Crofter

I've just taken delivery of my secondsandco order. The driver said that they have a contract with Kingspan to take all their reject sheets and nobody else can get them. I found them pretty good to deal with and they drove a lorry all the way to Skye for £50, which surely must have wiped out their entire profit margin on the order!

Agree with everyone above. I'm the biggest cheapskate going but still used some 9mm osb to board over the openings temporarily. Actually I knew I was going to need some later in the project anyway so it won't go to waste. On the smaller windows I just flew the membrane across the openings and left it in place (this was on a lower exposure elevation and windows less than 1m square). I then spent about £15 on rigging up some temporary lighting inside- cheap pendants and a multipack of LED bulbs.

Big yellow thing is in the sky... boat is calling... see you peeps in a few days

One of the few areas of my build where I have spent significantly more than the minimum was the windows and exterior doors. I priced up the cheapest 2G uPVC with a U-value of 1.6-2, but couldn't face sticking cheap plastic windows into a timber clad building. Thanks to @iSelfBuild I was able to import some alu-clad 3G windows/doors from Poland. They worked out nearly double the cost of the very cheapest uPVC option, but still less than the quotes from UK companies. I'm really pleased with them, and the likely longer service life and better energy efficiency help justify the higher cost. In particular I love the front door- I spent ages looking up 'proper' front doors but couldn't get the right combination of timber to compliment my cladding, plus enough glazing (the entrance hall's only source of natural light is the door). So I got one half of a set of French doors from the same range as my windows- voila, perfect match, plenty glazing, and far better U value than the 'proper' doors.

Thanks Peter- I've always had white or light grey plastic gutters. Only breakages have been when tiles blew off the roof and smashed the gutter on their way down.

Have I just been very lucky to have had plastic gutters on every house I have owned and not had any problems? When people say it fails after a few years, do they mean it actually stops working, or just that it starts to fade a bit?

And, in case things were looking too easy, you also have to get it past SEPA/EA as well!

By the way, another treatment option to throw into the mix is the Puraflo. This operates quite differently from a treatment plant as it is a more passive aeration process. You have a conventional ST then the Puraflo is downstream. It is basically a big box full of peat, where the effluent trickles through and is treated by the organisms growing within. From there, you have various discharge options- a conventional soakaway would count as tertiary treatment as so is not really necessary; I went for a partial (reduced size ) soakaway. I opted for this system for two reasons: 1- very slow draining soil ruled out a conventional system, and the soakaway area required even for a treatment plant would have been impractical. 2 - potential holiday usage of the new build meant that there were going to be problems with usage and occupancy rates. Puraflo told me their product is self regulating and simply adjusts to the demand placed on it.

I was told, in the context of investigating discharge to a dry ditch, that the effluent is 'clean' i.e. no pathogenic organisms, but it is full of organic matter which will quickly turn to slime. So, whilst it may be 'safe to drink', I wouldn't!

On fridges, we were very happy with the one in our previous house- Beko side by side American style, but without an ice or water dispenser. Consequently, bags of space inside. £500 well spent.

Mine too! Tools in general have been money well spent. My Makita addiction might have cost me nearly £600 but it's been worth it for the increased productivity, and I guess I could sell them on at the end, although more likely you'd have to prise them from my cold dead fingers

In a different league, pricewise. A bit late for me as I ordered my larch yesterday!

Good points. I do rather prefer the fresh colour of newly sawn larch, but to be honest I'm happy to go with whatever option provides a decent even finish at an acceptable upfront cost and/or ongoing time/cost to maintain. What I want to avoid is the neglected look that some larch-clad properties up here have, e.g. uneven weathering under shaded overhangs, streaks and patches of black or green, etc. I'm still researching options and had, like yourself, assumed that any sort of treatment meant sticking with the original colour, or close to. In terms of lifespan, I know more about marine finishes (paint, varnish) than other types, but for these the main factors are UV exposure and frost. I hadn't really thought about driving hail as a mechanical process, but I suppose it must have an effect.

In a similar incident, a whole load of new PFI schools were built a few years ago in the Western Isles. One morning the staff turned up to find a big atrium rooflight lying in pieces on the floor. As the same design had been used in most of the schools, they all had to be shut for a few days. Not quite as bad as the school in Edinburgh where a lassie was killed, but of course it could have been pretty bad. So not an isolated problem.

Thanks for the link, I hadn't really looked into this much before now- I had done some reading which suggested a DIY worktop was certainly feasible. I am quite surprised by how dry the mix is. I had assumed that you would use a fairly normal mix that would flow, especially with a bit of vibration.

Very interesting topic. I am contemplating concrete for the worktop, but I was going to just use snowcrete, pour it upside down in a mould, and vibrate the heck out of it with my vibrating poker. Grinding it down by hand sounds a bit tricky! By the way did anybody see the episode of 100k house where the two guys poured a concrete kitchen island? It was their first ever DIY concrete pour and it was... interesting. Presenter said it looked rustic and honest, or similar euphemisms; I would have been angle grinding it into little bits and throwing it a skip before anybody saw it!

Thanks, dressed makes more sense I guess, I may well copy you on this!

It's an interesting idea- we discussed it a while back on the forum:

Yes I know wall units are 'out' at the moment. But with a tiny house (I have a 12ft wall to fit an entire kitchen into) I don't think I can afford the luxury of not having wall units. Unless I just don't have any actual food and the kitchen is strictly for display purposes only...

Hi Rich- what did you make of your larch fascias? Did you use rough sawn same as your cladding? I was going to just use WBP but now that I think about it, larch would make sense since I am buying a kilometre of it anyway for the cladding.

Out of curiosity, what kitchen is this? I'm trying to persuade SWMBO that wood isn't dead yet.

I guess this thread is the place to admit my Makita obsession: chop saw plus 18v kit comprising drill, driver (both brushless), circ saw, angle grinder, and sander. Fortunately I don't count tools against the house budget because that little lot cost me more than I am going to spend on the bathroom

What would be using to build the furniture- foil faced MDF, timber, etc? To be honest it sounds like a lot of work!

I've been quoted a much lower price from a local guy-with-a-saw short of outfit, but that leaves me mixing and matching as he cannot supply the smal number of longer lengths that I need.

Well spotted, you plumbers are a clever lot Think I'll phone them in the morning. If I do end up with a solvent weld cap, is it just a case of adding a short length of plain ended pipe to make everything fit?