jamieled

I bought something similar to @ProDave though not quite as sophisticated. It is a rockwool sleeve with a foil outer. Found it in one of the online stove shops. This was the back end of last year.

Can't help with local recommendations. You can hire them and you would need your own insurance. Having said this I'd strongly recommend getting someone in who has the tickets. At that reach, you need to know what you're doing and there are significant risks to the roofers when working at height. Having a novice swinging trusses around is not only risky, it will probably not work out cost effective. Someone who knows what they're doing will be far more efficient so you can hire the machine for a shorter period (and hence pay your roofers for a shorter period depending upon your arrangement with them).

At present a population cut is not the entire answer. A 50% cut in population depends on which 50% you cut. Cut the poorest 50% of the worlds population and you'll achieve near bugger all. Cut the richest 50% (I.e. us) and you're probably onto a winner. In practice, climate change or some other malevolent force will probably do this for us and it's often less well developed areas that suffer. Population is a red herring imho.

I also got them to balance the mvhr and write a report for me as the BC officer wouldn't accept my version which still annoys me. I had a quote to do both which didn't separate them out so I can't really say what the airtight test element cost on its own. I can say that the total cost made me wince (~£700) and was the most expensive day's worth of work I shelled out for on the house.

Highland airtight testing (or something like that). May well be the lot you've contacted already though.

@Ferdinand it's a tricky document to get my head round. I found a couple of statements that suggested you could still use gas/solid fuel but you will need to do a lot of work on the building fabric to meet the emissions and energy targets. It will be a lot more straightforward to just say you are using a heat pump and so I suspect this is one way of incentisvising heat pump use. Many people around us seem to install woodburners for aesthetic reasons rather than as a significant source of heating and there's nothing obvious in these proposed changes that would prevent that. Incidentally I was speaking to an acquaintance in a small off grid community on the Scottish West coast this afternoon. They have a private wire electrical network fed from a small hydro. Heat pumps may not be particularly suitable there - they might quickly overload the grid at peak demand. They're a bit of an outlier, but it will be interesting to see whether any exceptions to the move towards heat pumps are made.

This will be more for interest for most people as this is just a consultation - any changes are a while off. But you may be sufficiently motivated to respond if you plan another build or are upset about something. https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-building-regulations-proposed-changes-energy-standards-associated-topics/pages/1/ I haven't time to read the whole thing in detail, but the bits that jumped out so far: -Improvents to the standards required for a SAP pass as well as changes to minimum u values. -Proposals to air test ALL new homes (not just a proportion as currently happens on larger developments). I'd imagine the housebuilding lobbyists might be swinging into action on this one.

I'd be careful about comparing it too much with a previous build - costs and carbon factors have changed. Assuming the sap represents your wall and roof bud up the things that might make a difference are: -the assumed air permeability. -inclusion of stuff like pv panels. As an example, our design sap was 77c with pretty good levels of insulation, triple glazing, but we are all electric dhw and heating which penalised us. As built sap 93A due to inclusion of more pv and an air test with a better value than originally assumed.

cheers @saveasteading, had found that one earlier. I have contributed to a few O+M manuals/documentation in the past and in general I would agree the principle is sound. For anyone in the SG reading this (!), the problems I have are: 1) There is no ongoing requirement to maintain or update it, or to pass it on if the house is sold. For us, it's not a useful requirement now as we know the place inside out so the only value would be to the next person if I sold the house. 2) The cynic in me reckons this is just a bit of a money spinner for the company referred to in the link. They are apparently produce these commercially. 3) The example uses graphics produced by the Glasgow school of Art! Not exactly encouraging for a self-builder and I have no desire to faff about producing a 3D model of my house for this. It is entirely aimed at the developer end of the market with no thought whatsoever about how these things might be produced. 4) If you look at what would be required for someone to properly understand a property it amounts to much more than their guidance suggests (6 pages, loads of graphics, v. little text). It basically gives Noddy information. It would be far better to just collate everything needed into a ringbinder (or digital version if needed). Drawings, operation manuals etc will be far more use than me trying to condense all this into 6 pages which presumably inevitably will result in referring people to other manuals. As an aside I had always planned on doing something similar, prior to being aware of this requirement. But mine will be a bit more practical and will probably take the ringbinder and manufacturers instructions type approach. For anyone else this might apply to, note that you only seem to have to do it if your sustainability rating (as described in Section 7.1 of the scottish building regs) is Silver or higher. If you don't know what your sustainability rating is then you're in for a treat navigating the process to produce your sustainability certificate which is also apparently required for completion (Did this today)! Anyway, unless passes me an achievable example (achievable by someone that doesn't specialise in graphic design!), I will develop my own version with the minimally acceptable level of info and report back when it's accepted.

Building warrant was issued around April 2019. On that basis it would be the 2017 version of the SG technical handbooks for building standards?

Has anyone come across the requirement of a quick start guide for attaining completion in Scotland? The BC officer has noted it as one of the requirements which I seem to have overlooked. A quick Google suggests it is easily diy able but an example would be handy so I know what to aim for.

Yep, I reckon it is fairly shallow, though my earlier attempt at an air test was testing to get it to 100mm. It seems to hold at 40mm when full of water.

@Oz07 tried that! He wanted the test done at the end with all fittings in place, stack finished etc.

I have a couple of things to sort for my completion. One of them is to do with the air test. For reference, I laid and tested all the external 110mm soil piping, the groundworkers laid the soil piping through the founds (which I tested as they did it). I used a plumber to do all internal waste piping and plumbing stuff. I have a single main stack which does most of our waste. I can plug it externally in an IC. I have an access cap on the stack internally from which I can attach my pressure gauge. I'm struggling to get the air test to hold. At the moment, the main reason seems to be that I can hear bubbling in the upstairs shower trap and occasionally in a downstairs sink trap. Firstly, can someone confirm that the pressures I need to use for air testing the internal stack/traps are the same as the external soil pipe? Secondly, if this is the case, how do I seal the traps for the air test? The plumber assures me he tested at first fix so I'm working on the basis that it's the traps rather than a problematic joint or pipe leak. The shower trap looks to be a fairly standard job but it also looks rubbish from the point of getting a decent seal.

SSE will spec it in the connection agreement, usually ENATS (spelling might not be right) approved. For a single phase I had a roll of single wall black 63mm.

Came to the same conclusion re availability. Any that are around tend to get snapped up. On that basis I bought a second hand one from one of the online companies and had it shipped up. If I decide to sell it will work out ok financially.

Screwfix do some, called Mattez or something similar. Comes in washing machine size!

Might depend where you are. I know of one big site that has shut here for that reason.

In terms of upfront cash required it will be highly dependent on the specific plot as it will dictate any survey requirements. The answer is almost 'how long is a bit of string'. If you polled everyone on here you'd get people who spent sub £5k at this stage and others who spent tens of thousands. That probably seems an unhelpful answer, so perhaps a way to think about it is to list out the very basic requirements (planning app fee, building warrant costs, fees for an architectural technician for your drawings). Get these costs off the LA website and ask an AT for a quote or look at some on here. That gives you something to work with assuming you find a 'normal' or straightforward plot. Then if you find a plot that looks like it might have additional requirements such as ecology survey, flood risk or something else you'll know you need more. You'll want a solicitor for the land purchase to check the title and for any searches. I'd have thought the lenders would require one to ensure their money is purchasing a legit piece of land.

I've been picking up my 5 bag allowance in the big orange shop when I'm in town. I might just have been lucky my trips coincided with their deliveries.

I did something similar myself when we were cladding the house as we had no mains electricity on site at the time but I charged batteries from my dewalt off the solar panels. I'd be less worried about the blade and more worried about power - ripping timber using handheld circular saws really hits the batteries hard, if you have a lot to do you'll need a lot of battery power or it will take ages. Also make sure you have a good ripping guide. The standard blade on my dewalt worked ok and left an acceptable edge for our cladding (which is fairly rustic in nature).

Half of england drinks recycled/treated sewage (indirectly).

There possibly isn't a lot of logic. Much like abstractions they set a fairly arbitrary (albeit with some basis) threshold in order to manage their workload.

Thanks all. The final answer will be a bit dependent on what I can get hold of. Getting hold of decking looks unlikely, I've been picking up cement for a patio sporadically when in town but paving seems a bit tricky at the moment.

Had the building inspector in today as I'd applied for a temporary habitation certificate. Only a few things to sort although a couple are not straightforward. One of them is my access ramp. In reading the building regs (Scottish) and associated guidance I had naively interpreted the access ramp requirement as just needing some sort of solid surface, and so I used whacked sub-base (see pic below). This is not apparently acceptable as it needs to be a solid, bound surface with no loose material, so I need to figure out another surfacing option. So far ideas are: 1) rip up the sub-base, install timer battens along the sleepers then use decking wood (not so easy to come by at the moment, continually going up in price, quite a bit of work). 2) Use some sort of thin bound surfacing, DIY resin bonded gravel or concrete? 3) lay patio slabs/stone. Am I missing anything? Pro's/Con's of above?