Crofter

One odd thing I noticed in the article is that they claim that wood that is too dry (below 20% MC) causes more pollution. I'm not saying this is wrong, but I would very much like to understand the mechanism involved. Also, there is room for education on correct use of stoves- I know people who insist on sitting with the stove door open, people who try to burn green wood ("it's OK if you use some coal too!") and, most commonly, people trying to keep their stove smouldering away at a low heat overnight. An extremely messy and polluting way to avoid having to relight it the next day.

You have to be careful about what your starting assumptions are. The article seems to be from the point of view that everybody should be on gas heating and the trend for stoves is simply a lifestyle choice. However my experience is that there are still far too many people burning peat and coal on open fires. This is probably a geographical thing. The inefficiency of an open fire horrifies me and IMHO they should be banned. So I find it hard to get aboard the 'anti stove' bandwagon.

I once bought a 'Yardmaster' metal garage, because I had just moved house and needed the space ASAP. Utter load of rubbish. It would cost about the same in materials to build one, but I'd have ended up with a far better shed.

I researched a lot of different options on windows and doors and found similar costs to what you describe. Another significant factor was that the number of elements in a window has a bearing on cost, and of course it costs much more to have two small windows than one window of the equivalent size. Hand in hand with this is that smaller windows lose proportionally much more heat than big ones do. Now whenever I see a house with a row of several small windows, or a window broken up into several panes, where one large window would have done the job, I shake my head and wonder why anybody would have wanted to spend more money just to get a more interrupted view and worse U value. I was happily oblivious to this before!

That was via @iSelfBuild who was ordering his own windows at the same time, so not sure if it's a repeatable offer I'm afraid- you could try asking him though. And of course it was pre Brexit (he ordered then directly from Poland). French doors ought to be fairly economical, he did try to persuade me to go down that route at first but I didn't think it would have worked on my site due to lack of space and exposure to high winds.

Good discussion here:

Mine worked out about £360/m2 inc vat for a small order (about 11m2) in TG aluclad timber. The tilt/slide patio door was almost as much as everything else put together, though. The relatively simple kitchen and bathroom windows were really quite inexpensive.

I'll have to decide on this myself at some point. My floor is 16ft span suspended timber and has a bit of bounce in it already- probably inevitable unless I'd used much deeper joists. At the moment I'm thinking bonded floor (bamboo) with a flexible adhesive, incorporating electric UFH mats. Sounds expensive, though...

I never knew that- every day I find something about which to be grateful for my choice to avoid having to comply with building regs. I didn't like any of the front doors I could find- insufficient glazed area, and universally made in wood which I worried would be difficult to tie in with my rough sawn cladding. I ended up buying what was described as 'half a French door' which was TG alu clad to match my windows, maximum glazed area, far, far better U value than any of the front doors I considered, and was cheaper as well. I was left wondering why anybody would choose a conventional front door, and now I know

Think I missed this thread first time round, congratulations to you for seeing it through with the planners. They can be a contrary bunch. One of my childhood memories from my parents' self build was of driving around the local area to take photos of houses containing all the features the planners had said we couldn't have, because they were out of keeping with the vernacular.

Hi and welcome to the forum. Harris is indeed lovely, as you'll already know. Some of the best beaches anywhere. You're not far at all from me- I'm in Skye. I'm sure you'll have lots of fun organising haulage etc

Because the MVHR ducting is the best ventilated part of the whole house!

We went for the old trick of having a baby half way through the build. Now I grab every chance going for a bit of shut eye.

That's a slightly different aspect of the detailing but a very useful one, thanks. I used black Siga Wigluv tape to seal the join between the window and the frame, and the reveal boards should hide that. Te plan had been to run a bead of sealant but the PVC strip seems quite interesting.

Thanks chaps! Google image searches had suggested keeping boards intact, and I was starting to wonder if I should have thought of this way back when I drew up the positions of the opening! But I do tend to over think things...

Hope to crack on with some of the wall cladding this week. 100mm wide vertical boards at 150mm centres, with a second layer of the same on top to close the gaps. All pretty standard stuff. Question is- when I get to an opening, and it inevitably doesn't exactly hit the edge of a board, do I stick to the pattern and just rip the board down to the necessary width? And if it's a window, I would have to just take a chunk out of it. Seems a bit of a faff and a good way to expose end grain. Or, alternatively, do I plan the spacings to be slightly over or under 150mm so that each opening is met with a full width board? Makes marking out tedious. I don't know if anybody would see the slight difference in spacing, it would only be a few mm. @Tennentslager what did you do?

Guess it was too subtle for me when you first posted it

Bumping this as I'm about to install the flue and flashing. The Dektite flashing didn't come with a fixings kit- I wonder if I can use some of the 'stitch' screws that came with my roofing, to fix it to the metal? They are self cutting and have sealing washers. Not sure how much of a bite they will get into a single thickness of the roofing sheet though.

I went to pick my backer board up from the BM last week. The guys in the yard had absolutely no clue what I was asking for, despite the office having sold me it and given me a ticket. Eventually had to get the manager to dig it out from a hidden hidey hole. So, yeah, they obviously don't sell very much of it! I am tempted to use backer board in the shower enclosure itself, but irritatingly the sizes it comes in (800mm wide boards) don't tie with my stud centres. Plasterboard would be easier and cheaper...

Unfortunately the best views are to the north/ north west (over the Minch to Harris). In the other direction, to the south, you're looking out over the village and on to a wind farm- so there are no windows looking in that direction! The topography of the site also plays a part- if I had built the house the other way round it would have had the long axis running down the slope, so the piers would have had to twice the height. And I seriously doubt I would have got planning for it.

The wall with the patio door is facing west, so going round the corner takes you on to the north facing gable. So you'll onoy get sun there very late in the day in summer, but it will be out of the wind. I was thinking some sort of bench seat round there would do the job, no need for building a much bigger deck. Likewise, the idea with the short 'L' on the integrated seating is that it tives you somewhere to sit with your back to the wind. It's not a lot of seating area but there will only be two people in this house. The ballustrade on the right hand edge of the decking would be more solid to provide a windbreak (I could even look at doing that one bit in glass?)

I don't think fossil fuels are going to run out before your battery needs replaced (c.10 years). What are your space heating requirements? (Hint- if you are truly a greenie, the answer should be pretty close to zero).

How much does site exposure play a part in the decision? It's very exposed where I am, and I feel like I am forever opening or shutting the trickle vents. On a breezy day it is too noisy with them open, and also gets very cold. But on calm days the window frames start going mouldy and the house feels very stale, and the windows run with condensation. Going with MVHR on the new house was therefore a fairly easy decision for me. The system is costing well under £1000.

As I understand it, all houses need tested, but the actual pass rate you need to achieve is really quite low. I feel your pain with the fixed costs and fees- even though I have managed to avoid a portion of them, it is a much bigger chunk of my budget than it would be for a larger house. Just FYI, my planning fee was £500, road access permit about the same, wate conn £1000, electricity conn £2000. No tree survey. By building a 'portable building' I have avoided BC drawings/fee, SAP, and air leakage test costs. I also did my planning drawings myself.

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