jamieled

Thanks both, food for thought. I'd need to modify this a bit for working in our burn as it's quite flashy, lots of cobbles and boulder movement which will need considered as I think something that big will get a bit battered quite quickly. But the responses so far are making me think a DIY approach is the way I'll go.

I'm currently looking at starting to install our water supply, and so ordering the bits and bobs I need. It will be fairly simple - a blue MDPE pipe from the burn to a storage tank above the house and then another MDPE pipe to the treatment for the house. I'm having trouble remembering the name of (and therefore sourcing) a bit for the intake. This will be the end of the submerged MDPE pipe in the burn. I know this as an intake rose, but builders merchants and an online search are not coming up with anything useful. It's essentially a perforated metal cylinder attached to the end of the pipe, to minimise vortexing, but mainly to minimise the ingress of any large debris. Has anyone got anything similar - if so by what name do you know it and where did you get it from?

For our tree plans (we haven't got tpo's but needed some mapped plans) we use licenced OS mapping as we had it for other work. If you go down that road then emapsite is quite economical. However, I'm pretty sure that you can use OS Opendata at that scale if you need to. It needs a license statement but it's a public license so no cost.

@GrantMcscott do you know where they're taking the supply from and what exactly the 12k covers (i.e. is from an 11kv/33kv line, wayleaves involved, road works etc?). It's not far off (slightly cheaper) than my SSE quote.

+1 in not having ensuites. I know a lot of people love them but I'm with you on the cleaning, although I think they're just generally unnecessary and add additional cost where it isn't needed (for us). I suspect it's one of those things where once someone's experienced them they'll find it hard to go back, but I can't honestly remember thinking I've needed one (and that includes big shared houses).

I don't think you'd want to use kiln dried wood externally as you'd be taking from a kiln dried, low moisture atmosphere into a higher moisture (assuming you're in the UK) atmosphere - the wood will want to re-absorb external moisture which negates some of the kiln drying benefit. Rather than green oak (not dried), why not use air dried timber in combination with Peter's suggestion above - it should have a moisture content which is more at equilibrium with where you want to use it and so should reduce the risk of shrinking/twisting in the wood. Also, there are plenty of other kinds of wood which have a nice finish and can be used externally, so if cost is an issue, don't be fixated on oak.

Hi Ben. You're in exactly the same situation as us with site constraints. We've decided to go with stick built on site because: 1) The access and power lines make things a lot more difficult. I have no doubt they could be overcome but my initial investigations suggested it would not be straightforward. 2) The cost of factory built frames looks high to me - I'd guess there must be some high overheads from running a factory/framing workshop, and if you can't continually run it at a reasonable output it makes the product even more expensive. 3) I was finding it difficult to identify a timber frame supplier who would produce something to the spec we wanted and deliver it to our site (near Inverness). Whether it does work out any cheaper only time will tell.

Makar are another one, based in the same sort of area as Carbonlite (http://makar.co.uk/). They do some modular building, but not as much as carbonlite - most of it is panel built and erected on site. We spoke to them a while back, but the prices and the fact they want to do everything to get to water-tight stage (as a minimum) put us off. I was impressed with their approach though and out of all the kit style houses I've seen they had the best 'eco' credentials when it came to materials.

But don't forget that not everyone will necessarily be building at the time you are. I've found helping out on occasional jobs in the past to be of huge benefit to my generally ropey knowledge of building. As I won't be starting on my place until next year I'd happily consider offering a bit of assistance for a weekend or two, in exchange for having a nosey about and a chit chat!

I once had a job somewhere in the wild west of Scotland driving a dumper to shift aggregate. On one trip back to load up I was faced with a 10 year old at the controls of the 20 ton excavator loading it up. Did the job perfectly though.

Hi Claire.You're not too far away from us - we're over near Cannich.

Hi, nice part of the wold there. I have previously been a bit involved with some of the SEPA work professionally, so, within the bounds of what I'm allowed to talk about feel free to ask any questions. We're hoping to start building in spring next year, up near Inverness, but for the now we're based in Glasgow so not too far away from you.

Ah sorry, it possibly does. I'm not that familiar with attenuated discharge for foul water, I'm presuming that it's because a soakaway might provide too rapid a discharge via faster pathways into the groundwater body. In that case @Triassic's suggestion is probably the best. You might not want the septic tank/treatment plant effluent in an open ditch/pond unless it was cleaned up a bit more first.

It means that as you presumably would need to discharge into a water company drainage system, or straight into a watercourse, that you're required to ensure the runoff from your development is reduced, usually to a rate that would have theoretically existed pre-development (the 'greenfield' runoff rate). It could take one of many forms, and they have varying costs so it's worth exploring the options. If you have space and the topography allows, the simplest system might be a swale (think of a green ditch) or small pond where the outlet is restricted to the greenfield runoff rate. There are various ways of making these options integrate into a garden or similar, so they don't necessarily need to look naff. If you don't have the space, then there are a number of other options for sub-surface storage. Others on here have used systems commonly referred to as plastic milk crates, but you can also do the same thing with stormwater attenuation tanks.

Bit different to us in that we were essentially buying woodland which had planning attached, so it fell under the 'non residential' property of the LBTT scheme in Scotland. There was no requirement for us to develop a plan prior to the sale but then I suppose it was fairly obvious it was a commercial woodland in some sense. I can think of various ways of showing you have some intent to manage it commercially, but I have no idea whether HMRC would consider these. We have a woodland management plan partly for our own means, and partly because I believe it's easier for grant applications and felling licenses. Interestingly an acquaintance in the SW has just won a long running planning battle partly related to what constitutes commercial forestry. In the UK there's a bit of a bias towards large scale conifer rotations, but clearly that's just one way of doing it. You can get the forestry commissions to approve a woodland management plan, and perhaps this would look fairly official in terms of how HMRC view it. We did this ourselves with no prior experience, but it did take a bit of effort.

As @newhome suggests the DNO can apply for a compulsory wayleave/deed but the cost to them of doing this is not usually insignificant and hence they will tend to avoid doing it if possible. For what it's worth we're dealing with a wayleave with SSE (not for the house build) and have sought some help with it as it was getting far too complicated. In some circumstances the DNO are obliged to pay the cost of professional fees of a surveyor/negotiator so worth looking into that.

@Stones - the SSE quoter told me about it. I think they have to treat all customers the same in terms of connection costs, and so they end up saying 'here's a quote that'll cost you a fortune and by the way you might get a grant if you look here'. I think the trust dishing out the grants is probably a result of SSE profit! @newhome the wayleave situation is a bit complicated, but that is an option.

@newhome you are correct, there is 33kv line right next to us. I was being a bit vague. When I mentioned, no connection points I really meant no existing connections. So as it's a 33kv line we'll need to pay for a transformer and the rest of it as running a cable ~1km was going to be too expensive (would probably have required a lot of road digging).

While I'd be interested, we're in slightly different situations. Different geographical area, different DNO. There are no connection points within ~1km of us and so we were always going to need a new transformer and the other gubbins. Once I see a detailed quote I'll obviously be scrutinising it!

This was the most obvious place to note this information, but mods can move it if I missed somewhere better. Last Friday I took SSE (the DNO in our area) up on their offer of meeting to discuss our grid connection. From a previous post on our blog some people might remember this is at the higher end of most quotes (~£15k). At this meeting I gleaned he following information, which I thought might be of use to others: 1) It is now policy that SSE will not hang a transformer on a pole supporting a 33kv line, it must be tee'd off on a spur. This is a bit of a pain as it requires around an extra 10m minimum. I'm sure this is fairly recent as I haven't seen it elsewhere. 2)It's also now policy that they will allow transformers to run at ~20% over their rated capacity before they upgrade them (this was confirmed as a recent change). 3) For those of you looking at a connection with a high cost in the north of Scotland, there is a trust which apparently gives out grants of up to 50% of the connection cost. I don't know how often they do this, or the chances of success but I will definitely be looking into it (http://www.shect.org).

An SPA for golden eagles will have a huge boundary. Unless the nest is close to the village I doubt SNH (the stat. consultee) will be bothered for a single house as it will have no impact on the designation.

I've definitely seen it done badly!

I'd second @Mr Punter. While the work may not be great, I rarely speak to many contractors who note that the previous person did a top class job. In itself it's probably a weak basis for a claim. While I can understand you'd be fairly unhappy about the work that's been done, try and get away from the 'he said' type of statement and note, in non-emotive language, what the problems are and why. Reference to standards (whether building standards or manufacturers standards) might help create a more objective basis for a claim.

@ProDave I assume it's Assynt WTW (above Evanton) if you're on Loch Glass? In which case it has an ultrafiltration membrane for primary treatment. The incoming water is screened, pH adjusted before filtration and as far as I'm aware it's dosed with sodium hypochlorite. As it's a newer works the chemical dosing is a bit more refined, hence it doesn't taste as bad as some other places. Sorry it doesn't answer your question, but you might be interested all the same!

Given that hosepipe bans don't happen regularly and we rarely have water shortages I don't see the infrastructure in as bad a state as elsewhere. The investment in existing infrastructure does happen for reservoirs as there's no choice given the failure consequences. As for leakage, the only way this will improve is if water bills skyrocket as the present setup protects shareholder returns.