Pete

How have people sealed the end of the duct when the water pipe has been pulled through? The bit under the ground, not the bit you can see in the house. I have a large 110mm or 150mm put in by the timber frame company and have a 32mm supply going in. The local water board need it sealing for sign off. TIA

It is amazing how quickly it all goes up. Our build took four days to erect the frame and then and a day to do the snagging and ensuring everything was as should be. Looks great, hope everything goes according to plan.

We used to get that many for our son, a student, until I had a word with him.

Patience of a saint I say. Will look amazing when you have finished.

At least you have your windows, more than we have!!

It comes down to individual choice. We are having Corian because we do not want joins in the worktop and really like the thin profile compared to laminate worktop. Some friends have had Corian for years including the sink which now looks awful so we are having a stainless steel bottom put in our kitchen instead.

Just buy large format tiles and you soon cover some area.

Has anybody any advice on the depth of mains elec cable? ENWL official diagram mentions a depth of 750mm but when the surveyor came out he said 450mm should be plenty. The cable will be inside 117mm red duct and sited in a private driveway. What I do not want is to bury it at the shallower depth and then they turn up to connect it and say you have not laid it at the correct depth. Plus not sure if this should be in a different thread but how have people laid all the cables together? A local groundworker said he dug a 600mm trench and laid all at same level and covered in sand but that seems very expensive use of sand and over kill on trench size. My initial thoughts where to use a 300mm trench and have water at the bottom and then elec but with ENWL wanting the elec cable deeper it throws a spanner in the works. I am only laying elec,water and comms duct. TIA

Good luck with the build and hope it all goes smoothly

When we had to check over our timber frame drawings it was like doing a spot the difference puzzle without knowing how many spot the differences there were!! We checked it and checked it and still had some minor errors but missed the main one which was a structural corner post which was designed out by the timber frame manufacturer but left on the drawings sent to the window manufacturer so that created one of the problems we have had with the delay of our window installation. The missing window is hopefully arriving today so we may get the installation finished soon!!

As I have said before you will look back with pride one day when you see all the hard work you have done to build the house of your dreams. Happy building!! ( Don't mention windows!)

Toolstation offer. Type in AUGBH18 before 3rd September to get get £25 off if you spend £150 or more

Man up Ian. Take a leaf out of @Onoff book. There was no messing with the grout issue, he just told her straight, did he not?

Great story that no doubt reminds all of us of our own builds. Mine was power floated in the dark and when I poured the garage floor (separate to house) the vibrating beam screed fell to pieces and consequently I have a very uneven garage floor that I just about smile about now. You will laugh and smile about all these things one day when you stand and look back at your lovely new home. (I hope)

I know you get a lot more than just a door if you buy a door set but if you only need a door then just buying a blank and having it veneered is a lower cost option. To be fair the guy I used can supply a veneered frame as well and if you are handy just fit door hinges as normal. Your door looks fantastic and I have watched a Youtube video of an installation and it is a quality product. Nice things cost a lot of money and these are definitely nice things.

Floor looks a bit dirty in the fourth photo, are standards dropping? Glad you making quick progress.

I do not mean to knock Deuren doors as they are a lovely product but the guy I am going to use gets his veneers from Nantwich veneers and applies this to a fire door blank which costs about £200 a door which is considerably less than Deuren product. If you can afford Deuren then go for it but with us we are saving approx £2000 on our internal doors using my contact.

I think this is because the Isoquick system has dimples to interlock the insulation slabs and there is a keyway down the sides of the perimeter pieces so everything is interlocked to prevent movement. We used the AFT technology system and this was significantly cheaper for the same result.

They mentioned that to us but did not take it any further at the mo. Nice people to deal with

How do you put stuff in there!

That is why I probably go overboard praising people when we receive good service. Treat people as you expect to be treated does not seem to be a lot of people's motto!

There are quite a few who have had issues with this company on this site. It is a shame as they are a quality product and look amazing. The difference they make to the internal environment on our build is fantastic. All I can say is that I have the contact numbers of the main people in the UK of this window manufacturer and they are changing the way they do certain things in the future which although will not help us maybe assist others.

Not many blokes read instructions!

Nothing wrong with OCD. Pre- requisite of self-building

We are in the same position. Ordered windows last September and expected delivery December. Wrong, apparently it was always January but the communication from the relevant company has been awful. January came and then the timber frame manufacturer had omitted to remove a structural post from the drawings he had sent to the window company and thus we needed a corner post which would take another 12 weeks. The window manufacturers would not let the windows be fitted due to the missing corner as they said that they could not guarantee water getting into the frames whilst the post was made. When the windows where fitted we had faulty triple glazed units that needed replacing (2.5m x 2.7m sizes), missing cill sections, damaged items, wrong window section to go next to sliding doors etc which as you have guessed involved another 12 weeks. As well as the faults with the windows the fitter's left two windows leaking water and drilled through from the inside to out leaving a large screw sticking out of the brand new aluclad cill.? During this time I was chasing the corner post as it was needed to fit the sliding doors and when it did turn up (yes, you could not believe it but when it goes wrong, it goes wrong)............................... it was damaged!! The Aluclad section had two large dents in it and the corners had been bent over so was completely useless. This item had travelled from Austria in bubble wrap and nothing else and now we had windows fitted but no corner post so we could have been in this position back in January and at least been watertight. THEN we found out the window company had outstanding debts with the window manufacturer that delayed us another 12 weeks before the new window could be ordered and now we are expecting the outstanding window and outstanding issues to be resolved this month but are are we confident that this will happen, NO. This is a very condensed version of events and is a lot worse than it reads. I have not been putting it on BH basically as we have just tried to carry on with our lives and wait for the windows to be fitted. Be assured our day will come as we have a large retainer and they will not be seeing much of this by the time we have finished with them. The windows we have chosen are amazing and the fact that we have chosen a really poor window company who by the way no longer deal with the window manufacturer after they have completed outstanding installations was a bad decision but how do you know about these things. During these 12 months we have not been able to do anything as we cannot do the pressure test so we have just done bits here and there.We could not have done much to the house anyway as we where relying on selling a building plot which we have just sold so hopefully if the new window fits and all the other faults are corrected then we can move forward. One of the reasons we have not let it get to us is people's experience of stress on here and we very suddenly lost a good friend recently and have another friend who is very ill at the moment so it puts our window experience into perspective. I am already bald so there is not much that can go wrong there so fingers crossed things can only improve!