AliG

Looks like it should be OK. Because of the services and allowing for the house to be roughly 2m from the boundaries and 9m from the boundary with the house behind it has to fit in a space roughly 17.5m wide by 14.5m deep. We will apply for something covering 155sq metres which is 20% of the area of the plot.

You should be able to get loose fill insulation and push it along. Once you have filled the space between the first set of joists it will push over to the next set and so on. You would need to make up some kind of "pusher" but that shouldn't be hard. This is the cheapest simplest option I would think. Not sure if you could get it into the corners though. I have also heard of people jury rigging a leaf blower to blow loose insulation in. Blown beads would be ideal but I suspect that this is too small a job for professionals. However, if you want the cavity done also then they might be able to do it all at once. You would need to know if the cavity can take full fill insulation with no dampness issues. I can't believe there is no insulation, it costs peanuts. They probably thought it was too much hassle to get it in there.

Is anyone else riding Grand Designs a lot less interesting in the last couple of years? So many of the houses are so unusual they have little relation to any house anyone might build and so my interest rapidly wanes. I now way prefer Building The Dream which seems much more grounded in reality. I do wish they put more emphasis on how houses are actually built. I need to try Impossible Homes

I have actually found them surprisingly helpful recently. I feel like there has been some kind of change. Many time I have called recently and they have answered the phone, something which never used to happen.

Sadly it is a conservation area so no PD. It feels like almost the whole city is a conservation area.

It was around £350k for 0.2 of an acre (800sq metres) As suggested there are a few plots for sale in Edinburgh at around £450k that are a little bit larger. There is also a plot I know of that just came on the market for offers over £150k but it is quite small and hemmed in by the adjacent houses although in a nice area. My parents don't want a large garden to look after anyway. As has been said though you have to see the value to you. The plot is at the other end of the street to us, around 5 minutes walk away. It is one of the nicest streets in Edinburgh and also within 2 minutes of a bus stop, 5 minutes of a few shops and 10 minutes walk of a GP. Perfect for retired people, the average age in the area is over 50 I believe. It is exactly what my parents would like and if they enjoy it and everyone is happy then I don't really care about a few thousand pounds either way. Of course the value of money is different to everyone. The wrinkle is that the plot only had permission for quite a small house, around 110square metres. That might be worth around £450-500k so wouldn't justify what we paid. In extremis we could fall back to building this. But the plot is easily big enough to take something much bigger. We plan to apply for a single storey house of around 160sq metres including a single garage At a guess it would be worth around £650k and so we can spend around £300k building it, 2000 a square metre and come out even. The plot is part of the garden of a listed house, the council told me that they didn't want a house with a larger footprint when I called and asked, but the application for the existing planning was on half the plot, I believe the owner hoped he could then apply for another house. The council also allowed a much much larger house to be built in the same situation at the other side of the street and have just approved for another garden in the street to be split in two. Plus most objections were to overlooking from a two storey house and this house would basically not be seen. We made a condition of the offer that we need to know if there are services through the plot to the house next door that would interfere with what we want to build, so are awaiting confirmation of that before the architect goes to work.

I don't think we bid too much, I wasn't going to worry about a few thousand either way tbh. There is £30,000 less stamp duty on the land than there would be on the house built on it which goes a long way to paying for things.

Our offer was accepted, but we will not conclude until we have confirmation that the services to the house next door do not interfere with our ability to build on the site.

I have two en suites similar to the first picture, see below. I designed them with a 1000mm screen and 600mm gap but the bulkhead was built wider than it should have been so the gap ended up being around 500mm. I thought it looked narrow but it works fine. The bathroom people were adamant that the water would come around the end of a 900mm screen. I think in terms of hassle the narrower gap and not soaking the floor is better. Very little water comes around the end of a 1000mm screen, most of the water transfer comes from wet people getting out of the shower. For the second room, I'd try to get a 1700x900 tray and build a bulkhead at the end to take a niche for shampoo and pipework. The bulkhead would match the one behind the WC at the other side and frame the bath. Especially for a longer shower like that I would want the controls on the side wall across from the entrance and the head at the end, do you have a cavity to run the pipes in and put the valve into? It looks like that is an outside wall on the side and end of the shower. If you cannot make room in the side wall for the valve it would go in a bulkhead. A 1000mm or 1100mm screen would be fine here. In the third one I'd just tile the 300m of floor, not much water will get more than 1200mm back.The back wall doesn't really get wet on mine, but I think I'd want to tile it also. I'd be very surprised if you couldn't find a shower tray that works at 1500mm, it might just require getting onto Google for an hour. In all three I would try and put the controls opposite the entrance if possible and in the two with bulkheads I would have a niche in the bulkhead to store shampoo etc. I had a picture to hand of one of my ensuites, the shower controls are at the end as the wavy tiles aren't flat enough for them.

I did away with it as it was just another point of entry for burglars. Usually garages have rear pedestrian doors so people can take the lawnmower out to the back garden etc. You already have a large back door. Putting a door right next to another door would seem redundant. I have one of the Latham's steel doors mentioned earlier between the house and garage, thus you put the car away and lock the door and it is totally secure. Apparently integral garage doors are often a good access point for criminals. It is also closer to one metre wide as then if I need to get stuff in and of the plant room it makes it easier, you might want it to get stuff into the gym. BTW I have insulated garage doors and the garage is insulated like the rest of the house, but they don't seal well enough to really bother too much about the insulation. I took a picture of the insulated Hormann doors on my last house with an IR camera. The insulation is only in the centre of the panels and you could see a very big temperature difference around the edges versus in the middle.

Now that all planning applications are on line we constantly get questions and comments about the house. My daughter gets asked about it at school, "why do you have 2 kitchens," "oh yours is the house with the pool" etc. I can't complain, I always look at plans to be nosey, but I wouldn't then start questioning the owner about it.

Yes that is what we are ideally going try and build, of course it is wasteful of land, but in this case the land only has planning for a small house, despite being a small plot. I am gambling that a larger single storey house is more acceptable in planning terms. @newhome this is exactly what they moved out of, they had a 5 bedroom 2100sq foot house with 3 or 4 rooms they barely every used. The funniest designs I think are where a house has 5 bedrooms upstairs and then a double garage downstairs, so they only have a lounge dining room and kitchen. I cannot imagine what lifestyle these houses suit, not many people have 3+ children. I did play around with designs that might work for them and figured out that one way to build a house with nice public rooms and few bedrooms is to move the lounge upstairs. So you might have a kitchen/dining/family room plus master bedroom the ground floor and lounge bedroom and study upstairs. This way if you stop being able to get upstairs you could comfortably live on the ground floor. At the moment my preferred design is something like a 140sq metre 3 bed bungalow . I have also considered that as it is very close to us, if one day in the fullness of time we decide to downsize we could just move into it and not have to move out of the area which we really like. When we bought our current plot, we could have bought a larger plot for less in a less nice street. Ultimately I decided that if I could afford the nicer street I would just regret not going for it in the long run. What we are finding out now is how nice a street it is. It is a very wide street, with only 20 houses mostly in large gardens. There is little traffic and very few parked cars. Not only is it a nice street, however, but there is a small supermarket, post office, restaurant, coffee shop, GP etc within a 10 minute walk as well as buses into town etc. It is an ideal place for older people to live, we are much younger than most people in the area. Despite living in a city all my life it has actually been very rare that I cold walk to a supermarket, post office etc.It really is very nice. When I said to the lawyer today I though the land was overpriced, she said ah yes, but don't forget what street it is on.

I will put in an offer next week. Sealed bids Scottish system, so no way of knowing if I am going to get it. There are two other interested parties.

I spoke to the lawyer today, she seemed pretty relaxed about whose name it was in. She said that the offer could be in my name, but we could register it in their name, or I could lend them the money etc. The one thing she mentioned was the new nil rate band for property inheritance, TBH I hadn't checked to see if it applied in Scotland. This effectively allows a couple to leave £1m tax free Thus as they can afford to buy the house it is probably better in their name. As suggested it is always a funny situation to live in someone else's house, historically when we have discussed this kind of thing they have seemed a bit concerned, this time they seemed OK. Some people mentioned trusts, I tried reading up on these a few years ago as I could never understand how people could use them to avoid tax. As far as I could figure out you cannot do that anymore. I did speak to an advisor last year and what he said was you can set up family companies with the shares passing from generation to generation as a way to avoid IHT. What he suggested though was that one of the main reasons was for family divorces and remarriage. You can structure a company so that the shares can only be owned by you and your direct descendants. Thus if for example you die and your spouse remarries your property doesn't end up being inherited by stepchildren. My parent's are worth enough to go to all of this hassle but it was quite interesting and I will have to do it for myself eventually. I just hate paperwork though. I know many people do not like the idea of IHT as they believe the money has already been taxed. On the other hand I think helps to level the playing field otherwise the property owning part of the country will just keep getting richer relative to everyone else. What is unfair though is that organised people can avoid it. I am happy paying my taxes when I know that everyone else pays their fair share. It really upsets me to think that some people are totally at it. I came up with an idea that IHT could be offset against the income tax you paid whilst alive. Thus if you had been at it and accumulated wealth without paying tax it would be caught when you died. Also if you had paid income tax you could leave your estate tax free, so as to not be double taxed, but if your kids then never worked it would be taxed when they died as they whole double taxation thing is only applicable to the first generation who earned the money. Just spoke to my parents, they really like the idea of a small manageable new house. The key thing for them is though for it to still have a nice lounge etc. I am surprised that no one has spotted this niche in the market. There are a lot of nice apartments being sold to downsizes, but if you want a house with a nice big kitchen and lounge you often have to buy a 5 bedroom house.They only need 2 or 3 bedrooms, but a developer built 3 bedroom house often has tiny rooms.

Actually I had mentioned to the lawyer I don't know if I should buy it or my parents should be buying. I would just be organising it. Hadn't thought of the VAT issue., Using a main contractor and with a lot less bespoke stuff than in my house most stuff will be zero rated, but it is definitely worth thinking about. I guess I am in a different situation to most people, I can afford to retire and earn way more than I spend. In that situation I think I may as well make other people's lives better so frequently pay for things for family members and friends. I enjoy it and they do too. I even paid for my wife's friend's divorce lawyer when her husband hid all their money and she was at risking of losing her kids. I prefer direct action, to giving to unaccountable charities. My parents are 71 and 72. Their health is fine and I'd like to hope they will be around for a few years yet. They could afford to buy the land and build the house, although they probably couldn't lay their hands on the cash next week to finance the plot. But they wouldn't know where to start to organise getting a house built. If I can make their life easier then I think its the right thing to do, I am sure most people would want to do the same if they could.

My parents aren't getting any younger so I wouldn't want to take as long as our build has taken! It might well be single storey and flat roofed depending on planning. The heavyweight construction my house was dictated by having concrete upper floors, without this requirement I am very tempted by an MBC timber frame or SIPs. The site has planning for a house that I do not particularly like, they appeared to try to get other things passed but I think had an eye to maximising development value, so we may be able to get something we prefer passed despite some planning constraints. Just need to decide what to offer. The Edinburgh market has gone insane recently especially below about £600,000. Houses now regularly seem to be in the 350-400 per square foot range. Two years ago this was reserved for the highest end developments or best streets in the town. I regularly see 30s bungalows or 50s detached houses priced in that range. I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole compared to something new, I nearly always look at them and want to tear them down. I noticed one the other day which very obviously had a vent right through the wall in every bedroom, presumably to deal with damp.

Hi Everyone, Just as we are finishing off my house, just a few things to do mainly landscaping, I am contemplating doing it all over again. My parents moved to an apartment 6 months ago and it is lovely, but they just don't like living close to other people. Meanwhile there is a piece of land for sale at the other end of the street to mine. I am considering making an offer for it and building them a house. Hopefully I could learn from mistakes that have been made on mine. Stay tuned, I will know if I get it next week.

There are some fantastic new drugs hitting the market for asthma as well as atopic dermatitis(eczema) which is related. Historical treatments work on the symptoms of asthma, these actually cure it by acting on the proteins that cause it. These should be imminently available to help the children. One of them, Dupixent, has just been approved in the UK for AD, asthma should follow next year. This Grand Designs is giving me ideas for a possible new project. BTW I had never had asthma or allergies in my life, but have lived in Central London Monday to Friday for work for the past 15 years. I stayed with the in laws who had a bulldog around 7 or 8 years ago and almost ended up in hospital with asthma from the allergy, the doctor thought I had pneumonia. I do worry about the effects of the air quality. The window ledges my apartment are covered in grey dust.

I was going to say Latham's, I have one of their steel doors between the house and the garage and it is fantastic quality for the price. They can glaze the double steel doors it's not clear how clear the glazing is though. About £1500+VAT for a double glazed security door. I would also thoroughly recommend these doors for a garage side door or integral garage to house door. One thing is that the maximum width frame is 2195mm, so you are probably looking at a clear opening of less than 2m and a height of under 2m also unless you have something bespoke made. The insulation value on this kind of door is also going to be pretty poor. I have to say that I have a single door 2.5m wide and I find any door much narrower than this terrifying to drive through, a door with around 2m clearance would be a non starter as far as I am concerned. I think the best option is actually a side hinged garage door. They are available insulated and with windows depending on what you want to spend. They won't be as well insulated a Fence doors, but then the garage door is going to be so badly insulated and draughty I don't think it really matters. https://www.garagedoorsonline.co.uk/shop/Side+hinged/1 Available anywhere from £300 on EBAY, upon to £3000 for a solid wooden one.

Good point, I forgot that as we have a PoE switch. Cheap TP Link switch is fine then.

You beat me to it @Dreadnaught The AC Lites are POE, power over ethernet, you will either need a separate ethernet power injector to power them or a POE switch. A cheap switch plus POE injector like this seems the cheaper option. https://www.amazon.co.uk/UBIQUITI-Networks-POE-24-12W-Ubiquiti/dp/B00HXT8LPW/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1538588859&sr=8-5&keywords=poe+injector POE switch option https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-SG1005P-5-Port-Gigabit-Desktop/dp/B0769C24T1/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1538588800&sr=8-2-spons&keywords=poe+injector&psc=1

I got my walnut from here and it was the nicest quality I could get for the price, a lot of lower priced stuff looked cheap when we got samples. I would definitely recommend samples. https://www.luxuryflooringandfurnishings.co.uk/solid-wood-flooring.html?dir=asc&order=catalog_as_low_as But you'd have a hard job matching £16.74 a square metre. Most places are more like £25-30 a metre for single strip oak at a minimum.

Rationel go up to 2337mm for a double french door, this would give a learance of 2100-2200 I would guess. So certainly you can get doors that wide. I wonder if UPVC frames have a lower width limit. Like @PeterW says though I wouldn't expect it to be long before someone tries to put a brick through them. Indeed I did away with any door other than the garage door in my garage. Around here almost all burglary is driven by trying to steal cars.

These are the figures from the building regs. Assuming that the house you are extending has a decent level of insulation the limit for a flat roof is 0.18. This can be varied if other elements are better than the limits.

As @Ferdinand says, you cannot sign a greater than 20 year lease on a residential property in Scotland. Even if you could it would be so unusual as to render a house very difficult to sell/mortgage. Frankly I think the entire system needs abolishing in England, but that is another matter. The landowner could keep a percentage ownership in the property equivalent to the value of the land, so that your friend doesn't have to pay for the land and the landowner effectively owns it from a financial perspective. However, I suspect that his real issue may be that he does not want the house sold to someone else in the long run and lose control over his estate. I suspect that he needs some kind of buyback clause to cover this, so that he can eventually buy the house at market value ex the original value of the land. Of course this affects the value of the house also and would be off putting to future buyers, he might have to buy it back and then rent it out. Ultimately this kind of deal annoys me as people want something for nothing and they get themselves all tied up to try and achieve something that isn't really feasible. If the owner wants long term control of his estate then he should keep ownership of it. If a house can be built, he should build it and rent it out. I know he is trying to be nice, but what he suggests is actually a great deal for him. He doesn't have to get planning permission but would benefit from it in the increase in the value of his land. Then he wants it to revert to him on a 99 year lease. It would actually be an awful deal for your friend as he would be building a house that would depreciate in value. Luckily the Scottish legal system has protected him from this. A buyback clause would be fairer but it would mean the landowner being on the hook for buying back the house eventually. I would be interested to see if he would go for this. Even then I do not know the legalities around it in Scotland.