AliG

I think I am almost done, after 5 tests the drain has passed. However, BC decided that it has been such a disaster they wanted to check the other of the two drains that were added. It failed. The conservatory company, although they are originally responsible for the problem have been very good in putting guys on digging it all up and fixing it. I am meeting the BC officer next Friday and I think it will all get signed off. They have been incredibly helpful, I really cannot fault them other than it is hard to contact them. In flat I think I will send in a letter of thanks as I am sure all they normally get is complaints.

I might try that, I tried calling, but Openreach seem to have made it almost impossible to speak to anyone. The website is very unfriendly to navigate and when you call up it goes through a series of things you should try on the web and then hangs up on you rather than giving you the any other option that most companies have. The street has Virgin so I am also going to try them as that is underground and may be simpler to reconnect. Really I would use Sky as my provider, but I am not sure if they are as good at organising a new connection as BT.

OK, I have read this whole thread and still can't figure out if I contact BT/SKY or Openreach. We knocked down a house to build ours which was previously connected to a pole. So theoretically I could just go to BT /SKY and ask for a connection as the address is in the database. But I would like to put a pole in the garden and duct the cable from there to the house rather than attach straight from the house to the pole over the road which is what they originally had, I guess this has to be done via Openreach. Am I mad or is there nowhere on the Openreach website to request a single house connection, all I can bring up are forms for multi unit developers. The builder was telling me about getting gas, water and electricity connected today. I asked about phone and he said he thought I was doing that, I have not idea why. SWMBO will not be happy if I cannot get us connected up in the 29 days we now have.

You're going to lose a lot on the house sale limiting your market to people who don't want to live next to a building site, probably 5% and wanting to rent it back will make it even more limiting. Meanwhile put a nice house up next to it and you could increase its value. You said that you plan to do up the current house then sell it. Could you use the cash for that to get you started on the new place. Is the house liveable in its current state whilst you build? Could this with a self build mortgage get you most of the way there. It depends what the budgeter for doing up the current house is. Of course higher interest costs could eat up the benefit of getting a higher selling price. Again a lot depends on how much you can get done using your own finance, if you could finance the ground works and the house is a fast timber frame build then you are only looking to borrow money for maybe 6 months. Ultimately there will probably have to be some compromise and you might not be able to maximise the financial outcome. Not building a house quite to passive house standards may be another compromise.

I actually think what the builder has done looks nicer. I wouldn't worry about steam getting up into the area under the flyover. We have a fake wooden mantle around the hob and steam has had no effect on it. My wife also lets the pressure cooker vent right across the front of our painted cabinets which upsets me but doesn't seem to be doing any harm. An extractor rarely sucks all the steam into it anyway. Looking at it, I assume that the plan is for the hood to be recirculating and then the extractor on the wall to be the actual extractor which is allowed in the regs, although it needs twice the rate of extraction of a hood above the cooker. I would be concerned that it never gets switched on unless it is automatic and even then someone will probably switch it off. Tenants don't like fan noise and don't necessarily care about causing you problems with condensation so I would try to have something that they cannot easily switch off. Maybe connect the extractor to the kitchen light or get one that works automatically with humidity.

The paper very clearly comes out against "volumetric" charges and I have to agree as regards network costs. Many of us here, me included, have reduced out electricity usage via the use of solar panels as well as energy efficient lights etc. However we still need access to the network as we do not generate all the power we produce. Give or tale the cost of providing network access to a property is the same irrespective of how much actual electricity they use. If we did away with the standing charge people who are higher users of electricity will end up paying more than their fair share. You could of course use batteries to totally leave the network and then you would not have to pay a standing charge which would be fair as you would not be using the network. An electricity network, similar to a phone or rail network does not lend itself to competition as the costs of building extra networks are prohibitive relative to the benefits of competition. Generally these are regulated by some kind of rate of return mechanism along with a savings sharing mechanism. I feel that this has worked well for utilities and it is used in many countries including here. As companies can earn a return on capital investment and keep some efficiency savings whilst sharing them with consumers if properly applied it should work. I am less clear on whether residential customers should pay for fixed generation costs. They don't currently. I believe that they have steadier and more predictable demand than industrial customers and so this charge has not been deemed necessary. I am surprised to read about this as I thought proposals were to move to more variable pricing which would tend to smooth out demand and would reduce the need for these charges. I do agree that most of these regulators are a waste of time. I don't know why we need this review at all, but no doubt it keeps them all in a job. Just across the river from my office in London are the OFCOM offices right on the Thames in central London, Motablity is in the next block. What a waste of money. These quangos should have gone in the bonfire of the quangos.

What helps is giving you the confidence to argue about costs. A few times I have had to hold my ground that quotes were too expensive and have saved serious money. Working full time at the other end of the country means I have to use an architect and main contractor to oversee the build. I reckon I could have saved 10% of the cost if I could have got quotes on everything myself. As was said the only person interested in keeping costs down is you, the people building your house generally want the easiest solution not the cheapest.

I have one of these to be built. I would just check the depth if you plan to put an extractor hood in it as I was shocked to find that Siemens island hoods are 299mm tall which is taller than I planned for the dropped ceiling.

There are a couple of things that aren't clear. At 184 sq metres and 1500 a sq metre I would have thought your budget would be around £275,000, not £225,000. I hadn't realised how expensive an MBC frame can be, that seems to be the cost for a passive frame, but the estimate has £14,000 for heating. In fairness you might need to budget a bit more for a passive house. If there are no surprises below ground and you budget correctly you shouldn't need such a large contingency. If you have a firm price for the frame, that's the price, why would you add a contingency to that. I suspect you are already committed to that architect, if so including that cost you might be talking £300,000 unless you do more work yourself, but certainly not £400,000 including a massive contingency. That is basically what your adjusted number is coming to.

I just had a look at your introduction page. I see Charlie Luxton architects - Can't imagine that they are cheap. Also an architect can justify high prices if they are overseeing the whole build as mine is. That can be a lot of work, I am sure I have underpaid mine. But here if you are buying in a frame there will be a lot less work for them to do. You mentioned using MBC for the frame, do you not have a quote from them rather than an estimate, someone who has used MBC may be able to comment on how much they would expect to pay. I get the impression that they are expensive but very good. I would expect that you can build something for £1500 a square metre plus architect costs.

Those figures are crazy. I wouldn't cut things out I would go through and see how the figures are calculated. 1. Architect at 9% of cost is very high, is the architect expecting to be paid more due to the higher budget? I negotiated a fixed price based on the budget costs. The cost is much more now but the price is the same, why should I pay the architect more if I decide to spec nicer windows for example. 2. £10000 for underground drainage seems v high, it is 2/3 of the foundation costs. 3. £27,700 for windows. My triple glazed windows cost only twice that in a house more than 5x the size. 4. £70-80000 for the frame, £440 a square metre is nonsense. 5. £20400 for electrical, again I am only about 50% more for a way larger house. On the other hand some of the fittings and finishes numbers may be too low but they are much smaller numbers. Get some quotes, look on the internet, ask him for a refund, he doesn't know what he is talking about.

3 choices 1. Live with it 2. Redo it, you only need top coat. 3. Lots of plants so you can't see it. You would always be able to tell it was different it it was painted and it would also weather differently. I personally hate painted render. PS my house is also K-Rend polar white, just started to go on and it looks fantastic.

I misunderstood this at first, but yes you probably could as it wouldn't affect the original trusses. Very good idea. I am not an SE though, probably best to ask one of them.

Build a steel frame outside the existing exterior walls to support the flat roof that is higher than the current wall holding up the pitched roof. Then have the flat roof overhang this until it meets the pitched roof. I would guess that although you need a wall to support the flat roof the small width of the overhang could be supported by the existing roof trusses.

The legs would support the weight, but the issue is going to be what do you screw into and the likelihood of the wall flexing. In all honesty I have never seen this kind of wall. @ProDave is right, if the cabinet can overlap a stud at all then attaching it to one stud should give a tight fixing and you can attach the other side with a plasterboard anchor. However, I am guessing you wouldn't be asking here if that was the case. I have done the same thing fixing a large TV to a plasterboard wall. You could use a plasterboard cavity fixing as it won't actually be taking a lot of weight, but i would be worried about the plasterboard flexing and eventually breaking. I was going to suggest a strip of marine ply to replace a strip of the the plasterboard and screwing into this. The trouble you will have then is attaching the plasterboard to this. Best solution I have is cutting a strip out of the plasterboard. Putting in two noggins that attach to the studs on either side, slip the noggins halfway behind each edge of the cut them you can put a new strip of plasterboard back across the noggins and screw into one of them. No matter what you do you will be left with a decorating job, but I assume that has to be done anyway.

Depending on the interior layout rather than raising the roof you could do a room under it with a step down into it, I think that is the normal solution to this kind of situation.

Hi, Nice to see someone else in Edinburgh. That panelling is made to be waterproof not to take weight, it certainly won't hold screws well. It's not clear what you are installing here, you said a quartz top then you said a cabinet. Does the top sit on a cabinet underneath or do you mean a frame that goes back to the wall? Anything supported from the wall is going to need a frame to take the weight, you would probably have to break into the plasterboard and create a frame inside the wall connected to the studs that are there. I have a wall hung double basin and cabinet where they built a small step into the wall to support it at the back, but again if there is no frame in the wall it will be hard to build something like this with nothing to attach it to. Is the wall going to be tiled? Without more framing, anything wall supported would probably cause the wall to bow and the tiles to pop. Do you have a picture of that you want to install?

There is no set standard for how to value a house and the more unusual a house is the more difficult it becomes. Normally an automated system will take the area of the house and price it to the local price per square foot. We just sold our house in Scotland where the seller gets the valuation survey. The valuer didn't care that we had a new kitchen etc versus another house that recently sold in the street. He pretty much insisted that the value was driven by size and nothing else. If the house is being built to a much higher spec than those nearby you will again struggle to get it correctly valued. Reasonably to value an unfinished house you need to take the finished value less costs to get there as a starting point. However, it becomes like a fixer upper and would likely be valued at a material discount to this, I would say around 10% off the net value as the market for such a property is considerably restricted relative to a finished house. The way a lender thinks is how much money could they easily realise if they had to repossess the house and sell it. The discount would depend on how much work needs to be done. You can obviously ask that someone visits, but a lot of lenders will not care and have a take it or leave it attitude.

Not really relevant but whilst we were looking at the site on Wednesday we noticed that the very efficient bricklayers had put insulation in the cavity of the side of the porch which is open to the elements. Detached garage does not need insulation as stated.

I also have Rationel windows. This detail is bizarrely fiddly and I have discussed it many times with the builder and architect but still struggle with it. We have mainly stone window surrounds and some render, these will stop around 10-20mm in front of the aluminium frame. The sealant is put in behind the facing material but far enough into the side of the reveal that it does not go onto the front of the aluminium. I should give a very neat finish as you won't be able to see the sealant looking at the window straight on. They haven't put the sealant in yet, I will see if I can get a picture in the next couple of weeks.

The walls are so thin that the windows have to be flush with the outside, my in laws house outer walls are probably less than 150mm thick. Basically the walls are going in the timber frame that would be the inner layer of most houses here. If the windows were set back there would be too much risk of water getting inside the frame I would guess. I found a couple of pics from when their house was being built showing the inside and outside of a window. This is in California not Canada, it was an on site built timber frame.

It was a nice house that they built, but I really did think he was being obsessive about the insulation. Just because you can get the U-Value down to 0.07 doesn't mean it is worthwhile to do so. I'm not convinced the quadruple glazing would pay for itself either. Considering the size of the house, 100mm extra width in all directions and a U-vlaue of 0.14 would perhaps have been a better compromise. I'm a lot more compromising now than I was at his age to be fair. As for the stairs this is a recurring Grand Designs mystery. Even if you could get away with it why would you want to take the risk.

I'm watching now. How bad a job can someone do before you don't have to pay them? The first effort at the basement was a joke.

Are you using the roof space? I changed the spec in my house to 400mm rock wool above the ceiling in areas where we didn't need a warm roof as this was vastly cheaper. You save on labour as well as the insulation. 200mm EPS under the screed will give you 0.15 U-value, you will likely get more benefit from the roof than the floor. Watch out for odd sizes which can be much more expensive, e.g. 90mm PIR can be more expensive than 100mm. You could cut your screed thickness to 60/65mm. Screed is usually charged by volume, so more screed than necessary will increase your costs.

Mine was the three foot of insulation kind, it was hard to find the cables for the Aico that was already there. How do you breathe up there? After yesterday I put on a face mask. Trouble is that after a few minutes my glasses were dripping and I couldn't see. Had to take a towel up with me.