LA3222

Not sure that's the case nowadays, neighbour sold one lorry load so around 20T. He went through a broker who took a cut, then had to cover transport costs and made a couple of grand at the end. That's the story I was told, I have no reason to believe he is lying🤷‍♂️

Have a look at Drax for the trees...neighbour nearby chipped a load and made a few grand selling it to Drax through an intermediary. I had no idea they did that but it makes sense when they're spending a fortune shipping wood pellets in to burn as 'green' energy!

Pretty sure that powder is for walls and floors. I used powder for all my walls - the difference between the two is how they cure. The powder is by chemical reaction, the paste by drying out. If the tiles are slipping it sounds like the mix is sloppy. I've tiled the ceiling of my steamroom using a powdered adhesive with no issues.

Ha, I did the exact same this time last year....cost me £1200 (formaplus) to get one of the panes replaced in a four pane window. Luckily, with insurance it only cost me £250. Bloody expensive and I'm paranoid everything I cut the grass now!

This is pretty much the point I was making. I've been on the forum since pretty much the beginning, I know what Nods background is and his business etc. I saw all the in and outs of his first build and the costs and I have seen this self same question crop up so many times and I think it is really unhelpful when folks just sling a magic number of £850/m2 or whatever out there. Casual new members looking for answers will have no idea what the context of that number is and may naively think they can use that for their cost assumptions. This is a terrible question with lots of variables hidden under the surface and if people want to chick numbers out there, they really should give full disclosure to how that was achieved because not wveryone will be aware of folks background, experience and personal circumstances which feed into how those numbers are achieved. I'm six years in and sitting at around £1250/m2....meaningless to a casual observer as my circumstances, location, Labour effort are not contextualised to allow an understanding of how I am at that figure.

I hate these types of threads.....there is absolutely zero standardised way of quantifying this question. There are far too many variables in how folks achieve a self build and what they include in their costs to enable a like for like comparison. @nod is an absolute outlier and every time this question is raised pipes up about how little he has spent per m2 with no context to how that was achieved. Is land included in your cost there, i expect not, how much have you spent on labour throughout vs how much have you done yourself? There is not much to be saved on materials...shopping around and economies of scale will help but the margains for material cost savings are small compared to the savings which can be made if you eliminate external labour costs and are able to do the work yourself. Labour costs are the killer and individual self build costs per m2 are primarily determined by how much work they can actually do themselves. But it comes at a cost of time.

Dunno, I didn't ask tbh...they sent me the fixing pullout data sheets which I weren't particularly interested in! Just told what the use was and asked for a recommendation 🤷‍♂️

They need to be screwed, I have a SIP house and I spoke to technical department at Kingspan Tek - they said screw and directed me to ejot for Screws. Spoke to ejot tech department and they sent me tge pullout tests they'd done fir a couple of screw options...think I went with their stainless steel ones in then end - the screws have to be long enough to for the tip to penetrate at least 20mm beyond the back face of the osb iirc.

Don't they dry assemble at factory to check everything fits before dispatch? I thought that was standard practice🤷‍♂️

In all honesty, it looks a right mess IMHO. I would suggest the slabs will have to be replaced, I can't see how those Mortar stains are going to come off sandstone - not what you want to hear I expect and I may well be wrong. Hopefully some with more experience of sandstone slabs will be along to give their thoughts.

Get one off FB marketplace...always loads of paslodes on there, no point buying brand new.

This looks exactly what I need, it will be interesting to see how you get on. I haven't the time to tackle this issue yet, hopefully by next summer!

I had to get G3 for Build control but to be honest as @TerryE said, these things can explode under certain conditions so I would have had it looked at anyway. Plumber spent 20mins checking it over and charged me £300 for the pleasure - still a big saving overall by doing it all myself. As far as servicing goes, its the PRVs and expansion vessels which need checking - easy enough to do DIY so no need to pay a plumber.

Agreed. My ASHP which I installed myself along with the UVC had two bits of 'plumbing' - Flow and Return. That's it, not sure why an MCS bod would need to do that?

I installed all mine myself then got spark to wire up. Had to pay a plumber £300 just for the G3 sign off for BC - was at my house all of 30mins checking it over. The beauty if pre plumbed is its a piece of cake...just dot to dot.

The sauna has a vent that extracts into the bathroom pretty much next to the mvhr extract, nothing in the steam room - just leave the door open once done and the moisture dissappears in short order with the MVHR on boost. There is a floor drain in there too.

I've put both a steam room and sauna into my Build- did them myself and they are easy enough. Steam room is just tanked and tiled all around, sauna is foil lined all around and then clad. They both quite big, I have 3ph so used 3ph 9kW heaters for both - sauna one sits in the sauna, steam one in the loft. Both take about 20mns to get to temp - all in they generally run for about an hour a time and use about 5kW.

A other one for drinking softened water here. It goes to our quooker tap and the fridge water dispenser. It's fine.

@Mikey iirc i ordered all of my lintels from london lintels - will have to check. Catnic do bespoke lintels, I told londonlintels what I wanted and they ordered from catnic. Catnic did a drawing and sent it through for me to sign off on pre manufacture. I've attached what they did for me. ALN20-466 Customer (1).pdf

So he plans on laying circa two slabs an hour.......🤣

Nay drama @Eric I sorted it. As a follow up in case anyone else has this drama the solution was to literally beat the proverbial out of it with a rubber mallet and block of wood. The frame is slightly over 70mm with the foil coating and the coupler was just under 69mm due to the foil wrap on one side. It would push onto one frame but doing so would pinch the opposing sides closed ever so slightly - so want started tight, became tighter. Solution was to knock the bottom corner in, screw it in and then work up, screwing in as you go. It took a while and a lot of brute force - point to note is that the glass wasn't installed at this point. Wasn't my favourite task but then self building is full of rubbish jobs!

Now then, I have a French door with two side panels for the garden room.....today I have lost the will to live; no matter which way I try, I can't for the life of me seem to get the coupler strip to fit properly. I can get one side on fine but can I buggery get the side panel to click into it - its so snug it won't budge. I've tried fitting it to the door first, then the side panel first, levering it in, sliding it in, wd40, plumbing lube...I'm done. Does anyone have an idea of how to get this bloody thing to join properly?

Cheers for the reply bud. I need to do some thinking about the setup- I was already thinking along the lines of a separate string. I can't recall what I put out there but I think it's a 3.6kW invertor with around 2.2kWp currently connected to it (small bit of roof). The ones on the garden room are going to be an East/west ish split whilst the others are south east ish but with an overhang shading slightly. In short, I don't expect to ever have all panels kicking out max power at the same time so with my fag packet thinking at the minute, they will be within the capacity of the invertor. The part of the puzzle I am trying to understand better is the wiring from a to b. Sounds like it's a non issue, I will look in more detail at the setup at the invertor end.

Long story short, I have an invertor on the side of the house and am in the process of building a garden room at the bottom of the garden. The cable run from one t'other would be about 100m. I want to stick another 3.64kWp onto the roof but don't want to add another invertor there. Is it feasible to add them to existing invertor and if so, how large would the cable need to be to keep the voltage drop within limits?

Stick some compriband in from the outside which will give you the watertight seal but allow vapour through. Then foam up to the compriband from inside...try not to overfill so you aren't trimming the foam too much then apply airtight tape across the window to the reveal. Should only be about 10mm on the frame which will get hidden by the plasterboard. Look at the illbruck 'i3' system and you'll see how it all works together.