NSS

Self indulgent but I just love the way the low afternoon sun creates such interesting shapes as it shines through our lounge glazing at this time of year.

True. We used to live in a road named Kingfisher Copse and regularly received mail addressed to Kingfisher Corpse. Funny thing was there's a cemetery on the corner of the road.

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Ours is apparently one of only two homes with the same name. Frankly I'm surprised anyone else would also have chosen F#@kwit's Bottom ?

Our Thermowood cladding has been up for about 3 years or so now. Unlike yours @Dean Carpenter ours is heat treated Redwood. We chose to coat it with a clear UV varnish as we preferred to maintain the wood colour rather than let it go grey. Apart from some slight fading on the south elevation it looks much the same as the day it was put up. We have sections on all elevations, and have no sign of any surface growth anywhere. Whether the varnish has helped or not I couldn't say, but for anyone considering Thermowood as opposed to Hotwood then hopefully our experience will provide some assurance.

What happens when you drive through a tunnel?

Wow! Just wow! Looking forward to seeing how it progresses ?

My daughter lives alone in a two bed coach house next door (attached) to a 3-bed house occupied by a family of four. The places were new 3 years or so when both she and her neighbours moved in. She has recently noticed that the meter number quoted on her bill is not the one on her meter. Turns out she's been paying the electricity bill for next door and vice versa but is having quite a battle to get the utility co to refund what she's overpaid.

Hmm, methinks they may be setting the bar too low (or should that be high).... 3.27. The proposed minimum elemental standards for new dwellings are as follows: Table 3.1 - Minimum standards for fabric performance External walls 0.26 W/m2.K ? Party walls 0.20 W/m2.K ? Floor 0.18 W/m2.K ? Roof 0.16 W/m2.K ? Windows 1.6 W/m2.K ? Roof-lights1 2.2 W/m2.K ? Door 1.6 W/m2.K ? Air permeability 8m3/m2.K at 50Pa ?

Wow, looks great - and what a garden! Look forward to seeing pics. Oh, and welcome ?

We have Jetfloor. Our longest spans are 4.45m and they had no issue with that. Total cost (supply only) for all materials (123m2) was £4,550 (albeit that was in 2015). Included 57 beams, infill books, inlay sheet, overlay sheet, Thermalite beam end spacer blocks, Thermalite edge blocks and Thermalite coursing blocks (for top of dwarf walls). We also had perimeter blocks to insulate the slab from the external walls and have Perinsul glass blocks in the below DPC build up of the external 'skin' to minimise cold bridge to the timber frame.

Or you could buy the whole thing from B&Q for £172 like I have. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder ?

Glad we're not starting our build now. Here's just a few of the major items that came from abroad. MVHR unit - Germany ASHP - Japanese but (I believe) ours was made in Italy Windows and external doors - Austria SageGlass - USA Staircase - Italy PV panels - South Korea In roof PV mounts - France Wood cladding - Finland Cereal Click cladding - Belgium Thermal Insulation - France Kitchen units - Germany Kitchen appliances - Germany and Italy (mainly) Wood for the Timber Frame - Scandinavia And when I first thought about doing a self build I had the ambition to use 'locally' produced materials wherever possible!

Literally, the cheapest I can buy the item here (even after negotiating an extra 10% off of the New Year Sale price) is £2,100. I've ordered it for pick up in Germany for 1,529 euros (circa £1,365). Mad is the right word!

I've just ordered an item of furniture from Germany. They won't deliver it, but it's still significantly cheaper for me to hire a van, drive to Dover, get a ferry over to Calais, drive to Germany to collect it and then drive back than it would be to purchase exactly the same piece of furniture from a UK retailer.

It was, and is the single biggest reason why it took us longer to finish than hoped/planned. Unfortunately we had objecting neighbours who took great delight in calling the council if we did anything outside the permitted hours.

Not always possible. Our planning conditions limited work on site to between 8am and 6pm Monday to Friday, and 8am to noon on Saturdays (no Sunday or Bank Holiday working permitted) and this was strictly enforced.

We had the same problem getting insurance but ended up going through https://www.intelligentinsurance.co.uk/

We have 48 spotlights in our ceilings. Not one of them has been sealed as there's no need to. If you have air leakage from outside to your ceiling voids then you're already fighting a losing battle, surely?

The MVHR in our home has, quite literally, transformed my wife's life, and probably added years to it. Frankly I don't give a damn whether it ever pays for itself in a financial sense.

Ours was very similar

How many times has ownership of the plot changed in that time? If each application has followed a change of owner, it may suggest each have subsequently concluded that it wasn't viable/economic to build it and sold to cut their losses. Of course, unviable then doesn't necessarily mean it's still unviable, but there's usually a good reason why plots either don't sell or don't get built.

We have 22mm OSB covered with 15mm plasterboard. The OSB gives something firm to fix to and the plasterboard offers a level of fire control (we figured with the number of electrical devices/controls contained therein that it was prudent to do so).

This may be controversial, but I also think there's a need to differentiate between a self-build, where the individuals who intend to occupy it have significant input into the design and build (method/specification) even if they're not particularly hands on in the actual construction, and what I'll term as 'custom build commissioners' who purchase a largely off the shelf design/turnkey build package (maybe choosing only the kitchen/bathroom finishes).

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