Bitpipe

We have a Haecker kitchen (1 year old now) and are very pleased with it - superb attention to detail and very substantially built. Our utility had some awkward elements to fit around (gas boiler flue, 180mm MVHR ducts) so the installer pretty much built a bespoke unit around those parts. One year in it still looks good as new.

So time has come to move away from Ecology and lock into a cheaper rate. Have just passed the 2 year lock-in period and have shortlisted a two year and five year fix which I need to decide upon. I have a warranty (Zurich) but do not yet have a completion certificate from BC, need to finish a few external elements before I'll get that. Talking to the broker (found through Quidco), there's an open question as to whether that's needed for the mortgage, depends on how diligent the surveyor is. Anyone else done this recently and anything else to watch out for?

We've used Ecology and they have been a dream - money is released without any hoops to jump through and you can have as much or as little as you need at any time - obv. they have lending criteria (passive/SAP A) so not for everyone. In our case, we used the pot of money to get the groundworks done and then drew down the first chunk of money, starting the two year redemption penalty clock ticking. In retrospect, we should have pulled out £50k early on and kicked off the two year timer early. Coming to the end of our time with them and about to remortgage to a conventional provider - will start a thread about that in a bit..

We had full height scaff erected around the basement ahead of the frame erection and the MBC boys needed to knock it about as it was too tight at the top. Then the window installer had to trim a few tubes to get the sliding doors in, and finally we had to lift a board and adjust tubes for the render guys. The (rather scary) scaff guy came onsite one day and was pissed off - wanted £1500 to put it right before he'd take it down. Next day I came home to see Brendan cheerfully dismantling more scaff around our utility room to make way for the garage Luckily the render guys were excellent and tweaked the scaff as they went so the scaff guy had no cause for complaint when he arrived to take it down. Top tip - if you do cut tubes for whatever reason - dump them in the skip asap and if possible swap the tubes around so the cut ends are not visible. It's the first thing they noice... As for H&S, never came near us and we had a large build with basement excavation etc.. however we are down a cul de sac so had to notice in passing. I know Herb J got collared the day his frame was being delivered and that caused quite a few days of delay for him .

I remember that when our Gebrit frames were delivered we had forgot to order the extra angled brackets to fix them to the frame - had to scramble about to get them in time.

The slab (and kicker if you're doing it that way) itself should not need that much formwork, certainly none of the steel braces you see in my pic, as it will only be 200-300mm high. Once it's poured and cured then it should be able to take the load easy. It's the vertical elements that need the bracing, no reason why you cant build in situ, will just take longer I suspect. Our guys built the corner (inc. window) and wall panels flat and then craned them around with some fine tuning for each pour. They could have torn them apart and remade for each pour if space was tight but it would have taken much longer.

I was amazed at the amount of work that our basement team put into the formwork construction. The panels were very heavy duty (needed craned into position) and each one was custom made for the given pour, the steel threads & nuts that tied the panels together were also sizeable. For reference, each pour was about 2.7m high and about 2-3m wide. Ridges were built into the end sections to leave channel grooves to take the water-bar for the next section. Guys probably spent two days building the formwork for each pour (they did 2 sections simultaneously, a corner and a central panel). Not saying that you and your mate are not competent but I guess it a question of materials, time and the cost (and liability) if any pours go wrong - either a burst or a wall that is not true or waterproof etc.

We used Karndean in our basement as an alternative to tiles. Cost and comfort driven choice (No UFH there). Looks great and quite robust.

I feel your pain, currently running around the house taking MVHR measurements with the anemometer that I borrowed from the forum and a big card cone to focus the airflow. Son (12), who is naturally good at maths but generally disinterested in anything technical other than his XBox or phone, asked what I was doing. I explained that the device measures air flow in m/s and we can convert that into m3/h by knowing the cross sectional area of the measuring probe - all stuff he's doing in y8 maths. You could see the eyes glaze over rapidly, he thought I was going to test a smoke alarm by setting fire to the card... +

Looks amazing. Is this before you moved in or do you always keep it that tidy

The OR surveyor recommended that we DIY the road crossing and pulling the cable and the guys who turned up were more than happy. Worst case you have an expensive pull cord in your duct :). Superfast fibre is just to the local cabinet, bog standard copper twisted pair from there through the 'last mile' to your pole / JB and then to your house. FTTK/H (fibre to the kerb/home) is still pretty rare in UK - I think Virgin are doing it in some areas?

One option is to buy your own cable at TLC and pull it in yourself. 5 pair cable is about £60 for 100m. Leave the slack at their end of the duct run - what have you ducted to, a pole or BT junction box? Come connection time, when you're moving in, you order a new line from BT or whoever and when OR turn up, just point them to the cable and they're more than happy to make the connection at both ends. Quite a few threads here already about this - just search for OpenReach.

Ah, yes, makes sense now Best to cast in appropriate ducts now, drilling after is a pain and you also need to angle the hole to fall to the outside which can be tricky.

What my guys did was put a section of duct (150mm for fouls, 80mm for services) horizontally in the steel, butted up tight to the formwork either end with two rings of Sikaflex waterbar. Separate duct for each service as your guys say. When the concrete is poured, these get set in watertight. Confused as why they would ever be vertical? The services themselves are put through these penetrations later and the gap is filled per the Stopaq spec (super sticky stuff ). You can also use puddle flanges and put an actual section of services through, this only really works for fouls.

Yes, aside from the fouls (110mm going through a 150mm sleeve that was cast into the wall) we ran two 80mm ducts (similarly cast into the wall) into the plant room for electricity and water - both coming in about 6-700mm below wall top. Once the cable / pipe were pulled through, I sealed the gaps between sleeve and services with Newton Stopaq 308. For BT we drilled a 25mm hole through the wall, pulled through the BT cable (and a cat6 cable to kiosk for future gate control) and sealed that hole with Newton Stopaq. These only come in about 150mm below wall top, probably should have cast in a duct but doubt I'll ever have any issues. Gas comes onto site in a yellow perforated duct to a ground box and then into the house above ground level in copper, drops down into plant room once inside.

Yes, their proactive nature has come as a relief - I've given them space to deal with it and stayed calm.

This is exactly what they need to understand - nothing's happening until then.

Just had director of render firm plus local Parex rep round. Board rep couldn't make it today but is planned to visit at some point. There is a definite 3-4mm dip between boards now when putting a straightedge over the top. Boards do not seem to have any give and the system is intact, no cracks. If they're all confident that the boards have settled into their final position then they will apply a top coat of maite, mesh and DPR (top coat) all round. We have generous reveals and drip gaps on the cills and other fascia so no issue there. May get away with using a scissor lift vs scaff. If they think the boards are subject to more movement then something more radical will be required.

Are the quotes itemised? Both of our contenders for the job gave rates and quantities for excavation, muck away, concrete & steel (these were SE specced) plus formwork rates, crane and pump hire etc, backfill material, drainage materials etc - made it easy to compare like for like and see where the money was going and question some of their assumptions & calcs. The prices came to within £10k of each other on a £200k job, we went with the firm that felt more organised - they usually build underground carparks and the like so our job was small beer. I do think that when you combine 'basement' with 'self build' the £££ signs start to mount up in some contractors eyes. Ground workers are almost always local but the concrete team will travel to jobs (as they are essentially labour) +- tricky part if you split between contractors is deciding who is responsible for supplying the formwork, plant and getting the concrete on site. Depending where you are, I can PM you our concrete guy's details.

In my limited experience, quite a few basement specialist contractors will advise an internal membrane draining to a sump & pump arrangement. This can work fine but if the pump fails or there is a power cut..... Starting question for @Triassic is what are your ground conditions like? Your SE should have interpreted these (bearing strength, water table location etc, and designed accordingly - down to bar bending schedule etc. If you have this level of detail then I'm surprised that you're getting such massive variations in quote - ours were within 10% of each other once normalised. if you're essentially above the water table, then WPC alone should suffice. We have a land drain to soakaway at the foot of the slab and backfilled the 1m working space with large clean stone (fist sized), so any surface water quickly drains away.

There are quite a few admix products, we used Sika, Kryten (mentioned above) is another. What's key is that your concrete pour team are trained in the system and you get the work inspected at each stage by the manufacturer to get the warrantied sign-off. Our groundwork contractor used two guys who did all the steel work, shuttering and pouring, plus a few labourers. It's quite skilled, especially the formwork construction, which is very heavy duty stuff - panels needed to be moved with their machine. There is a 6m linear pour limit for vertical sections of waterproof concrete, so once the slab and kicker were poured & cured (in one shot), they built two formwork sections (one a corner and one a flat wall), that they rotated around our build to make best use of time - each section took 24 hours before being struck and then 3-4 days to go off before a neighbouring section could be poured. When they did the 100mm slab kicker, they left a groove in the top (using shuttering) to house the water bar for the wall pours. Ditto, a groove was left at the end of each vertical section for the same reason. Before the bar was applied, each groove was cleaned out, scarafied and dried with a blow torch. They then used an approved Sika mastic to hold the bar in place. All penetrations (150mm sleeves for 110mm drains to follow) were double wrapped in water bar before the pour. Everything was photographed and emailed to Sika rep for approval and on a few days he came in person. BC wanted to inspect the steel before pours also, checking that it matched the engineers spec - the concrete guys called out a few omissions and mistakes in the SEs bar schedule and added extra reinforcement around door and window corners to prevent cracking.

Thats who supplied our blocks of EPS 200 for the basement foundation and the EPS70 to clad the basement walls. Just plain 2400x1200x300 blocks, no fancy forms.

As an 18 month 'dweller' we found summer much more uncomfortable than winter. A top tip we were given in our first winter was to use a dehumidifier once it started getting cooler. As caravans have lots of ventilation openings and are usually dependent on LPG (oven, boiler and fire), there can be a lot of water vapour in the air, especially when its damp outside. As the van cools overnight, the vapour condenses out and the floor can feel very cold in the mornings. The dehumidifier significantly reduced this effect and, as it kicks out some heat, it also removed the need for the LPG fire (further reducing the water vapour in the air). The increased electricity to run it was worthwhile for the additional comfort.

Our house is about 20m off the boundary where the gas main is so we had to have a meter next to the house (in an ugly brown ground box and then take it into the house from there. Electricity is in a kiosk near the boundary, did this prior to demolition so we only had to get the DNO out once. Don't forget to run data cables (or make duct provision) if you plan to have video / audio intercom on boundary and /or want access control of gates or entrances. I've just run an exterior grade ethernet cable to my kiosk from the basement plant room in black electric duct for this purpose ahead of completing the landscaping around the house.