DavidFrancis

Well I'd be interested to hear more details on your build and see some pictures!

We can get BT's Full Fibre 100 for £40/month. Don't need it, though. Can get Full Fibre 900 for £60/month. Quite suprised. Two or three weeks ago at the in-laws I managed to cut through an OpenReach copper cable with hedge clippers as a fibre cable had been added to the pole and someone moved the copper cable but left it loose just inside the bottom of the hedge. Had to spend 40 minutes going down the lane apologising for the loss of service, and half of them had full fibre (which I hadn't cut through).

Remarkable. You have my great respect.

Perhaps 19mm battens were used on the old section and 25mm ones on the new roof?

What bits of the build, if any, have you not done yourself?

Don't know enough to answer your question. But in your position and I wanted to keep the cost down, I'd be tempted to fill the cracks with bitumen mastic and then repaint. Probably cost less than £50.

Hard to say with much certainty from the pictures, but the roof could have been painted with solar reflective paint that has now worn off in large parts. If it is that paint, it might look OK with a couple more coats.

Pretty sure he means "Manufacturer's Instructions".

@Nod - "have used" or "have NOT used"?

I made a planked roof for one of our stores about 5 and a half years ago. It leaked from the beginning, so I had to put a bit of DPM or something underneath. This is what it looks like now. Bit different from Temp's picture! (The plywood's there because there's too much splashback at one end)

I've seen a lot of Onduline-type stuff sagging badly round our way. No idea if any of it was supported properly. I wouldn't be suprised if most of it wasn't.

Many thanks for all the extra info. I wonder if the costs should be £35-£54 per metre squared? Looks like a very interesting build. This is purely idle curiosity: from the picture of your other half and daughter sitting on the top of your internal frame it looks like you're going to have two walls, one on either side of your steel posts. If that's right, what kind if wall thickness will you end up with? And will you be putting some kind of waterproof cover over your internal frame, or are you trusting the external fame. Either way, you're going to have one hell of a lot of storage space above!

Looks like you've got insulated roof panels. What u value do those particular ones have and do you mind my asking how much they cost per m2. I'd find any other info interesting too. Like whether you bought them direct or through an intermediary. Were there any difficulties with the size of your order which might be smaller than the average. You said you did the roof yourselves. How hard was that? Thanks in advance.

We had smart meters installed several years ago at the request of our supplier at that time. And even then they sent a meter reader around to double check the readings. None of our subsequent suppliers have been able to collect readings remotely, but I think the newer meters will allow this. In my opinion smart meters won't help you to reduce your bills unless you really want to reduce them, and then you could probably get most of the savings by using a plug-in power monitor (costs about a tenner) and a modicum of common sense. The in-home display did allow me to double-check the consumption of some ceiling lights, the oven and the security alarm, though. Might have saved a few quid.

My Titan/Screwfix one stops faster. Pretty much instant.

@Oz07 at the builders merchant I use (a big and busy independant) they store all structural timber outside, unprotected. So if you pick a less popular size, from the bottom of the stack, after a prolonged wet period, then your timber could be soaking wet. I had to repair the edge lip of our flat roof a few years ago. It was made partly of (sawn) batten and partly of planed timber. The planed timber was fine but parts of the batten had rotted away. I suspect the batten was wet when it got covered by the felt. I have the impression you work with timber a lot. What's your view on the way timber is stored?

Isn't the whole thing just a collection of panels bolted together? If so, you should be able to dismantle it, put down some more slabs or blocks and then bolt it back together again at a higher level. This might require replacing the piece of felt going over the ridge, though.

Good point about drying times. I use Bedec MSP for our windows and I think it's good stuff. Been using the MSP four about four years now.

Don't know how good this picture will be, but the cladding on the right side hasn't been recoated since it (the wood) was replaced 8 years ago. Had to recoat the left (west-facing) section last year, after seven years.

I used Sadolin Classic stain on cladding that covers parts of our extension. The cladding was replaced in 2012 and I had to re-coat the west-facing part last year. The south-facing section, which is shaded by a large beech, still looks OK, but could now do with a clean as it's starting to go green!

There's a list of abbreviations here Also, Google will give you OSB, and a search for "PIR insulation" on Google will give you PIR.

Partial vapour pressure?

Thanks for that @kxi. Hadn't seen the insulated roofing sheet thread. And didn't realise the sound insulation was poor. Have you posted more details about your build somewhere? Looked at your recent posts, but only found something about your floor.

The ones I'm thinking of are the metal-clad panels, as used in large commercial/industrial buildings. They're always used with a heavyweight frame, but with a true bungalow I imagine you could get away with something very lightweight. Some of the panels have quite respectable finishes both inside and outside, so you'd only have to clad them if you didn't like the aesthetics or wanted to have a service void for cables/pipework etc.

I want to see someone build a bungalow using sandwich panels (Kingspan, Tata etc) on a lightweight steel frame. Looks like you can get a U value of 0.15 from a panel of a bit over 120mm thickness, if I'm reading the Kingspan details correctly.