newhome

I would have to look that up! Way too tempting to leave as an unknown ?.

If the current buildings have been used as a garage (since you mention garages above) even if not originally for that purpose they won't be eligible. See the section from the VAT notice here: Examples of a ‘non-residential conversion’ include the conversion of: a commercial building (such as an office, warehouse, shop) an agricultural building (such as a barn), or a redundant school or church into a building ‘designed as a dwelling or number of dwellings’. The conversion of a garage, occupied together with a dwelling, into a building designed as a dwelling is not a non-residential conversion. The term ‘garage’ not only covers buildings designed to store motor vehicles but also buildings such as barns, to the extent that they are used as garages. However if it can be established that the garage was never used to store motor vehicles or has not been used as a garage for a considerable length of time prior to conversion, its conversion into a building designed as a dwelling can be a non-residential conversion. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-708-buildings-and-construction/vat-notice-708-buildings-and-construction

Depends how much you do yourself TBH. A turnkey type affair where others are doing most of it will be more expensive than if you project manage, buy supplies and arrange trades yourselves (comes with a health warning though). There are lots of threads about costings here and much of it depends on your spec (minimum vs passiv standard, designer kitchen vs budget for example), but as a rough guide use circa £1200 - £1500 per m2. That's the footprint x 2 for a 2 storey property. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/104-costing-estimating/ You have the land, access and service connections already that can all be big headache / cost areas so that's one thing in your favour.

I used Scotframe for my house and it was a great experience from them, very helpful. As @TheMitchells said they did everything for us (apart from the planning as we already had PP) up to the delivery of the frame and then we took over to get it erected and the house built.

Welcome to Buildhub Cazza. I used to live in Kent before I moved north . I'm sure someone who knows more about planning than me will be along to advise soon but just watch out for mounting architect's costs. The strategy of putting in multiple plans seems to keep him on the gravy train for a while ... Have you considered asking advice from a planning consultant who knows your local area?

All done. Completion certificate was issued in Dec.

I have just had my vat refund so will now have to pay vat on my next heating installation but am a bit confused by the rate that will be charged. When I was a self builder I could ask for all supply and fit work to be zero rated. If I bought the goods I would pay the vat and reclaim it. That’s simple and straightforward. As I have recently moved from self builder to ‘home owner’ I now have to pay vat on my next installation but I am confused by the rates. I understand that some energy saving materials are charged at the reduced rate of 5% if the equipment is installed. But if I buy the equipment supply only it is standard rate? So using this example as I am considering installing an ASHP. If I buy the ASHP and DIY the installation I will be charged 20%. If I have it installed as supply and fit ASHP installations are rated at 5%, and if that was all that needed to be done it would be charged at 5%. I assume any ancillary bits and bobs (connectors or whatever) would also be at 5%? If however I wanted it to be connected to a thermal store for example would that count as ‘installation of energy-saving materials with other goods and services’ with the whole thing rated @ 20%? If so presumably I could ask for the ASHP to be installed as a separate job from the cylinder and receive 2 invoices accordingly? And what about heat batteries eg Sunamp? If I buy one and install it myself it’s 20% but if I get an installer to do it it’s 5%? I couldn’t see whether heat batteries were included in the vat notice at all in truth. It was far easier when I was a self builder!

I doubt it, just include an explanation in a covering letter. You can provide evidence of both addresses. I had 4 addresses for my claim; my original Kent address, a rental flat, the plot reference address and later the proper house name and address. The important thing is that it’s your name on the invoice.

Well that doesn't reflect our experience when we went at weekends to look at our last house being built in 2000. There were obvious things wrong that we complained about, and endless snagging issues post the handover, and we later found out that they had missed out the cavity wall insulation for the entire road despite us all receiving the guarantee for it when we moved in. I would say that maybe the quality has improved in the interim as it was quite a long time ago but judging by the endless posts on the local FB group up here complaining about issues with their new builds (there is an explosion of new homes in the local town covering several different builders) it seems unlikely. There are some great trades about but you generally can't get them as they are too busy. When you do get one they are like golddust and generally they don't charge as much as they could for the quality provided. The crappy ones seem to turn up, do a crap job and charge way too much.

Your missus has the patience of a saint IMO but at least you stick at it. Mine used to get bored and leave jobs half finished for the duration ...

Thanks all. I still can't get the damn flush thing out but I could nuke it if I had a new one I guess . Miraculously I managed to find the email they sent when we ordered the cisterns and they say AG1378 so I'm thinking it's probably this one? @PeterW? http://www.toiletspares.co.uk/ag1378-flush-valve.html I have a sneaking suspicion that the flush valve leaks a little too as the water starts to trickle out into the bowl before it has even refilled. So a trickle possibly caused by the seal not being 100% on the flush, followed by a gush as the fill valve doesn't stop the water and it starts to gush out. That's my non educated guess anyway. Is the fill valve that @JSHarris posted the one I need? Or this one (but the end is metal instead of plastic)? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Monaco-Universal-Cistern-30956510-Thread/dp/B00Y3PE5FY/ref=sr_1_1?s=diy&ie=UTF8&qid=1532184641&sr=1-1&keywords=siamp+95l The one they list in ToiletSpares is this one but it says 'new type' and doesn't look quite the same: http://www.toiletspares.co.uk/ag1378-inlet-valve.html @lizzie I've drawn a blank trying to get any damn plumber out here so have been forced into desperate measures hence trying it myself. There are other jobs here that I definitely can't do however so have to keep trying to get someone to come, and not a cock plumber which is the worry ... And @Ferdinand it wouldn't have been so much 'fun' had I been told just to replace the bits to start with, and I now have some knowledge of how the damn things work that I didn't have before yesterday so it's all good. I have another educational piece still to come trying to reassemble it all and getting the flush working properly so that may need more voddy I imagine Will try the one upstairs first.

Looks great! When does it go down for real?

Thanks. It's been in 8 years and is the one that has had the most use being the downstairs loo, and also the only loo that worked when we moved in, so I guess that's not too bad. The others have various issues but given my experience with the one upstairs I think that's due to the rods etc not being fitted correctly or still pressing down after a flush as the one upstairs doesn't leak or do anything strange with all of the rods and clips taken off. I have the joy of putting that back together and trying to avoid the issue yet to come .

Are they fairly standalone things? So if it fits on the side inlet pipe it should work regardless of make? Wondering if I should get a more reliable make?

I've unscrewed everything and rinsed it although nothing looked dirty inside in truth.

Do I need to search for a replacement one of these or do I need to do something to fix it?

Yes we're using scrum. We've started off creating feature teams where we can but there are many challenges to overcome so we have many component teams that we intend to move into feature teams as we progress. We won't be offshoring the whole lot because frankly we haven't seen the capability within the offshore teams in traditional waterfall projects and from what we've seen so far they aren't exactly stepping up to the plate to help us shape our agile transformation. One of the biggest challenges is co location as we have teams spread not just across India but spread across the UK too, and the company has long made a commitment to flexible / agile working that means that even those in the same base location either don't work every day or work a fair bit from home. I haven't noticed too many people being resistant to 'their' teams being assigned to labs and working in a team centric fashion. Certainly doesn't bother me anyway, I am pleased to see how motivated and enthusiastic the approach has made many of them. And the ones that aren't? Well they were never going to be and will likely get managed out I suspect.

Are you sitting in darkness with blackout blinds?

My company is finally being dragged into the modern age and are moving to agile development having spend years going down the offshoring route and leaving us with very few subject matter experts and those that are left were pushed to be hands off overseers who really only got in the sharp end if there was an issue. Now we are transforming ourselves and are about to recruit permanent staff to cover deep technical roles again and even the management are being asked to step back into tech land. Agile is hard in my organisation though where in my area alone we have over 500 live applications to support and maintain. A tweak to one can mean changes needed to multiple apps. We will get there I'm sure but it's not nearly as easy as for the SMEs / new startups.

Well that’s a relief for sure!

Hopefully not anytime soon ... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44903471

I know but I don't think I can be bothered. In fairness most of the stuff I just binned seemed to be mountains of fixings and electrical bits and bobs rather than proper tools. Did chuck a load of drill bits though but they should be easy to replace if I need some later on. I still have some anyway and I don't see me turning into a DIY fiend in truth .

I may well do that as there are some things in there that I don’t know whether to keep or bin.

Success! Couldn’t find a spanner but managed to improvise with some grippers. What now please?

I’ve got rid of quite a lot of stuff TBH. There are still bits and pieces left but not as much as there was to start with for sure. I didn’t find the right size spanner but cleared out 4 more crates of crap. New mantra, if it’s rusty then bin it lol.