Square Feet

I just watched this video of how to properly fit a Velux window, including the insulation kit. It's a good one to watch even if you don't intend fitting your Veluxes yourself as it will allow you to make sure your carpenters fit them properly - including the insulation kit, which is supplied in a separate box and apparently just gets thrown away by a lot of joiners/roofers who don't know what to do with it 🙄

I've been watching these two channels quite a bit. The first one is a chippie doing first and second fix on construction sites who gives very clear directions on framing, joists, hanging doors, architraves, skirting, dormers and Velux installations etc. Robin Clevett - a chippie from Kent. https://www.youtube.com/@robinclevettcarpenter The second one is a cabinetry joiner who would be of more interest if you were wanting to build your own wardrobes, kitchen etc. Peter Millard - London based cabinetry joiner. https://www.youtube.com/@10MinuteWorkshop/videos

This was a fantastic blog, I've really enjoyed reading it and learned a lot. Your house is beautiful. Congratulations and thanks for taking the trouble to write such a comprehensive and detailed write-up. Is it rude to ask roughly what it all cost in the end? You know - just for people like me who have entirely unrealistic expectations 😂

I watched this today and thought it was interesting as I seem to spend massive chunks of every day on procurement of materials to keep things moving. He references some US shops but the experience is pretty universal I think. https://youtu.be/FHuJYuZTa7o?si=OBurUR4CxRG3xkfN

According to this, yes.

External insulation on top of SIPS is the standard I have found when reading up on this.

Yeah I follow them too. They are good fun and likeable people and it was interesting to see how they built their temporary home and what it cost (although the figures on the screen didn't match the total!) but I felt they are a bit trapped in the influencer cycle of having to constantly churn out content, when there isn't that much going on in their project just now.

Jeezo. £6k sqm! That's insane. I live in the Borders and I have been amazed at how cheap trades around here are - but the catch is that they are always busy and so very difficult to get hold of. There's a lot of very cheap properties around here in need of work and a lot of folk from other areas (mostly south of England) buy them at auction thinking they will just get some locals to do them up for them. They get a rude awakening when they realise how difficult it is to source the skilled labour to do the job. I have noticed that it is a lot easier to get a plumber, electrician etc to come out for a householder than for a rental or investment property and I have begun to suspect that there is a fair amount of resentment from trades towards those who are just looking to make a profit from property investment, so they chose to prioritise householders which is fair enough. I wonder if there is something similar going on with the Skye builders who perhaps aren't thrilled at all the rich second home/retiree incomers, and are basically pricing themselves out of the work. On my current renovation project I had to rewire all the ceiling lights which was an issue that I had missed at purchase (as did the surveyor). I tried for months to get a spark in to do this for me but they were all too busy. I think it's a bit of a horrible job that none of them wanted either. In the end I found one who was willing to let me basically be his mate and do all the donkey work under his supervision. So I cut raggles and ran all the cables and he popped in at the end of the day to tell me what I needed to do and where I needed to run the next ones and to check my work. At the end of it he charged me £210 which I can only think was 7 x £30 an hour which seems crazy cheap. It might have been 3.5 hours at £60 I suppose, but if that's the case then he under-billed me for his time. That didn't include fitting a new trip-switch box and making the connections at that end, but he will do that part later as he needs to do it himself in order to sign it off. So around here the trades are there and they are very reasonably priced, but devilishly difficult to get hold of.

£90k for the build? Wow. What's that per sqm?

I'm not an electrician or anything so I can't comment other than to say that with option two you need two additional junction boxes so more places for things to go wrong. Easier if the cabling comes off the sockets so you can access it more easily to check for problems in future.

When I have done this it has been treated as a sale for legal and tax purposes. I haven't done it for about 10 years but it was £1k in legal fees then.

They are bringing it in cos it is an easy win for them. It sounds like a jolly sensible policy but from what I was hearing (headteachers being interviewed last week) it really misses the mark. There's absolutely no way pupils will be allowed to sit there on their phones in lessons. That just doesn't happen.

The ironic thing is that EVs have absolutely ridiculous levels of torque. First time I floored it with my son in the car he nearly shat himself. 😂 If the boy-racer crowd ever find out how powerful these cars are we will be in trouble.

Mobiles are banned already from use in schools. The headteachers have taken care of that. It's the out-of-school social media abuse issue that is the problem. This new legislation is unneeded and won't tackle the main issues. It's just more hollow populist dross from the Westminster govt.

It's a good series - check the others out too if you have time. I love my EV but find myself constantly having to defend them from what I can only see as a twisted narrative. The right-wing climate denying lobby love to punt this sort of nonsense and the petrol-head Top Gear folk don't help either. They punted the idea that EVs somehow diminished masculinity and were some sort of joke and went out of their way to prove this by driving an EV round and around a town till it ran out of juice so it had to be pushed to the charger. Ha ha, how ridiculous these EVs are. I feel like I need to do my bit - not only to help towards limiting climate change but also for these wee kids that get asthma from living near main roads. With a range of 70-80 miles my 2013 EV isn't the most convenient vehicle in the world, especially for long journeys but it's fine for local use, which is where many people are exposed to emissions. Given that there's no road tax on EVs and they can be charged for 7p per Kwh overnight and also possibly make you money via a V2G connection, it doesn't seem daft to keep an old EV for shorter journeys. The new ones have 250-300 miles of range, which at 3-4 hours of motorway driving is about my personal 'toilet range' these days anyway. By the time you have stopped at a motorway services for the lavvy and a coffee your car will be topped up again and ready to roll onwards. I don't see that as an inconvenience at all.