curlewhouse

The guy is doing both, BC & Warranty inspections as it's all through the same firm. There's not been any obvious separation between the inspections if you see what I mean. I've politely texted him back about the latest thing pointing out that I have a Part P qualified electrician inspecting so wasn't aware it needs inspecting twice .... awaiting his response.

Using a private inspection service at my architects recommendation. 1st inspector was great, sensible and most importantly, practical. Unfortunately he has left the company and the guy we now get is friendly but I get the feeling he is new in the job - for example questioning whether Kingspan SIPs are an approved building material (!) making *me* check if the 1mm /2mm packing used in spots along the soleplate by the erectors is acceptable or if it should be grouted (good luck getting <1mm grout in), - insisting I find out what the shrinkage is on the SIPs once built and so on (I replied that as a building inspector HE was more likely to get a reply from Kingspan than I was - and he did, it's tiny and effects our build methods not one iota) - his latest is insisting *he* check the first fix electrics, even though I have a Part P qualified electrician doing the certification... saying I cannot put up any plasterboard at all (a bit late as Ive several up, but one side of each wall only, so wiring is clearly visible) until he does so. I'm trying to keep it all friendly for obvious reasons, but it's getting to be a pain (there's lots more silly questions I've had to deal with but too much to relate here). I wonder has anyone else found a way to deal with this sort without putting their backs up so they make your build hell - as they hold all the cards & could make things crazy expensive for you (this one is also doing the surveys for our warranty).

It's all a bit arbitrary though isn't it? For example we have a potable water supply in and the various pipes are full of water and currently just locked off with maintenance valves (except the temporary outside tap Im using building water) but no taps or sanitaryware yet fitted. My wife notified the council tax folks we were now living on site in a caravan - in response they immediately sent us a bill for the forthcoming year for the house we've just vacated ! When I told them politely to go to hell if they thought I'd pay for the year advance for a house I no longer live in they claim its an "automatic letter when you cancel your direct debit" - I told them I'd heard similar stories many times when dealing with other fraudsters when I was an investigator ?. Anyway, 2 months on we are still waiting to hear what they want to charge us whilst living in the caravan on site (I'm told its usually the minimum band).

Must admit Nick, I have wondered why I can't just pour wet concrete and then use self levelling as you describe - it would seem far simpler, but I presume there's an issue why "dry" screed is used - drying time is still pretty massive, and I've built stuff like sheds or garden walls on top of concrete in far less than the 50 days in theory my dry 100mm screed could take to, er, dry. Ordered the sharp sand today to do dry screed and have 4 days off work so plan to start on the first room tomorrow ....

Thanks - Just looked "dead men for plasterboard" up and will make a couple.

Yes, the quoted drying times are huge, I think you are correct as I had figured it to be about 50 days. I did think maybe to do it to 90 or 95mm and use a self levelling compound on top. We plan to put something like ceramic tiles onto it in the downstairs bathroom and utility room. Stone for the main living area, but I am probably going to get the pros in to do that screed as between it and the smaller sitting room there's about 100m2 to do so well beyond my DIY capabilities to level with any certainty.

Yes, so far I've found one in my land rover tyre (luckily its a proper land rover with proper tyres, not one of the modern hairdressers cars land rover now produce, so the rubber is too deep for the nail to get through) - about 80 of the 8 inch long screw things the SIPs people use, and then roofers apparently fitted the slates by throwing 1000 aluminium nails in the air in the hope 1 falls into a slate hole - or so it appears from the many hundreds lying around the perimeter of the house now (which as they won't rust will pose a hazard forever unless all found). I have a habit of spraying some of my tools with yellow paint - which identifies them as mine, though I do it really so I can find them as I'm hopeless at putting things down and then wasting 10 minutes hunting for them - so bright yellow helps! Our cocker spaniel also pinches anything cylindrical or glove like - so screwdrivers, tins of expanding foam, mastic tubes and work gloves tend to disappear when my back is turned!

If they ban woodburners in London here is a handy conversion that avoids all that wood smoke:

Its 200mm from the beam and block floor to top of the blocks the sole[plate sits on.

Got my UFH down in the 2 smallest rooms, utility and downstairs WC. Being small rooms I want to do the screeding myself (though may call in the pros for the big rooms). I've got 200mm cellotex, and my pipes and steel mesh in place ready - my "issue" is going in circles about what I should actually put down. Is a normal sand/cement dry screed OK at 100mm thick? All the examples I can find online are thinner than that. (I also intend to add fibres of course) - or would a simple wet concrete mix do the job?

Well, though in total it was almost 7 months, we finally got electricity. Life in the caravan is now much more civilised, and I can write this without ear defenders on because of the generator noise. No more lukewarm showers or worrying about flattening the caravan battery. Hooray! On the other hand, our builder is getting increasingly vague about when he will do the stonework on the house and it is getting very much colder in the caravan now here in Northumberland - we have to keep the heating running most nights now. Got first lot of UFH laid in downstairs bathroom and utility - I don't know how those guys get lovely straight lines, mine are as wobbly as a London tube rail! However, it doesn't matter as long as the separation distances are correct (made myself 2 little templates for this from cardboard doubled over and wrapped in tape, marked 150 and 200mm respectively, made it nice and simple ). I've got all the socket wiring now in place, and the soundproof plasterboard up where I wanted it on the upstairs bathroom and bedrooms. Coming to the realisation that boarding out the huge open space above the stairs is going to be "interesting" when the time comes! But with some of the plasterboard up, we are really getting a feel for the room sizes and it really feels like progress. Our daughter is now at University and is gutted she can't be helping - she really enjoyed helping.. So thanks to the wonders of technology, I took my mobile and gave her a visual tour of the house last night on skype. Isn't technology clever? Pics to follow.

Yes, no DAB here at all and no fibre for us (though since we are now the only folks on ADSL at the exchange we get respectable performance really) and mobile data non existent - unless I climb on the scaffolding to the very top and hold the phone up as high as I can - then it works! .

You can always get an internet connected booster - EE and Vodafone do them that I know of. We've had them before and whilst they did not work "up to 100m outside the house" as we'd been told, they did work really well inside the house. Vodafone also runs a scheme whereby if you are in a very rural area you can have a small repeater of theirs on your property FOC (very small, not a "mast" type thing) they will do that. At the time I saw it I wasn't on Vodafone so never explored what the advantages to the householder concerned were beyond not paying for it) which provides service very locally (i.e maybe your village area).

Build up is beam and block, sand blinding, DPM, 200mm celotex

So I'm about to start to make the floors and lay the UFH pipes in the ground floor bathroom and utility (for various reasons I need these rooms useable albeit unheated ASAP). I have up to100mm to play with on top of the 200mm celotex now in place. I'm torn about whether I need to put steel mesh in or can do it with fibres alone. I laid part of a private road for a neighbour where I used to live using delivered ready mix with fibres a few years ago and it is uncracked to this day despite bin wagons etc etc. The two small rooms are 2700 x 2500 and 2700 x 3000 - and I've got a choice open to me of 75mm or 100mm with UFH in, which will then have stone/tiles on top. I've looked online to see what is suggested for various depths (i.e when/if mesh is preferred over fibre for certaibn depths of concrete) and TBH its not clear. I'll be self mixing for these two small rooms, so fibre would seem an easy option. I notice the CEMEX web site actually suggests fibre reinforced over rebar for domestic and light commercial use - but the old fashioned part of me cant quite accept that it will be strong enough if only say 100mm on top of the insulation (as presumably with the best will in the world there will be movement). I plan to do the biggest rooms with mesh (don't know why, just seems to me that the bigger span needs it?). Any experiences/thoughts? I know some on here really prefer mesh, but I'm interested to know what peoples experiences are between the 2 (not mutually exclusive) options.

Bought 2 lots of Seconds on eBay after all - unfaced stuff, to go on the bottom, and using the the good foil faced stuff I've bought on top to give us our 200mm - you've got to watch though as some of the seconds on offer is sloped/angled, and you could miss this if not paying attention to the listing. It was considerably cheaper, and I've never seen the advantage of 2 lots of foil face to face in the middle anyway really, if using more than one layer. The top face yes, makes sense of course, but not having on the very bottom I can't see making any difference really, so given the price saving, I went for it.

Yes, I just got them to price match online prices for insulation this last week, so got it quicker too.

Disappointed with Seconds & Co as I'd planned to buy a lot from them, but I think they've jumped on the increase as their seconds of foil faced Kingspan/reticel/etc. are currently priced higher than I can source perfect condition ones! Their unfaced are still cheaper though.

After I posted on our local market town FB page warning someone who had asked where to get something, not to use the local Jewsons unless they were a millionaire (I called in once for something for work and got offered prices which were so ridiculous that I asked the guy to repeat it as genuinely thought I'd misheard, it was so insane). The new manager saw the post, contacted me and said to me that things would be different now he was there and to give them another try- he was right. It seems the branch managers must have a lot of leeway open to them. It made good business sense too as I've spent several thousands with them which they would never have seen otherwise. I have to say my local MKM branch gives Joe public quite decent prices in my experience. I rang TP early on in the build having opened an account with them, but they didn't even attempt to give decent prices and I've never bothered again. It seems it might be more down to local management than actual firms.

So apart from the long running saga getting the Northern electric network to understand their own reson d'etre, I've started to do the utility and downstairs bathroom, so as to give us facilities as soon as possible. Coincidentally the two houses to the North of us have been bought and are being renovated and the guy doing the building work called in to see me and very kindly told me that there has been a 14% or so rise in insulation costs and another forecast for October according to his BM. He realized I'd be buying quite a bit so had popped in to warn me - which was nice of him. So I checked online for the best price I could find and rang my local Jewsons branch with my account number and asked what their price was - it was about £6 more per sheet - so I told them the price I could get it at and they said they'd match it - so since that meant quicker delivery I just ordered 20 sheets (it was celotex I was after but they only have a different brand so I thought I'd only order a limited amount until I saw the quality). It seems fine, though being 100mm it has made me realize that I need to think a bit more about the floor build up as it still leaves me about 150mm + to the door level (disconcertingly, on the ground floor I find the beam-&-block level to door opening levels to be different at different entrances!) , though that does mean I can squeeze in another 100mm of insulation - a pity that for some reason it shot up in price recently. So my plan is to buy seconds unfaced insulation and put that on the bottom, and the foil faced on the top. I had planned to buy it all from a seconds supplier, but found that I can now get better prices for new in the foil faced versions than their seconds are priced at! After getting a few quotes, and reading peoples comments I chose Wunda to supply our UFH kit. I began pricing it all by buying it individually via eBay and so on, but found Wunda to be very competitive, so went with the easy option and got it all in one go in the end. We bit the bullet and after months debating have gone for only having UFH on the first floor in the bathroom, though obviously the whole of the ground floor will have it. Although I know the calculations say we should not need it, I am tempted to fit "just in case" background electric panel heaters in the bedrooms. My daughter bringing her horse to visit!

Ironing with generator and ear defenders! Door open to avoid CO poisoning!

Yes, she emailed me as soon as they passed the file to her, apologising for the delays (though it was none of her fault personally as she'd not been involved until that moment) and asked me to ring her. Just as she then promised, she then went next day to see the guy in person about the wayleave agreement to save the time it would have taken posting the forms out and getting them back, and took one of the engineer guys with her to look at the site. I can't speak highly enough of her, credit where it is due, and I emailed a thank you to her, copied into other people who've been involved (perhaps her example might rub off?) in the issue.

Well the lady from the wayleave department has been great - turns out she is local and had seen our house going up and wondered why she had not received anything about it. Because of the delays she went in person to see the neighbouring landowner with the forms and got them done there and then next day after I spoke to her. What a shame the rest of her organization wasn't like that. The generator is playing up and cutting out so my poor wife got in from a 12 hour night shift wanting a shower (she's a nurse and the NHS being the way it is the shower for staff has no curtain or privacy and is used for storage) to wash the many germs she's no doubt exposed to off, and was unable to get one because of the lack of electricity, so we are fed up now with the lack of a connection. I think she wasn't far off tears when she went back to work last night. I emailed all the contacts I've had at Northern Power Networks last night about the situation, pointing out that we still have not been given a date for connection, only a verbal promise of "as soon as possible" - which given their 6 month delay so far could mean 1 day or 1 year! I mentioned that I had no doubt that they would all go home to hot water, showers and electric lighting, but we are not far off living "like tramps" thanks to their "losing" the paperwork from March (they claim it was "lost in the post", but since they also will not answer their phones ( we tried repeatedly - you get a secretary who says they are all too busy to take your call) I smell a large rat and increasingly suspect it was "lost" as a way of avoiding the work. My wife is considering if we should go and look at renting a house again as we have absolutely no idea at all when they intend to do anything. We certainly can't keep buying generators. I think the model we got has been very good, but I think it's obviously not made for the amount of use it's been getting. At least I do have the MPAN number now and have sent that to our would-be supplier. They tell me it's a 3 to 5 week admin process between being connected and the supply being on - so by sending it to the supplier early, I hope to limit this as it allows them to get on with the process whilst Northern Power Networks still dither. The thought of October/November with no electricity for showers/heating etc in Northumberland is too grimd to contemplate, so if there's no progress these next few days I think we'll have to start looking quickly for a temporary rental somewhere or some other answer to the generator issue. I've asked Northern Powergrid if they have a generator loan scheme for when they cannot supply properties which we could borrow while we look for a short term rental. Trouble is if I buy one, they could connect us next day - or in another 6 months, we have no idea, so a loaner would be good. .

I was pleasantly surprised during our SIPs construction when we got heavy rain (that's not the bit I was pleasantly surprised about) and had to get something to firm the place up - road planings at £8 per tonne delivered from a local farmer who has a side business in this sort of thing, so just £80 for 10 tonne. I've found water drains completely freely through them despite the telehandler etc. running back and forth and compacting them a bit. Going to get some more as a sub base before final site leveling.