AliG

I just watched this week's Building the Dream The house was very nice and for some bizarre reason the owners sold the plot without planning permission even though achieving planning does not seem to have been contentious. I found the original planning application and there was not one comment. Indeed the original proposed house was somewhat larger as it was 2.5 storeys high although the final design was probably nicer. However, they claimed to have spent £480,000 and had the house valued at £1m. On most episodes I know nothing about the area, but as a kid my parents looked at houses in Dalgety Bay in Fife. That valuation for a 220sq metre house is almost double the prevailing valuation in the street and as far as I can find the most a house has ever sold for in Dalegty Bay is £620,000. Currently a somewhat larger house with a pool, although maybe not as nice is for sale at offers over £795,000. This is in probably the most expensive street in Dalgety Bay, Donibristle Gardens. Anyway, I would guess the house is worth nearer £700-800,000, still a fantastic profit, but it made me wonder if they are consistently over estimating values. As people on here often note if you self build nowadays often you just break even. The people last night will have been helped by buying the land below market.

I just had a look at my quote. The french doors are around 20% more expensive per square metre than opening windows. Opening windows are around 8% more expensive than fixed windows. I have a lot of french doors, but no sliders. I also have quite a lot of non opening windows as I didn't see the point of the extra cost and maintenance if they don't have to open. Perhaps if you want to cut costs you could change some sliders to french doors. It's quite a personal thing, I guess, I just prefer doors. You might also want to look to see if all the windows need to open.

I did wonder after your comments that the price was coming in quite high. The Home Pure (KF500?) are a very nice and I would guess very expensive window. I have watched people's quotes come in over time on here and I would guess that you should be looking for a price somewhere between £325 and £350 a square metre fro a good quality alu/wood window assuming that your order is maybe around 40sq metres? One caveat is not many people have posted prices since Brexit and it may be that prices have risen around 10% since last year due to the exchange rate move. I am not sure on an alu/PVC window although comments suggest that they should be the same price or less. There are quite a few companies who can quote, Velfac, Rationel, Ideal Combi, Janex. Also some people on here may be able to point you towards eastern European suppliers they have used and got good prices from.

Lizzie you never said what price your quotes were coming in at. As a generalisation aluminium/timber triple glazed windows come in at around £300 a square metre ex VAT and fitting. Many things affects the price of windows, as well as the construction, doors tend to be more expensive than windows, especially large sliders and the price you can get will be affected by the size of the order. It sounds like your order is not enormous and has more large sliding doors so I would guess it to be over £300 a square metre. I would probably separate out the entrance door as they are much more expensive. I hate maintenance but have gone for wood internally as I prefer the look. Often the question I ask myself in these circumstances, and it is an unfortunately expensive question, is down the line will I look at this item and wish I had got something else. That will drive me up the wall. If you are happy with how the UPVC looks inside then fine. The windows will be excellent quality and perform well. The main difference is aesthetics which is a personal thing. I wouldn't worry how they will look to other people, most people would never ever notice and what matters is how you feel about them. You mentioned sound reduction being important. Standard triple glazed windows have glass that is usually 4,18,4,18,4. That is 4mm thick panes with 18 or 20mm spaces. That reduces sound by around 35 decibels. If you want better you need to alter the thickness of one of the panes so that sound does not resonate through all the panes as they are the same. Thus you can change one pane to 6mm or 6.4mm laminated glass which is also more secure. Looking at Internorm's website the standard glass is called 3N2, this offers 35dB reduction and the glass with different thicknesses which reduces sound is called 33U, offering 39dB reduction. This or laminated glass will tend to add up to 10% to the cost and you should check that the different quotes you have are like for like on glass. I would also note that a lot of the sound actually comes through the window vents and if you want to reduce sound probably having MVHR and no vents would make the biggest difference. TBF though, we have a lot of wind noise in our current house, I think it mainly comes in around the eaves and I am not convinced it doesn't come through the roof rather than the windows. It is hard to tell.

I don't think we are overlooked but cannot tell for certain until the house is built so I went for clear glazing and will get blinds or shutters depending on the windows. I am seeing white shutters a lot recently which seem like a nice feature for a bathroom.

I think if it is actually on the boundary it will have to be fire rated. If it is 1m away then you could prob use a normal window if the size is less than 1sq m.

Yes I could have got cheaper windows, but I really liked the look of the Rationel windows particularly the ironmongery and the sashes. We are going with the rough granite black finish as I think it looks a lot less like a commercial building than the smooth aluminium finish. The colour is Noir 2100 sable. We are in the process of getting quotes to get all the rainwater goods, soffits and fascia boards in aluminium to match this which I think will look good as well as being very low maintenance. I suspect that black wooden soffits and fascias would need painted constantly or they would look tatty quite quickly. One of the things that keeps down the U-value is that quite a lot of the windows don't open, particularly in the hall where they are large units. The non openers have thinner sashes and the larger the window the higher percentage of glass. Some of the windows have a U-value below 0.7. The Auraplus windows also come laminated as standard which I wanted.

Hi Ross, If you have timber frame, or SIP inner leaf then you need perpends I'm afraid. It's one of the reasons I wasn't so enthusiastic about SIPs. The windows are from ADW. Any reason for asking? Al

If you put your usage into uswitch.com it will tell you who would be cheapest over the year taking both the standing charge and the unit cost into account. If you do change supplier you can sign up to Quidco or one of the other cash back websites. They usually give a fixed amount for a supplier change, say £30 cash back. This can be a very generous percentage if you have a modest bill.

I have one company doing UFH, boiler and MVHR. They don't do PV panels, but they don't particularly need to be done by the same people, they don't need to be integrated. I don't really think they need integration. ASHP, boiler etc are just going to heat water for your UFH. However as these are all plumbed items often the same people can do them all. MVHR could easily be done by someone else. Choices you make depend on your insulation levels, availability of gas, how free you want to be etc. I did a lot of research on this. If you have mains gas available it is usually the cheapest source of heating. ASHP may be better if you are off the gas grid as oil and electricity are way more expensive than mains gas. PV seems to be better than hot water panels as electricity has more varied uses and is more expensive and you can always use excess electricity to heat water.

Had the afternoon off today so went up to the site. The last of the steel on the ground floor was going in today and the first floor slab will go on next week. Could really get a feel for the room sizes now the downstairs walls are finished. The beam across the hall is 365x350 and 11m long!

Most window suppliers should be able to supply a window with a fire rated double glazing unit and frames. Fire resistant glass is very expensive approx £300 a square metre. The frame would also have to be fire rated as well as the glass. I think your window supplier is the first port of call. You can get cheaper wired glass but I would presume you don't want that. I didn't know that the regs required fire resistance if windows are close to the boundary but apparently they do having just looked it up in Part B of the Building Regs. You are allowed a certain amount of "unprotected area"(windows or doors) that rises as the distance from the boundary increases. If you exceed this area the exterior doors or windows have to be fire rated.

Haha, ignore everything I said then. I thought you meant open to the roof not the outside.

You can contact the valuation board once the house is demolished and have it removed from the council tax list.

lAs people have said glass is better than polycarbonate. Also i would specify 3G roof lights, it makes a considerable difference to the amount of noise you will get when rain hits the roof, otherwise it will be very noisy on there. Plus heat is going to rise and leave via the roof so the more insulation the better. If you look at the spec on the velux site it shows the difference it makes depending on what kind of glass you use to both the U-Value and sound transmittance. These are the electric and manual roof windows if you want an idea of sizes and prices. https://www.roofingsuperstore.co.uk/browse/pitched-roof-windows/velux-roof-windows/centre-pivot/white-painted-electric/triple-glazed-206621u.htm https://www.roofingsuperstore.co.uk/browse/pitched-roof-windows/velux-roof-windows/centre-pivot/white-painted-manual/triple-glazed-2066.html

I considered an ASHP but it would have been on the elevation closest to my neighbours and as they were already very awkward about the build I thought that this would almost certainly wind them up. I could show you the spec of an ASHP, showing that it isn't noisy, but no matter what the spec shows, someone is almost certain to worry that the sound will be annoying. Indeed I might well have the same concern if my neighbour was putting one a few metres from the boundary. If an ASHP was removed I wouldn't be surprised if it was because it didn't have planning permission and didn't meet what seem to be reasonably strict rules for making it permitted development there. Thus an awkward neighbour might well have complained. I cannot see how them having tinnitus is relevant though. It wouldn't be affected by an ASHP. However, again I could see how this kind of thing could cause planning to err on the side of caution and not approve something even if the real evidence is shaky. Looking back at your posts I see you say the neighbour was vehemently opposed to your planning application. I take it that the ASHP wasn't on it? If not maybe planning would allow it as a non material amendment or confirm that it is permitted development.

I really wouldn't recommend asking the neighbour to cut down the tree. The whole point the BCO is making is that in the future if the tree wasn't there the soil will expand due to having more water in it. Whilst you are being asked to build foundations that will protect against this, I don't see why you would want to force the situation to happen.

The downsizers' money often goes into apartments at high prices. My parents just reserved an apartment 2/3 the size of their house. Someone said that's nice you'll release a couple of hundred thousand. Including stamp duty they will be lucky to release anything at all. The kind of nice apartments downsizers would want to move into in Edinburgh are priced at a large premium to houses. £350-450 a square foot versus maybe £275-325 in similar areas. They did look at an over 50s apartment which was priced absurdly at around £550 a square foot. Indeed, partly reflecting Dave's issue large houses are so difficult to sell, it sometimes feels like they will soon be cheaper than smaller houses. The level where this point is hit is just different in different places. The value of incremental square footage drops dramatically over around 3000 in Edinburgh. Houses seem to be selling well up to around £750K then get incrementally harder above this, partly due to independence worries and partly due to punitive stamp duty. This is why developers seem to want to build nothing but 2 bed apartments. They of course work well for the BTL crowd too. I did have a thought the other day, that currently the market for these apartments is underpinned by equity rich downsizers, but eventually they will have recycled all of their equity and the generation behind them don't have anywhere near the equity. I am sitting in London here at work. My rental contract just came through for renewal. It always makes me look around to see if I should move or buy something. New stuff around here is now up over £1500 a square foot, some approaches £2000. The London market has totally disassociated itself from the rest of the UK, rendering UK wide housing statistics useless. The market is still pretty depressed outside the South East

Sorry mat not matt, what was I thinking!

I'm a fan of Amtico/Karndean if you can get something that you like. Much thinner than tiles. Depending on the pattern some looks fake, some doesn't. I wouldn't leave just 2mm, grit will get dragged across the tiles and ruin them. I would think you could grind 5/6mm away without too much bother, of course once you've started you could consider polishing the whole floor instead of tiles. Or, could you put a door matt fitted into the tiles, I have been thinking of doing this in some areas as the tiles can get quite messy. If you leave an area untiled and have a matt cut to fit it would probably look like that was how it was always supposed to be. Depends on the use of the room, decor etc.

I had this same issue at the last minute. SE decided that with clay soil and large trees close by (5m+ away) I need "heave" protection. I had never heard of it. We put 90mm Cordex boards under the slab. This cost an extra £23 per sq metre of ground area. I don't know if he also changed the strip foundation depth, some areas may have got a little deeper. I guess you can compare costs versus a block/beam floor. I wouldn't want to mess around with foundations without getting an SE involved. Better safe than sorry. However, if the BCO signs off on it I could see why the cost might seem high for piece of mind.

I wanted grey but we are having Lyra. Much as I'm a fan of grey as I think it's more modern I don't see why you consider it more practical. The Blanco Stellar is v nice.

You're right Jeremy. What I really like about these shows, unlike most "reality TV", is they don't set out to make fools of the participants. In the main people get to achieve their dreams and the shows celebrate that. Very unusual in these cynical times. Some episode of GD have made me cry, especially the ex solider who had lost a leg building a house adapted for himself. It was inspirational. Then there is the entertainment value of the somewhat more out there people - The Georgian House woman in series 1 The guy who built the house with the inverse wing roof. Clinton and his impressively OCD attention to detail. Then there is just the towering achievement of some people - The pumping station where the guy worked for weeks blasting the walls clean. The there are just some very nice houses - The Irish guy who built the house on the side of a hill is a personal favourite, I loved that house. I'm still a fan, maybe BTD is more useful/relevant, but GD is still very entertaining. I was rewatching the arch house the other day too.

They've almost certainly excluded the appliances, I think I saw two side opening Gaggenau ovens and 2 Siemens top of the range microwaves. Thats £8k give or take right there. There was also a very large induction hob. My kitchen designer tells me that they have never sold more Gaggenau, Sub Zero, Wolf etc than in the last year. Originally she specced a Gaggenau fridge and freezer which were over £10,000. I nixed that. Sub Zeros are £12-16k. I don't think they offer any real advantage over other fridges. I don't mind spending extra to get something that works way better or looks much better. I will be having a Miele washer and dryer in the new place, they are demonstrably quieter than other makes and on average much more reliable. However, generally speaking I turn on the oven to 180-200C and that's it. The cheapest Pyrolitic Siemens oven is £759. Now not cleaning your oven, that is something useful. Also after 10 years it is likely that the kitchen equipment will look tatty and I might want to replace it, I don't fancy £800 a year in oven depreciation. In saying all this, it's just a decision for each of us. I drive an expensive car, they are my weakness. Some people like Caribbean holidays. Whatever makes you happy. I still can't figure out a £400K build cost based on a few extravagances.

I definitely need to watch last night's again to try and see where the budget went. Maybe the main contractor was just taking them for fools. Especially when the budget didn't allow for foundations! They did say £15000 for windows, which is pricey for a 120sq metre house, but not outrageous. It was an oddly drama free episode. If you aren't short of cash then it i hard to have drama. Things just cost more and you pony up the cash. People asked me if I would like to be on one of these shows. I felt it wasn't good for business to be showing off your large expensive house on TV. But also I knew they wouldn't be interested as there is nothing unusual about the house and I wouldn't run out of money. Indeed I am sure I told the architect to keep it straight forward. I was surprised at the valuation at the end but £5-600 a square foot is apparently not an unusual price in Elstree having just looked it up. I just looked back at the list of houses on the last season of GD and it was less unusual than I thought. There was that odd tree house at the start. The last episode where the people built a wooden box on top of their bungalow also reminded me what a country of small minded NIMBY whingers this is with the endless complaints that it was ugly and didn't fit in. Perhaps if you were building next to some kind of listed building but usually the complaints come from the owners of standard suburban houses. I always find their arguments nonsense as if you took it to its logical conclusion we'd all have to be living in huts if houses always looked the same as the ones already there.