fatgus

He's a big old thing... the village's apex predator

I imagine we have less wild beasties here than in NE Scotland… a cat’s about as dangerous as it gets here. Or maybe a rabbit…

Our current main bedroom is the same… bungalow, doors onto patio and no other windows. In the summer we often sleep with the doors open. No intruders yet, but the neighbour’s cat has joined us for the night a few times

Indeed it is 😁 It’s one of the things that keeps life interesting. One of the other things that keeps life interesting! Also the bit I still enjoy in my day job… You’ve very fortunate Gus. What I’ve done has treated me reasonably well but I would dearly love to make a living from something I really enjoyed. I am Good shout. Already done

Understand totally and agree 100%. I’ve been a director for 23 years. Used to love it, briefly loathed it, now mostly a means to an end… enjoying this build project infinitely more, even though we haven’t broken ground yet. We’ve been gradually clearing our site for well over a year… today I was pulling the guts out of an old caravan and putting in my first ever field gate. Now knackered, but looking forward to more of the same tomorrow… a great way to spend the long weekend Gus… Thanks for taking the time to add your thoughts. It’s all informative and interesting stuff, and one of the reasons I frequent this forum

I had to Google that! Not quite as exciting as I imagined 😂 Essentially to make their quotes more competitive. We're sticking with opening. The saving, as you say, is pretty negligible and I just know we'd regret it at some point if we go for fixed.

I think this is the case with most of the surveys we've needed (e.g. bat, otter/vole, arboricultural). In one report, the 'other' house name had been left in 🙄 It can be a bit irritating for sure, but if the price is fair, it's factually correct, delivered on time and the outcome is what we need, I'm not sure it really matters if it's a regurgitation of someone else's report 🤷‍♂️ I might have had a different view if the architect was doing the same, but I don't think they would have had the opportunity with our project What did get my goat: the (swiftly rejected!) quotes for some of the other planning requirements... upwards of £2k for a GIS or a planting plan???

Thanks Gus. That makes a great deal of sense 👍 Bear in mind that the work we’ve done ourselves reduced the burden on the architect. That being said, I think they probably did under-price it and I daresay that if we were to approach them now we would receive a higher quote regardless. I should probably also say that we started this process back in 2022. It was also a very small practice in a small office and at the time I very much doubt the director was charging himself out at £100/hour. They’ve grown nicely over the last few years, which is lovely to see, but again that probably means a current job would be priced accordingly. Ultimately, between them and us we achieved planning approval for exactly the house we want… even if we spent £4k and had zero quality information for later use, I’d be happy. I’m sure there will be things that would have been different if we’d gone for one of the several quotes that were >£40k, but looking at what those companies deliver, with one exception, I fail to see how we would have achieved a better outcome at this point. Also, we did our due diligence… we spoke with a few of their current and past clients, and a construction company they’d worked with, as we did with some of the others on our shortlist (easy to find though local contacts and of course historic planning applications). Feedback was positive. The only negative was, as you alluded to, relatively small issues with construction drawings, but having spoken with the home owner, it was nothing significant. Interestingly, the feedback on one of the larger companies (or at least, larger quotes) was not so good… they gave a pretty good sales pitch, albeit with a touch of over-confidence, but the recent client I spoke to was most unimpressed. You may well be right Gus, and the choice of architect could cost us as we progress through the build, but we didn’t make the choice purely on cost, we enjoyed working with them, the house is exactly what we want, we’re perfectly happy to date and if the construction drawings are lacking, we’ll go elsewhere 🤷🏻‍♂️😁

Very good point. All bar one of ours are SE facing, the other is NE but will only get any sunlight in the very early morning. All quite small windows too.

Thanks Gus… that would seem like good advice. We’ll be looking at this in more depth 👍

No problem at all I’m not sure I follow, sorry Gus… do you think £4k for 1-8 is low or high? And do you think 9-21 should be more than a couple of thousand? It’s actually nearer to £3k, to be fair Based on the other quotes we had, these guys appear very reasonable. It doesn’t bother me one way or the other really, as I’m very happy with what they’d done (and continue to do) but it’s still interesting to hear other people’s take on fees…

Thanks Craig… interesting

Not the first time I’ve heard that…

Extension, but been empty for some years…

Nordan now do supply & fit, at least the Cardiff branch does. That’s crucial for us because of the reduced risk, but also because we can get 5% vat on supply & fit as opposed to 20% on supply only. I might be wrong, but I think Westcoast is the manufacturer and Rawington’s windows are from Guttman?

We hadn’t really thought about aircon, but it’s an interesting thought. Most of our glazing and three of the four bedrooms (fourth will be largely unused) are on the north east elevation, so we shouldn’t have overheating issues in the summer and we’re hoping that slab cooling will keep it comfortable. Will look into the A2A options though…

😂

We have a window manufacturer/supplier shortlist… some of them are mentioned a lot here, like Internorm, but others much less so… Scouring the forum I can see that a few people have expressed concerns over Nordan. I’ve found the Cardiff branch to be very helpful but it would be great to hear thoughts from anyone who has actually installed and lived with their windows. I can’t find much about Rawington or Westcoast. Their windows seem decent, but if anyone has first hand experience of them it would really good to hear. Both Rawington and our nearby Westcoast installer, Phoenix, are really helpful… Phoenix have just loaned me a Westcoast window for the weekend

😁👍👍👍 Opening it is then! We’re probably going for top hung, so there’s presumably not much we can do to maximise cross flow? The positions are determined by both the internal layout and my obsessive need for consistent spacing between windows 😬

Good point 👍👍 We’ll have plenty of opening windows for cross flow night time cooling of the bedrooms & living area in the summer, but the arrangement of the wet rooms means there would be no air flow in that area of the house, other than via the MVHR. We ( or more accurately, I ) made a similar mistake of having only french doors in our current bedroom (ground floor). Lovely view of the garden, but it’s a right pain in the summer… they’re crap doors that are either closed or flapping about in the slightest breeze. We should really put a window in…

Does anyone with MVHR have fixed bathroom windows? A couple of potential suppliers have suggested it, so we’re giving it some consideration… I’d guess MVHR negates the need to open? 🤷🏻‍♂️ Or would it be a daft mistake?

No worries... The fees to date cover items 1-8 below. 9-21 are another couple of thousand. We have planning approval, have discharged the pre-commencement conditions and we're probably 50% of the way through the remaining points. PREPARATION 1. Development of initial statement of requirements into the Design Brief on behalf of the client confirming key requirements and constraints. 2. Surveyor and measure the house. DESIGN 3. Prepare a number of sketch designs as your brief and for discussion purposes. This can include hand sketches, 3D computer modelling and physical models. 4. Prepare final design/make alterations in accordance with your instructions this will be weighted at 20% of the design fee. Planning 5. Prepare planning drawings and other information if needed. 6. Submit the Full Plans and Design Statement. 7. Act as clients agent during the planning process and advise on planning requirements. 8. Notify the neighbouring owners of the construction under the Party Wall Act etc. 1996, prepare notification letters only under the act. PRE-CONSTRUCTION 9 Obtain a quotation for a Structural Engineers on your behalf. The client will hold such persons, and not the Designer, responsible for the competence, suitability and performance of the work thereby entrusted to them. This also includes any specialist contractor, sub-contractor or supplier 10. Liaise with the Structural Engineers and co-ordinate changes across all disciplines. 11. Revise drawings to suit Structural Engineers/ specialist contractor/ supplier designs. 12. Detail Structural Engineers drawings to suit. 13. Write to the statutory services and establish service locations. 14. Prepare detailed construction drawings and could include, depending on project: - Dimension Plan - Electrical Plan - Foundation Layout - Sections - Detailed Sections - Drainage layout - External works and indicative landscaping scheme 15. Prepare a specification. 16. Prepare the storm and foul water drainage. 17. Discharge planning conditions. 18. Obtain notification of planning discharged conditions. 19. Obtain a Radon report. 20. Make a Building Regulation application to the local authority. 21. Prepared copies (or originals) of all approval documents and statutory consents. I have to say that the project has very possibly taken longer and been more complicated than the architect perhaps initially anticipated, but to be fair to them they have stuck to their original quote. We've been very involved in the design process. Additionally, we've done quite a lot ourselves (rainwater & foul water management plans, SAB application, planting plans, green infrastructure statement etc) but that was pretty straightforward and quite enjoyable. That being said, most of those aspects weren't included in the other architects' proposals anyway. One of the really frustrating things was that most of the architects we met, with only a couple of exceptions, seemed intent on designing the house as if it was for them. We gave all of them the same brief and most ignored it. One flounced onto the site dressed like a Tom Baker Doctor Who wannabe and spent an hour telling me how wonderful he was... his quote was over £40k and having seen some of his other work I saw nothing to justify it. Of the architects I met in person, the one we chose was the only one to ask questions about our lifestyle & routines, how we expected these to change, what worked/didn't work in our current house... I really felt that they were invested in helping us build a house we'd love. I'd use them again in a heartbeat.

We had quotes from £3k to well over £50k for ours… the RIBA architects at the top end were far too interested in telling us how wonderful they were and generally wanted to build the house they wanted, whereas the one we eventually chose (around £4k, which is <1% of build cost) listened, understood and delivered exactly what we wanted. We’d probably have been happy with 2% of build cost, but some were nudging 10% which is surely insane unless it’s a really complicated design 🤷🏻‍♂️

@Gus Potter Thanks for the screen shots... really appreciate it We've already got some labour costs in the spreadsheet, mostly because we're aiming for supply & fit for the big ticket items (for VAT reasons... 5% on supply & fit, 20% on supply only). Thankfully, labour rates here are not too outrageous if you choose wisely Once it's watertight, we're in no huge rush and looking forward to doing as much as possible ourselves... we've done it before, albeit on a smaller scale, and while we're admittedly getting older, being hands-on is one of the drivers for the project. This is bang on... There are quite a few aspects of our plan that many would question, but we are determined to have... a few economies elsewhere make the justification a bit easier

Thanks @Crofter 👍👍