Crofter

@Visti Those houses look awfully familiar... are they Dualchas/R.House designs by any chance? I've gone with corrugated steel and am very happy with it. Cost about £1200 for the whole roof inc flashings, ridge, fixings- bear in mind my house only has about 70m2 of roof. This was for the thicker 0.7mm steel and the Plastisol coating which has a 20yr guarantee. Installation was straightforward, I did it singlehanded without scaffolding although tbh most people thought I was being a bit crazy

Sorry I missed this one when it came up. Only thing I can add is about the holiday let exemption from council tax- to qualify, it must meet the Furnished Holiday Let criterion of being available for let for minimum 210 days per year, and actually let for minimum 105 days. Within that period I believe that no individual let can be more than 30 days (to the same party). However you can have longer lets over the remaining 155 days- e.g. some people let their FHL to long(ish) term tennants over the winter as a single let.

Yes as Dave says I'm already exempt, but that's because it's a portable building, rather than because of its size. The intenal floor space is about 43m2. Presumably there are downsides to not having an EPC. The first one that comes to mind is that you'd not get various green subsidies/incentives such as FiT, insulation top ups etc.

Not a nice situation to be in. From all the advice you've given me and others you're obviously a very clued up sparky so I hope you can find plenty of work and see this through to the end. Use the enforced delays to hunt for bargains- plenty good stuff out there on eBay and Gumtree.

About 4.4m on a room that is 4.6m wide... looks good to me. I'd have thought that the external appearance would dictate the pitch and therefore the height?

Hard to say really- the oven and hood were picked up whilst we were in civilisation for a weekend, so that was just a quick trawl of Gumtree. That hooked me into Bosch (I have it in my head that my guests will be more impressed if everything matches, probably overthinking this) so the search slowed down a bit after that. It's all time spent unwinding sat on my arse, half watching the telly, so you can't really discount it from productive time. But even so, I imagine it's got to be in the region of £100/hr.

Patience is a virtue... Bagged a brand new Bosch induction hob for £200, this time it actually arrived. So that's my hob/oven/hood all sorted out, all in Bosch, for £310. For testing purposes, I've whipped the ceramic hob out of my freestanding cooker and shoved the induction hob into its place (not wired in- it just plugs into a 13A socket). Holy moly I am converted! Going to keep using it right up until I have to install it in the new house.

I'm building probably one of the smallest houses on here, at 43m2 internal. I weighed up the pros and cons of open plan vs greater division. I found that the more you split the space up, the more practicality you could build in- easier placement of furniture, far more storage, better privacy. I had some 'must haves' that included an entrance vestibule (for weather protection) and a bathroom that was not en-suite (to give greater flexibility). So that is initially what I went for. However once the shell was up, my ideas gradually shifted as I spent more time in the building... and in the end most of the walls and divisions disappeared. I've now created a sight line from one end of the house to the other, framing the woodburner as a focal point. I've even decided not to bother putting the double glass doors between the bedroom and living room, although they could be added later. The bathroom has become en-suite and the vestibule is gone. There is now zero space wasted on corridors/hallways. It just feels so much better this way. Yes I have lost my original 'must haves' but I can see now that I was letting some arbitrary requirements, that are actually of very little importance, drive the whole design process.

I don't have any storage heaters! I'll check the meter today, but my impression is that it's simply working off its own timer and spits out electricity at peak or off peak rate depending on time of day.

I might need you to unpack that for me a bit... is a MGS like a remote relay or something? I think you might be getting confused between my two houses- this UVC is going in the holiday let which simply has a single meter providing electricity at two different rates depending on time of day (E7 tarrif). Not THTC and storage heaters, which is what I have in my own house. At only 3kw per immersion, it's tempting to just spend £5 on a timer and plug into the ring main!! Only joking...

So... my sparky never clocked that there are two immersions on the tank, and has decided to start again from scratch. Maybe should have had a chat about what I wanted but it looked kind of obvious to me! Setup: 170l UVC with two 3kw immersions, property is one bed, one shower, and E7 supply. Holiday let so must be idiot proof. Lower immersion will go on a timer, overnight. Upper immersion will have a simple time lag boost button set to one hour. So far so good. The overnight timer can, I think, be something very simple indeed as I don't plan to mess around with it at all. In fact I will deliberately place it out of the way to avoid people meddling with it. The boost button is a bit tricker- I ordered a cheap one that looked the biz (one big button, no meddling, no confusion). It doesn't light up or anything though. I'd also like to future proof if I can, and be able to upgrade to a 6kw boost immersion- but all the boost switches I've found are only 13A or 16A. Anybody know of a simple one-button time lag switch that can handle a 6kw resistive load? Finally, can I just place an illuminated isolator switch after the boost button? That would give a visual indicator that it had come on. Likewise can the E7 timer have the isolator between the timer and tank? That would allow me to switch it off without interupting the power to the timer itself.

Wait till you hit a knot! Although I've lost more bits than holders. Currently using longer (so no holder) bits from Wera and Milwaukee, have broken one Wera Pozi3 but the Pozi2 Milwuakees are holding up very well. A better buy than the pack of ten Silverline bits for £2 that, ahem, someone I know, bought... those didn't last the day

I presume you should balance the system with the doors either open or closed depending on how you expect them to be used? It must make quite a big difference to the balance, unless you have a supply and extract in each room.

One thing I may add is a little 1Ah battery, or whatever the smallest available one is. I could do with a third battery and if you're just drilling pilot holes or other light duty work, it would reduce the weight of the tool. The 4Ah batts go on for days unless you're using the circ saw, grinder, or sander for long periods. But in the drill and driver you'd have to have a much better work ethic than I do to empty one in a day

I found the best deals were on eBay. Brushless LXT impact and driver kit inc 2x 4ah batts and charger, in hard case, for around £280 IIRC Can't recall the name of thr seller but they were a German outfit, so the charger is a two pin plug. However they would deliver anywhere in the UK for a flat rate and it worked out much cheaper than buying from a UK seller, all of whom wanted a small fortune to deliver up here.

If we were higher rate tax payers it would be a big saving, but we're both on basic rate so probably not worth the trouble.

I'm pretty pleased with my little 3kw room sealed Burley- bit like a model T Ford though, only available in black! Your underfloor feed probably works better than my through-the-wall, which behaves differently depending on wind direction. It's on a north gable and strong northerlies mean that you need to throttle the air intake down a lot more than normal.

Hmmm, the significant downside to going with a ltd company is that corporation tax has to be paid (20%) before the dividends come out. So a lot of hassle for very little gain, if I'm understanding it correctly. I had assumed there would be some sort of allowance on CT to help smaller businesses, but it seems not.

I know he's trying to keep Debbie out but are we overestimating how hard she is going to try to get in? No need to build a bunker... is there?

Mine's also 11mm. It would have been impossible to manhandle the sheets up there if they'd been even heavier. Although I suppose the extra weight would have made me less likely to get blown off the top of the ladder. That was a brown pants moment!

Interesting ideas, thanks. I will definitely be speaking to account before making any decisions, but I like to be as well prepared as possible for these sorts of things. If I brought in another family member as a business partner, how much attention is paid to that? Would it get complicated if it was someone further removed than SWMBO (who has already used up all her allowance). Two sets of £5k dividends would almost certainly cover everything- I will look further into this approach.

As many of you will know, I'm (nearly finished!) building a small house as a furnished holiday let. I plan to have it let out for the 2018 season, with a gross income of around £10-£12k per year My original plan was simply to operate as a self employed sole trader, and I expected to pay no income tax once I had deducted the basic bills like laundry, electricity, etc etc. However i have gone and messed all this up by getting a job! So with all my personal allowance already used up, now I am rather keen to investigate how to operate the business without getting a big tax bill. I understand that I cannot offset the cost of the actual build, but I think I can claim certain portions of it. I'm not sure how much of each of these things I can offset in a given year, though. From what I've read up so far I think this may include: - the kitchen and appliances - the bathroom and fittings - the wood burning stove - light fittings - appliances such as the TV, hoover - furniture, kitchenware, linen - decorating costs Cheers

I don't feel quite so ripped off now- I was buying 25x50 battens. I would be surprised if @recoveringacademic could get many 9mm battens out of a length of larger wood without losing a good number of them to knots. Do you not have a future project that could benefit from them? Decking, a shed, log store, etc?

That's probably another aspect of regional variation- different flavours of "always done it this way". The few tradesmen I've dealt with have commented on how unusual my build is, and at times told me I was doing it wrong, because of features including: pier foundations; vapour barrier; airtightness requirement; windows fixed within, not on outside of, frame; MVHR; plaster finish; plasterboard finish; service void; engineered joists; full fill insulation; vaulted ceiling; 6" frame instead of 4"; use of tanking in shower; etc, etc.

It's not a given that a self build will be worth more than it cost. Up here delivery can be a significant factor, and this may filter through to general costs. I noticed on another thread that I've been paying twice as much for battens as another poster. I sourced my roofing for two thirds of what I ended up paying, but couldn't actually realise the saving because the haulage wiped it out.