NSS

If those ovens are £3k each then the £20k that she said the kitchen cost must have excluded the appliances! Got the distinct feeling they were just on an ego trip.

Trouble with tonight's episode was that it should have been titled 'Having the dream built for you'. £420k build cost for a 120m2 house (excluding land) is obscene!

As you said in your original post, it's 45m to ALL points of the building, and the furthest point appears to be the back of the section protruding rearwards on the driveway side of the new house. Incidentally, just checked and those sprinkler prices included provision of water storage and automatic fire pump (@ circa £1.500) on the assumption that there may not be sufficient mains pressure, so the lower price was £4,800 if you exclude that. Our house is circa 165m2 so not much bigger than what you're proposing. By the way, my understanding is that the 45m is measured from the rear of the appliance and the brigade assume forward entry into the site. That effectively adds the length of the appliance to that 45m measurement. Not trying to be difficult, just passing on the lessons learned from our own experience. Thankfully we found an alternative solution!

We faced a similar issue over fire appliance access. Fortunately we managed to resolve it through negotiation with the fire service to the satisfaction of our BCO, but not before getting two quotes for a sprinkler system.... One was just over £6,000 and the other was well over £7,000. Am I missing something ref the gate suggestion? Access looks narrower to the opposite side of the bungalow than it does on the proposed access side.

You may also want to check out the CIL liability as this also is only exempt for self build and retrospective if you claim exemption and then live in it for less than 3 years.

Hi Terry, the PVGIS predicted output was 3,276 so we've actually done very slightly better than projected in the first year.

Probably a dumb idea, but I was actually wondering whether I could do a rough test for leaks by running the MVHR with the main inlet covered? Concern is whether this could potentially damage the unit?

Cheers Dave. I should have mentioned we're on the South Coast.

Our 4k solar PV went live in mid-January 2016 so I now have the total kWh generated in the first year @ 3,340 kWH. Our system has 2kW @ 084o, 0.855kW @ 174o and 1.14kW @ 264o (roof angle is 42o ) so we get a reasonably good yield across daylight hours, the aim being to generate power when we're most likely to be at home using it rather than generating the max possible (by having it all south-facing) but using much less of it. This is particularly important given the comparatively low FiT rate we get (we only get the lower rate as there was no EPC when the system was commisioned). Anyway, the reason for this post is that I am wondering how our output compares to that of others with 4kW installations? I know location will influence others' results, but would appreciate if some of you could post your total kWh generation (and array size/orientation) for the last 12 months, please.

Don't think offcuts of our Karndean flooring would be as effective

Which is precisely my worry!

Yep, I appreciate that, but my concern is what happens when you've forgotten to get a trivet out before opening the oven to baste the roast. Oh, it'll be okay this once.... too late.

Surely there's more danger of that machine floating skywards than sinking into the ground

Thanks for that. Much appreciated.

Thanks guys, pretty much as I expected. Colour and size constraints are two of the big issues driving us toward Silestone. I'd still like to hear from anyone out there who's used the self-adhesive hot rods though if possible. Cheers :-)

For a variety of reasons we are now leaning toward 20mm quartz worktops for our kitchen (rather than granite). From reading other threads, Silestone seems to be well regarded but we have one concern - heat resistance. We've been used (in our old house) to 30mm granite worktops (baltic brown) onto which Mrs NSS could happily place pans straight from the oven or hob with discernible issues. Am I right to assume that 'hot rods' or a trivet would be necessary with quartz, and if so does anyone have any experience of using self-adhesive hot rods?

More like half the people building twice the number.

Not necessarily. Many of those tradespeople would end up working in said factories, the difference being they'd be building twice as many homes.

As @Crofter has pointed out, there's a big difference between what is desirable and what is necessary. I too suspect that most of us on this forum aspire to build what we want, rather than what we need, and I don't think the kind of bespoke builds that most of us undertake lend themselves to meeting true low-cost build methods. However, I genuinely believe that homes targeted at those looking for their first (and possibly only) step into home ownership could be built much less expensively if a TRULY modular (and as @MikeSharp01 says) mass produced approach were adopted. Back in the early 80's I was part of a team tasked with reviewing the way the company I then worked for built warships. Implemented on the third of a three ship contract, it involved 'pre-outfit' of bulkheads, deck heads, etc, and then assembly into blocks or units prior to bringing them together (much the way most of the world had been building merchant ships for many years). Traditionalists were sceptical but the result was a saving of around 500,000 man hours over the previous ship in the series and even the new Queen Elizabeth Class carriers have been built that way. The problem with 'factory built' homes at present is that they're not built in sufficient numbers of a common design to maximise the cost benefits. I agree to an extent with @MikeSharp01's comparison to the humble Ford Focus, and such cars may be customised to individual's preference for colour, trim, engine, size/type, wheel size/style, etc, but the basic 'shell' is common to every variant (ie a 5-door Focus is a 5-door Focus). Until homes are built to similarly strict constraints, the real benefits of factory/mass production will remain elusive. As @Triassic says, perhaps it needs the Chinese to shake things up, but let's hope the big UK developers don't leave it too late to adapt or they'll go the same way as British Leyland and the like. By the way, and on a practical note, we all know that getting out of the ground is a significant proportion of the cost of most builds, whether it be strip foundations or a passive slab. It strikes me that helical (screw) type piles may offer a significant cost benefit and I'd certainly consider them should I ever be mad enough to self build again.

I assume the ducting is Lindab spiral tube. This is what we used and did the install DIY without any issues.

Apologies for re-booting an old thread, but Scandia-Hus encouraged us to have a kitchen design produced very early in the process (once the basic floor layout for the house had been agreed). They then 'tweaked' wall/door positions/sizes to ensure that when the timber frame was manufactured our desired kitchen layout would fit as precisely as possible.

Our place is essentially at the top of a hill and on free-draining (subsoil is ballast) ground but we still had to put in a huge soakaway for surface drainage from the roof, and our driveway and all pathways have to be permeable.

Don't driveways have to be permeable these days?

Yes, and the pleasing thing is that the spaces are exactly as I imagined they would be when I designed the place. The big difference is how light it now seems. No heating on as such, but we did have a small fan heater running for a couple of days to help the jointing skim dry before the rub down. Wasn't on overnight but the house was still warm in the mornings. That's basically how the boarder did ours. His lad lifted them up and then Mickey positioned and tacked them.

You need to eat more spinach.