Roz

I think i am going to leave it out, I tried calling the company again and they insist they don’t keep old invoices, and the quotation actually doesn’t look as much like an invoice as i remembered. It’s frustrating as it’s one of our largest VAT amounts, and I was pretty good at making sure I had all my invoices on email so it’s a shame one of the larger ones is one I made a mistake on, but it is what it is!

Was there a theme to the invoices they asked to see? E.g. most expensive

Thanks James. I’ve got an invoice-looking quote so guess I could try to send that if HMRC decide that’s one of the ones they want to look at! (I’m under the impression that they’ve changed it a bit so they don’t make you send every single invoice but I could be wrong)

Am I right in thinking that HMRC are only asking for a handful of invoices now? I can’t find the invoice for our supply only ASHP which is pretty annoying as the VAT is like £500, and the company say that they’ve been taken over by another company so have a new computer system and apparently can’t find the invoice without the ticket number (?), so I’m stuck with it. Is it worth just putting it on the spreadsheet anyway and hoping that HMRC don’t ask for that invoice? It’s up there near the top of our VAT amounts we are reclaiming. Anyone any experience with what happens if they ask for the single item we don’t have an invoice for?

Thanks Bonner. I thought workshops were specifically ruled out? Now I don’t know whether to say ‘yes’ when they ask if it includes any other buildings or just say no but put all the materials on the list. What do you think? I could say ‘yes’ to are there any other rooms (they ask if there’s anything other than kitchen bathroom and bedrooms). Although I did just watch that video from Andrew Jones and he specifies no to garden rooms so perhaps should just leave it out. I’m going around in circles haha

Reading some of the extracts from that thread suggest it might not be worth trying - I don’t want to put it on and then have them question every other invoice we submit for proof it wasn’t used on the garden room.. But havent watched the vide yet!

We bought SIP panels pre-cut from a local company but we put it up ourselves - it’s already complete. ASHP was by a contractor but we bought the ASHP separately

Thanks for the thoughts on this Temp - I’m not VAT registered as a business so can’t claim that way. And I think it’s too late to update our plans as we’ve completed already and I’m looking at doing the reclaim now 😅 . Wish I hadn’t called it a ‘workshop’, it’s just what we’d been saying to each other as a place we would work! I will give that thread a read thank you

Thanks Temp, we bought the ASHP separately, maybe our installer wasn’t VAT registered I can’t remember anymore! I’ll give writing a note on the invoice / form a go!

Hey sorry for the delay I don’t seem to get emails. Not sure if this is still helpful but we did go ahead and do it ourselves with tarmac. We cut the edge clean with a large disc cutter, and then scraped out and cleaned out underneath, compacted with a plate compactor. We hired a ride on rotary compactor which has the automatic spraying of water onto it so we didn’t have to worry about it getting dirty, and had about 6 people helping to rake out the tarmac along the 80 metres. We kept the lorry there until we were done to keep the tarmac warmer, paid them for 2 or 3 hours waiting. It would have been good if we’d organised a way to level it as we were doing it by eye and there are a few dips here and there (you can’t really fill the dips once they are cooled a bit, as it starts to break up, so a more efficient levelling system would have been good - we didn’t organise a timber edge or a timber levelling stick). However, over a year later and it’s still good and not broken up (we were told by one person who quoted to do the repair that it wouldn’t last more than a year, so that was our benchmark for success). The bit we have repaired is in much better condition than the rest of the lane, so it feels generally like it went well. Maybe we wouldn’t have been pleased if we’d paid a professional, but we didn’t! Clean up of tools was a drag, so would consider the tools as part of the cost of the job so you don’t feel you have to salvage everything. We were hoping the guy in the tarmac lorry would be able to direct the tarmac into our trench but he couldnt, so we did have to barrow it. With the number of people we had, that wasn’t so bad. A few people barrowing and the rest raking or compacting! We just did one tarmac type, not two layers with a fine layer on top. Our lane in general wasn’t in good enough condition to warrant that. I can’t remember all the reasons we didn’t go for concrete - but one main one was having to prevent access for longer.

Has anyone got any experience / knowledge on whether you can include a garden office in your VAT reclaim? It was on our planning permission for the main house. It’s an insulated garden room which we perhaps stupidly called a workshop on our planning permission, but it was always going to be our home office with desks etc. Does anyone know if you can include these? I used to think not but there’s a section online where it asks if you want to include any other buildings. To complicate matters one end of it is a shed, which I don’t think you can claim for. Lastly what about changes that you have made during the build that you didn’t notify the council about? E.g. We originally planned for an oil tank but put in an ASHP instead - will they not allow us to claim the VAT for the ASHP as it’s not on our plans?

Bump

Hopefully I can explain this well enough! For a rak wall hung toilet Inside the ceramic area you insert the flush pipe into, there is maybe a 5cm space, then a ridge going all the way around, then a space with 3 holes where the water flows into the bowl from the pipe. Does the pipe get cut beyond the ridge, which seems to be in the middle of the whole cavity of the flush pipe area? Or do you cut it at the ridge, etc. We are getting leaking and I think I might have cut it too long so it’s too close to the holes and maybe creating a backwash. The rubber seal also pushes back on the flush pipe instead of staying in place so that might also be the problem if it’s not seating well enough inside the ceramic. Thanks!

yes the tank is just for hot water, I just seem to remember the guys asking us to run the main cold water up to the tank cupboard before running it anywhere else. And from there I thought we asked them to put some isolators on so we could turn the water off here instead of going outside, but I can’t see which it would be 😅 i should really write things like this down!!

Is it possible to turn the water to my bathroom off from this tank cupboard? It’s been so long that I can’t remember 😂 . We ran the main water feed up to the tank and then the cold and hot came back from the tank cupboard to the bathroom and the kitchen. I think! IMG_7351.MOV

I just rang for quick price, think it would be about £960 at 10cm thick, but they recommended 15cm which is £1440, so a decent price difference.we’re also laying on a hill.. so not sure how tricky concrete would be for that. have you guys done any tarmac laying? Are there any holes in our plan that you can see, if we did go that route?

The thing is all the country lanes round here don’t seem to have a retaining edge, and the access lane we are repairing doesn’t either, so I guess that’s why we thought we could do it without one for the tarmac.

Just realised you both said concrete and I hadn’t picked that up… is the price comparable? I feel like we ‘should’ respire like with like but I don’t know.

Thanks Declan! Timber edge definitely worth considering. the lorry is including a 30 minute wait then it’s £48 an hour or so for every hour after that that we ask them to wait. I did wonder about asking them if they could dump it in a line into the trench as it runs along the road!

So we have a shared, unadopted lane leading up to 3 houses. I don’t think anyone owns it. Along with our neighbour we dug up one side of the lane to lay water pipes. The lane is in terrible condition so we are wincing at the idea of spending £4k getting it repaired when the rest of the lane will still be so crap. So we are planning on doing it ourselves. Here’s the plan, any holes? it’s about 60m long. Will average about 1m wide for the section we are doing and I was calculating tarmac for 45mm deep..The side we need to repair is not in good condition, it was just scraped at by a digger so no clean edge. we will start by cutting a clean edge with a disc cutter along the length. (Neighbour has a 300m one but Need an asphalt blade) break up what’s left and remove loose stuff (neighbour has a breaker if needed) fill any deep holes with hardcore / bashed up old tarmac compact? With compactor (hire for about £40) Get tarmac delivered next morning (about £700 for 6 tonnes and haulage) barrow it up and down the lane (or maybe we want a motorised barrow?) Compact with one of those ride on rollers with water spray to keep the roller clean (hire about £150 plus delivery) seal join with bitumen seal and a blow torch (about £100) not planning on a proper curb edge to the non joint side, as it didn’t have one before, and don’t think anyone who quoted us for it was going to make one either. also considering getting someone in on a day rate just to be a more experienced pair of hands but that would add £200 any thoughts / advice /etc ? thanks!!

I mean we have had no issues with ours, ufh has been running fine and no issues as far as I know 😂 . Hope yours goes / went ok!

Oh this is good news! The pipe is downstream of the bath, and it’s about a metre or 1.5 metres away?

I’m doing my own plumbing and think I have overlooked the waste plan a bit. House is pretty simple with single upstairs bathroom including bath with shower over, basin and toilet. below this is the kitchen with the kitchen sink. I have some waste pipes in place but I am now confused about whether and where I need to add air admittance valves. I had thought I just put one on the top of the soil stack, to which all the bathroom wastes will run, but now I am not sure? Do I need individual ones on e.g. the basin? I’ve attached a quick diagram of what my thinking was until now. Thanks so much for any advice!

It’s a small barn to be fair, I don’t know if that helps. About 30 or so square metres for the slab downstairs. And the kudos for a job well done goes to our builder who did this but for us! ☺️

Thanks! Glad to hear you think so ? I’ll double check with a long level later for flatness but otherwise I’m hoping that’s the general thought, I really didn’t want to sand it ? the concrete has been down over a year, but that’s a really good tip about the glass bowl!