Crofter

I'd be a little worried that larger guttering could look big and bulky on my wee building. Can I mitigate the risk of overflow by having a steeper fall and/or a downpipe at each end?

Is that these chaps? http://www.plasticdrainage.co.uk How were they on delivery?

Not an option, unfortunately!

Just about to order the guttering, and wanted to check: I know I need two bends to take it from the outlet to the downpipe, to account for the width of the soffet. But I see there are 92.5 and 112.5 bends, so do I need one of each, or two of one, and if so, which one??

Say, hypothetically, you had someone in a tent in the field next to your site... and you felt sorry for them when their tent started letting the rain in... and you let them sleep on the floor of your new build... how many nights would have to go by before your crossed the line and it was deemed 'inhabited'? (asking for a friend, obviously!)

Some people on here have left their sewage treatment plants unconnected to demonstrate non-habitability, and that seems to have sufficed.

Just bumping this one as I'm now in need of my internal cills. I had in my head that I would get a piece of oak worktop and cut it down (I need three cills- 1.8m and two at 0.9m) but having had a wee look I realise that oak kitchen worktops appear to be very obviously made up of blocks of wood glued or finger jointed together. As I want to oil or varnish these I don't think it's the look I want. I could take the easy option and use the same stuff as my exposed beams- dressed all round redwood from the BM. I get to choose the exact bits of wood from stock, and there's a wide choice of sizes. It would obviously match the beams, although not the windowframes, which are a darker and cleaner lacquered pine. The pieces I've used for the beams were stored dry but exposed to the wind, and were subject to a fair degree of shrinking/cracking- more than would be acceptable for a windowsill. @JSHarris's radiata pine sounds interesting.Any others to consider?

Thanks all, some good information in there. So I can discount the Kingspan roof panels- thought as much. Shame because in theory it would do about four layers work in one go. It may well be an idea to use nothing at all between the frame and the breather. I haven't used the rigid batts myself but if they are stiff enough not to need to be boarded into the frame on both sides, then that would certainly be useful. I'll have to have a think about how poor I want to allow the thermal performance to get. This application isn't really for permanently inhabited buildings, and low build cost is vital. I totted up my initial buildup idea (18mm osb, 95mm glasswool filled frame, 20mm woodfibre board) and got U=0.3 (not accounting for bridging) which isn't all that shabby really, for what is essentially a shed. If I lose the woodfibre layer it jumps to 0.37 and the bridging gets worse. Up the frame to 145mm and it drops again to 0.25. I really must run these numbers through a calculator which accounts for bridging. Re the inner skin, I'm sure I read somewhere about OSB that was available in a sanded/smooth finish. Can't find it again now. I think it would have to be something like this, or indeed ply, to give an acceptable finish for painting. Rather than using biscuit joints I would probably just use cover strips to hide the nail heads and expansion gap. Scratching my head somewhat for the roof, and specifically how to provide a small slope on what is likely to be a 16x16ft building. For simplicity I think a monopitch works best as it can be done in single lengths of steel sheeting; a shallow duopitch would risk having water blown up under the ridge. The sheet manufacturers don't actually give a minimum pitch for a roof, but I wonder if something like 5deg would be sensible to ensure runoff. A green roof option would be great, obviously at higher cost. And I'm also intrigued by the EPDM roof that @Tennentslager used on his hut.

Early days yet but I'm starting to turn my attention to future projects (yes, I know). I'm sketching out some ideas for building something small and cost-effective. This would be for construction under the 'portable building'; rule and thus building regs exempt. Critical factor is cost effectiveness. Application is for glamping accommodation, studio, garden room, etc. I'm playing around with performance and cost of different materials at the moment, and I'm a big fan of corrugated steel as a cladding material (cheap, easy, fast). I also really like the idea of doing away with the whole VCL/void/battens/PB thing and simply using a ply or OSB interior sheathing layer, sealed with appropriate paint for vapour resistance, and then with all wiring etc surface mounted. Now with no VCL I think there is a risk of vapour in the structure, even if I do my best to seal the interior. So I'm looking at the vapour permeability. The frame would be most likely 45x95 stick build, fully filled with glasswool. I think I then need some sort of exterior board to hold the wool in, prior to the breather, battens, and steel cladding going on. I know that I could just use OSB on the outside, but I'm very curious about the woodfibre boards that @ProDave used. A quick glance online shows that the thinner versions of these aren't silly prices. I don't need them for racking strength, as that's what the interior osb layer will do. Question is where is it best to spend the money: beef up the frame to 145mm and just use osb outside, vs keep the 95mm frame and use say 20mm woodfibre boards as EWI. Or, should I use a different material as EWI, e.g. PIR, PUR- my gut feeling is that this isn't vapour permeable enough. Another option would be to use Kingspan's insulated roof sheets as my exterior cladding, but how do you manage vapour permeability with this system?

I bet you can't wait to get out of the ground!

I've tried to persuade SWMBO on this. Two dishwashers, no cupboards. Take out what you want, use, put in the other. When full, swap over.

Well this version uses no electricity, so that has to be a good thing. Dose it with a capful of Milton once a year, well that works for boats anyhow.

OTOH, the smaller the house, the smaller the heating requirements in absolute terms. Sometimes I think we forget this.

Nice wee project. I take it you don't fancy collecting off the roof due to all the trees around you?

Very crisp, well done! Does your budget include the appliances?

If you think our politicians can control the wholesale price of energy, then you have a lot more faith in them than I do.

James Webb space telescope is finally launching next year. It's hugely ambitious, massively over budget, years behind schedule, and turned out to be a far more complex project than it first appeared. Something I'm sure many of us can relate to

Welcome aboard. Sounds like quite a project! I take it you'll be able to claim the VAT back, given the apparent condition of the building?

Welcome to BuildHub. We have a few people on here who are or have used ICF for their self builds, look forward to your insights.

Just looking into this just now. Highland Council have a page on this, with the inevitable form to fill in and the even more inevitable fee (£150 in this case). However it refers to submitting this within a month of the building warrant being approved. Well, I don't have one of those. Also, loads (the majority?) of people get a site connection right at the start of their project, and also plenty places have electrical connections but aren't houses- so how does that work?

So should we all be buying big room-temperature fish tanks and putting them around our houses, to act as thermal stabilisers?

That'll be this article then (paywall for full text): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/02/avoid-creating-new-generation-nimbys-banning-ugly-sixties-style/ Interesting question. I share your concerns that asking a whole community for their permission/blessing is fraught with difficulty. IMHO it's a recipe for conservative and unimaginative design, or, more likely, no new building at all.

I went with this stuff: https://www.wood-finishes-direct.com/product/wood-preservative Which should have a top coat of: https://www.wood-finishes-direct.com/product/log-cabin-treatment It's really too early to say what effect it's had. Some of the cladding has been on all year but it's only had one coat of the first oil. Despite that, it does seem to be holding its colour well and I have no reason to believe that it's not working. Ask me again in five years! The stuff does stink, by the way- I was treating the cladding boards inside the house, laid out on the floor, and unless you had all the windows open it was properly headache inducing.

@Ferdinand not exactly, I have no wish whatsoever to exclude local sellers. I simply want to see a list that includes only people who will post/courier. They can be local or not. If I restrict my eBay searches to, say, the nearest 100 miles, I will get almost zero results whenever I am looking for anything even vaguely specific. Now if I wanted a properly 'smart' search, it would include everybody within a hundred miles who accepted collection in person and/or courier, and would include people further away if they were courier, but not pickup.

Erm, thanks and all, but I want the opposite of that. And I don't think simply keaving the box unticked provides that. Ebay, along with most websites these days, annoys the heck out of me since they have abandoned boolean search strings and wildcards in favour of their own brand of smart search.