Crofter

Babies seem to be an obligatory part of self building! Ours has just passed the ten month mark

I'm gradually coming to realise that I will have to put some sort of surface on my driveway. It has worked out a bit steeper than I had hoped and has a sharp bend in it half way down- this is also the steepest part. The total length is about 35m and it is made from rock topped with crusher run that has been graded and compacted as much as a two and a half ton digger can manage (which isn't a lot). The resulting loose surface is, unsurprisingly, a right PITA leading to scrubbing and wheelspinning at the corner. I've had a quote for tarring the whole lot, at £4k + VAT, and on top of this I would need to budget for some sub base to be rolled onto the existing surface. That's a fair whack. What would be wrong with using concrete instead? I can lay a 100mm slab for a quarter the cost of the tarmac, although I might have to add rebar to that, and buy in timber for shuttering. However it is extremely tempting. The other option to cut the cost is to surface only the steepest part of the drive, at the corner. This would favour concrete again as the on-site cost for the tarmac guys seems to be quite significant. I can get a volumetric concrete delivery so the 3-4 cube that I need would be no problem for them. So... apart from perhaps not looking as nice as tarmac, what's not to like?

Isn't it nice when things turn out to be simple

You could try putting a bulb across the terminals and see if it lights up? LED ones are fairly sensitive to voltage but I'm guessing you may not happen to have a 12v one lying around to hand. The Crofting way would be to check if you can get a spark by brushing a wire connected to one terminal across the other terminal (fleeting contact only). If the battery really is at 1.2v then you won't get anything. Another obvious one, does the charger have different modes? E.g. a 6v one?

Even a completely irrevocably dead battery will still read something like eight or nine volts, in my experience. Apologies for stating the obvious, but is there any chance that the display only has two digits and is actually reading 12v? (which would still not be ideal as it should be about 13.2 for a recently charged battery in good condition).

Ok so I can get a 4.1m Axiom or Egger worktop in Inverness... I had heard that Duropal were the ones to go for, though. How much of a difference does it make? I can source a Duropal and get it up here via courier but it will probably cost a bit more and obviously is more hassle. Second, related question: Wickes have given me a 'sale' price, is it worth trying to squeeze a bit more on this? Will need to decide soon though as they guaranteed that price up till the new year.

Welcome aboard! How did you find us, by the way?

The negative equity on new builds thing is, I think, happening in two different ways. You have the (relatively) highly desirable areas like the Sleat peninsula with its £80k plots, which appeals to incomers with deep pockets, who are financing their dream house through the sale of one in a higher value part of the UK. Often older or retired people. They may wish for a very high specification, and may not fully appreciate the local ceiling values, or simply not care about them. If it's going to be your last ever house, what does the finished value matter? If it's your dream house, aren't we all guilty of letting the budget slip a bit? Alternatively, you have the local 'stayers' or 'returners' who want a basic but decent modern house in their chosen area, so that they can live close to family, work the family croft or business, etc. Again, they are building what they want and need, this time to a lower budget, and again the final sale value is not really part of the equation, because they are not planning on going anywhere. I do think that there is currently an abundance of overpriced plots on the market, post crash; as @AliG points out, this reflects sellers failing to adjust to current market conditions. Perhaps they are all holding out for that Grand Designs buyer with big dreams and deep pockets. Occasionally a plot sells, so I can see why people hold out if they are in a position to do so. But there aren't enough of these buyers, and it makes things tough for the rest of us with more realistic budgets. As to build costs, I could compare my 1976 Department of Agriculture bungalow with a modern house to give one example. My house is sturdy, but undoubtedly was cheap to build. Single glazing, storage heaters, quality of finish very poor by today's standards (walls and ceilings are not even taped, let alone skimmed. You can see every joint and nail. Cheap doors, skirtings, etc.) The foul drainage pipework is far too shallow to meet current regs and has no access points. The road crossing is at a depth of about 300mm, not today's 700. The septic tank and soakaway is a joke by modern standards, just a pile of stone really. The access and bellmouth is nonexistent, the house is basically built beside a layby on the road. The electric supply is a cable six inches below the lawn, and not in a duct. As originally built, there was virtually no insulation. Cold bridges and air leaks everywhere. Some of these factors can be avoided with better design and only marginal extra materials cost. But other ones are more significant. On the new house, I will have spent about a third of the budget on drainage, access, and laying services- all elements that if done 'the old way' would have cost a fraction of this. However, I would not advocate a return to the old fashioned standards. If we consider that houses should last for several lifetimes, and if we can agree that investing in more efficient housing is a good thing, then perhaps there is a case for more government intervention or support to enable that standard to be met. It is a long term investment, and not something that the open market is able to do by itself.

A couple of factors at play here. Housing stock and its price may not reflect need. So yes there are houses on the market but, in general, they are too large and too expensive for first time buyers or for people working in the few local industries. If nobody who lives and/or works in the area can afford the house, then it is overpriced, simples. Part of the original statement by Alasdair Stephen is that it costs so much to build a new house today. What @ProDave considers so ridiculous as to be impossible, that is, negative equity for new builds, is simply taken as fact in some parts of the Highlands (Alasdair singles out Lewis in his statement). This is not a new problem- many houses built under the croft house grant scheme would likely be uneconomic if built without the grant. If you plan to pass it on to your son, market value is not really important anyway. A further point is that the Highlands is not a monolithic entity. I can't claim to have first hand experience of the whole area, but I have lived approximately a decade of my life in each of Argyll, Easter Ross, and Lewis, and have been in Skye now for around four and a bit years. The housing, employment, and general economic conditions are not identical in each of these areas (nor is it identical within these areas). The economy within commuting radius of Inverness is very different to, e.g, Tiree or Kinlochbervie. Anyway, I'm not sure what can be done to lower the cost of building new houses in the areas where this is needed. Access to building land is obviously crucial. Placing some form of tie on a house is possible. I think it could be hard to do much about the actual building cost though, without going back to the old days. But it would be a very interesting discussion to have perhaps on another part of the forum.

I saw this doing the rounds on Facebook a few weeks ago, and actually meant to post it on the forum myself. It's received a fair bit of attention, with the original post being commented on by various local worthies (Councillors, MSPs, people in the industry etc) as well as coverage in the local paper. It's an issue fairly close to my heart- I used to do research work in rural development and population movement. And of course I have lived in rural Scotland all my life, and been one of those who watched in despair as property prices went through the roof in the early 2000s just as I had left home and was contemplating the near impossibility of buying something myself. Is there a problem? Yes, of course there is. The outflow of young people from rural areas cannot be sustained indefinitely and the demographics of many rural areas are changing, with an increasing proportion of part-time or retired residents. This then has a knock-on effect on the whole economy and becomes self perpetuating, as businesses move out of the area due to lack of suitable workforce. A fair number of the fishing boats rely on migrant workers from eastern Europe or the Phillipines these days. With traditional industries dying out, we risk seeing a gradual 'museumificiation' of the Highlands which is a very sad vision indeed. And eventually the overgrown and empty crofts will cease to resemble the (entirely man made) environment that visitors to the area expect to see. If this all down to housing? No. It's what happens when young people want to go and do something 'better' than their parents did, and when their local area doesn't offer anything. In some of our studies as the UHI, we discovered evidence of a cultural phenomenon where staying in your birthplace equated with failure- the product of generations of people being convinced that the only way to 'better yourself' was to leave. I think this attitude may be changing, helped in part by the diversification of employment that remote working brings, and the growth of interest in small self employed niches. I can think of a small number of people who have deliberately moved back to their rural areas to take a significant risk in starting up e.g. craft or outdoor sports businesses. Does housing play a role? Yes. There is a mis-match between the available employment opportunities and the market value of housing. Market value is distorted by the wealth of people moving into the area with deeper pockets. In some of the prettiest spots, e.g. Applecross, all the cute little traditional cottages are bought up by retirees or holiday home owners. If the only job you can get is cleaning or hotel work, how can you compete with someone who has just sold their ex-council flat down south for a six figure sum? The current mortgage situation does not help either. Whilst interest rates are next to zero, it is extremely difficult to persuade a bank to lend you money based on a seasonal minimum-wage job or an unproven new business idea. So what can be done about housing? Two things, fundamentally. One is to control the existing supply in such a way that houses become available to those who it is necessary to retain in the population, i.e. those of working age and young families. But this is fraught with difficulties. People are used to ownership as being an absolute right. Crofting tenure is about the only example I can think of where failing to meet certain conditions can result in your rights being taken away. Something similar could be extended to housing in general but I would expect fierce resistance. So the other option is to build more houses. There is no shortage of land. In some ways that makes things more frustrating. It is understandable that in the middle of a city a plot might cost hundreds of thousands, due to physical scarcity of parcels of land. But up here the scarcity is artificial. and is entirely a product of the combination of land ownership and planning policy. Finally, the actual build route/method and its impact on cost. This is not as big a factor as availability and price of plots, but will have some bearing. The cost of building a house has risen, as I'm sure we could all agree. Materials are up, the standard that must be met is up, people's expectations are up. On my own build I have been surprised at how large some of the unavoidable costs have been- water connection, planning fee, road related permits. From my point of view it does feel as though house builders are being milked to some extent by the cash-strapped council. It is possible, though, to buck the trend. I know a couple of people who have built very nice houses indeed at impressively low costs. It helps if the land is your family croft, and therefore free. It helps if you are under 40 years old and qualify for the higher rate of croft house grant. And it also helps if you are a tradesman whose old school mates are also tradies, and you can count on almost free labour for your project, as well as trade prices on materials and first sniff at good deals or surplus. This attitude of helping one another out is a defining characteristic of crofting communities, and just one of the things we are at risk of losing. Anyway, sorry for the essay...

Hi, great to have you aboard, don't be shy with the questions

@ProDave That sounds very practical, spot on! Now a question that I *should* know the answer to, because I've done plenty plasterboarding before: how do you tape/fill the joints between boards which are end to end, without a feather? As @jamiehamy pointed out above.

I've got a vaulted ceiling, where the buildup will be, from outside to in: rafters, 100mm PIR, vapour barrier, 25mm battens, and then plasterboard. The battens will follow the rafters, then the plasterboard will be fixed to the battens along the long edges. The total length from eaves to ridge is 3.17m so there will have to be a join along the short edge of the plasterboard. What sort of support do I need to give along this edge? Can scrim tape do the job? I am toying with filling the service void in this area with 25mm PIR which could perhaps be another form of support. Or I could run a batten perpendicular to the rafters but obviously it would only be supported by one screw every 600mm. I guess I will need to do that at the ridge and eaves anyway?

You'd have to amend your building warrant submission to include the additional insulation, and they might come back to you requesting a condensation risk analysis, maybe? Probably not a big hurdle at all to be honest.

'ang on Dave, you've out your frame up inside out, haven't you? (Sorry!) Seriously, though, this highlights the basic principle of vapour control- the wall buildup should get more permeable as you move outwards. So really it is everyone else who has their frame inside out. On my build, the PIR is on the inside of the frame, so whilst I haven't had any professional input on this I am happy that it will not be a condensation risk.

Ooh that's a controversial one. To be honest, though, I only moved to Skye quite recently, several years after the tolls stopped. Before that I lived on Lewis, which very much feels like an island; Skye just feels like any other bit of the Highlands, far less self contained, far more reliant on Inverness. Our annual mileage has quadrupled since the move and in many respects we are much more isolated. E.g. when the baby arrived, we were nearly three hours from the hospital, whereas on Lewis we had one ten minutes away. As for delivery (not talking babies here) basically everywhere north of the Great Glen seems to be treated the same, i.e. we pay through the nose. On the one hand it's understandable that if things have further to travel, they should cost slightly more. But it's the companies who refuse to use Royal Mail (flat rate UK wide) which really bug me. Or the ones who are free delivery everywhere else and then want a minimum of £20 to get to Inverness or beyond (like the laptop I just bought, that's 10% of the cost ffs). Anyway, rant over, merry Christmas, bah humbug

Vaguely reminds me of this:

Welcome to BuildHub! Ask away, we don't bite Whereabouts are you building?

It's an open plan living room and kitchen, measuring about 4.7x4m, so the kitchen is pretty dominant in that. Don't think the industrial look would work tbh. If I treat them like cattle, I won't get the customers I am hoping for. I'm willing to take the chance and make the place pleasant, in the hope that the overwhelming majority of people who stay there will enjoy it, respect it, and come back in the future. Yes I might be naive but, at the end of the day, I will have their credit card numbers

I was hoping to do it in concrete but have chickened out, the to-do list is long enough as it is as things are starting to fall behind schedule. Plus a 4m length would probably be a bit ambitious- although maybe joining it would be easier if I just made up some mortar and did it green.

I'm treating the worktop as something that will inevitably need replaced within, say, five years (almost tempting to buy teo of them and put one in storage!). I'm not in the least bit relishing the idea of buying two shorter bits and joining them. It would cost more anyway. The house will be a holiday let, so I'm not sure how much abuse the kitchen will get. Some weeks it will probably hardly be touched, other times it might get some use. But I don't think it will see the sort of day in, day out usage that a long term let would see. I've heard conflicting things about textured worktops- harder to clean, but maybe more resistant to damage, or at least showing up the damage. I would happily have a wooden worktop in my own house, but it seems a risk too far in a let. Only takes one careless person with a glass of red wine, or a hot pan, and that's it permanently marked.

People use them for cold frames or in their sheds. A mate of mine is building a fairly large conservatory/sunroom onto the side of his shed using entirely recycled DG windows that he has collected over the years.

I'm a bit surprised that it's a complex as it appears to be. My roofing membrane was quite pricey but then that has to be breathable. For the vapour/airtightness layer I had assumed that even a very thin layer of polythene would be 100% watertight and airtight. So maybe worth buying a slightly heavier gauge for longevity, but other than that...?

Confession time: I bought a £30 router from Lidl a year or two ago, and, erm, it's been used a grand total of once- for a job that really needed a pillar drill, but it was all I had at the time. So my router skills are decidedly untested...

Well strictly speaking that's a question for SWMBO... but something fairly dark, e.g.