recoveringbuilder

You also have no claim on anything under£500 apparently, when we sold in 2016 the buyers wanted the fridge freezer, washing machine and dishwasher and I wasn’t too happy about the fact they were all 8 years old and could have broken down at any time however the solicitor said they would have no claim on anything less than £500

We bought a property 3 years ago which was a cottage with 2 acres, we more or less immediately set about getting planning for a new house in the grounds, when this came through we fenced off the cottage and some land then put it on the market, it sold within a week and we moved into a caravan on site, the title was not split until we sold the cottage, no CGT as the money received from the sale of the cottage was used to do our self build which was then our main residence

Had the same problem trying to read it ? Scotframe seem to be the big name in Scotland however we used claymore timber frame in fife and our engineer complemented their kit, said it was one of the best he’d seen recently

an and then a 4 day fortnight from March. I'm not entirely convinced about his ability to take instruction though. I've already had insubordination from him on a couple of matters????? you need to get him in line!

Don’t talk to me about stairs! Our architect made a right pigs ear of the position of the staircase, nobody noticed, staircase company came out to measure up, still didn’t notice, we had a temporary staircase in for me getting upstairs and used all the time by the builders, still no one noticed, 3 months later when the staircase company decided to get to design they suddenly noticed we didn’t have enough headroom, we’d paid over £5k to the kit company for the staircase but when this problem was finally noticed the staircase company wanted another £5k+ to produce one which would comply, by this time we were in the closing stages of the build and didn’t have that kind of money left to spend on something we thought we’d already paid for! Architect wouldn’t admit liability and pay for the amended staircase, we tried everything to come up with a solution to come within an acceptable budget and ended up with a straight flight a quarter of the way into the room. How I now regret that decision, it’s a bloody eyesore and has changed the use of the room altogether, I should have a large room with a dining table in the middle not too near the stove, instead I don’t know what to do with it, had another architect out who said he’d never seen one as bad, he measured up the headroom in its current position and was still not certain it would comply so suggested I get bc out for a look, the problem is that I agreed to having it where it is and the architect (after threatening him with solicitors) eventually paid £1100 for the extra handrail and glass. I was hoping that bc would come out and say it wasn’t right in which case I could have gone back to the original architect and claimed him for putting it right however when the officer came out he looked at it and I told him we still didn’t think it was compliant, he had no tape measure and when I offered to get him one he mumbled something about it not being as simple as that and in his opinion it was fine and he would pass it, he said it had nothing to do with him that it looks ridiculous but it was safe as far as he was concerned! had it not been an oak staircase it would have been tossed out by now and we would have started from scratch but it’s too big a loss to do this as we certainly couldn’t replace it with the correct one made in oak, how many times I have kicked myself for agreeing to have it where it is and I know we are going to eventually have to do something with it!

Is that if you register a trade account with them?

Ok sounds good, just need to source at a good price now ?

@Nickfromwales they are 2wire

Not compatible with Heatmiser thermostats taken from the wundatrade website and the reason hubby got in touch with them but with no success

No the Heatmiser are 230v but they are the neo air stats so don’t know if it’s something to do with that

Yes I think that’s the ones he’d been looking at however they say they’re not compatible with the Heatmiser stats

So , home again and back to this, hubby decided to phone the aforementioned company to check out if they’d be suitable for our system, sent in photo of our manifold and informed them of the fact we have the Heatmiser neo air stats, here is the answer he got ; “as a parts only supplier we are happy to supply them to you however what you choose to do with them is your choice, we won’t recommend you fit them to another system however they may well work” Not a lot of help! Here is a picture of the manifold if @Nickfromwales could have a look and advise please

thanks for that @Nickfromwales , I may get back to you on this if you don’t mind, we’re currently away in the Lake District for a few days.

I was an estate agent some years ago now and the dead time was always around November until the end of January as people weren’t thinking about moving then and similarly July til September however our local agent assures me this is not the case now?! Problem is if you have it listed during one of these periods it becomes stale and then your prospective buyers are looking for a price reduction.

Any opinions on these? Our ufh has no flow meters which oh is not happy about and during his online search he has come across these, does anyone know anything about them?

Yes that’s where I was going with this, we couldn’t get a decent price for road opening for water connection but we were lucky when the pm from Scottish power came out and heard our predicament he said he’d do it for us at the same time as electric so saved us a fortune!

Wayleaves can take a considerable time to sort out so I wouldn’t be leaving asking for your connection until the last minute. Who are you receiving quotes from re your water connection, we had a terrible time trying to get this work done and Scottish water told us they didn’t do this work although I think it’s a regional thing as others on here have had it done by Scottish water

Yes I found it extremely difficult to grow a pair!

I have always shied away from confrontation as it’s really not in my nature to do so however when it comes to something as important as this where you’re going to be paying a lot of money you just have to do it. I had several confrontations with tradesmen during our build, wasn’t happy about having to do it but at the end of the day it was my money getting used.

We had all labour quotes in some months before starting as well so we knew exactly what we would be paying for labour

Funnily enough I had a chap here yesterday who was telling me he’d done several self builds himself and he said the last one he did the timber frame company went into administration before he’d had delivery of his windows, the windows were in the company yard but he could not get them as the administrators wouldn’t release them, cost him thousands to then have to go and buy windows.

We never calculated the cost at m2 until the end, we priced up everything before starting, we had the tradesmens prices for each stage set in stone, we knew exactly from the engineers report what the foundation would be and what materials we needed. We priced up everything before starting and pretty much stuck to the budget. We parted company with the builders near the end and had to get another joiner but still within budget, I think the only thing that cropped up that we were unaware of was finding a spring in the grounds and having to get machinery in and extra drainage to deal with it. Our biggest surprise was the electric supply which we had somewhat taken for granted but eventually managed to sort out.

Definitely wasn’t like that on the forms they sent me , I just had to list every invoice and number them to correspond with how I had listed them no matter how the vat was shown or not shown, only thing I did was put all the ones that weren’t in my name onto the form last with an asterisk beside them and an explanation underneath. Obviously the online form differs from the paper copy.

That’s odd! I asked for the forms to be sent out to me and there was only one form (made up of several pages) nothing to separate types of invoices. I had a good few till receipts which I made the calculations for, all paid, in fact the form was exactly the same as it was back in 2008 when I did my last one and quite straightforward

To be honest with you I had a book that I updated regularly when buying stuff, it served as a running total for me but also helped with the vat ,