newhome

With an amazingly tight budget and a huge amount of control and self discipline you might do that for £300k (without the cost of the plot) but that assumes a serviced plot with decent access from the get go. Without that it will be much more. How are you going to afford to heat a 400 m2 house? Don’t under estimate how much a house that size will take to run.

I built 350 m2 in Scotland for circa £750 psm but that meant doing a lot of the work ourselves, and being very heavily involved in the budgeting / ordering and making some compromises in places to keep it on budget. For some those compromises may have been a step too far but it’s an individual decision. If this is your dream home and you want to stay there for the rest of your days you may not mind putting money into it that you may not get back when you come to sell, but if that’s not the case then you do need to be mindful of what the house may be worth in the area that you have chosen once completed. For me it was important that I could sell it for at least what it cost to build so the budget was set, and rigorously adhered to with that in mind. 350 squares metres is a pretty big house. 400 square metres is a warehouse .

Yes I have that issue here too so can no longer use the nearest recycling centre. I have to drive miles in the opposite direction to use the nearest one in my council area. It’s a complete pain in the arse, and not very green either.

Then you just ask them to tell the drivers to be careful to get the message across. Different strokes for different folk (or suppliers). There doesn’t have to be a one size fits all approach.

You may also be able to protect your interests and attempt some risk mitigation to a degree if the road does happen to be completed before your large deliveries arrive by telling suppliers that they need to be careful and may be held responsible for damage to the road if anything happens. Glass half full and all that

I deffo don't have one! You'll need to check their phones for selfies .

Thanks @lizzie. I'm going to see if I can get a solicitor to see where the access route went wrong initially as there must have been a mistake made between my solicitor being sent the new access route (it couldn't be the old access route as it went right through the middle of my planned house and onto next door's drive blocking their access) and what was recorded. The route that has been recorded is a very odd one as it strays away from the main access gate into the site, goes through a fence, swirls across my main parking area, hits the corner of my garage and then rejoins the main driveway / shared area. It should just take exactly the same path as the shared area which is the most direct route to their gate anyway. The lady from NR did offer to come on site but my neighbour didn't want me to have any further contact with NR until their solicitor had completed their investigation in case I agreed to something that compromised their position I guess. Now that route has been extinguished maybe now is the time to broach it again. We have a huge legal department where I work too and I have seen some of the costs involved in taking on a large company and I most definitely won't be doing that. Annoyingly I have asked the solicitor who has my file to check the papers for me and he has just completely ignored my emails / phone calls. Do I have the right to ask for my file?

So an update on where this got to. The expensive solicitor that my neighbours employed wrote to Network Rail informing them of the 48 hour notice condition and asking that they comply. Network Rail have written back stating that they don't believe that they have to give 48 hours notice. So now 4 solicitors (vendors' solicitor, my purchase solicitor, next door's purchase solicitor, and now this expensive one) have stated that there is a 48 hour clause but Network Rail refuse to concede. The expensive solicitor has said that the next course of action would be to consider taking Network Rail on as they are sure that they have to give 48 hours notice but that it is likely to be very costly as Network Rail won't care about throwing money at it. So essentially even though we believe them to be wrong they win. My neighbour has suggested that I employ a different solicitor to ask them to provide another view on whether Network Rail are wrong but I'm not going to do that as I don't believe it would serve any real purpose as I'm not going to take Network Rail on and 5 solicitors saying that they are wrong won't alter that. What I do need to sort out is the route of access however as the one registered at the Land Registry is different to that agreed when I purchased the plot (that is categoric) and it can't take the route lodged at the Land Registry as I have a fence and a garage in that area now. Given that they took 3 years to register the plot are people really supposed to wait for a plot to be registered (apparently it can take up to 5 years) before building on any part of the plot in case the route recorded differs from that agreed when the plot was purchased? That just feels wrong to me.

Yeah cos it's like Vegas here init .

I was scared the first time I used it lol but it's passed that test already. The joists were altered to allow it and to accommodate the open plan nature of the room downstairs I believe.

And for the avoidance of doubt @Nickfromwales and @PeterW decided not to share that bath in case a photo ended up on BH . Will was let off given that he forgot his water wings . That bath is circa 300l BTW although I know you didn't fill it up to the top.

The guy who we paid ex vat was the guy who supplied and poured the screed. He came from a long distance away and wasn't friends with anyone local so no risk to us on that score, but I totally get what you mean. We walked away from a few too as it seemed like far too much hassle ultimately.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004R24U76/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A1X89CF5H93U7O&psc=1 Added on £6 postage when I selected the 5 in that they had in stock though. Maybe you could contact them direct for a bulk order?

Actually it’s only just over a fiver from a 3rd party seller on Amazon.

£9.11 on Amazon Prime. Sure you must be able to get it cheaper on a bulk purchase. Tried Jewson or the like?

Thanks! The system has been here for 8 years and I’m only just learning the terms and how it should operate .

So an update on the solar. Looks like it’s working as later on the settings were as follows: col 64.4 tst 47.1 S3 68.5 % 70 h P 7 And the lower eBay stat was up to 68.5 from its earlier 56.5 and I’m pretty certain that the boiler didn’t fire up to do that. I’m not certain why the col temp got to 127 earlier in the day but it must have stopped for a bit I guess. The forecast is back to being rubbish again as per, and the col is down to 8c today so the sun did clearly shine on the righteous and they’re safely back in England and Wales now. I have to say that I’m struggling to get my head around the hot water staying in the TS because never in the years the thing has been installed has the hot water not run away somewhere. I keep looking at the little eBay stats in amazement . It’s also a novelty seeing the boiler on but not fired up as there was never a point where it was on but at rest previously. I want to knock on the cover and see if anyone is still in there . Electric bill was £254 last month (33 days) which seems a lot given that it’s only me here and I only heated 1 room previously. Hoping it might be a bit more economical going forwards! Am going to take regular readings to see how often the boiler is coming on and how much it is consuming, just for my own interest really to help me understand how the boiler is behaving as it is what it is. Every single room is between 20 and 22 degrees currently as they were all turned on to test the system Sun night. None of the rooms have dropped below the set temperature yet which has been lowered a bit as it was actually too hot in here lol so none of the rooms have shown as ‘heating’ in the last circa 36 hours. It’s also a novelty to walk round the house feeling that it’s warm as this house has always been cold previously. It’s weird how the abnormal becomes the new normal after a while and I’m now struggling to get my head around what should have been BAU / normal for this system lol. Am also going to set up a heatmiser profile to just heat the rooms I use as there is no point in heating the guest bedrooms for example. So all looking good so far, albeit that it feels like an alien concept to me at present.

Of course this could also mean that you are living with a temp road for years if the last plot isn’t sold or developed .....

Yep, seems perfect for your needs!

Other things to consider that should be noted in your purchase documents. Who owns the access road, and who is responsible for its ongoing maintenance once built? I have a shared access to my plot and it clearly notes that it is owned equally between the 2 plots and we are each responsible for a half share of the maintenance. My thoughts. Whilst the wording would seem to not preclude the owner from putting the access road in at any time the fact that he is selling the plots for houses to be built provides you with a reasonable expectation that the road will either be built to the standard required to allow any heavy plant traffic to pass over it if it is constructed before the houses are built, or that the builder will make good the damage on the road if it is found wanting. If the damage is a 4 way split (or whatever) I doubt that the neighbours will want to risk being liable whilst heavy building work is taking place so getting them onside may help. A solicitor’s letter should help and if your has retired he should have passed the files onto another one.

S'ok @Nickfromwales fixed the epilator to deal with his bear pelt while he was here. The shower is now blocked however .

That’s sounding like an advantage TBH!

Hmm, my take on that would be that all of the toxic additives are being KEPT inside! Better out than in and all that!

Gate track would make sense as Terry installed a lot of gates when we lived daan saaf. There is no code on them but they are 500mm in length and there are 30 of them here. There are no sliding gates here so surplus to requirements apart from using to bludgeon Network Rail employees who wake me up.

There is a crate of them here so just checking what they are before I skip them.