulous. Almost all the internal wall skeletons are back up - so now we get a much better feel for the layout which is a very good thing. (We built some downstairs walls earlier but took them down to make the DPM and insulation easier.) Most of the frame insulation is in. There’s even loft insulation in the loft - ok it’s still in its rolls ready to be fitted but it’s still there, patiently waiting. And there’s some VCL in place and we’ve made a start on the inner skin - some battens and yet more mineral wool to form what is really an insulated service void to give us a half decent wall U value. The man cave has its insulated metal panel roof and is usefully storing tons of stuff. All the service pipes and wires are buried in a trench ready for connection to said man cave which meant yet more depressing hours on a digger, and now the back garden is a moonscape. A humongous insulated twin pipe monster conger eel of a thing is buried, surfacing at the concrete plinth for the heat pump at one end and in the under stairs cupboard at the other. We have surface water drainage pipes installed at the back. Phew. No wonder we are worn out. And I’ve probably left lots of things out too - when you are on site every day it’s so easy to forget what has been done and focus instead on the rather elongated to do list that keeps me awake at night. Not every night mind, some nights are a lot better than others and I am getting a vaguely sensible amount of sleep more nights than not now, thanks to constantly talking stuff through with J. But there is an essential difference in the build. Before we sold Bramble we knew we were running out of money so we weren’t going at full hurtle. I had a twenty minute drive to and fro and a soak in the bath, all of which helped me keep my head in the game. It felt like there was time to think. Now I have a twenty second walk (if I dawdle) to and from site. Despite the ice box (aka rented bungalow) having a really powerful gas combi boiler it has a low power electric shower that dribbles just enough water to get clean but not get warm. And we’ve the money we need to complete, so it’s warp factor 8 Mr Sulu. Now if I was doing this on my own I’d have no choice but to slow right down, and try and get my head together, and feel in control again. Thankfully we are totally in this together, so we aren’t slowing down. Not that it’s without tensions. J and I talk everything through and she keeps track of tons of things that I can’t (hopefully everything that I can’t, which is an unfair burden but that’s how it is). We identify short term priorities and I focus on them, with me tacitly accepting that I am not personally in control of everything as for me to be so would mean a lot slower progress: neither of us want to stay in the ice box a day longer than strictly necessary. So the tightrope act is to balance keeping the pedal down as hard as possible without us actually losing control or allowing any major cock ups to occur. Simples. It gets harder when there is anyone else on site but ourselves and Rolly, our chippy. Peeps are incredibly (and I believe unconsciously) attention hungry especially when their needs are coupled with my need to monitor all work and limit disturbance to the neighbourhood. It’s so frustrating that when a contractor is on site my own productivity declines enormously. And then there’s the gargantuan mess, especially in one particular case - the thoughtless dumping of spare stuff; the treading of material up and down the road without a care for the frozen moron still sweeping and hosing down the road in the dark hours after they’ve finished their second pint; the drifting flocks of discarded paper bags mixed in with fast food packaging. Sigh. At least everyone we’ve had on site so far has done excellent work, so that does compensate. The feeling of a lack of control is not helped by the fact that I’m completely useless at estimating the time needed for tasks - though as J frequently mentions we’ve not done lots of this stuff before so we should accept that we can’t know. The DPM and underfloor insulation took me many, many times what I imagined and I’ve a black belt in beating myself up. I enjoyed doing the lower polystyrene layer, so nice to work with, but hated the PIR layer. The polystyrene has spring in it and one can cut pieces a little oversize, lever them in and get a really nice, tight fit. It’s messy in that little baubles of white stuff get everywhere but they don’t get down your throat. PIR however is sooooo different. The dust it creates is truly horrible, it lingers in the throat many hours later even if a mask is worn, which it mostly was. It almost appears to shrink away from it’s neighbours - when cut to precise size and shape, wrestled into place shooting showers of nasty dust up as the air trapped underneath is expelled through the tiny gaps at the side - it still sits there showing a small but definite gap between the sheets. Not at all satisfying. Thank heavens we ignored the architect and chose not to put PIR in the walls. So it turns out that there is a job worse than moving tons and tons of crush. But thats now done, thank heavens. As an aside I’d planned just polystyrene, but the reinforced slab came up a bit more than planned so I switched to part PIR to get the insulation level I’d targetted. Note to self: get quotes for different thicknesses of stuff before deciding. Buying stuff that local suppliers have on hand saves tons, which accidentally benefitted us on the underfloor insulation - had things gone to plan it would have cost us rather more for the same insulation performance due to me designing in theoretically available sizes. Odd world, innit. The need to book contractors is a real source of pressure. An example: We have been recommended a plasterer who everyone says is brill and so is v busy and we don’t want to lose him, but that means guessing a timescale and thence sticking to it. I’m an ex-project manager. I know that to manage the project requires knowledge of the timescales for each task in the train, and as above - I really don’t have a scooby. Well, I do, but Skooby the Skoda probably doesn’t count in that regard. So, in summary we’ve got tons done, but tons still to do. Xmas has annoyingly punctuated the project but that’s probably a mental godsend - at least I’ve a popped ballon to enjoy putting in my empty honey jar. We’re working really well and closely together as a couple and I will get used to the feeling of panic just below the surface that not feeling personally in control causes; the foreboding that I cannot be confident that I haven’t missed something important; the relying on J that will deliver much faster progress. You never know, my next post might even be a bit about the build…

This time of the year gets to me - sometimes. And in the context of self-building, its dark for longer, wet for longer, cold for longer, windy for longer than I'd like. Optimists say that some of that can be sorted by proper clothing, and decent site lighting. But wetness can make a site misery quicker than anything, cold can stop concrete and mortar dead. Wind is a bastard on a scaffold. Self building's a character test. The push to complete never lets up despite all of the above. I suspect that a few of us are having to 'dig-deeper-than-normal' these days. Got any ways of picking yourself up when things are more than merely gloomy?

Hi everyone. It’s been four weeks since the last blog instalment and despite the Christmas and New Year break, quite a lot has happened. Apologies for a somewhat scattergun approach but I wanted to try to cover all the progress. Kitchen units and appliances Last time, just before Christmas, carpenter Chris was halfway through fitting our kitchen units. That work was completed during the first week of January in readiness for… Kitchen worktops Martin from Langford Stone came out to template the kitchen/pantry/utility units for our worktops. While he was at it, we also asked him to template for several granite surfaces for our master ensuite. A week later Langford’s team of four fitters arrived with some very large slabs of granite, which they duly fitted without issue and to a high standard. We’re very pleased with the results: Internal doors Chris and Alan fitted the four pocket doors to the sliding gear installed back in September, before plastering. They then fitted the oak door linings for the 8 conventional doors and hung those doors. The door linings required some thinking about because we originally opted for rebated linings but these have had to be reinforced with ply backing to give enough meat to confidently screw in hinges that can take the weight of the (44 kg!) doors. We hope still to get the rebated look by fixing full width door jams, which we’ve now ordered. The doors themselves are 33” Avon Oak fire doors from Todd doors. We opted to buy them unfinished because the factory finish doors felt a bit ‘plasticky’. Mrs P. has done a brilliant job with sealing them with Osmo Door oil and we are very pleased with the results - they have a lovely look and feel to them . The doors supplied were really good quality - no need for further sanding before oiling and no complaints from the carpenters (except about the weight!) Troy Pointer supervising operations: 2nd fix electrics After a pause at the beginning of January, Darren is now back with us and making good progress on the second fix electric. Skirtings Steve, our tiler came in to fix the porcelain skirting tiles and was able to make a start, but the rethink needed for the door linings meant we are not ready to fix all the architraves just yet. So he has promised to come in on a future Saturday to finish those off. The skirting tiles themselves are 900 mm long and have more of a bow in than we were expecting (well I was expecting them to be flat to be honest!). Steve was worried that they would not look great but in reality unless you look along the line of the wall you can’t really notice the bowing and we are happy to live with it (especially since we can’t think of any sensible alternative at this stage). Once grouted or caulked to the same colour as the walls we don’t think it will be an issue. Ensuite boxing-in I’ve been whiling away the odd hour here and there preparing the ensuite for final fix by my brother next week. There’s quite a lot of pipework which needs to be hidden - given the way the house design squeezes three bathrooms into a small space, the stud walls are just not wide enough to take it all. So my idea was to create some boxing-in using spare 4x2s to hide the pipes, provide some built-in cupboard space, and form a framework for timber cladding on the lower walls. Sure, I could have asked the chippies to do this and they’d have done a great job in no time... but where’s the fun in that? For the timber cladding itself we’re going be using some of the left over Brimstone heat treated ash we have used to clad the outside of the house. This time of course we'll seal it with Osmo oil. The quality of that Brimstone Ash is too good to waste solely on the outside. You will hopefully be able to see from future blogs whether this bathroom design idea has been successful or not but for now here's some 'boxing-in'. Moving in next month! I mentioned in the previous blog that we had brought forward our target moving in date to the end of February. We now have a removal date booked of 23rd February. - so only five weeks away! We should be fine, we could probably move in and camp now if needed. The main things we really need sorting are a fully working bathroom, electrics, and ideally smooth and solid access to the front of the property. Hopefully we can get all that done in the next five weeks. Council tax Mrs P. and I were wondering about bin collection and also how soon the council would want to start charging council tax, when lo and behold the man from the council turned up. He explained the process, gave us a form, and told us we could request bins (for which we have to pay a £81 one off charge - of course we do). Since we will be ceasing the council tax liability on our rented house, we are happy to start paying council tax on the new house. The council man said it could take three or four months to get a council tax valuation but they will backdate the charge to our move in date. Address After seven months(!) Royal Mail have finally got round to adding our address to their postcode checker database. They say on their website that they will only add it when you move in but as anyone who has self-built will know it’s really very difficult to arrange deliveries, service installs, etc. if your postcode is not on that Royal Mail database. My advice for anybody starting a self-build is get that address registered as early as possible. Fibre Another service that’s taken seven months from request to delivery is our full fibre to the house. Many of you will know this is a new build building control requirement for England, so we requested (and paid for it) back in June. It finally arrived last week. Unfortunately we didn’t get added to the Openreach fibre database straight away so no service providers could offer us a fibre service until that was resolved earlier this week. We’re hoping to get the broadband service up and running next week. Focus for the next two weeks: Electrics, still lots to do. We’re hoping to have two sparkies in for most of next week so they should make a lot of headway. Plumbing. My brother Chris is back for 4 days next week and will focus on getting our master ensuite up and running, the kitchen & utility sinks fully plumbed in, and then if there’s time progress on the family bathroom and guest ensuite. Landscaping. Ashley, our garden landscaper is making a start on the front landscaping from Monday. We’re really looking forward to seeing the crushed aggregate disappear under something more wheelchair-friendly. Dashboard: Contractor days on site this past four weeks: 47 Contractor days on site since build start: 495 Budget: No change - over budget but within contingency. Plan: Moving in booked for 23rd February. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: N/A Current top issues and worries: None.

Hi, last September we found a plot we liked in South Cambridgeshire and started to look into doing our own self build. This is something we had considered doing when we retire, but plots that align with our requirements are not super abundant, so we decided to do it now instead. We are looking to build a Passivhaus two storey dwelling and have it certified. Energy efficiency is important to us and so is having a home at the end that is really comfortable to live in. A few months later and we have exchanged contracts and are a couple of months into a planning application, awaiting the final outcome any week now. We started the journey with an architect, but two months into the relationship we realized our timeline would be heavily affected by the fact that we were not totally aligned and not fully listened to (despite very lengthy email threads back and forth) and decided to learn how to do the architecting ourselves, and hire any experts we needed to help with things along the way. But having a third party handling it all for us was... too low touch for our liking. We'll be managing the build ourselves, as we've decided against having a main contractor. Maybe we'll need a project manager at some point. We've been reading the forum and learning from you all, hopefully we contribute something back soon!

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!

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I’ve got to be honest, there are times when it feels like we are inching towards the finish line ever more slowly, with lots of jobs nearly but not quite done. Pulling together this regular blog is really helpful in that respect: Every fortnight I start off thinking there is hardly anything to say so it’s probably not worth issuing an update. But once I start to look at what’s happening since the previous blog I realise that we have generally made good progress. And indeed it’s a case of more good progress over the last two weeks. It does now feel like we are nearly over the line. Several long-standing activities have been closed off thank goodness. So here are some of the things we’ve made progress on since the previous blog. (Confession time: I meant to take more photos of the bathrooms, kitchen and lighting but seem to have forgotten to do so, so you’ll have to wait for next time for those.) Bathroom After our disaster last time with the wall hung shower toilet, my brilliant brother came back over from Sussex to hang the replacement, even though he had managed to break his foot in the meantime - that’s what I call dedication to the cause! The (revised and up-to-date) instructions we were given with the replacement WC pan said to tighten the wall bolts to 7Nm torque. Which seems really very low - the sorts of torque used on bicycle parts. Anyway, that’s what we did to the best of our ability. It was just about enough to stop the toilet feeling at all wobbly and the good news is nothing cracked, nothing fell on the floor, and the toilet seems pretty stable. Especially now it’s been siliconed around the edges - though I’m sure the silicon doesn’t add any strength at all. While he was with us, Chris also fitted the small hand basin in our ensuite, tiled and grouted the splashbacks, then fitted a lot of sound insulation into the stud work between the three bathrooms (they all back on to each other, so good acoustic insulation is a definite plus!). He also bailed us out of a looming problem with our porcelain tile skirting… Tiling We were getting increasingly concerned whether our floor tiler would finish off the porcelain skirting tiles before we moved in. The quality of his work has been great, but since Christmas it’s been hard to schedule any time from him partly because he’s been ill and also he’s got a lot of other work, I guess. So we agreed to part company amicably, we agreed a payment for his completed the work, and my brother Chris stepped into the breach. Chris then spent a long day finishing off the skirtings, which really meant doing all the tricky mitre corners which had been left until last plus a few straight runs. For a simple, relatively open-plan house we had a surprising number of corners! Chris then went round and grouted 130 m of skirting. Great job Bro! We decided to hire a recommended specialist silicon guy to apply silicon around the bottom and the top of the skirtings, 260m in total. He did a great job, and very quickly. He is certainly getting a good rate for it! But I’d agreed a fixed rate and he did it to a good standard so, fair enough… Specialist siliconing is obviously where the money is these days! Anyway, all our tiling and skirtings grouting and siliconing is now officially… done! Kitchen Chris the carpenter has finished off all the outstanding jobs in the kitchen, including the final fit of ‘wall of ovens’ in the alcove where they sit. I’d been pondering the best approach to ventilation and with Chris’s help we came up with a what I think is a neat solution - creating a slender recessed ventilation strip above the ovens which is there but doesn’t catch the eye. Chris also fitted the plinths which make the kitchen look finished rather than work-in-progress. The Quooker tap is now powered up in as well as plumbed in and we have been using it for the first time over the past couple of days. I have to say I’m really impressed; it works really well and feels and looks great too. Electrics Progress on second fit electrics has been frustrating, I think mainly because our electricians have got too much work on and they’re trying to juggle multiple jobs. Also to be fair, our installation has been more complex than originally envisaged due to choices we’ve made. The rate of progress hasn’t been a problem until recently but it’s begun to feel like we might not have the electrics ready to move in: However, our main man Darren was in this week and made good progress, and we now have power and lighting throughout the house. All the kitchen equipment is powered up and whilst there could still be a fair few jobs outstanding after we move in (e.g. external lights) it’s clear that the electrics are going to be working well enough for us to move in as planned on the 23rd. Yesterday Nick, the electric contractors boss, demonstrated the seamless switch-over from mains to battery by switching off the mains supply without causing so much as a flicker to the lights. I wanted to try it myself when we had friends round later but Mrs P wouldn’t let me: “it’s not a toy” apparently. I was wondering whether we would actually know if we had a power cut, but the battery app sends us a message to say the power’s tripped over to batteries and then another one when the power is restored and it’s tripped back. I was a bit worried that, with the electrical work ‘growing’ and there being a fair few extras that we’ve asked for, the final bill was going to be way over the original quote. So I have been badgering Nick to give us a revised quote. He has finally done that, and yes, it’s going to cost us a bit more than he first quoted but actually not nearly as much more as I feared. Which is a result! Joinery Meanwhile on the joinery front, the oak we ordered to use as full width door jambs and the pocket door frame sections have all arrived. Mrs. P. has Osmo oiled them, fitting has started and they should all be installed by the time we move in. Rear landscaping Lots of activity is now underway on our rear landscaping. We have a fall of about 1.5 metres from the house finished floor level to the far end of the “residential garden“ part of our land. As I am a wheelchair user we are naturally wanting to have step free access to as much of that as possible. The garden design we have involves level access from the house to a terrace seating area, then 1:20 ramps down to three different further small seating areas between planting areas. That obviously involves quite a lot of low retaining walls and ramped paths. So given we are in the middle of the winter monsoon season, it was clearly an ideal time to start work on those walls, paths and terraces! Ashley and his team have made great progress despite the weather, as you can see - although if their landscaping work ever dries up (ha ha!) they could probably get good employment as World War 1 battle scene recreators. Front landscaping If the back garden looks like the Somme, in front of the house the parking/turning area is looking much more civilised. We debated about how to finish the surface, considering a number of options, but in the end we’ve gone for simple tarmac. Gravel is a no-no for the wheelchair, resin bonded is too expensive, brick pavers we don’t like the look of and need regular cleaning. In a previous house we had hot-rolled grit into tarmac and that does look nice but we found it collects dirt and is a recipe for bringing grit into the house, so we’re keeping it simple this time. The base coat is down and the front apron is being done tomorrow(!). The aim is to leave the top coat until all the heavy work in the back is done, to avoid damaging it. Ashley has told us several times we’re doing it the wrong way round - we should have started at the back and worked forward - but having that base coat down is transformational for me - no more wheeling through lumps of clay or getting bogged down in loose type 1. Preparation under way: Troy anointing the prepared sub-base. "May God bless her and all who walk/wheel on her": Laying down the blacktop: First flower bed planted! Focus for the next two weeks: Moving in! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this past two weeks: 45 Contractor days on site since build start: 572 Budget: No change - over budget but within contingency. Plan: Moving in on 23rd February. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: Hanging that toilet Whether the electrics would be ready Finishing the skirtings Current top issues and worries: Packing! (I expect Mrs P. has it all under control ;-))

In case anyone is interested, we had some good news today. To recap: the plot is a disused commercial building, in a village centre, in a Conservation Area, and in a National Park. It's directly overlooked by the neighbours who are on higher ground. There were two reasons for refusal - the impact on the Conservation Area and the impact on the neighbours. We'd offered a detailed study of the local area and showed how our design responded to it. The Inspector agreed with us. But the Inspector agreed with the neighbours that there would be a negative impact on them. He weighed it on the opportunity to redevelop a derelict site, the need for housing and the environmental credentials (EPC B in this case). So that's the end of that chapter. Start = 11 July, site visit = 9 October, decision = 5 February. Thanks for the moral and technical support from this group, and I'm happy to share more details if anyone needs them. Now the actual work begins!

That's a good call on both counts. My recommendation is also to have a serious look at the tools out there available - as well as rigs you can knock up with spare timber - that can make your life easier to move and fit materials. One of the things I've noticed is that the trades and builders generally are really bad at thinking things through like this and will scoff at stuff that makes life easier - as a consequence we unconsciously follow those practices. Building on your own takes a very different mentality than a testosterone filled building site with lots of labour available or those who are willing to harm their bodies (I once got laughed at by a builder for putting on some chain saw trousers when I was about to chop down 3 trees). One very small example is atool I bought several years ago was this: https://grabo.com/ It turns lifting plywood, plasterboard, windows, paving slabs, you name it, into a one person job and means you can hold a sheet up to a wall single handedly with putting in a screw with the other. When I first started using it I got giggles from staff in the builders merchants about how I'd just got the vibrator out. Then that turned into how they wished the company would buy a few in for them. I had no idea how much I'd end up using it.

After a full on week of getting the following jobs done. We’ve finally moved in. Given we have to hand the keys back to the rental on Monday, it’s been cutting it fine. 1) caravan foul drainage connected to the sewage treatment plant 2) water supply to shed for washing machine 3) installing Starlink. This was very easy 4). Fitting a skirt to the static from salvaged 18mm shuttering ply 5). Making some steps. So glad I never burnt the pallets. They are perfect. I won’t miss the hours drive each way and my commute to London is now 45 mins instead of 90 mins, plus our daughter is moving into her first home shortly and she’ll be 7 minutes away. A new chapter has begun 😃 ps - site currently resembles the Somme

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.

Weeks 40 to 56 So it’s been a year now since we started the build and I’m happy with our progress but perhaps more importantly I’m still enjoying it. If you have followed the blog from the beginning you might have thought this was going to be a quick build as the shell went up quick but don’t worry work is continuing as we expected at our own slower pace, we have no definite finish date but it would be nice to be in for winter next year. The cladding is finally complete. David started the cladding at the end of March and I think it’s fair to say it took him a lot longer to complete than he expected, but like me he likes to get the details correct ie drip angles on bottom edges etc and neat finishing around the doors and windows. The photos show how the Thermo Pine has already started to fade. We are happy with the colour changes it is greying nicely and hopefully will blend in with our working barn after another summer. Above is a sample piece that has not been exposed to the weather and the other image shows the first signs of the greying colour change. This is our working barn the wood on here is a minimum of 20 years old more likely 40 years old. Inside I have completed most of the insulation above ceiling height, we have slopping ceilings in 2/3rds of the building that will be completed after the screed is done. The MVHR ducts are in the roof, I carefully insulated around them as they pass through the Rockwool layer and the Celotex, then the VCL layer which is Gerband SD control. Not the most expensive VCL but still a reasonable price for a control layer. Putting the VCL up on my own was tricky I used double sided tape to attach it to the Celotex initially pressing it on top, middle and bottom as I unrolled it for 12m. This held it in place surprisingly well leaving me ample time, (days as it often too hot to work in the loft) to tape it up properly with Gerband airtight tape. I finally took a break from the roof insulation and moved on to floor insulation which is a much nicer job on my knees. Back in June we had a Cornwall/Devon meet up of fellow build hubers. It was great to put a face to the user names. The weather had one quick shower just as some arrived but then cleared up so that we could all sit around eating pizza and chatting. The waste for the two wet rooms is completed ready for the screed. I’m now ready to lay the UFH separation layer for this I have chosen something a bit different https://www.laminon.co.uk/. The material is a bit like weed membrane which if any body has ever pegged down knows how those pegs don’t want to come back out easily. It also has a grid marked on it that might make it a job for me on my own, together with the decoiler and stapler I have borrowed, or David will help me. Like many on here I downloaded LoopCad, input all the data about my location and the build then designed the loops. For reference I used the Ashrae load calculation method, rooms that didn’t need UFH e.g. the pantry I input as already having a heat source. I have kept my results and all the print outs but in the end I have chosen Wunda because they are very competitive compared to me buying the manifold and pipe from an online UFH trade shop. They have saved on their costs because they can send the coils out in lengths more compatible with my circuits e.g. I have 5 circuits between 109m and 117m so they can send out 5 x 120m coils. No matter how I combine different circuits I always ended up with a lot of wastage pipe. They don’t use LoopCad to its full extent e.g. the whole house modelling for the load calculation but from what I discovered most UFH suppliers don’t either so I might need my LoocCad summaries for the flow rates as Wunda are not accounting for a well insulated and air tight building. They are for now not supplying the pump or any thermostats as our plan is to get the house fully insulated and the VCL layer completed on the at least most ceilings so we can monitor the room temps with a few data collecting thermometers. This will hopefully tell us how cold its going over winter without occupation, and so far its certainly feels warmer than our current house. We now have drains connected to the main sewer line and our soak away is installed. Next job will be the guttering. I had to take down my potting shed for the build but hopefully next year I can reassemble my potting shed in its new location which is the opposite side of the cow shed than it was previously, but my view is a lot nicer. I also finally finished the Gabion wall, I used all our own stone and rubble. Most of the stone was from the initial groundworks that we had moved down to the lower field. This meant that I took the lawnmower and the garden mini dumper down there, climbed the piles and picked out the best stone and brought it back up to the house. When I was nearly completed and I knew the groundworks team would be returning for our drainage connection and soakaway I decided to wait for them to hopefully unearth some more nice stone. They did but I had to work fast to use it before it was back in the ground around the house getting the levels correct. There is still a lot of stone in spot on the lower field but for now I don’t want to build any more Gabion walls. Of the trades people we have had on site so far the groundwork’s have been the best and I would be happy to recommend them. To the left of the photo is the old stables you can see how this wood is aged, hopefully our Thermo Pine will age similarly and blend in. The photo above was taken just after the Groundwork's finished for the day, you can see the mist has blown in and the cladding looks different again when wet. The following day and we can see how great a job the groundworkers have done, its hard to believe this is the same soil I have picked the stone for the Gabion walls from. They sorted the soil with the digger and buried the bigger stones leaving quite good soil on the top. They are returning next week with a bigger dumper truck to bring the soil back up from the lower field. They will then fill in the bit to the right of the photo and round the front.

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 ).

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.

Block and beam? No! Ground bearing slabs. A decision that has given me sleepless nights and resulted in some serious hard graft. We had 60 ton (that’s what we were told 🤔) of Type 1 MOT delivered and had to then proceed to get into the bays and levelled up, before compacting it. The brickie was an arse as he should have stopped building and said “get your hardcore in and laid”. His work was rather shit, so I knocked some of it down to enable me to get a dumper in distribute the piles to make levelling it quicker. Building control were fine with me using grano dust as the top layer. This compacts nicely and gives a much harder surface than sand. Below are a few pictures. Hoping to get everything finished by tomorrow. I’ll breath a sigh of relief that it’s done and dusted.

Sorry to hear it OP, these houses can be such a massive emotional and physical heavylift.... But the shitshow will be temporary and the satisfaction and enjoyment is a lifetime. I promise you it is all worth it in the end, but you do need to smile and endure.

Well, it's been nearly 9 months since we moved in, and I didn't leave a list last time, so here are the parts of the last list that still needed work. As you will see there still remains a lot of stuff to do. You'll soon learn why they're still here 😞 more stone work - still on the list but much reduced rainwater soakaways - still on the list rainwater collection system - decided after deliberating a lot to leave this out for now as it's not a condition backfilling - partly done, still on the list concrete lego brick retaining wall - delivered, to be fitted Flooring - en-suite and "attic" room left to do Wood cladding - still on the list Fit internal doors - one last door to do Fit en suite - basin and bog outstanding Build MY garage - still on the list A green roof system, because its on the planning application, and may be required for certificate of completion (unless someone can enlighten me as to how to avoid this, and be able to delay the installation) - still on the list, but good news on the completion element for this below. Back in August 2025 we moved into a building site, and worked hard to get the remaining bedrooms completed before our first Christmas for which SWMBO had invited MY family. Not sure whether to label this action as bullying, blackmail, fraud, spousal abuse or whether another specific crime was committed. But, we got there, and a fantastic Christmas was had. Also during this time, we managed to secure a buyer for our old house. We had decided to stop calling it home to start the process of removing 29 years of emotional attachment to the place in which we brought up our two children, and in December we removed pretty much all the remaining furniture in readiness for Christmas and what we thought would be a completion on the sale in January/February of 2026. You may recall me asking questions about a retaining wall which was holding up the new buyers getting a mortgage. Now, this wall was not a part of the house but on our boundary about 2 feet or so away from the side wall of the house. It has a crack in it and the lender wanted it repaired. We had requested an SE to come give us a report, hopefully to tell the lender to stop being a d1ck, and we had arranged to meet them on the 6th January. We arrived the day before to find it difficult to open the front door because there was some plasterboard behind it which had come from the landing ceiling at the top of the stairs. This had been caused by a leaking water pipe in the loft. Subsequent water bills showed that 28m3 of water had come through the ceiling - we now had a major water leak insurance claim repair to deal with. And the upshot of the SE visit the following day was they said it did need fixing. B0110cks!! So, now instead of a completion in Jan/Feb, we were looking at a completion in 3-6 months. We then found out that the retaining wall was our liability, and not the people who owned the land behind it. This put a huge dent in our plans. Everything we had planned to do in the first half of 2026 (work on the house and a ski trip) went on hold as we got someone in to repair the wall (in March, once the rain had stopped) and to deal with the insurance company who thought it was a great idea to appoint two separate companies to complete the drying out/repair work - WHAT COULD GO WRONG? We sat down, and reworked our plans for work on the house. This has been limited to work that we could carry out with little spend because either it was something outside in the "garden" (read mud bath), we already had the materials on site, or the materials required were not hugely expensive. What have we been up to in between complaining to the insurance company about the lack of co-ordination and progress (WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?) We bought parts to start finishing off the rainwater drainage pipework, which also allowed us to do our first bit of hard landscaping, some steps down to one side of the house, and starting off the path as well. We still had a lot of stone cladding to complete, so once the weather improved, I set to completing most of this. There are still a few odd bits and pieces to do once the balcony and connecting bridge have been completed (one of the large ticket items that is on hold). The other main area of work has been the en-suite bathroom, where we spent a little bit of savings and created a service wall on two sides, got it plastered and painted, and also installed the walk-in shower. After a bit of back and forth, SWMBO agreed to a wall hung toilet pan (thank you to those who responded to my cry for help). So, the en-suite requires said bog, a basin and vanity, tiling behind the basin, flooring and a door to be completed. All materials on site or on order, and the plan is to get on with that over the next few weeks. So, where does all this leave us? Well, the bits of good news we've had:- - our BCO visited just before Christmas and gave us a list of things he'd like to see before he issued a completion certificate, and on that list found that the green roof was not required to be fitted, but just some documentation about what we proposed to put up there. I know what many will think, but we will probably still install one at some point, but it does mean we can delay installing it until after completion. - I mentioned we secured a buyer for the old house. Well, they have stuck around through all our tribulations and we will be completing on June 5th. Come mid June we should have the following major items to complete, and the funds to do them: Balcony including balustrade Connecting bridge to balcony Balustrade by internal stairwell Exterior porch floor rainwater soakaways - still on the list concrete lego brick retaining wall and backfilling Flooring - "attic" room left to do Wood cladding Finish the en suite - as outlined above Build MY garage - still on the list A green roof system Once all that is done we might also be ready to clear the site of the touring caravan we used for the first four years of weekends and holiday time we spent building the house and a lot of left over building materials. I'm glad to say there is very little of that as I resisted the "order 10% more than you need" rule, and am pleased to say it only bit me twice in extra delivery charges. This has meant we have incurred zero cost for skips/clearaway etc. and, no, we have not buried it all in a very big hole in the 3 acre field we bought. There's still a lot to do, but as we approach June 5th with lightened hearts, we have a much clearer view of some form of end game, with may hours to be spent creating a new garden around our NEW HOME!!

UPDATE……. so after emailing and posting the letters by hand, the builders truck arrived at the neighbours yesterday. This morning I was doing some work outside and the neighbour called by and said the builders aren’t starting Tuesday now. They (neighbours) put a halt to it to clear up what’s going on. Said builder said he would deal with communications, they didn’t know what was involved with access or PWA. Didn’t want any bother so it’s paused until further notice. It was the first amicable conversation about it. So the builder is available for work now if anyone is interested 😁 In the meantime I’ve painted the fence, walls have a had a coat of brilliant white, jet washed and pointed slabs and oiled furniture. looks lovely for any future photos 👍🏻 Thank you

Should I even call you darling? Probably not, but as you (not you specifically, sitting there in your ‘should have been put in the wash weeks ago’ dressing gown, I mean the buildhub fraternity) have been so great a moral support I can’t help feeling some degree of affection. Anyway, there’s no chance of me drawing breath this week, or any week till we move out of the ice box (AKA rental - and thats the polite version, I now have a different name for it), so if I’m going to mark the year in point it has to be now, as a year ago on Tuesday I clambered up onto the roof of da Bungalow and started sliding tiles at my mate Steve. I miss him. He’s not dead or anything - though his dress sense would tell you otherwise - but he’s off the project and that isn’t comfortable. He buggered his shoulder blocking up to damp and hasn't been back working on site since. He still visits to let me know that it’s not up to standard and we should be further on, so basically all the things I know already, but it’s not the same as working together. That was rather fun. In a twisted way. So, how far has a year got us? Insides are plastered out and oven ready for our mist coats, which hopefully start Monday. I’m hoping we’ve no buried leaks or missing cables, time will tell. Outside a small groundwork’s team are half way through connecting the house to the drains. When I dug down to find the capped sewer pipe it looked closer to the surface than I remembered - which featured in the playlist of yet another sleepless night. I’ve quite a wide repertoire of tumble dryer worries, yet another talent courtesy of the build. Thankfully it turns out my water level did me proud and the poo pipes protruding from the house are at the predicted level with respect to the sewer so happy days. It’s really odd building a plastic bag to live in. OK, it’s a well insulated plastic bag, but it’s still a really big plastic bag. It’s beautifully illustrated by our breathing ceilings. We continued the hideously gaudy coloured VCL up the side walls and over the ceilings, putting in as few staples as we could to reduce the number of penetrations. Eventually the house itself was sealed up bar the missing front door and loft hatch. We took the precaution of putting the first layer of loft insulation up to avoid condensation on the ceiling VCL, using “Industrial polypropylene strapping” stapled to underside of the joists before the VCL was put up, so the strapping took the weight rather than the VCL. It worked a treat and even allowed insulation to be laid even where the VCL hadn’t been done. Standing upstairs a weird thing constantly happened. The VCL above us very slowly rose and fell - it was as if the house was breathing. Oddly mesmerising. I should have recorded a video. But there was no time to stand and look. The plasterer had lots in his books so couldn’t get to us till the end of January, so we took that as our target. We had no way of knowing if that was doable (it wasn’t) but the concept was that by setting a target we’d go faster so we charged up the cattle prods. I thought I knew it would be stressful being driven by such a deadline. As in so many build things I had underestimated badly, however. Some things went better than I’d expected. I’d planned to pull in the wires myself but instead Steve the Sparks (the confusingly named son of Steve of the buggered shoulder who did the demo and the founds with me) did it all in a couple of days. The speed of the man, but oh, the radio! He was the first of several with the ubiquitous Makita site radio playing ‘80s stuff. We’d been a no radios site till then. But we had by then lots of fluffy insulation, so I relented as long as it was on indoors only and relatively quiet. And having said yes to one it’s a lot harder to say no to others so the tackers (plasterboarders) and the plasterers all followed suit. Did I really need Bananarama on a loop in my head with everything else whizzing round? Another thing that went well and a quicker than feared was pulling in the water pipes. On the odd moment I was alone on site it took very little time to actually pull the HEP2O pipes through. OK it left a mess of tails above the cylinder but that could be left till after the tackers started. A lot of things got categorised as ‘after the tackers get started’, which was sensible but not always satisfying. The theory of radial plumbing, no joints buried, I found seductive. However the theory floundered when it met the Aqualisa buried shower and bath controls. That continues to cause me angst and will do until I’ve finally accepted that I’ve dealt with the last wet patch (yes, technically it’s called a recurring nightmare). One thing that didn’t go so well was the vent ducts. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I’d decided to go for 90mm rather than the smaller version and we’d ended up with 253mm metal web joists (pozis) rather than the 304mm I’d planned. It also wasn’t helped by a glulam blocking the ideal route from the main house into the loft above the downstairs bedroom. So it was a fiddle, (polite version) and the pressure was on as the duct itself only arrived on the 28th of January, mostly due to a supply issue. I’d thought long and hard about duct routing, but things are never as one imagines. The MVHR unit will sit in the garage next to (but not touching for fear of noise) the wall of the downstairs bedroom. All duct pass through the loft above said bedroom and then enter the house itself. That loft is a disturbing piece of modern art. I’m glad that I will never see it again (fingers crossed). Fifteen 90mm corrugated white tubes bound together wrapped in fluffy brown insulation snaking through the trusses. Where they pass into the house there is a Quatermass of airtight foam, as if the house was punctured by the hydra and it bleed green goo. Getting the insulation up there was surreal. It’s a v restricted space and the only way to do it was to poke my upper body through a gap in the ceiling VCL and distribute the insulation. It pretty much fills the loft now. When I start sleeping properly again I’ll have nightmares about all that. It wasn’t all bad news though. One bit that worked really well was taking all the ducts for upstairs straight up the front gable wall, with the ducts insulated but never passing through the VCL. The bit that didn’t work was the downstairs ducts getting over the glulam. It meant they started their journey into the house with a tight s bend. The corrugated outer skin helped prevent the pipes pulling through the holes in the wall and floor that enabled them to dive down into the posi layer. We also discovered a downside to our very heavily engineered joist plan above our main room. We are very keen to have nice, stiff floors upstairs with little movement. So we ended up with pairs of 147mm posis with only about 240mm gap between each pair. Looking at it there was literally more joist than gap. Felt good to walk on. Getting ducting through however… On top of that we had a flue to avoid, and a barrier formed by two well insulated pipes that run from the UFH manifold to the cylinder via a diversion due to steelwork - another obvious bit that I failed to anticipate. Thank goodness the bookends (the guys doing the solar pv/inverter/battery/UFH/heat pump/UVC/etc.) suggested getting the cylinder in when they did. We call them bookends as either appear to be unable to work without the other. Odd world, innit. So, with those pipes too in place it’s v congested in various areas. Much swearing and jumping up and down onto stepladders and skinned knuckles later and the vent pipes were done, with all 15 vent ducts poking out into the garage like some 1950s comedy alien being. An alien that sits and waits, and when I walk past it it spits distilled water onto me. Seriously. Yet another ‘I’d never have imagined that’ moment. I'm guessing that the warm, wet air from the house is being sucked through all the vent pipes by the passing breezes. The garage is unheated. When that air hits the bit of the ducts in the garage some of the water vapour condenses onto the inner walls of the ducts. As I walk past I cause a disturbance which makes the condensation coalesce into droplets that then fall on me. What a fabulous illustration of how much an MVHR unit needs a drain. Anyway, eventually, meaning two weeks later than hoped, we were ready for the tackers. I’d amassed a long list of ‘I’ll do that when the tackers are here’ tasks, oh my, will I never learn! To start with there was a constant stream of questions from the three guys. All of them reasonable, but they tended to be neatly timed so I’d just start picking up tools to do something myself when I distant “Geoff” would be heard so I’d put everything back down and toddle off to find which bit that particular tacker was staring at. Originally we’d planned to put an OSB layer on all walls and the upstairs ceilings. I'd gone for raised tie trusses to reclaim some of the ceiling heights lost early in the design process. The idea was that the little sloped bit at the top of each wall would be hidden by the extra layer of studs and insulation. It was designed to the millimetre. Mistake. The tackers assured me they would be careful of the ceiling VCL, and indeed they were. The few times they caught the VCL or when it needed easing they called me in to bring my repair tape. (Note to others - put spare VCL at corners, it’s so easy to make it too tight for the tackers). So they convinced us to ditch the ceiling OSB idea. Only if course, I’d factored in the thickness of the OSB into my calcs for the raised tie trusses. So when the walls were boarded in a couple of places the roof bracing was just a tiny bit too low. I should have allowed a contingency but hey ho, double boarding the walls sorted it where needed. Fortunate to say the least. Plasterboard changes the place. We’d spent weeks amongst soft, spongy walls, with insulation sitting behind and in front of the VCL. Very quiet. Lovely in fact. But plasterboard puts all the echo back and then some. Plus it finally shows the rooms for the shape and size they are. Sounds daft given how long we've spent in those rooms but seeing them plasterboarded was a bit of a shock in places. The best example of that is the hallway. Drawing layouts and trying to imagine spaces only gets you so far. We designed in a double height space just inside the front door, nice straight stairs on one side. Bit of a sort of gallery on the other. But it’s huge. I knew all the dimensions by heart but I still didn’t know how big it was going to turn out. We are going to have to get creative to get it feeling right. Fortunately for me our principle aesthetics consultant (i.e. J) is brilliant, so I just know it’ll turn out well. The plasterers were a dream. Tidy, polite, quiet (if you ignore Bananrama and Simply Red constantly playing in the background) and they also did a super job. A pleasure to work with. The only wrinkle was the ergovents. I installed them in their plenums precisely as per the instructions. What a shame I didn’t check with the plasterers first. The instructions said the vents should be either flush or max 1mm below the plasterboard, which I super carefully did. The plasterers started when the upstairs was boarded, and they took one look at the vents and said “no”. They need 3mm to 4mm proud. Turns out the instructions are really targeted on the continent, where, apparently, they rarely skim. We skim. We need more depth. Thank heavens downstairs hadn’t been boarded by then. All but one upstairs I could get to from the loft, slitting the VCL (I really must remember to go back and repair those slits) adjusting the brackets so they could be skimmed properly. The downstairs ones were easy to adjust, ahead of boarding. The plaster has reduced the echo a bit, and as it’s drying and its colour gets lighter it’s given an even better impression of the rooms. The plasterers were much less high maintenance giving Rolly and me time to put the wood cladding on the rear gable (massively more time consuming than expected) which meant that the three skylights could be fitted. Fantastic. I borrowed a leaf blower from Rolly. The intention was to do a half arsed leak test using a temporary loft hatch. Never did get used, we never put the time aside, there was always a short term deadline hogging the priority. We'll find out in time whether it was needed. Another one for the ‘hope’ list.

My faulty Brink Flair unit has now been returned, and I bought and installed a DucoBox Energy Comfort 325. All of the problems I attributed to the Flair have now gone away. This is as good a like-for-like test as you're going to get, everything is the same - same house, same ducting, same vents, only the main unit has changed. Just for completeness, I want to mention two additional (objective, measurable) tests I did on the Brink Flair in the last days we had it, using a CO2 and humidity monitor. Why didn't I think of this earlier!! I placed the monitor inside one of the supply vents, luckily we have two through-wall vents which are perfect for this (https://www.ventilationland.co.uk/en_GB/p/uniflexplus-wall-manifold-rear-connection-1x-o90-mm/9744/) so the whole monitor can sit in the incoming airflow. We then left it for a few minutes so the values could settle down and we could get a general background reading: the RH was about 55% and the CO2 was about 450ppm. First test was a humidity test: I boiled a kettle in the kitchen and let the steam be sucked into the extract valve. The RH jumped to 70%, then went back down again. I also showered, and again the RH shot up to 70% (see attached graph). Second test was a CO2 test: I disconnected the flexible noise dampener which is connected to the Flair's extract port, and breathed into it several times. The CO2 reading at the supply vent briefly increased, from about 450 to 485, then went down again. I tried this again with my partner, and the CO2 reading went up to about 540 PPM. (This one is difficult to show on the graph though, as the unit only logs every five minutes, so the brief peak isn't logged. It's difficult to keep breathing into the extract!) This can only be because there was a leak inside the unit. This does echo the results of my smell test, but is more objective and can't be written off as me having some sort of super-nose! I consider that to be proof that the Flair was faulty, despite Brink's inistence that it wasn't. The new Duco works as expected. I've done the same tests, and showering makes no difference at all to the moisture levels of the incoming air. It's been in for over a week now, and the RH in the house hovers around 44 to 54%. Even while boiling a big pan of potatoes there's no moisture on the kitchen window, whereas with the Flair it would be dripping wet. With the Brink Flair the humidity in the house was always high. The 55% mentioned above was only acheived because we had left the above-window vents open, and aired the house out every day by opening the windows for several minutes. Until we started doing that it was always above 60% and would jump to over 70% when cooking/showering. I must say I'm really disappointed with Brink. They showed little interest in the problem, I had to nag them constantly, and were almost totally unresponsive, and it seems they closed my 'case' several times. If I hadn't kept the pressure up they would never have responded. Which is a shame, as I really liked their products otherwise.

Hi chaps, UPDATE! been a while since I posted. Hope y'all doing well. Good news & an update on this heatpump! I finally won the battle with Vaillant, & they've come up trumps, by replacing my problematic Split system with a Monobloc. Installed 10 days ago. No mechanical noise in the house anymore! hydraulic unit gone- good riddance! My goodness, what a long battle tho. I got the final agreement & date set, after approaching a different female at Group Service dept, picked up my sword for one last effort, & with careful navigation (tricky & complex & 5 years of stress tbh) she empathized.. & got the ball rolling for me. Which had been stalled for over a year & my energy spent, & I was defeated & demoralised tbh. And with it I had a fantastic installer too. Extremely competent & friendly. Fab work done, you can just see the difference. Vaillant's west UK choice, so had tiptop credentials. Thanks to all who offered help & advice on this. Zoot

Hello In the early stages of converting a former railway building into a house in the Yorkshire Dales. We will also have a SIP extension. Trying to do as much as I can myself, but I'll pay some people to do some parts. Would love to be in for Christmas 2027, but no promises!

Week 36 When I posted the previous blog two weeks ago we were looking ahead to activity on the bathrooms and electrics, and also to making a start on the landscaping. Since then it’s been a fortnight of progress and challenges… Bathrooms My brother Chris made brilliant progress throughout the week he was with us. A toilet, basin and shower screen were fitted to finish the guest ensuite, a basin and shower screen fitted in the family bathroom to finish that room, and the bath, hand shower and basin were fitted in the master ensuite. It was all going really well. Too well. And sure enough disaster struck while fitting the wall-hung shower toilet in the master en-suite. We* were gently tightening the bolts that hold the toilet to the frame when there was a ‘ping’, then a crack appeared around one bolt boss, before replicating itself on the other boss, and then the whole pan came away from the frame in a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. Which was a bit disappointing, to say the least. (*Yes, I was 'helping' - that could be the true root-cause of the problem to be fair.) That white rectangle on the wall is a foam pad which is meant to cushion the pan against the wall to be trimmed away after fitting. We obviously never got that far. The actual cause proved to be a mismatch between the TECE wall frame instructions and those supplied with the GSI Ceramica WClean toilet. We followed both sets of instructions as closely as you ever can follow these modern 'pictogram', wordless instructions. Sadly, this led to the pan being inadequately supported directly behind the bolt bosses and the pan shattered as the bolts were tightened and the stresses rose in the ceramic. Here's the template the TECE frame instructions encourage you to cut out around. Which leaves you with an unfortunate void around the bolt holes. Of course, as soon as it happened we both kicked ourselves for not spotting the problem beforehand. At that point, I wished I had bought a Geberit frame and toilet as I originally intended rather than being persuaded by the bathroom showroom that these were better products. In fairness to the showroom (Island Bathrooms in Salisbury) they immediately agreed to supply a replacement pan, which arrived this week and we will have another attempt to fit it when my brother is back with us next week - first making sure that those bolt bosses are fully supported! Fingers-crossed! Notwithstanding that disappointment, as well as all the great bathroom progress Chris found time get the kitchen sink and Quooker tap, and the utility sink all plumbed in too! Landscaping Ashley Ralph, our landscaper, made a start on our external landscaping during the wettest January for years! (We had 259mm - over 10” - of rain in the month in our corner of Dorset.) Having temporarily turned our relatively tidy site into a recreation of the Battle of the Somme, he has quickly got a good covering of type 1 packed down and the site looks relatively tidy again. In fact tidier than it did before. To be fair, Ashley does keep things very tidy. Concrete pad for a future potential car port. The plan is to tarmac most of the front to make vehicle and wheelchair access nice and easy. We did consider a layer of hot-rolled grit over the top, which we did in our previous house and which looks attractive but when it’s not being walked into the house the grit collects dirt over time and becomes impossible to keep clean. So tarmac it is. Behind the house is more complicated with a fall of 1.6m over 17m of garden. To make that as wheelchair accessible as possible we have an intricate plan of terraces, ramps, dwarf retaining walls and planting beds which we’re hoping Ashley can install in our relatively compact garden. This mini-project could be running for some time! Cladding Alan, chippie No. 1, came in for a week and all the timber wall cladding is now done! All that remains now on the cladding front is for some of the soffits including those under the front and rear roof canopies, to be clad. The chippies may need to perfect the art of hovering above in-progress landscape works while they do that (!) Electrics Electricians seem to have become a bit scarce, which is a worry. To be fair we had two in the week before last, and a lot of lights were connected up but no significant milestones seem to have been reached. We still have a lot to get through to have a fully wired house before we move in on the 23rd February. And no electricians are planned on site until 9th Feb, so this is becoming a concern. Tiling We’ve also struggled to get our tiler in to finish off the porcelain skirtings - a couple of planned visits cancelled due to illness. Whilst we could move in with the skirtings as they are now it is obviously preferable not to be trying to finish them off with our furniture in the room. A ‘plan B’ is emerging to allow us to get this one over the line without relying on our principal tiler, who although good does not appear to be in great health right now. Internal joinery We have some further oak sections on order to give us enough material to finish the pocket door frames in oak rather than the primed MDF Eclisse supplied. Also since we have decided to opt for full width door stops to give a rebated door frame look, we are waiting for those to arrive so that they can be fitted. The oak door frames and architraves really do set the doors off well - we’re very pleased with them. Focus for the next three weeks: Electrics, still lots to do. Plumbing - that wall hung toilet! Landscaping - onwards and downwards. Packing - it has to be done , because… … we’re going to be moving in in three week’s time! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this past two weeks: 32 Contractor days on site since build start: 527 Budget: No change - over budget but within contingency. Plan: Moving in booked for 23rd February. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: N/A Current top issues and worries: Whether the electrics will be done in tome for our move. Hanging that toilet.

I think what you've done is that brave, put your head above the parapet, admission of human vulnerability in an arena that is still steeped in 'manly toughness' mythology. And what you've done is highlight the experience that probably most, if not all self-builders go through during their build. I come from a psychology background - I began in the engineering field and then gravitated to psychology, so I originally trained to BACP levels in counselling and eventually moved into a field called coaching psychology where I worked with a combination of high level athletes, business leaders and business founders. Now, I can say that every single one of my clients has experienced major ups and downs and a lot of their time is spent grafting in uncomfortable places. But context is everything. In both business and sport there is at least a good proportion of acceptance around psychology and mental health. The most successful ones embrace this as of primary importance for their day to day function and successes, but even in these contects, there is still a long way to go. My experience so far of the construction industry is that it hasn't even begun to accept this. When I go and see construction sites, I don't see pleasant, human environments and people just don't talk about or readily and openly acknowledge their vulnerability. Sometimes I see quite frankly highly unpleasant working environments, with lots of miserable staff - which I see as one of the reasons why we get such shit building and trade quality - it's a UK construction industry cultural context that just doesn't seem anywhere close to shifting. Last summer I spent a couple of weeks in a construction academy training centre and it was one of the most miserable places I've been to in a long time and the trainers wonder why they get such poor engagement, performance, and results from students. This cultural context to me goes a long way to explaining why the construction industry has one of the highest rates of suicide. Here's a quote from the ONS about this: " These are pretty alarming figures. There are obvious exceptions to this. I know a contractor fairly near to me who runs a small company where he treats and pays his staff well. As soon as you go on site you can tell this from the nice, smiley and friendly atmosphere. In another example, a previous client of mine who engaged me when he started up, we spent 18 months to 2 years exploring how he wanted to lead the company and what kind of culture he was looking to foster as he wanted to be very different from his experience in construction with very large construction companies. Most of his contracts are in Europe but his company has now surpassed £1 billion in annual revenue. The context of a self-builder changes things and can make them more complex, especially if you're very hands on. As a self-builder you are completely invested and I know myself that this can make you feel trapped - you can't just walk away like you can from a job because not only have you ploughed loads of money into it, it's your blood, sweat and tears too. It's personal. You're also in the construction industry, but an outsider without necessarily having all the domain knowledge to navigate your way through a different working environment. So it's realy no surprise that self-builders feel down and it's great that this is being discussed so openly here with so much support being offered. I too can offer help and to talk, if someone wants to do so. I'm based just out side of Bath Oh, and to mention a little celebration I had for myself yesterday. My company is now officially MCS certified for design and installation of air source heat pumps - but please don't crucify me for that 😉

Thanks all for the supportive replies. This forum is one of the best sources of support a self-builder could have. I want to give special thanks to @BotusBuild and @Fallingditch for their generosity with both practical and moral support, and to @Gus Potter, @Nickfromwales, @ProDave, @SteamyTea, @ToughButterCup and others who have responded to threads and direct messages with advice and wisdom that I could not have managed without. Knowing that you guys are here, and willing to show such kindness and generosity with your time and knowledge, is invaluable.

Prior to starting our build and when deciding on what and how we would heat the house we were told more than once that separate heating upstairs was not required. Ours is not at Passiv level, it does have a .11 roof, .12 floor and .15 walls. We have UFH downstairs and a total of 6 radiators upstairs. All on a single unmixed heating zone. Radiators were sized for the expected heat loss and flow temperatures. The bedrooms are at about 18.5 - 19 degrees which feels a little chilly to me. Heat does not appear to reach upstairs very effectively. We have a centrally located 180 degree return staircase. There is a noticeable gradient in temperature as you get to the landing, which surprised me. Now, i fully accept that our single zone design with a flow temperature that has not so far ever got above 38 degrees even at minus 5 in December is not best suited to radiators upstairs. But that is not the point. If we had gone without radiators at all upstairs we would be in trouble . For those contemplating going without any heating upstairs i hope this little tale is helpful. keith

This is the bit that's the toughest for me especially when trying to balance everything else that's important in life. With the build, it's not like going home from the office and switching off. One of the things here is that my boys have grown through their teenage years on a building site, but I've spent a lot of time with them away from the build, which at the moment seems to have been the best thing for them. They're living in a warm, dry house, and have their own bedrooms, a bathroom and a functional kitchen, it's just so many other areas of the house still need a lot of work. Deepest winter does seem to be the worst. I approached it with the mentality of - just do one thing, however small it might be. Rather than looking around and seeing how much needs to be done, it's about seeing what little things can I do here or there, even when the weather or light is against me. It's not the solution, but it can very much help. Sometimes I'm surprised by how much gets done as a result and how even just getting some plasterboard put up, can feel so satisfying. But then, sometimes, it is just a pure grind and I see that as just a temporary phase that'll change in a few short days or weeks.

Ufh pipes will cost a grand to buy, if you don’t put them in you need a serious word with yourself. I don’t understand the figures like some on here, but I know I’m sitting in the most comfortable house I’ve been in for a long time, just a gentle warmth in the tiles emits to every point of the house. it’s just an absolute pleasure.

Been a while and I was just randomly passing through when I noticed a few recent posts on this thread. Current update is we gained our Completion Cert in July (almost exactly 10 years to the day since buying the land), and the interior is nearing completion with just the kitchen to finish. Fully offgrid, we haven't paid a utility bill in 9 years. Living our dream and still pinching myself, tbh.

It's done!! Just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone with the advice on this one. After the advice I changed plans and in the end got a sand cement screed laid by a professional company who did an amazing job and finish. Time to move on to the next stage (I'm sure I will gleaming you wisdom again) Thanks again, few pictures before

After the advice of pretty much everyone, for once I am going to admit defeat and have some professionals in for this job. We have found a couple of options we are happy with and will readjust the budget a little to accommodate but its not something we can afford to go wrong. I will take some pictures and update you in a couple of weeks when it's done but thank you so for your advice and help and I now know what to watch for when it's poured and what to prepare

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.

We hear sentiments like this a lot and unfortunately they are based on a misunderstanding of the respources we have. This line is promoted by certain sections of the media (who unfortunately no longer have the journalistic integrity to check their sources), and politicians on the make, and is 'encouraged' by the oil companies who source oil outside the UK but know that promoting 'British Oil' will actually lead to more sales of non-British oil in the UK! I'm by no means an expert, but I used to work for a solar company (way back, the first solar installer in the country) that was founded by a man who came from the oil industry and had first hand knowledge to impart. Without going into the weeds (which I'm in no way knowledgeable enough to do - I'm dragging this from the back of my mind from conversation 25 years ago...) you need to understand some basics of the oil industry as it has existed for the last 100 years. And a little Geology. Where to start? Oli is not what you think it is. Most oil in the world (and unfortunately the oil available off our coast) is not the black stuff you see shooting out of the ground in the Beverly Hillbillies. It is a multi coloured sludge made up of a vast array of chemicals that need careful and expensive processing to become useful - and that usefullness may not be as an energy source. Most crude oil - like that available in the UK - is only suitable for chemical productions (fertilisers, medecines, etc), not high grade energy use. Setting up oil refineries is increadibly expensive and to maximise economies of scale, a single type of process tends to be dominant in any region. Essentily, individual countries have specialised in different processes, using particular types of oil that is shipped around the world. I believe we ship 'our' sludge to South America for processing into a usable product, and vice versa). TLDR, The Geology of the North Sea does not produce the type of oil that UK refineries are specialised in, and the cost (and time frame) of converting our refineries to handle UK-sourced oil and the percieved benefits (and profits) are vastly outweighed by and dwindling resources of existing drill sites. In a heating world, WE MUST NOT drill any new fields and even if we did, the product would not power our country. Promoting th use of British Oil is a wheeze by foriegn oil producers (in bed with corrupt politicians and journalists happy to trouser a commission) which keeps the UK dependant upon their products. 'Gas lighting' in the literal sense... Another important lesson regarding 'Energy Security' has been learned from the war in Ukrain. A distributed power production that is not dependant upon a single source of energy is better able to withstand interferance from bad actors. It is very hard to cpmpletely destroy a wind or solar farm in a bombing raid, and even if you succeed, it will only be part small part of overall production. A distributed power generation will keep the lights on. But if you blow up a gas powered station - or the North Sea drilling rigs that supply your gas - it is much harder to get back up and running. To achieve a renewables based distributed grid is going to require huge investment of our aging infrastructure. But the long-term result will be lower bills, which should boost the economy as it will make manufacturing costs cheaper. Espescially if, as weve discussed before, industry is encouraged to move up North to be near the wind generation sources. We were perhaps disadvantaged compared to our European friends in the last 80 years, in that the last 'bad actor' was so very inefficiant at destroying our victorian infrastructure that we didn't have to rebuild earlier. Ironically, we probably gave Germany a boost by levelling the country and forcing a better grid to be built...