AliG

With the garage so near to the boundary I would think that it is a material change to your neighbour. This will be particularly true if they objected before due to the garage.

I couldn't get close to see exactly. It was the weekend and I was looking through the fence. Most pieces looked fine, but not all and one piece in particular was far off the face at the corner. It may be that it just didn't have the clip on it yet. I do know previously that although Porotherm blocks are ground to be flat at the top and bottom some of the blocks were not flat on the side faces so where they bulge out it may stop the insulation being flush. Porotherm only has 1mm of mortar between the blocks. This does mean that the blocks seem to fit very tightly against each other it is more whether they are hard against the wall I am worried about.

That was exactly my thought on the way into work. If they put the boards on in rows then put a foam bead at the edge where they meet the wall then effectively they are gluing them together

Thanks Jeremy. I will speak to the builder about this. I did think about it initially but my feeling was in the pieces that fit tight against each other it would be difficult to get foam between the insulation boards.

It certainly sounds better than people coming in via the kitchen. Glad it isn't a big expense. Wren does look good when I have looked at it, are you fitting it yourself? I've noticed some of the places with more reasonable cabinet prices seem to jack up the fitting price.

The main practical consideration Jamie is that you have to be careful of it catching in the wind. Also if someone leaves a parcel against it, it might be hard to open, but I don't recall anyone every leaving a parcel actually against my front door. People might find it a bit unusual but you soon get used to it. Its a lot harder to kick in if you have upset anyone! Are you happy it's the best layout? Seems a big last minute change.

Thanks Terry. They have literally just started putting it on. Porotherm lets you build one leaf at a time so the entire ground floor inner leaf is built but they are only just starting the outer leaf. I had read about the issues with the convection currents behind the insulation. But if it is only some pieces, I think it is probably either where the Porotherm blocks aren't flat or the ties are getting in the way, then the next piece of insulation being hard against the wall would presumably stop the convection current? Also if the gaps are taped the air would have to rise up the whole height of the building without hitting anything which seems unlkely? Or am I missing something. I have impressed numerous time that I want it as tight as possible. I did wonder if you could infect stick all the outer insulation on but I haven't heard of that being done and decided that taping the gaps to prevent air being able to easily move around was the most cost effective solution.

Scared to start this. The builders started to put the Celotex on the outside of the inner leaf last week. There are plastic ties which should hold it close to the Porotherm blockwork, But I noticed a couple of pieces were maybe 2cm away from the blocks. I have asked the builder to tape all the joints and the cavity is not ventilated so it should be pretty hard for air to blow behing the insulation. In this scenario do you think the gap materially affects the U-value or as long as the air cannot move does it not make a difference? There will also be insulated plasterboard on the inside walls which means there will be some insulation everywhere no matter what. FYI Wall build up is - 20mm render, 100mm porotherm, 50mm cavity, 100mm Celotex CW4000, 100mm porotherm, parge coat, dot and dab 37.5mm insulated plasterboard, plaster skim Thanks

I found this guidance for non material amendments. I'm no expert I just Googled - There would be no alteration to the application site boundary and the proposal would be located within it (red line boundary). The amendment would not conflict with development plan policies or other Government guidance. There would be no conflict with any conditions on the planning permission. The proposal would not exacerbate concerns raised by third parties at original planning application stage. The approved footprint/siting of the building will not be moved in any direction by more than one metre. The proposal would not result in an extension to development already approved. The height/volume of the building or extension would not be increased. A reduction in the height/volume/size of the building/extension. The amendments must not result in a fundamental change in the design of the building. Does not amount to new works or elements not considered by any environmental statement submitted with the application. Amendments to windows/doors/openings that will not have any overlooking impact on neighbouring properties. As it's a height increase it may be a minor material amendment, however, assuming that the garage is lower than the house they may consider it non material. If I was you, I would apply for a NMA and see what they say. You could also just call up and ask depending on how helpful they are. If they say it is material then you have to make a variation or removal of condition application which is closer to a new application although has a lower fee.

I would recommend getting the cheapest Neff/Siemens/Bosch oven with this feature. Why pay up for 20 different over programmes that you will never use when this is of genuine use. Other makes do have the function but I haven't tried them. The now call the feature activeClean. It is not the same as a self-cleaning over which has a coating which is supposed to react with heat to help clean them when they are on. This does not work as well, Siemens call it ecoClean. They claim that they only use around 3kWh for the cycle and that this is actually cheaper than the cost of oven cleaner as well as not getting any nasty chemicals on your hands. Once finished the oven is coated in a thin layer of ash and you can just wipe this away with a damp cloth or piece of kitchen roll. You should give the oven a quick wipe beforehand as mentioned to clean the door and also to take off any thicker pieces of dirt as these won't totally burn away. Apparently in the newer ones you can leave the racks in. My wife ran ours without reading the instructions and didn't take out the rack. It took the shine off it and now it doesn't slide properly. Our ovens are 4 years old and still look pretty much like new when I run this feature. For the modest extra cost it is a steal.

Most definitely. I have Siemens ones. They come up almost like new.

You'd prob have more luck chipping away at the quartz

Thanks Dave, I thought around £50 a point plus some overhead. Good for costing mine up. They had a lot of LED strip lights but there was no sign or mention of home automation so it seemed bizarrely expensive. My builder has put a much lower price in the quote for a much larger build. But we need to know the final electric plan to confirm it. There are extras such as distributing TV and WiFi around the house and heating controls etc but even adding all this in I wouldn't expect to get to £35,000.

Back on the Building the Dream house, how could the electrics have possibly cost £35,000. Again its the kind of thing where I would tot up the numbers of sockets, switches and light fittings and then work out the cost per item. Surely that size of house didn't have enough electrics to get anywhere near that cost. I think @prodave is our resident electrician, is this a good rule of thumb? I would go on £50-100 per fitting plus maybe an allowance for the consumer unit, etc?

Shows that often it's just mark up. Like I said on the kitchen I just counted up how many cupboards there were, allowing for drawers, more expensive cabinets for ovens etc and then said how do you get to xx price per cabinet. Get them to break the price down into cabinets, worktops, equipment etc. Because you can buy appliances on line it is very easy to check the prices and you can again look at the price of the worktops per square metre to check that. Usually the markup is in the cabinetry. I stripped the equipment out of my main kitchen order as I could buy it all a couple of thousand cheaper on line. I was surprised that they didn't try to raise the price of the cabinets as I had stripped so much of their profit out of the order, nor would they match the online prices which was odd as I am sure they buy below these prices. Almost all kitchens have similar MDF cabinets. There is just no justification to try and sell something unless it is very special for over £1000 a cabinet. I suspect I could have saved quite a bit over the whole build compared to the main contractor who just orders stuff up from the builders merchant. Often what works is to figure out what the reasonable price to pay is and then stick to saying that is the price you want to pay. If you are not silly about it often you will get that price or very close.

As you say it is often harder to value self builds due to better build quality and finishing. In reality people don't pay much for these so I would tend to just go to the high end of local prices per square foot, or slightly above. The trouble especially with interior finish is it depreciates pretty quickly. I see houses for sale today that I thought were stunning 15 years ago and now they look tired and old fashioned. Last night's valuation was way out from prevailing local prices. It was undoubtedly a nicer house, but even my suggested £7-800,000 is well above the local norm trying to allow for the nice, finish, views etc. My architect took me to see a house he designed before we started. The people planned to sell it and build next door. When they put it up for sale, I reckoned it was at leat 15% overvalued when I compared to local values. Again it was way higher per square foot than houses being built nearby by Cala homes an upmarket but mass market developer. They have now cut the price by £50k and it still hasn't sold. I saw another recent small development where the houses were at least £100k over the prevailing market price. Some developers just seem to chance their arm. I try not to say anything. There is a development in Edinburgh called Caer-Amon. When the developer started it the houses were around 40% more per square foot than the new house I had bought a couple of years earlier, it was 2006. It is also under the flight path to Edinburgh airport and the houses are ugly, but nicely built and finished. When asked by the salesperson I told them that they were way overpriced. She told me that some people had bought in the first phase with the intention of selling up and moving to the last phase subsequently. They still haven't sold all the houses in the development and the houses sold in 2006/7 are sometimes worth less than people paid for them. I guess the point is it is hard to buck the prevailing market price for a house. I looked up the value of these houses on Zoopla and noticed that it is valuing houses way over the price that actual neighbouring houses are up for sale for (and still not selling). My own houses they have added £100k to in the last 6 months. I hadn't noticed this and it is theoretically nice, but I am pretty certain I would really struggle to get the price they were quoting 6 months ago. I have never seen its estimates so far out before, I think what is happening is that they are indexing all houses in Edinburgh to the rise in the market, but as often discussed before large houses are currently very difficult to sell in Scotland and considerably underperforming the overall market.

I clicked that link Barney, it doesn't look anything special and that price is outrageous. I have been getting quotes recently for the laundry room in the house where we are going to have full height cabinets. Frankly I hated paying up £4-500 per cabinet including fitting for just the cabinetry. Then there are appliances, worktops etc over and above this, but I don't have the time to do it myself and they will probably do a nicer job than me. In the current house I bought the cabinets from Homebase and built and fitted them myself. If you do this you are probably talking £100-200 per cabinet. Lots of drawers do push the prices a bit higher than these figures. The new place will have a Callerton Kitchen, as I have in my current house. It was quite nice to buy something made in the UK. The cabinetry where I have a lot of 1000mm wide deep drawers is coming in at around 700-800 a cabinet. That's in a combination of high gloss and real walnut. I balk at that price yet it seems some of these places are charging £2000 a cabinet or more. Often the only difference is how nice the door is and the basic cabinets are very similar.

The average car price I quoted was from a company called Driven Data, however, this is the average "showroom price". The SMMT suggested an average transaction price of £22,000 a year ago, probably £23,000ish last year. I am assuming this is the mean average, it would be pretty unusual to quote the median or modal average. Arguably the average house price average has the same issue. I looked up West Sussex earlier and saw a nice place at £19.5m That's what happens when you quote data in a hurry as you should really be working!

This is a whole new debate. The average new car in the UK costs £29,000, the average house in the UK costs £220,000 which is massively inflated by London. So the average new car costs more than 10% of the cost of the average house. However, for people who live in detached houses like self builders the average car/house value is probably more like 6-7%. As houses get more expensive the relative value of cars tends to fall. And for some of you tightwads who like driving around in antiquated cars the figure is considerably less In all seriousness I know that driving an old car massively reduces depreciation costs, but newer cars are generally much nicer and safer to drive and sadly there is an intangible feelgood factor that I am happy to pay up for. What I try to do is to drive an expensive car with low depreciation, but basically they're my weakness! BTW I read an article a couple of years ago about people being more and more willing to spend £100k on kitchens. It's crazy. They are usually a little bit nicer but I feel a lot of it just goes into profit margins, commissions etc. So you're right Jack £50k isn't that much at some places, I would still argue it's way more than necessary and certainly one of the first things to go if you can't afford to build the house you would like.

Yes, that is similar to my winter bills for a 4000sq foot 90s house. I am around £1500 a year for gas. A lot of that goes on DHW and a gas tumble dryer. I once looked at a 6000sq ft stone house in Edinburgh. They said the gas bill was £700 a month! The U-value of those old stone walls is around 2 which is worse than a modern double glazed window.

Champagne tastes/beer budget springs to mind. When I was a teenager and doing my paper round I noticed that there was a very strong correlation between the value of people's cars and the value of their houses. The correlation changes depending on the value of houses in the area and would not work in London, but even if I look at my current street there is a pretty good correlation. There were a couple of notable outliers where people had cars worth an enormous percentage of the value of their houses. Generally speaking if you drive a BMW 3 Series I would not expect you to have a 400sq metre house which is way larger than average. I did have a quick look and see that West sussex houses seem priced at around £400 a square ft so it is an expensive area for housing. It shouldn't affect build prices that much but I am sure it does. I know someone who spent over £10000 a square metre to build a basement in Chelsea. He said it was OK as it would increase the value by more. I kept asking why did the build cost go up with the selling price! 50k on a kitchen is a bit excessive excessive for a 400sq metre house. I wonder if we did a survey here how many people's kitchens cost 60% more than the list price of their car (list price not depreciated price). If you translated the kitchen price to other fixtures and fittings you can see where the money is likely going. That along with a high percentage of glass. I am sure they could bring the cost down to £1500 with design and specification changes. You should be able to build a very nicely specified house for that price.

David is right, I never checked the calculation at the start, but 100 cubic metres is around 1111kWh not 111. All those 1s are easy to mistype. So around £50 a month including standing charge, the gas itself would be around £30. For the winter that is still excellent. My 90s house uses way more gas in winter months than summer. You will probably find your heating isn't on at all for 8 or 9 months of the year. If you are heating around 300l of water a day by 40-50c then DHW is using around 15kWh a day, or close to half your usage. Thus over the year I would expect you to use around 5500kWh for DHW and 2500kWh for heating, assuming roughly 4 months of heating. You may be using more heat than normal at the moment as materials dry out. At 3p per kWh that is £240 for the gas used plus around £100 for the standing charge at around 30p a day. So your average bill should end up being around £30 a month over the year.

As people say that seems a very good result David. It is only around £3 a month of gas in the winter (plus standing charge). Most people would be doing a jig if they achieved that!

I had never heard about the radiation, seems like the MoD are now cleaning it up. It's a very nice commuter area, but it's pretty out of the way and expensive for what it is. The views are fantastic and the house last night made a lot better use of them than the developer built houses in the area. The quoted million pound price is £425 a square foot ignoring the room above the garage. It looks like the prevailing price in the street is closer to £250 a square foot and I don't see anything has ever sold for over £300 a square foot in Dalgety Bay. You can buy houses in nice parts of Edinburgh for under £300 and even the most expensive streets rarely go over £350 a square foot. Only high spec flats pass that kind of price. There are a few places around Edinburgh which are pleasant but full of commuters and to my mind overpriced when travel time is taken into consideration. Many of these places have massively unperformed price wise in recent years as I think historically prices were propped up by incomers from England who were used to longer commutes. As these have dried up the prices differentials have increased. I may be biased but there are very few jobs in Fife that could support a £1m house and in the morning you are looking at up to 1.5 hours to get to Edinburgh. You can buy a much larger house in Edinburgh for the quoted price. That's a no brainer unless you like to spend 20% of every weekday commuting.

Yes, my main concern is that they are giving people false expectations of the profits to be made and like most people here I am building to get the house I want, I am probably spending more than I can sell the house for. Indeed recently some of the suggested budgets given by people on the show are absolutely fanciful at well below £1000 per square metre. I seem to remember one episode though where the people claimed to budget around £250,000 for a 350-400sq metre house That's just ridiculous. Last night's house was 220sq metre according to the plans plus a double garage with room above, around 260sq metre in total. The build cost was thus quite high at around £1700 a metre. Maybe they are told to underestimate the budget to sound interesting Dave. As you say few people would be able to afford to go 30% over budget. When I looked at the Fife planning portal the original approved plan was for a 320 sq metre house and I suspect that they scaled this down due to budget constraints. I also question if they really give all the spending. A quick google suggests last night's house was architect designed, although the architect didn't get a look in on the show. If I look at my build, architect, SE, ground reports etc are close to 10% of the cost. Also I haven't ever seen any mention of stamp duty on the cost of plots. Still it doesn't stop it being interesting and entertaining and giving us all ideas of how to spend even more money! I am concerned I just don't have enough LED lights everywhere now!