Crofter

Upstairs, there's a lot of space given over to the hallway. Mostly in order to access that bottom left bedroom. Maybe that's a feature you want but it might be possible to tinker with things to make a more efficient use of space.

I don't have anything against the house itself tbh, I'm just curious about the legalities of building something like that.

I heard one of the finalists was in my neck of the woods (Skye) so I looked it up on iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002ckqg/scotlands-home-of-the-year-series-7-5-highlands-and-islands What I'm wondering about is what regs this building has to comply with. Does it really comply with normal building regs? No downstairs bedroom, no balustrade on the stairs, I'm sure there are other issues. However it doesn't comply with the caravan/portable definition either, because that would force a 10ft ceiling height limit. I suppose there is 'hutting', but again it doesn't comply because it's a permanent residence. Thoughts?

I spent a total of about £200 on the guttering on the cottage. Childsplay to install. It's been up about eight years now and I can't detect any fading. I suppose it will eventually succumb to UV damage. But then again I'm the sort of person who buys all my kitchen appliances secondhand...

In order to create two different colours on the walls, we're going to use larch plus another lighter coloured material. In the attached sketch, I'm talking about the light brown section of the wall (I was just using the closest approximation I could find in SketchUp) At the moment I'm penciling in corrugated steel, because I've worked with it before and it's easy, cheap, and durable. I am a tiny bit concerned that a white or cream colour (which is what we want, and will likely be required by planning anyway) will show up every last speck of rust. Not that we expect that to be a significant problem as the plastic coated galv stuff has something like a 20yr guarantee. SWMBO isn't sold on the idea, she is fine using it for the roof but not convinced about using it on walls. What other options are out there? Essentially we want it to look like white painted rendered blockwork from a distance. So smooth and white is the goal. I don't really want to use blockwork as I'll be doing all the labour myself and I'm a pretty slow brickie. It just seems like a lot of work and cost for what is in effect a rain screen. @ProDaveused some form of rigid insulation board as his cladding, that sounds interesting. Another option might include fibre cement. Budget is pretty limited... last time I checked, corrugated steel was about £10/m² so I'm going to need some persuasion to spend too much on this...

Can somebody explain to me why you would use anything other than plastic? It's cheap, it's easy, it's idiot proof. Agree on the point made above about galv nails in larch- I've seen this a few times and it looks awful. Stainless all the way.

Thanks! Forgot about that. I had a play around with OnShape before I managed to get SketchUp to run, and I've thing I liked about it was the dimensions automatically appear on your drawings. So I might use that for floorplans.

I thought it was a BR rule that you must have a downstairs bedroom, plus a non en-suite downstairs WC. I'm a bit rusty on all these requirements though, and will need to refamiliarise myself with them. But yes this is likely to be where we end up in our dotage, although that's a pretty long way away (we're still in our early/mid 40s). I expect that we may end up making the house a little bigger, this is very much an exercise in minimum viable product design. The master bedroom at the top of the stairs is, as drawn, only 3.1 x 4.3m, with partial coombed ceiling. The other bedrooms aren't even that big. Both the WC and upstairs bath/shower room are pretty pokey. I have used a 450mm external wall thickness for now so it's possible that I can slim that down a little when I start getting in to the details of the buildup and u values.

Is this a hard and fast rule? A fire safety thing maybe? Or is it more about cooking smells etc? In practise, you'd come and go from the back door, at the kitchen. But it would be easy enough to have a patio door in the front of the house too. In fact I've indicated that in the sketch. Good spot. So we'll need that patio door. The WC needs to retain the option of becoming a jack and Jill with the downstairs bedroom, and will also need to have the option of adding a shower. I think that whole space (under the stairs, between the bedroom and kitchen) has lots of room for optimisation. AFAIK there's no actual rule against using the WC opening off the kitchen. It doesn't really bother us personally, we're used to living in a small space (we've spent the last 4yrs living on a boat so this house is going to feel palatial). Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it 👍

For some reason the floor plans have come out at different scales- the length (L-R as viewed) should be the same on both, but the upstairs is more like 9x5m and the downstairs in 9x7m.

This is very rough. I realised after I had downloaded and cropped the pictures that I'd not left enough space for a door at the bottom of the staircase into bed 1. Oops. Basic outline: 9x7m footprint, with an asymmetric pitched roof. Roof will be corrugated steel, slate blue. Walls will be mostly cream or off-white corrugated steel (I like the stuff, OK) and the front section will be larch, board on board. Some rooms upstairs, with some vaulted space at the front. Not shown, there will be an extensive car port out the back, with most utility room functions housed there in a small separate building. This will have PV panels as its roof. I've only shown a few windows on the front elevation. There will of course be other windows, tbd. For context, the site is a fairly steep east facing slope. The east/front (larch clad) elevation has the sea view. There is a neighbour close by on the south side. Site will have to be dug back in to the hill a bit, so the car port will go in that sheltered area at the back of the house. Any feedback welcome!

It's relatively economical to obtain big sealed glazing units. E.g. a 3G unit 900x2200 is under £350, with a claimed Ug of 0.7. I'm hoping to find a company that can produce fixed roof lights using this sort of unit, without the cost getting out of hand.

Fairly limited selection there from what I can see. Do you happen to know offhand how big you can go with a basic non opening roof window, before prices go silly?

Vaulted celling. I'm just doing preliminary sketches at the moment but it would be nice to know what the size limits are on readily available units.

I gave a go-to website for standard uPVC windows and doors where I can easily and quickly check the cost of a basic 3G unit. They don't supply Velux type units for pitched roofs though. Any suggestions? I'm looking for cheap and cheerful, not high end stuff. At this stage this is just for quick cost estimates and as a check on what is actually available- no point designing my new house around window sizes that aren't actually available to buy.

The current sketches are for a box 9x7m, with an asymmetric pitched roof. It's a fairly straightforward shape really. I'll stick some pictures up once I've tweaked a few details in my SketchUp model.

I had a go with Onshape, but it was a bit frustrating. It looks like a good product if you invest the time. However after a bit of googling I discovered that a common problem running the web version of SketchUp is that it won't work unless you have at least 4Gb of free space on your HDD. I deleted a few things and voila, back in business! First draft of my new house project incoming...

Or in my case, just materials and tools. I never employed a joiner last time and I don't expect to this time either. This is what I'm concerned about. Last time, being exempt from regs, I could just build it the way I thought would work best. I already had a fair amount of knowledge about TF design and just applied those principles, but there weren't a lot of calculations involved. It was a very small house (50m² footprint) and I used 6*2 studs and rafters primarily for insulation depth so I was confident that it was plenty strong enough. We have a local guy who I've already approached, and he had a good reputation, but he says he's moving away next year and my project might not go fast enough for him.

The problem is that when you open the door to light it, you break that circuit. Once up to heat, the stove draws fine. It's just lighting it that's a problem. What size is the one you're familiar with? I do think part of my problem is that my stove is so small.

There is no frame supplier. I'm building this exactly the way I built the last house, by buying a big stack of timber and using a nail gun and chop saw to turn it in to a house. I may use engineered joists (I used them last time and they were great to work with, and very cost effective compared to solid timber). But I may not end up using trusses. Ground floor is likely to be an insulated slab. I may be facing a bit of a reality check with my costs. The first house (2015-17) came to £40k total, excluding the plot, including VAT on everything because it was exempt from building regs and ineligible for VAT reclaim. The new project will be bigger (33% bigger footprint, plus rooms upstairs) but will be lower spec (uPVC instead of aluclad, no WBS) and eligible for a VAT reclaim. So I'm hoping that it will be only slightly more expensive to build. Of course there's been a fair bit of inflation since 2017. But £5k would be a huge chunk of my budget. I did all my own drawings for PP last time, and intend to do so again. How feasible is it to also do my own BR drawings?

It's a new build house. Provisional sketches are leading towards a 65m² footprint, 1.5 storey. Timber frame, corrugated steel roof, larch cladding on the walls (or possibly a mixture of larch+steel). Basically the same as how I built the previous house.

Embarking upon self build no.2. First time round was building regs exempt, and was entirely a DIY effort. I'm confident with designing the layout and structure, and much of the detailing- I've done it all before, although I'm not trained or qualified in any way. I'm considering employing an AT to ensure compliance with regs. 1- is this the correct person to use? 2- is it feasible to go DIY? Or will I get hopelessly bogged down in SAP calculations etc? 3- how much should I budget for this?

My experience of a WBS in a low energy house is not especially positive. It's a very small house (43m² internal) built to approx twice building regs minimum u values, and as airtight as I could get it (I was building regs exempt so didn't do a test). I have MVHR. The stove is a 3kw unit with external air feed, via a vent in the north elevation. In certain conditions it can be an absolute pain. I learned early on that to stand any chance of getting it to draw, I had to leave a window or door on the house open, because the airtight house just can't support the draw of the fire when lighting it. If you don't get it to light first time, you're best to let it go completely out before you open the WBS door, otherwise you'll get all the smoke blowing back in to the room. I think the intrinsic problem is that it's a 90% efficient stove and it's at the lower limit of what is actually possible in terms of size. There just isn't enough heat going up the flue to get it to draw strongly. I may try adding an extension to the flue to bring it higher above the house ridge, and I could try repositioning the intake, as i do think that in strong southerly winds there might be some sort of vacuum effect going on. But it's all a lot of hassle for something that is really just there for aesthetics. The next house will not have a WBS.

I do have a pitched warm roof. But I don't have trusses, as all the cross beams would represent too many penetrations and thermal bridges. I've got a ridge beam and cut rafters instead. I wouldn't discount the idea of layering your insulation the way you describe, but I would seek more advice on it. It's a higher condensation risk but it may not be a show stopper.

It's certainly a higher risk for interstitial condensation. But I believe it's possible to make it work. On my build I did full fill wool between studs/rafters, and a layer of PIR on the inside. Seemed the safest method. I'm in no way a qualified or trained builder or engineer though.