Susie

At the beginning of Week 5 the scaffold arrives. The ICF walls get past window header height so they can be boxed in first with the ICF to close the side jamb, header and cill then the wood brace for the concrete pour. The internal structural walls are started and tied into the ICF. These are to support the steel roof beams. Its good to stand in the open plan kitchen and lounge area now and get the scale of the room, the three windows look down our field to the East and the slider door opening looks out South towards Dartmoor, visible on clear days. The kitchen may look a bit dark but it will have 4 velux windows that as well as providing light help to zone off the open plan area. The photo from the scaffold shows our workshop in the big barn and beyond that just visible is our current home. The weather has not been too bad during working hours, a mixture of sun shine, rain and strong wind with gusts of over 43mph so I will be happy to see the pour next week. This week the car is our own Jensen Interceptor my husband took it out in the sunshine when he went to our local ‘Men’s Shed’ in Holsworthy. Total man days of labour week 5 is 23 man days.

Yes we have been lucky on getting out the ground but the roof cost have gone up. Not much is happening at the moment so next will be week 5 and 6.

Check the deeds. The deeds for the houses around me are a little complicated at times as the main farm has been split up and sold off. The end result is that what was once a field is now a garden (mine), our neighbors have a soak away into our garden. This does not bother me at all as we have plenty of land but the deeds state the right to use our land as soak away for 50 years which expires soon. I’m not sure they are aware as it’s in the original deeds before the split. When useage expires they may be lucky as my build might give them access to mains sewage cheaper than a replacement tank.

A bit late to reply but here goes. From my September 2024 quote from Norrsken. Innova sliding door 2.1m, S319A matches P33A windows, two panes, aluclad 0.76uW £3500 plus vat plus delivery, installation, sills, compriband etc

You can still get Polar Wall, based in Exeter I think, this is extremely similar I don’t know what the difference is. R-wall is based near Bude so very local for me and we have a few local builds.

The car in the banner is a Jensen Interceptor, both are customers cars. I will eventually get a photo of a Jensen FF as it returns from the painters.

The last bit of soil pipe and inspection chambers that are close to the house are completed. The ICF is delivered and by the end of the week we have the start of door and window openings. The insulation is extruded polystyrene XPS 100mm each side of the concrete cavity. U value of 0.14 The windows have rebar in them before 50mm insulation closures are added. At the weekend we had a yellow wind warning for the South West, our home weather station recorded top gusts of 40mph. I’m pleased to say the R-wall ICF survived with no problems. Total man days of labour week 4 is 22 man days split between Groundworks and ICF builders. The build is going on very close to our workshop entrance which makes the delivery of vehicles and test drives limited. This week we took delivery of a previous customers Jensen CV-8 which now has a new owner who has sent it to us for further works over winter.

Another beautiful week in Cornwall only 7mm of rain on the Sunday The week starts with laying the soil pipes then it was sand, hardcore, burying the soil pipes, laying the radon barrier, mesh and more concrete for the slab leaving a lovely surface to start the ICF walls next week. And the field was cut and baled, not as much as a normal September cut due to us moving our spoil down to the far field and tramping the grass down and making a very very muddy gateway between our two fields. Nether the less it was 10 bales for our friendly farmer Rob. Total man days of labour week 3 is 9 man days Cost to date Brought forward from blog Building Regs, Part O and SAP £14625 Refund from Architect £300 Fee to LABC for inspections £600 Foundations Weeks 1 to 3 £30,000 Total to date £44925

Looks a nice location, well done on planning, hope it all moves along as planned now. I have just started an ICF build just finished week 4 of the build, will be updating my blog soon.

Jensen made a few cars, you recognised the Jensen Interceptor we also have two Jensen FF, look our for other cars making an appearance Jensen CV

We specialise in restoring Jensen’s, that one is a customers returning after a test drive but we also own a few and hope to sell an FF to fund the build.

Despite the yellow weather warning we luckily had the coastal wind pushing it away, most of it fell on Tuesday but only 6mm The trench foundations are excavated and inspected. Then the concrete poured, and the first blocks laid followed by dolly blocks and internal supporting wall starter blocks Total man days of labour for week 2 is 13

Does anybody have a SAP with 6.8kW PV and can tell me the dwelling generation and units used and exported figures Or A build of 110m2 who can tell me their notional generation figures and units used. Reason I’m not sure I am going to have the funds at watertight shell stage to put as much PV ‘in’ the roof as I wanted to in the SAP completed by the architect. We are no longer with the architect and he has refunded me the SAP costs so I can not ask him for help. My PV calcs show that 6.8kW would be a good amount of PV for my usage but the architect put 11.7 kW in the SAP for BC and that’s too much and too expensive. I could pay to have another SAP calculation but this will be a very slow ‘build as you earn’ once watertight. No other SAP elements should change but as this is showing who knows what will happen as the build progresses. The PV is fed into the calculations for TER and TPER The notional figure for PV is calculated as 40% of the build area divided by 6.5. So for me 135m2 x 40% / 6.5 is 8.3kWp which has a PV generation of 6672.7132 With 1586 units used in the dwelling and 5085 exported. The generation figure is not based on my property like a MCS calculation so I think it is more general may be a notional location and possibly no account for ‘in or out all day’. From the generation figures I can calculate the TER and TPER for my as built SAP to see if I still get a pass with less PV My target TER is 8.41kgCo2/m2 and my dwelling is negative 2.5kgCO2/m2 and TPER target is 46.33 kWh and the dwelling is 25.54kWh so I should have some wriggle room. Or any build hub member looking for a client for a Part L SAP for a house that will not be completed for years.

Correct the VAT reclaim is dependent on the house being a self build nothing to do with your existing home.

We have finally started to build. Day 1 was Monday 2nd September 2024. It was nearly 3 years from the first invoice which was for the private planning consultant to discuss and review the possibility of demolishing one of our old barns and building a bungalow on its footprint. Back then we weren’t overly confident of our chances but the consultant gave us a fairly good chance. Our current home is a listed property on 3 floors. It is far too big for us with 4 double beds, 3 baths/ensuite and two lounges. It makes a great multi generation home but no longer fits our needs. We are both in our fifties and looking to downsize into an economical to run bungalow. The old wooden barn was given away locally on condition they took it down and removed it without our help. We had birds nesting so we had a planning condition it had to come down between November and February. All that remained was the concrete down the middle, one wall and concrete lintels separating the bays. We chose a local building contractor from Bude, he came recommended and so far his groundwork’s subcontractors have been very good. The build starts with lovely weather but by the Thursday most of the UK has a yellow weather warning for rain, we had 23mm of rain Thursday, 14.2mm on Friday and another 27.7mm on Sunday. By the end of the first week we had a cleared and level site marked out ready to start on the trenches on week 2. Week one total man days of labour is 6

Some on here have used Norrsken they are in Poole. They have been very good with me and my numerous phone calls. We have only just started the build but been in touch with them 2 years.

the home show inExeter this weekend. it’s a small show a few hours max and it’s done. https://builditlive.co.uk/pxsw29/?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADtZLTcS7bBRwZDo0699yl3Eut_c_&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0Oq2BhCCARIsAA5hubUoP87A1PfAtZKy7URNcrGhf6w_g9k0R_2TiJ0UDA6tDjkYYkBU_8IaAsQJEALw_wcB

Hi I don’t know Yelland but after looking it up I have been through a few times. I like to stop off at Instow to walk our dog. We moved down 8 years ago, Instow was the first beach we bravely let our Greyhound off lead, he ran in circles, which was typical for a Greyhound first time off lead experience. Im in Morwenstow and I get what you say about trades people they are very hard to find to get to do jobs. We hope to start our new build next month.

Welcome to the forum, I’m down the road just past the border in Cornwall.

Have you considered a curved shower rail from the short width to the long width, and a curtain with 3 magnets, one at both ends and one in the middle. we had a low ceiling which meant the screen was no good.

There a few of us spread out all over Cornwall. welcome

You can store your cars in the open that’s allowed but not necessarily good for the car, depending on their current condition you might want to invest in a carcoon. Could the neighbour think you are going to start a business up and not be happy with that. Perhaps he thinks your storing fuel. The sentence ending ‘works set out above’ implies something specific they want you to do if the letter doesn’t state that then I would be asking for more details. if you only just sent your letter of reply then give them time to reply then phone them. a safe site is what they want to see.

There are probably quite a few of us feeling a bit down at various stages some don’t get the planning they want others with health problems along the way. im a bit older than you and haven’t dug the foundations yet we also want ICF but struggled getting builders to quote. your closer to the finish line than me. Don’t give up on the workshop that could be one of the things you really want to enjoy at the end if even that starts with just 4 walls it will be your rest place and a nice place to go to.

You can phone the electric supplier to get the times. They are not always 7 continuous hours I previously had a one hour and a six hour night time on eco 7. I have a smart meter and times have changed to now on 1.24 to 8.24 I was told 1 to 8 BST but we have an old system and you hear the contactor switching and the smart meter confirms this just wish it would send the reading to supplier.

You can ask the insulation manufacturer eg recticel to do a risk analysis they do this for free. Tell them what you have already and where you live and wait a couple of weeks if you can for a very detailed report and suggestions. my architect also got the insulation the wrong way round and BC didn’t query it. Luckily the architect got a few more things wrong like no fire engine turning circle so I went through everything double checking and he refunded the SAP fee. we’re still not out of the ground yet so hopefully no more hidden architect surprises. You can try another manufacturer as well for speed of reply kingspan and unicel etc will all do a risk analysis and the products are interchangeable.