epsilonGreedy

I can see how this happened, you commissioned a roofing job and it started turning into a structural renovation. £130 a day is not a lot for someone who is expected to cover all those roles I mentioned. Will you now have to submit plans to your local building control office as the scope of the job has grown? Playing the role of small claims court magistrate, my first question would be "what contract was established" and then "did you gain any benefit as the daily rate odd job man worked under your supervision".

Reading between the lines here, from the outset of this project you undertook the roles of surveyor, structural engineer, building control inspector, quantity surveyor and project manager. It is unreasonable to blame the solo low-end 130 quid a day bod who decided to work for you, he probably wanted out by the end of day-2 as the poor condition of the structure was revealed.

Now you have done it. I sold my boat to fund the self build and had not missed sailing as the build occupied 100% of my free brain cycles. Nothing in the modern world beats the sense of freedom sitting in the cockpit at sunset heading down channel on a close reach contemplating a solo night at sea.

The procedure I have seen is: Forget about the DPM until the masonry walls are up to gutter height and the roof is on. The DPC is installed from a roll of extra wide material and this is left as a loose flap on the inside. Pre screeding, you lay the DPM, install the insulation sheets and create vertical upstands of insulation block around the outside perimeter of the wall. DPC and DPM are lapped together at this stage. This process is not 100% foolproof and so during screeding an extra pair of hands is useful to tuck the materials together until the weight of the screed holds everything in place.

I spoke to the pro installer of a flowscreed job near me this week and he confirmed my advice posted in this thread i.e. some pressure should be maintained during the pour. He said the objective is that when the UFH returns to normal operating pressure post pour & cure the UFH pipes can contract and expand a little during heating cycles without creating cyclical pressure on the slab. Some pressure in the pipes during the pour would also reduce risk of the screed compressing the pipes though he added this is a low risk with a 50mm flow screed pour. The guy also advised me to think ahead while laying the footing blockwork and allow for a circuit that does not result in a Clapham Junction of UFH pipes running through a door threshold.

I watched 50mm of flowscreed being applied to my neighbour's plot this week. The installers spent time plugging such gaps in the perimeter as flow screed would escape round the frame brackets shown in your photo. No expert here but surely the solution is small insulation upstands around those frame foots if only to prevent cold bridges. The cost of the job was £4000 for 90 sqm including UHF components and pipe installation.

I got lost there a few years ago trying to avoid a snarl-up on the A27. The Hamble River valley north-east of the M27 is particularly idyllic and overlooked. The notion of "semi rural" is relative, a population density map of the UK highlights that the combined conurbation formed by Southampton/Gosport/Portsmouth is one of the population hotspots spots in the UK.

Lots to like in that corner of the country. A stones throw from the epicenter of UK yachting on the River Hamble, last semi rural coastal area between Southampton and Portsmouth and not so far from Southampton Parkway then London. Some people still have to work for a living.

How many of these panels could I fit into a regular 2006 vintage transit van?

I contacted H+H today to ask if they run any demo or workshop days for folk interested in thin-joint masonry construction. The answer to that was no but they do have a demonstrators who go out onsite even in the case of a single selfbuild. At my suggestion someone from the H+H tech department said they would be happy if such a site demo was to a group of interested self builders. Would this be of interest to some forum members?

I know an arborist who works maintaining safe vegetation distances around power lines. They operate with large cautious safety margins and these are designed to cope with exceptional conditions such as hot weather when the lines can stretch and droop, also an HT cable can spark to earth over a larger distance when humidity is high. The industry is highly regulated and they don't mess around with the safety distances, the last casualty he encountered was a dead horse.

I am actually offering encouragement to the OP by suggesting there is no need to get that deep into mortgage debt. I also think that if a newbee self builder plucks a max budget out of the air and then sits down with an architect, then the architect will find a way to spend that budget.

As an online social experiment, could you try responding to one of my posts without an antagonistic string or !!!!!!!!'s or ???????????'s A little earlier in this thread you cast doubt on the national self build survey figures I quoted because of the low single digit margins. Now you claim it is a perfectly normal commercial margin. Which is exactly what I did through the link I posted but you then disputed the basic survey numbers.

If you looked at my figures in more depth you would realize that I was providing an example where the OP's final mortgage would be £90k less than assumed. I sometimes feel like I am dispensing advice on the dangers of class-A drugs in the middle of an opium den. This place is very tribal and the hard core of 20 regular posters who account for say 50% of the content plainly do not like diverse opinion or facts. I thought my original post in this thread was mild and understated though clearly I irked the forum's inner core. Going forward I shall refrain from forum posting and just maintain the blog which needs updating because I have progressed beyond dug foundations.

Assuming the figures in the report are reliable we can conclude: The average figure masks many self builder financial casualties regardless of the zero costed labour input. Most self builders fail to match pro builder profit margins due to their inexperience. My earlier assertion about typical plot value ratios is more accurate than yours.