AliG

A 100mm SIP panel will hit the minimum insulation for an extension which is a U-Value of 0.28

I couldn't figure that one out at all. I think I did notice at least 2 Gaggenau ovens in the kitchen which are about £3000 each and don't seem to do anything a £1000 oven doesn't do, but I did't really notice any other extravagances. I need to have another look at the finished house. I have a main contractor and an architect and am not skimping on the spec. I think all in I will be around £1500 a square metre, not £3500! GD doesn't necessarily have expensive builds, more just odd nowadays. Like that one with the guy making a house boat. Although there was Clinton's house which was Grand. You wouldn't believe how many people seem to have seen that episode and asked me about it because I am building a house.

Just watched episode 2 of the new Series of Building The Dream. Does anyone else feel it has overtaken Grand Designs now? BTD is interesting because it generally focuses on normal houses that people might build and I feel you get some interesting ideas from it. Grand Designs on the other hand seems to increasingly focus on deliberately unusual builds with little relevance to most people.

I think you can get down to 175mm or thereabouts, 27.5mm slips, 10mm board, 25mm cavity, 100mm SIP panel, 25mm service cavity, 12.5mm plasterboard. That is 200mm looking at a normal SIP detail, but i don't think you need the service cavity which would take you down to 175mm. Timber on the outside instead of slips might get you down to 160mm. You will also lose around 40mm framing out the outside wall of the house. So net you are looking at losing 215mm of width give or take. If you are allowed to build up to the centre of the block wall you have 2.65m, so realistically you are talking around 2.4-2.45m of internal width. Basically this is down to single bedroom/study size. There is enough room for a single bedroom and an en suite. Can you build an en suite off a larger bedroom upstairs adjacent to the garage? Or maybe use the existing single bedroom for this and add a new small bedroom above the garage.

Now knowing that the house has a ground floor extension, an upper floor extension balancing it out makes more sense. You might consider is would it make the house much larger than all the ones in the area which might limit the price. Even if he garage isn't big enough to open the car doors, it would be expected in a house this size and I would be wary of losing it. This is the biggest issue - I am guessing from your comments that is a 7'6 or 8' garage door. As someone said there is a good chance that the wall in the centre of the garage is a single block non load bearing wall. Not only would you need a steel to support a wall above it, but an insulated cavity wall would be a lot wider. You will also need to frame out the wall on the other side against the house. You could end up with less than 8ft internal width in the room, so something like 19x8 assuming a normal garage size. It might be that you cannot use a cavity wall and need to use some kind of wood clad box to keep the thickness of the walls down. This may or may not look OK. Ideally considering the size of the house you'd be wanting to add a double bedroom with ensuite. This might be possible if the bed goes at one end with the back against the short wall and the en suite at the other but is likely to be very tight, you'd only have 18 inches each side of the bed!

I am currently building with these, so maybe a little early to say. Negatives Whilst they go up very fast in theory, that is only if you have a flat wall with no doors windows etc. The measuring and cutting takes pretty much the same time as with any other block work. They are somewhat more expensive than standard blocks. As I didn't price up the job with standard block work though I cannot be sure of the comparison. I would guess around 1/3 more per square metre of wall. When I look at the Celotex U-Value calculator, despite being advertised as having better insulation properties due to being hollow, it actually makes negligible difference, they are still blocks. The U-Value is 0.01 better using these or indeed aerated blocks rather than standard blocks. Positives The thin joint system produces a much neater job with very little mortar overspill etc compared to conventional blocks. The system doesn't require any ventilation in the cavity avoiding ugly perpend vents in the outer skin that are required with timber frame. They allow you to have concrete upper floors. They should perform much better in terms of sound transmission than timber frame. You can work as long as the temperature is above freezing. You can just build the inner skin and put the upper floors on to get watertight and then build the outer skin whilst work continues inside.

This seems to definitely be a phishing scam https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=201909120 https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200213150 https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_201887920_to_201889310_2?nodeId=201889310 How would someone not know the price of their own item. As you have identified the email address is incorrect on the second email. Also Amazon would pass on your address details he doesn't need them. That isn't an Amazon payment at all, it is a direct payment to the guy's bank account. If you paid to that account you would not be protected by Amazon and they would not refund the money. Finally that would cost a fortune to post from outside the UK, it is a heavy bulky item plus the rails are 1.4m long. It is highly unlikely a seller outside the UK could offer a sensible price. I would make sure and cancel the order, it is not clear to me that he cannot claim the order has arrived and have Amazon bill you, although in that case it would be refunded. You should also contact Amazon and report the seller. PS At Christmas I checked my credit card statements, we (mainly my wife) had 290 transactions with Amazon last year. Does that make me an expert?

My 4K system has been generating around 3.1kw a year since installed. Unfortunately the figures are a bit messed up due to the meter breaking for a few months in 2015 before I noticed. Recently has been the best period of production. I generated 2920kWh between 7 March and 18 November 2016. I'm in Edinburgh and it faces almost exactly due south at 45 degrees.

Obviously we don't know the layout of your house, but unless you have lots of kids, an extra room downstairs may be preferable. As the population continues to age an ensuite bedroom downstairs which could be used as a gym or family room today, but could also suit ageing people in future might have more value, although it will be more expensive to build due to needing foundations. The other thing you might consider is a big open plan kitchen, again this may add more value and maybe free up say a dining room that is rarely used to be a more functional room. Depending on the direction your house faces, it may also allow you to make better use of the light and create a sheltered area in the garden. A lof of houses have way more bedrooms than public space nowadays, but is it really useful when not many people have more than 2 or 3 kids. I guess an agent may help to answer these questions and you can look at the sums of cost to build per square metre versus value added. Although tbh you could just look at Zoopla and find out prices in the area yourself as this is pretty much all estate agents do. If you do go along the lines of building above the garage, you have to consider that it has to look correct relative to the original house as it will be very visible. The risk is you build one thing on your side and then the neighbours build something similar but not exactly the same. It ends up looking very untidy. And as pointed out you end up with a semi which probably cuts a few percent off the value of your house.

I spent ages agonising over granite versus Silestone for the new house. I am having Silestone as I want a 2.9m island with no joins and it comes in larger slabs than granite. Also our current lighter coloured granite has pitting. As I understand it dark coloured granite tends to be stronger, our previous black granite was perfectly smooth. In my research I found enough stories of burned quartz worktops to concern me. The resin that glues the quartz together can burn, granite cannot. However, all stone tops recommend that you use a trivet anyway in case thermal shock results in cracking. This would be more likely with a 20mm top than 30mm. Considering the enormous cost of the worktops I just wouldn't take the risk. I always use a trivet with pots and heavy oven dishes. Chances are it would be fine, but iyou only have to be unlucky once to destroy thousands worth of worktop. We have moved over almost entirely to silicone oven dishes as they don't stick, are easy to clean and don't carry as much heat so you can put them onto the top without worrying.

Joe is your quote really over £1000/sq metre? That's ridiculous. Sounds like they are a little bespoke, but painted hardwood isn't particularly unusual. Looking at my quotes for a very large area of windows I am just below £300/sq metre ex fitting for alu clad 3G. This seems to fit in with the amounts suggested above.

I think blaming building standards is a red herring. For the people here with unusual build methods and one off designs this will definitely be a headache. Why would this be a big overhead building standard 3 bedroom semis in timber frame? As long as they meet current insulation standards what big issues would there be? Mass market builders churn these houses out all day long. Indeed I tried to buy a piece of land that was built by a mid sized builder who outbid me. They are selling the houses for very close to what I estimated, the only way they could have bid what they did is if their build costs are around £1000 a square metre. I think they paid around £1300 a square metre for the land based on the built houses and that is before costs to clear the land.

I agree with this. The people on here are generally building houses to a much higher standard than necessary as it is what they want. Indeed I think you'll find a lot of modest houses on here are better built than £1m+ houses built by developers. In Edinburgh even in new build flats at over £4000 a square metre (mainly land obviously) you don't get triple glazing, you don't get MVHR, you don't get airtightness, you may get UFH, but often it is still radiators and with a gas boiler. You do probably get nice kitchens and bathrooms and wooden floors, because as ever people will pay for the things they can see more than the basic construction. If you build a timber frame house to a B-C on the EPC, with 2G windows, walls with around 0.15 U-Value, carpets, GCH, 1 or 2 bathrooms, no Silestone worktops etc, then the cost is going to come in at less than £1000 a square metre. Indeed isn't this exactly what the likes of Barratt and Wimpey build. Barratt are selling 120 sq metre town houses in West Edinburgh for £280,000 (2300/sq metre). They are selling 100sq m including an integral garage semis in east Edinburgh for £236,000 (2360/sq meter). But if you go to Motherwell they are doing 125 sq m townhouses for £166,000 (1300/sq metre). That was about as cheap as I could find on their website. They still probably paid something for the land at those prices. What people would like is to be able to buy these kind of houses in Edinburgh for example where well paying jobs are easier to find. But of course in those places the land is too expensive and instead they build £4000 a square metre apartments for downsizers. I don't really think we need to get that creative in terms of how we build houses. You can build a perfectly acceptable no nonsense house for under £100,000. It would still seem like luxury to what was being built in the 70s. But you need to be able to get the land cheaply and people have to have perhaps more modest expectations.

Sorry Dave, I know your situation is tough. In fairness though, when I said the value of my house might fall by 30%, I was really thinking the value of the land would collapse, the cost of building a house would then underpin the value, not the inflated value of land. In your case the land should have very little value so I doubt you would suffer a big drop in value. Also I wouldn't expect house prices to fall overnight which would cripple people with bridging loans etc, I would assume that increased supply would have effects slowly over many years.

We were discussing this at work this morning. The problem is mainly the cost of land. 80-100 square metres of house could be built to a modest spec for £80-100,000. This would be affordable for a single person earning £25,000 or a couple earning £20,000 each. As Dave says you can get plenty of living space for a young family out of this kind of area used intelligently. If the supply of land wasn't so tightly controlled and restricted its value would collapse and the number of houses built would increase to serve the market. We were discussing this today at work as a report was out saying that inequality would increase as better off people are more likely to inherit more money from previous house price appreciation. I have been talking about this for years. As increasing numbers of people inherit money then for them house prices don't have to be linked to earnings, but it seems very unfair to me that they can then price others out of the housing market. Again though much of the inherited wealth comes from house price inflation. If I had bought a 1 bed flat when I started working in London 14 years ago I would have made over £20,000 a year tax free. A lot more than many people earn after tax. A few solutions I have considered. Tax capital gains on your main property. This would stop it being seen as an investment and also stop people receiving massive windfall profits depending on where they live. Basically people who have owned a house in London for over 10 years are now massively wealthy than almost everyone else in the country through shear luck. I would also tax planning gain and use it to reduce council tax. The council tax payers have the power via the council to grant planning permission. If I had the power to increase the value of land ten fold by granting planning I would expect a massive cut. If a council owns a ransom strip they value it in this way, why isn't planning valued this way. This would have another benefit. NIMBYism would be a lot less likely as the more houses you allowed to be built the lower your council tax would be. Again this would encourage the release of more land to be built on and the value of land would soon fall when its supply was less restricted. I for one wouldn't mind at all if the value of my house fell by 30% if the value of the land collapsed as I would rather the next generation have a chance to own a house and have a better standard of living. We could create rules that ignored negative equity as long as people could continue to make the payments as no ones' income would have changed. Further I don't think people realise how much of a tax on everything in the UK absurd property (land) values are. Every time you go to the pub or the cinema or the supermarket part of the cost goes towards paying for the inflated value of the space you are occupying. This spending power could be freed up for genuine value added economic activity. Sitting on appreciating land is not generating any actual value.

Not exactly what you were asking but- Have you thought of using some kind of electronic key where you can issue temporary keys to people. I have looked into this a bit, but am not quite sure yet which of the various systems is the best. It is relatively new technology. Edit: Spent a bit of time researching. The August smart lock looks interesting, but the reviews suggest it is not 100% reliable which a normal lock is. It may not be time yet for this technology.

Sadly the VAT rule for wardrobes is incredibly tight. This explains why almost all wardrobes are just a shelf and a rail as that is basically all you can have to be VAT free. (c) basic wardrobes installed on their own with all the following characteristics: the wardrobe encloses a space bordered by the walls, ceiling and floor. But units whose design includes, for example, an element to bridge over a bed or create a dressing table are furniture and are not building materials the side and back use three walls of the room (such as across the end of a wall), or two walls and a stub wall. But wardrobes installed in the corner of a room where one side is a closing end panel are furniture and are not building materials on opening the wardrobe you should see the walls of the building. These would normally be either bare plaster or painted plaster. Wardrobes that contain internal panelling, typically as part of a modular or carcass system, are furniture and are not building materials The wardrobe should feature no more than a single shelf running the full length of the wardrobe, a rail for hanging clothes and a closing door or doors. Wardrobes with internal divisions, drawers, shoe racks or other features are furniture and are not building materials.

I have to put sprinklers into a second floor room that is open to the first floor. I am not sure what building control would make of a system that has plastic pipe and no separate water supply. I have to have a tank in case the water supply is cut off in a fire and I believe copper piping for the sprinkler system. However they are not overly expensive to install. People on line suggest £10-15 per square metre in a new build. This could be offset by not needing fire doors etc.

The original piece doesn't really make sense. If houses cost more to build than you can sell them for then why would anyone pay £80,000 for a piece of land. For the opportunity to lose money. And as pointed out, other than a few thousand extra for insulation, build costs haven't really changed that much. TBF I noticed the same phenomonen in the US after the housing crash. People were still trying to sell pieces of land for hundreds of thousands of dollars when you could buy houses that were a couple of years old for less than build cost. The writer suggests that there is a problem and that the government needs to step in to fix it. There are times when the government can help things along, especially for example in areas like safety where the market may simply not work. But this kind of suggestion that the government needs to fix a supposed problem I disagree with. Firstly what is the problem. People are leaving The Highlands. Is this really a problem? Is there any particular reason people should live in The Highlands or anywhere for that matter. People will choose to live where they like. I would never live in the countryside, some people would never live in the town. Demographic trends have been pretty constant for some time. People, young people in particular, like to congregate in cities where there are more opportunities and more things to do. Indeed so strong is this impulse that you have people living in modest houses in London worth millions of pounds. They could sell these houses and retire almost anywhere else in the UK, yet they so like living in London they would rather work 20 extra years to cover the cost. The population of Glasgow has been falling for some time and Edinburgh rising, Eventually Edinburgh will overtake Glasgow on current trends. Should the government subsidise housing in Glasgow so that people don't move to Edinburgh? The crazy one for me is Aberdeen. I wouldn't buy a house in a city where the main industry will almost disappear over the next 20-30 years. Now of course if this kept going everyone would live in London, but eventually the price differences mean people might want to live elsewhere for a better quality of life. There is a general problem in the country of a lack of affordable housing. This is due to difficulty in obtaining planning, historic subsidies to btl owners and overseas investors cornering a finite asset. These things the government can help, because these are distortions of a free market. But I really don't believe that the government should interfere in where people would want to live.

Resurrecting this thread - I had pretty much decided to use PAX furniture for fitted wardrobes in three rooms in the new house. My plan was to box these in so that they appear like fitted furniture, examples I have seen on the net look really nice. We had a look yesterday and it is fine, however I might have preferred some different door designs. I also had a look today at B&Q's modular Darwin range. These have a couple of advantages for us over PAX - they have a walnut colour that I like and they have a matching dressing table. But I looked at them in B&Q today and they felt a little flimsy. TBF they often don't put the stuff together well in the store. Has anyone any experience of the B&Q alternative or any other alternatives that I could look at. From what I can see the fitted bedroom companies charge 1000-1500 per linear metre of cabinets which is just ridiculous for cheap MDF. At that price I could have a cabinet maker make them in solid walnut.

Ah I see, yes I notice that there are more imperial size doors available, which seems particularly odd as they are usually made in Europe. However, the metric ones are 60mm taller which is better for my higher ceiling. They are also thicker so I would think appear more substantial even if they aren't.

Ok I must have missed something, what is the problem with 826mm doors? My architect has specified 914mm gaps in the block work for 826mm doors, but it may be that there will be more frame in a black wall.

It will sit nicely on the worktop

I try and check everything my architect sends out and then comment back if I see errors or disagree. If for no other reasons two sets of eyes are better than one. The builder recently made some small errors that I spotted and had to be rectified. In my line of work these kinds of errors would just be unacceptable as we have regulators and customers who would come down on us like a ton of bricks. In the building trade making errors and then wasting money correcting them just seems to be par for the course. As to cold bridging, unless your architect is a specialist in passive design, it's just not something architects are that focused on. I have had numerous discussions about it and the view I get back is usually I am being too picky and they don't really matter. I suspect that this is true sometimes and not other times. As to any claims, if your architect changes something on your say, he is still the architect and has to accept responsibility. He shouldn't change anything he is not comfortable with.

There is reference to two kinds of roof construction here under the fire regs. in the case of a pitched roof covered by slates nailed directly to sarking and underlay, the junction between the sarking and wall-head should be fire-stopped as described in BRE Housing Defects Prevention Unit “Defect Action Sheet (Design)” February 1985 (DAS 8), or in the case of a pitched roof covered by slates or tiles fixed to tiling battens and any counter-battens, the junction between the tiles or slates and the underlay should be fully bedded in cement mortar (or other fire-stopping material) at the wall-head.