AliG

I have considered that and it might be what we do. One problem is that they are about to start rendering the house and we couldn’t do all of that without the window in place. I have been looking at window lifting robots again this morning. I reckon we could hire one for around £500 for a day. The scaffolding would still need to come down though and we’d need to create a surface that could take over 1000kg moving across it. I think that no matter what we do it will end up costing £1-2000 as different ways of doing it all involve either extra machinery or extra people. I just had a discussion with the architect where I suggested that with such a large window the easiest thing would actually be to put it into the room with the crane whilst the frame goes up but that has its own issues.

As things stand at the moment it looks like we need a massive crane as the only way to lift the doors to the other side of the house. This is quoted at £1680. We are waiting to see if the crane company gets another quick job for a large crane so that we can split the day with them. The ground around the house is not flat enough for any kind of dolly and at the moment the scaffolding is there anyway. One thing that no one realised until it came to install the windows is that heavy 3g sliders with a much wider frame than windows should probably have a larger tolerance built into the opening. Say 20mm above and 15-20mm at the sides. The windows were ordered from the timber frame plan with 7.5mm tolerance. This has been fine with a couple being a little tight. But if you need to put the sliders in at any kind of angle to the opening they won’t fit with a very small tolerance.

They are triggered by animals. We have a whole family of foxes that live between us and next door. Apparently the lady there feeds them. When I see the lights come on I know that’s the fox doing it’s nightly sweep. This doesn’t bother me. It’s basically once a night. The only window that you see the lights from is the home cinema. It could be more annoying if it was a bedroom although I would never notice if I was asleep. It’s light at 4am at the moment anyway. However, I replaced the light nearest the boiler flue with a microwave sensor light as it would stay on all the time the heating was on in winter. We spotted a baby fox just yesterday. They don’t cause any trouble. At our last house the foxes disappeared and we were soon overrun by rabbits which were much worse. We also have a family of squirrels that tbh I love watching. Smaller animals like these don’t usually set off the lights.

That's a good solution, but you could take it a step further and bring the entire window inside the frame. Thus the opening would only be 6m and there would be no issues with insulation and wall ties where the fourth pane goes. You would then just build a stud inside it to cover the extra pane. I see how the fourth pane fixes airtightness, but whatever kind of gasket is used to attach it to the next pane could maybe be applied to the corner of the wall instead. Clearly this loses you around 500mm of inside space, but if you have the room and money that is not a problem. One point I would make is that you can do anything with your own money, but this all seems pointlessly unnecessary and expensive. You could use a triple slider with one fixed pane, or bifolds, or a 4 piece slider opening in the middle, or two fixed panes and french doors in the middle. We have French doors all over the house and we rarely leave more than a single door open.

No, that was the question. He was thinking of opening the door enough to put a strap through under the top of the frame. I pointed out that the top of the frame was probably not designed to take any weight. I assume from what you say that you agree.

Thanks Craig. Just spoke to the builder. He says the plan is to attach suckers to the fixed pane and open the moving pane enough to get a strap around the frame. I did ask the question as to whether the top of the frame can take the weight which he did agree he would have to check.

PIR backed plasterboard is fine, it does not have the same issues with cables that EPS does. The issue to watch for is allowing for the cables not to overheat. This is probably a question best put to your electrician. As I understand it, they normally want the cables attached to something that is a better conductor than insulation to help keep them cool. If not the cable sizes have to allow for the fact that they may get warmer. TBh I think this is not normally an issue in a new house with proper cable sizes, but the electrician should be able to tell you. I would look at your plans and see how many actual cables and pipes actually need to go in the outside layer, I found it was very few. If I put my mind to it I could have put almost every socket on an inside wall.

Resurrecting this thread. My windows are mostly in and looking good. But the builder is struggling with the largest window. The windows are from Russell We have a 3G slider that is 3.7x2.5m and weighs 467kg. Original plan was to move it through the house into position on rollers. builder is concerned re safety of this and the amount of labour needed. Current plan is to use a large crane to lift it over the house and lower it down into position. The crane company are uncertain if they have window lifters for the width of the quite deep frame. Apparently the fitters normally deal with Velfac and would dismantle such a large window and then put it back together in place. Russell have told them that they cannot dismantle the window although I have not had this conversation with Russell. It would seem that if we could take the slider out and reduce the weight to <250kg then things would be a lot easier. Very difficult to move the window round to the back of the house due to scaffolding and lack of flat ground. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I bought the Blum inserts myself as it was cheaper than what the kitchen company wanted to charge. They are very nice and fit perfectly but very expensive, around £100 per drawer. You can claim the VAT back though. I have the metal inserts. In my opinion I would only have metal or plastic as it is easier to clean. I can see how you might prefer the look of wood, but not only is it harder to clean due to being wood, but the corners are 90 degrees which makes it even harder to give them just a quick dust out.

You could get a smaller insert and put it in the middle then just have a space between it and the sloped sides for larger items. The sloped side criteria really narrows down the options.

I had been thinking of suggesting an extension instead of a garage conversion as the garage basically only saves you on foundations, almost everything else would need redone replaced. An extension gets you extra room and keeps the garage. I don't think your suggested plan is great, small bedrooms and one bathroom. I doubt that is really what you had in mind. If you had a plot plan people could aybe suggest extension ideas. An alternative layout would be - Knock kitchen and bedroom three and maybe the hall that currently leads to the kitchen together to make a new larger kitchen that could be connected to the existing lounge. Convert dining room into master bedroom and ensuite. Bedroom one and two stay the same. This is not ideal as two bedrooms would be off the lounge, although it would not be unusual in America. You could possibly create a small hall at the back left hand corner of the lounge and put the access to both bedroom 2 and the new master bedroom there so they would be separated. It would be a lot cheaper.

I basically rearrange our dishwasher every day, we get around 50% more in when I pack it. My wife does the emptying. We have the drawer at the top which is far better. It does limit you if you put wine glasses in the top but we don't drink. Some people don't seem to realise that you can still get quite thick items in it, all of our cooking utensils go in there except ladels. Bosch/Siemens do an XXL version of this dishwasher which is around 5cm taller. It is great, we had one in our last house, but the kitchen people said it wouldn't fit due to the rail for our handleless doors limiting the height slightly under the cabinets. I actually think they were wrong.

I was helping someone in another post and this came to mind. Historically it has been popular to convert integral garages to internal space. I was assuming in doing this you would insulate the garage walls and roof. Do BC now insist that to do this people also insulate the floor. It looks like the reg is 0.25 U-value in England and 0.18 in Scotland. Integral garage floors would normally be below the rest of the house so there would be room to raise them and insulate them but I don't feel that people have been doing this historically.

That's quite a lot more work then. You'd need a steel beam to support the roof when you take down the wall. The most problematic thing would be that it is unlikely the garage roof is high enough to insulate and use it as a room, it looks barely higher than the tops of the windows. It would need a new roof, which may mean planning permission would be needed. This would most likely be granted, but just take time and be another expense. There might also be a step down not the garage currently so you might need to raise the floor as well as insulate the floor. Actually I don't know how garage conversions are treated under current regs as the floor will not be insulated to current standards. This would probably add almost £10000 to the cost of the work.

You can probably find the drainage situation from the local water company. If it is combined drainage then you can probably connect to the drain outside bedroom 1. If not then you are going to have to run something either around the outside of the house or under the floors to connect to the existing drainage in the area of the kitchen and bathroom. The difference in cost could be a couple of thousand due to the extra distance. If you are talking cheap kitchens and bathrooms then you'll be a lot less than I guessed. Maybe £30k would do it. There could be quite a lot of building work around the kitchen. That was between the kitchen and garage currently will likely be an insulated exterior wall. It may also support the roof (is the roof continues over the garage?). So removing it would mean insulting the garage and possibly some structural work. Best idea is probably to get a builder along and get him to give you an idea of the cost.

Anything is possible given enough money and time. The main issue will be connecting the drainage. What kind of floors does the house have? Easier to take up floorboard than dig into concrete. Do drains already run close to the lounge that you can connect up to? Also does the house have combined drainage or separate foul and rainwater drainage. If combined it may be easier to find a drain to connect to. A few thousand will likely get the drains moved around and re routed. A small percentage the total cost of what you are looking to do which would likely cost more than 50k assuming the cost of a new kitchen and two new bathrooms. If you are doing that I wouldn't be surprised if we are also talking new heating and windows and rewiring. You could soon approach 80k.

Great work, thanks for updating everyone. Nice to see the door on the correct level now!

Does that pipe go into a combined sewer? If not then it shouldn't have waste pipes going not it. Even if it does you shouldn't be doing that, but it wouldn't be breaking any regs.

I absolutely would not recommend doing this, it will seriously compromise your plot and cause no end of hassle. If a property developer owned next door and wanted to do it, how much would you charge them? Think of this number and are you willing to just give this amount of money to your neighbours?

Houses in this street would go for around £500 a square foot, one of the highest in Edinburgh for houses, and it has permission for a 3700sq ft house. Really weird design though, I'll post the ground floor. It would probably be worth around £1.5m (Value per sq foot falls over 3000sq ft, plus the odd design). It's a 0.22acre plot, same size as my parents' but we only have permission for 2000sq ft and paid half as much three years ago. A house with the same size of plot in the next street was just sold for £715k and they are knocking it down to build around a 2500sq ft house. They have paid way over the odds I think. This would suggest even £800k is doable for the site.

Basically build costs are up about 20% over the last year. Big increases in insulation prices, so it becomes chicken and egg. More insulation is needed when energy costs go up, but insulation needs energy to make so it is also up in price. Build costs are surely one of the big drivers behind house price inflation. Much as I think house prices have peaked and need to fall because of cost of living increases, builders need prices to stay up to cover cost increases. What really has to fall in price is land. A plot in my street just came up at offer over £650k. I assume they want 700. I would expect them to get it as self build plots are so hard to come by. We had someone put a letter through the door offering to buy my parents' plot as we hadn't started building. My suspicion is that people are overpaying for plots as they are not correctly factoring in rising build costs. Land if anything should've fallen in price as build costs have been rising much faster than house prices recently.

Planners can give advice but they don't have to and you cannot necessarily rely on it anyway. It is basically up to you and your architect to figure out what is normally acceptable in the area. At first I thought your architect was crazy with the ridge heights, but when I see the drawings, this is basically another house. Without knowing the size of your plot and so on people cannot comment on whether or not this is likely to be approved. When the planning officer says it is "too large", they may well mean it is too large, not just too tall. A similar building passed recently that is not in the conservation area is not very relevant from a planning perspective. What have they allowed in the conservation area and what the conservation area character appraisal says is key. The planning officer cannot know that you intend the garage to mean that a replacement house will not need its own garage, even if you told them that they couldn't take it into account as it may never happen. they can only look at what they have in front of them. It may be that the lowering of the height is enough to get it approved. If not I would be considering making an application for the whole site. It will be much easier to see it all in context. Also if that is ultimately where you want to end up, what you don't want to do is find you get approval for this and cannot get approval to replace the bungalow. Replacing a single storey building with a two storey building will possibly be even more controversial.

You'd have to seal it around the joist and any light fittings. A really difficult job. My only other thought is that it might be better to put the membrane or some other airtightness treatment on the walls with the insulation inside it. Stops the insulation being bypassed by cold air.

From what I can see online the issue of annexes, council tax and planning can get a little messy. You are likely to get permission but it will be for use as an annex only and you will not be allowed to rent it out. This would need further permission at some point in future, the same for a separate dwelling. It will probably get its own council tax bill which you would be exempt from if using it for an elderly relative, but again if you wanted to rent it out or have someone not exempt like a teenager live there then it would become liable for council tax.

I agree, summer bypass works like this on my system but makes little difference. Opening windows works much better.