newhome

There are quite a few rolls of rockwool insulation up in the loft that were unused. Wondered what I should do with them really. I guess the options are a. use them somewhere but where? b.leave them there as they are not in the way after all (I have never actually been in the loft!) or c. get them down and get rid of them. Views?

Mine is like that, ie I can’t switch the hall light on or off from upstairs. Hubby said he had no idea how he missed that. Plus if you are having room thermostats ensure that they are not near something that generates heat.

And just musing about @Dudda‘s great advice I wish I had taken the time to do the walk round of the electrical plan. There are some niggles in relation to some of the plug sockets that ended up behind furniture or are missing from locations where they would have been handy. Plus I wish I had a data point next to where I sit with the laptop that may have helped with the slooooow internet speed round here. I left it all to hubby but think I may have noticed a couple of issues as everyone sees things slightly differently. Plus there was some good advice from @ProDave on here once that was to ensure that the sockets for kitchen appliances weren’t placed behind the appliances meaning that you had to pull them out to switch them off. Mine aren’t like that thankfully but I can see how that would be a pain.

+1. This forum is not just for blogging, but also those little niggles that hit you out of nowhere in the small hours, or when someone asks you a question you don't feel qualified to answer, and even if you do feel qualified to answer it will help to validate that your understanding is correct. Support and advice is one of the things that BuildHub provides in spades so please ask away any time. Plus all questions asked provide information for others who follow. And one of the first things to deal with on the stress front is to accept that things are going to get a little behind in certain areas. I doubt there is anyone on here who can say that every element of their build ran entirely to plan. Things happen; weather, availability of builders, suppliers letting you down, things simply taking longer than estimated are just a few examples. It just goes with the territory I'm afraid and not something you can afford to be too stressed over as anxiety can eat you alive if you let every little slippage cause you concern. Better to get things right than to rush and compromise. When I first started my build I had a gaant chart detailing the timeline and I pinned it up where everyone could see it. Hubby and the builders looked at me like I was an alien from out of space, but management was my thing and I thought that would help me keep things on track. Well I soon binned that idea as it was clear that my initial approach wasn't going to work. It was hard to adjust my mindset to accept this and it took a while in truth. I wish I had been able to accept it sooner as I could have diverted my energy elsewhere. The second thing to deal with is not to over analyse what anyone says to you before validating the information. I have a tendency to over analyse too and have blown things up to be massive issues in my head, when actually the very next person who looked at it just says 'whatever' and all of my worrying has been for nothing. Just ask on here - someone will know. Better for the mind for sure. On the positive front the build looks great. You have either struck lucky and have ultra neat builders (a rare event indeed) or you are obsessive in clearing the site regularly. I used to go round at the weekends retrieving drinks bottles, sandwich wrappers, general rubbish and 'stuff' left everywhere and it still looked like a mess all the time. Onwards and upwards. Tomorrow is a new day.

Lol, I think @Mr Punter meant don’t turn up to court with yer bits on show!

Plus the effort of making the garage into living accommodation of a decent standard to start with. I would take the 'house on wheels' option over living in a garage every time. Our caravan was actually quite comfortable inside, it just wasn't very big for long term accommodation even though it was a twin axle modern caravan. The limitation of the shower was the biggest downside in truth but other than that we had a fridge, freezer, microwave, oven, hob, heating, shower, hot water, fixed bed with sprung mattress so it was bearable and wasn't forever anyway. Hubby lived in it for 9 months and then we moved in.

+1!!!! Don't even mention any ambiguity. Start from the angle of having been completely clear and transparent with what you required then let the window company argue their own case.

Knowing @Onoff of particular interest will be the point of collapse but some before, during and after photos would be great. including these things. We love a seeing photos on here - really brings things to life. Might be good if you could detail it all in a separate post in the relevant sub forum (see link) so that it can be more easily found by people who are looking at doing a similar project in the future: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/60-house-extensions/ And welcome to BuildHub!

Well that’s progress of sorts I guess. Maybe the judge will look unfavourably on the company given that they have ignored attempts to mediate, especially as you showed willing.

Welcome to BuildHub. There is a section on the forum for windows so it might be useful if you have a look through the posts there initially and then if you don’t find what you are looking for post a new topic detailing the issues you have so that someone can help. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/142-windows-glazing/

It wasn’t like that all the time of course but you can see why we moved into the house as soon as the kitchen / family room and the downstairs shower room were complete. I can’t say that I got the full caravan experience as I was only there at weekends. My hubby used to drive me back to the rental appartment an hour away on a Sunday night, we’d have a meal and he would use the shower that was luxury compared to the small shower in the caravan with only a limited amount of hot water. I could not have coped with trying to dress for the office and live in the tourer for an extended time in truth.

As I said further up most caravans won’t fit in a normal sized garage so unless yours is extra tall you will have an issue. This was our caravan during a pretty snowy winter. My hubby lived in the caravan for the duration of the build but I had a rental apartment and only used the caravan at weekends. We had the caravan hooked up to the mains that meant we had blown air heating so it wasn’t too awful inside the caravan in truth. We also used the gas heater as that tended to put out more heat than the electric blown heating. On the odd occasion we used a fan heater too but never left unattended. There was an electric blanket on the bed that worked pretty well and all in all it was survivable. Damp coats were hung in the shower cubicle overnight to help them dry off and we had a washer / dryer in one of the awnings (we had awnings both sides).

My caravan wouldn’t have fitted in the garage. Too tall.

Is that part of the deal when someone purchases one of these houses? Is it enforceable or are you hoping for voluntary participation as a result of the appeal of the passive feature?

Ok you win!

Lol, we posted at the same time!

Thanks for the introduction. Looks like a very interesting project, and the layout and design will appeal to many buyers I think. How many houses are you building? What is the rationale for using the different building methods? Will that complicate the construction and risk impacting the delivery? I assume it will mean more suppliers to deal with, with no leverage to negotiate a better price deal through having multiple houses to use as the bargaining point? Not knocking it, but interested in the thought process.

I operate that way at work mostly with fixed price outcome based arrangements for most IT contracts I pull together but it didn't always work for me as a (worse than novice) self builder. The worst example being the one I quoted above where a joiner charged me £1000 to do some relatively minor work here. He was the only person I could get out to quote and IMO because he was being paid a fixed price he rushed it to the extreme. He was here for about 2 half days, definitely not more than 10 hours in total. He cut where he stood covering several rooms in dust, dropped something in the vestibule and chipped one the tiles and clearly noticed because he shoved some silicone in the chip to cover it up. Maybe if he had been paid by the day he would have taken longer and taken more care.

It sounds like a massive issue just now and one that will always be an issue when house building is in full flow. When we did our main build it was 2009 / 2010 and the housing market had all but collapsed. We had multiple quotes for every one of our jobs (didn’t stop us from engaging a few knobs however ?) as they were crying out for work so getting trades in wasn’t difficult at that time. We actually got most of our extension built in 2015 using members of the fire service who all seem to have set themselves up as trades alongside their fire service job in the local town that I understand only requires them to work 3 days per week. Other fencing and landscaping work is done by someone who is now a salaried employee of a local (non building) company but he still does his landscaping work at weekends which is ok if you can wait for him to a. become available as he’s always in demand, and b. it can take a few weekends to get through the job so it has to be something you can live with in the interim. So there are options but those probably aren’t viable for the larger jobs. Conversely getting someone to do a small job is very difficult too.

Sounds like a good result. At least all the main bits will be there from the get go and you can add the vanity items later.

That’s something that always bugged me too. We were reasonably lucky in that most didn’t take the mickey but there were some that did and it caused a huge row once when my hubby refused to pay them for a full day. He cut it back to half a day as they had hardly been there quite apart from the early finishes on other days. That said many of our time and materials trades charged by the hour. We would be given a sort of time sheet (fag packet style) along with the invoice that felt a lot more transparent. Clearly if you agree a fixed price it isn’t so much of an issue apart from the potentially elongated timeline, however I’ve been caught out by that too when I’ve calculated what their day rate for the job worked out as. Even if I count 2 half days as 2 full days worked I paid £500 a day for a joiner once

2 things here though. 1. you assume that all self builders know if something is right or not and 2. most trades I’ve come across don’t give a stuff about trades following on. There are exceptions of course but many don’t give a stuff. Problems range from the clearly wrong or bodged that anyone can spot to issues that only someone with a decent amount of knowledge can spot. It’s a wonder that so many developer built UK houses stay standing in truth.

Doesn’t live in Scotland clearly . Tax is just over 9k in UK excl Scotland on 52k.

Unless they are the huge windfarm affairs they just blow down up here! Even the one at the nuclear power station blew down some years ago.

I believe that these are rebadged Whirlpool / Electrolux appliances.