LA3222

I can see why you would say this Lizzie especially in light of your own self build experiences, but I don't think it's as unachievable as your post would suggest. Myself, I would be happy to be around the £1250sqm mark but there are enough members on here aiming for that magical £1000sqm mark that it has inspired me to believe that the self build doesn't need to be £1500sqm + as most online estimation calculators would suggest. That being said, the biggest variable in all this is Labour- materials tend to be a fixed cost within reason, therefore to achieve that figure means getting your hands dirty. Admittedly not everyone will be either able to or confident enough to do so and that will reflect in their total build cost. Many ways to.skin a cat and each self builder will tackle the issues in the way that works for them. Back to the cost of a garage, I'm not au fait enough to suggest a figure but as a point of reference if this was a detached brick double garage I believe you'd be looking at £18k? So from that you know that it definitely will cost a fair bit less than that....how much so...im not sure! I'm sure the answer will be forthcoming though.?

Crap picture done on my phone....but along line of what others are saying.

Cool, this confirms then in my mind that attic trusses = a lot of fiddly detailing! So logic would say that a cut roof would allow you to wrap the VCL around ceiling joist/rafter tie and then go about fitting the rafters from the eave up to the ridge board completing the triangular section. Hopefully my thought process is right. Seems I have some thinking to do about my roof so I have my COA established when the time comes. The plans for my plot show two steels running the full length. Having read all the posts in the roofing section it is my understanding these are purlins and will support the weight of my roof. It appears to me that my design is a raised tie truss design. So I think that this may be done as a cut roof, which means I can get the VCL running up the wall, behind the steels and then through the joint where the roof tie joins the opposing rafters and up to the apex of the roof. I'm sorting out my electric issue at the minute so haven't formally discussed this with an architect. I am on a crash diet of buildhub to learn and understand how/why things are done so I am able to have a two way conversation with my architect about what I want to achieve and how. FWIW I do not plan on deviating much from current plans so the roof will likely remain as is in terms of purlins carrying the weight etc. I am mulling over swapping the steels out for glulam and making a feature out of them, but at 14.5m long the depth required may be too much to be practical.

I didn't consider this - noted and OSB is now on my list! I'm in England so sparking not required - but for the small additional cost (in the grand scheme of things) I am keen to increase the racking strength of the roof.

Apologies for the crap picture, I'm on my phone so not the best. It's the continuation of the VCL (red) across the junction (blue) that is puzzling me. I'm sure I am missing the obvious but until it's pointed out I don't have a clue what the obvious is?

I may be wrong but from what I've read I believe there are two varieties of membrane - tenting/non renting. I believe that for a warm roof construction a non tenting membrane can be laid directly onto the sarking - in my case tgis will be something like 100mm wood fibreboard. This will then have counter battens attached running from ridge to eaves on the rafters. There will then be another set of counterbatten running horizontal to give something for the tiles to attach to. The first set of batten ensures any rain etc that gets under the tiles can freely flow out into the gutter. I think I have that right and therefore am comfortable with the external make-up of a 'warm' roof. Internally I believe I can fill the rafters with insulation, I will probably then batten horizontally along the interior of the rafters and fill this with eps or some such. This can then be covered with a VCL and plastervoard completing the job. I think...i may be wrong.....that this is the way to go. The bit which blows my mind is the continuation of the VCL from the loft to the external walls of the rooms upstairs to ensure there are no gaps in my VCL. If someone can clear the fog it would be great.? Getting ahead of myself maybe - missed that Ian and Dave have replied - will read in a minute. Stuck in the middle of a rave at a holiday camp and two feral kids to track down!!

Now this may be a daft question and the answers may already be out there on the forum - I'm speedily working through all the posts and could have missed the relevant info. I've read all the roofing posts - currently on foundations at the minute then that sections done, but a thought keeps niggling at me about the warm roof VCL that I can't recall reading about. After reading @ProDave and others numerous plugs about sarking and warm roofs etc. I am sold that it is absolutely the way forward in my build. It seems a no brainer to me. So, as I understand it the roof makeup more or less is tiles, tile batten, counterbatten, breathable membrane, sarking (I'm sold on wood fibreboard), rafters, insulation fill between & below, VCL, plasterboard. Right as I understand it, the internal VCL stops warm moist air from the house permeating into the insulation where it could condense at dew point in the insulation. The external breathable membrane is there to stop moisture from rain etc. coming back into the structure but let moisture that may be in the insulation out - a one way system like a diode? If my thinking is correct about the above, my niggle is how do I continue the VCL down from under the rafters to the external wall of the rooms below to ensure a sealed box essentially for the whole house? Do I have to faff about bringing the VCL down between each joist at 600 centres and then taping/sealing around each one? A lot of the pictures I have seen show the VCL in the bedrooms running along the ceiling - but surely that creates two separate boxes - the roof and then the house. This would also mean every penetration through bedroom ceilings would need careful attention to ensure an air tight Seal? If I do then so be it? Just after a bit of clarity from those who have been there and have the t-shirt so to speak! TIA for any guidance. Jamie

You may be onto something about the madness of self builders. May be that self building attracts people of a masochistic nature - I read all the horror stories on here such as your wall falling down and some of the members here have had some severe challenges to overcome and rather than put me off it just makes me more keen to crack on with my own build! Walls collapsing, 'level' floors not being level, extortionate quotes for an electric supply.....just puzzles to be solved. The great thing about this forum is that although in body you are doing the work yourself, in mind there is a collective will to aid/assist in these challenges. Problem solving without the collective wisdom/experience here would be bloody hard work. I'm slowly working my way through all the posts....reading about steels and rsj' s at the minute - I've learnt a lot! Read a lot of your posts Ian and it has been interesting reading your progress from when the forum started so long with all the others.

Whilst on the subject of dodgy house building, my father in law bought a new build about 17 years ago and is still finding problems now. Last year he found that one of his SVP was just venting into his loft space....he assumed the periodic dodgy smell was a dead bird or some such until he stumbled upon it. The other day he said he's just found that the SVP running up the outside of his house terminated at eaves level with no cap of any kind on it. It's a really tight gap between his and the neighbours hence he never realised - the unusual hot weather has made the odour noticeable now. A couple of years ago he changed the fire and just found a massive hole in the wall behind it....always wondered why the lounge was so cold until then. Theirs was the show home!! Built crap then, build crap now and will continue to build crap. I've noticed that eve self builders are fighting uphill in trying to ensure a high build standard is adhered to by tradesman and these are people who want that high standard. When the big developers are only interested in the bottom line the standard of output is inevitable. It's not helped by the desperate people who have no choice but to buy them, move in and then commence with the snagging battle.

+1. This thread seems to have gone a right tangent now! FWIW I despise concepts such as Agile - not the working practices behind, more the fact that society seems obsessed with assigning names/brands to things that people have been doing for thousands of years. Someone looks at a bunch of good working practices, flowers it up, gives it and name and then sells it as a whole new concept. Pretty sure you could look at how the Romans were building roads etc. back in the day and find 'examples' or where the concepts within Agile were being applied. Introducing/sharing good workings practices is always a good thing, but why do we need to pretend these are new concepts. As for self builders wanting all the bells and whistles - seems only natural to me. However it would seem to me that self builders are a pragmatic bunch - there's a list of wants and a list of must haves. The list of wants always get pruned upon first contact with budget realities, but the list of must haves seems uncannily similar, airtightness and thermal performance are two common themes throughout this forum. Self builders are a hard working bunch to have got to the point where they can: a. Afford to do a self build. b. Have the determination to actually do so. Demographics is an interesting one. I get the impression it's generally speaking a more mature bunch on here and usually with a higher than average education level. Myself, I'm just a lowly soldier and reasonably young. I do have an engineering degree - unfortunately I've forgotten more than I remember now, a pity because I was a dab hand at CAD/Solidworks etc. back then.....feel positively thick now when I see some of the kids maths homework!!

I think a single point of reference is definitely beneficial....signature blocks etc as a secondary means makes sense. Surely we can make this easy for everyone....lots of willing members...lets make it easy to identify them.

Evening all, whilst waiting for extra time I figured I would check in to see what's happening on the forum! I see this thread is starting to digress to where members self builds are located. I have seen this happen to a few threads whilst I have been trawling the forum on my education mission and I have some thoughts that may or may not make sense. I recall stumbling upon a thread where talk of a map was the hot topic....it seemed to have died a quiet death. The problem I have when threads drift like this is that the various 'offers' and locations of the various members get lost in the weeds of general chit chat. I have found myself having to make note of members names/locations as I trawl the forum so I can make contact at a later date. Would it be possible for the moderators to pin a thread where members whom are happy to receive visitors can post their locations AND ensure that only that info gets posted their. All chit chat is banned/removed from that thread and then we can have a clear concise list of locations in one place for ease? Just throwing this idea out there... Jamie

Welcome Paul. Must admit I hadn't heard about Nulok until recently - seems to have been a few threads pop up recently about it. I am not at the stage where I need to make a roofing decision yet, but I will certainly look into your product in the near future. Jamie

Morning all, well after 6 months of cajoling solicitors into doing something we signed the contract for the plot yesterday!! Due to the unknown ownership of the unadopted lane Northern Powergrid won't confirm if they have the necessary legal rights to excavate said lane to lay a new service cable to our plot. They won't set their legal department to task until payment has been received for said connection! So, a bit of a chicken/egg situation. The vendor can't afford to get the plot serviced, we didn't want to pay and then risk the vendor selling to someone else. The compromise we have reached is that a clause was inserted into the contract whereby if we are unsuccessful in obtaining an electrical connection within 6 mths we can walk away. Likewise, once we are satisfied it can be done, 10 days notice is served and we complete on the purchase. We paid a notional £6000 deposit, but this is a solution that was proposed by Lyndsey & I, and is something we are comfortable with. My first quote from NorthernPowergrid was for a single phase connection - they offer max 18kVa and 80A fuse. When I really looked into what we could potentially be running, I concluded that 80A was a bit close to the bone and so submitted a new request for a three phase connection - I plucked a notional 30kVa out of the air, but when I was talking to the engineer he said I could request up to 55kVa so I suspect the fuses in the service head will be for 55kVa rather than my requested 30kVa. So, they have till next Thursday to provide the quote. When I was discussing options with engineer he said it would be a few hundred quid extra to request a three phase connection over a single phase one and that the service cable was the same. I have decided on building a 'kiosk' right near the entrance now which saves on about 30m of service cable being laid - I'm hoping the saving here will actually bring the quote in a bit less than the one I received for a single phase connection (£5900). I will then run SWA from here to the garage and utility room once ready to do so. Why do I feel 80A may be close to the bone - well we have no gas for a start so all electric in the house. We also want a sauna and steamroom (pretentious maybe - but what self builder doesnt have luxuries they aspire to have? - these are ours!) and the generators could be looking a combined 50A ish during use, throw in an induction hob and electric ovens and electric car charger and if it's all on at one then it's close. I know that diversity is applied when working out power requirements and that the likelihood of the perfect storm of everything being on together and blowing the service head fuze is small, but I would rather have too much than too little - it's cheaper to go three phase now rather than retrospectively. On another note we took the kids (6&8) to look at the local infant/junior school (combined). It backs onto our plot which is handy, only 90kids in the entire school - my 8yr old has 90 just in her year at her current school. Safe to say they loved it - I think new kids are rare because they were like celebrities, all the other kids and teachers knew their names. It was an hour of listening to my kids say "we're not allowed to do that at my school". I never realised how restricted they are!! We saw one kid waving a stick in the air - head teacher covered her eyes saying "I hope he doesn't poke someone's eye out" before asking him to be careful. My youngest told me that they get shouted at if they even look at a stick in the wrong way at her school. My eldest couldn't believe they had 5, yes 5 whole football's to play with at this school - she told me there is one at her junior school which the boys get at lunch time and the girls can have during the other breaks. I was gobsmacked - I never realised how bad it is for kids nowadays, when did we stop letting kids be kids and start constraining them with endless rules and regulations. My lasting impression was that this school is like 'freedom' and just let's kids express themselves how they want. Safe to say I need to get a shimmy on now because I think the shine has gone from their current school. (I will say that all the teachers they have had up till now have all been really good and nice, I suspect that it is the shear number of pupils to staff in most schools which necessitate the endless rules and restrictions they put in place - sad really because it takes the fun away) Anyway, that was a long post and this is where we currently stand - a little bit closer to the end goal! Jamie

+1 me too lol?

Pretty sure @epsilonGreedy is in the same LA as me - East Lindsey District Council. I saw a Pdf dated 2017 where they on about CIL not being feasible at the moment due to low residual land values - they just using S106 at the minute. If you have an S106 liability it will say in your PP if I recall correctly.

Wow, I gave up reading halfway through, looks like an extremely piss poor effort by the architect. I feel your pain, spending good money on a 'professional' and you get this to deal with. Seems like self building is a perpetual minefield of fighting to get value for the money we are spending on achieving 'the dream'.

Now this made me chuckle. @JSHarris going to war with the local cat population? I have two cats myself but they stay indoors and don't dump on the neighbours property! (Someones cat keeps dumping in my garden at the minute?) On another note why the hell do people think it is acceptable to behave like the scrotes @zoothorn is having to deal with! I'd be tempted to get a BB gun but I think the 12v battery/electric fence solution is far more elegant and satisfying. Can't do much about the neighbours but can take measures to deter the cats/dog - small victories and all that. Aren't there noise deterants available that emit high pitched noises that dogs/cats hate?

Evening, I am looking at potentially installing three phase power as opposed to the norm which tends to be single phase for domestic installations. Having trawled this forum and numerous other areas there doesn't appear to be a great detail of information on the pros and cons of three phase in a domestic setting (other than the usual - if you are using 3 phase machinery, can spread the load, careful with mixing phases in same room etc.). I think there are maybe three or four threads on this forum which touch on the subject. It would be great if those of you whom have three phase could give some sort of insight into their own experience in practical terms of this route. Pros, cons, if you could do the build again would you still install three phase? If not, then why not? A bit of insight from those in the know would be beneficial not just to myself, but likely others in the future whom may be pondering the same thing. TIA Jamie