Ecthelion

Fair enough. Export wasn’t the main driver for me. I wanted away from oil and the volatility of oil prices. So ASHP combined with solar and battery has done that in my case. The 3 measures have added value to the house as the infrastructure costs (interest free loans) don’t pass to any buyer and the improved EPC from CC to BA also adds some value. For a lot of the summer I was only paying the daily standing charge as any background use of the grid was cancelled out by export. Winter will be expensive on electricity but probably less than I would have spent on oil. It all hinged though on the £10,500 total in govt grants.

I get 15p with Octopus.

I see. The way I did it was I researched the pumps, picked the one I wanted, (Grant Aerona) then searched for a grade 1 installer for that pump and that they were MCS certified.Then I just put on the paperwork for the grant what the pump was and who the installers were.

Why wouldn’t you want it MCS installed?

Actually no, sorry, those are the old plans and were going to need to much steel so we reduced slightly.

Sure.

The garage I have just built is 113sqm of usable floor space and including a small kitchen and bathroom and flooring etc in the upstairs it came in at £1249 per sqm. This is in Ayrshire. The builders built the timber kit themselves apart from the attic trusses. I think I could have swapped the price of the steel door frame, the garage door, the outside staircase at £12k and possible have had a reasonably finished house. There are smaller houses near me by big house builders selling at £375k. And yes I paid vat on everything. but I was very lucky with these builders who I trusted because they worked very hard at pricing the job, looking into everything. I had 2 cheaper quotes but I know they would end up costing more because they hadn’t done their homework. in Scotland, there’s hope for self build but it dwindles by the day.

Agreed on the money. It will be better in the long run and you will get the house you want, so that is the benefit at the moment. Material and construction costs have put paid to making immediate money on a new build. Our house without the garage is 294sqm and the construction cost all in was £300k in 2016. I feel very lucky, it would closer to £450k now and barely viable. I would still do it though for the aforementioned benefits.

Aye we don’t have UFH upstairs either. I’ve only ever see that once, on a TV show and it seemed absurd. Unless maybe just the electric kind in bathrooms etc. We went with radiators upstairs and Karndeal tiles in the bathrooms. They don’t really get cold like traditional tiles.

Oh. Good point. I’m not sure. My mistake. I think there are other schemes though and if it’s zero vat rates could still be better than oil. I’m assuming an absence of access to gas, which was the case for me.

People near me have electric gates and I found them ridiculously expensive. They also break a lot. Instead I put in a cattle grid, with a bit of fencing either side. Cost £2k all in, including the digging. it keeps the dog in and other dogs out. The kids can cross the cattle grid but it slows them down considerably and they won’t be wee and daft for long.

Exciting times! I built in Ayrshire and learned a couple things. Things I would recommend if building rurally are: do underfloor heating. get an ASHP - you will get £9k grant from Scottish government and with zero rate vat that should cover pretty much the full cost. I can highly recommend the Grant Aerona R32. getting the ASHP unlocks funding for solar panels and batteries. You would get £1250 toward each and the remainder as an interest free loan payable over 10 years. So if you have a south or even SE or SW roof design them in. I got the ones which sit in the roof rather than on top and they look very neat. Put data cabling everywhere alongside the electrics. Cat 6A. My biggest regret is not doing this. We have 1gb fibre but have to rely on mesh system and front haul so we don’t get the full benefit, maybe we will when WiFi 7 comes out but that’s going to be an expensive upgrade. If you are having a wood burner and it is more central in your house rather than on an external wall you can get additional heat benefit upstairs with louvres and things rather than having the flue just encased behind plasterboard.

Big Dug, no I haven’t! I’ll Google now. Thanks very much.

Local guy who is really more of an architectural technician. I know him a little bit and I just worked with him and specified what I wanted. He got it through planning and the structural engineer didn’t really add much other than reassurance. it was really Pasquill, the attic roof truss designers who made the difference. I was a bit worried from the final drawing that the room was going to be too long and narrow. I spoke to them and also about the possibility of storage in the walls. They designed it with the recesses which are great and otherwise the veluxes would have been odd and too low. But if they were higher you wouldn’t be able to see out of them. So one side has 5 recesses and works great. The other one side has 2 recesses but a big long section of storage in the eves, accessed by a side panel at one of the recesses.

It has a shower room as well, not sure the shower will ever be used. I don’t find office work gets much of a sweat on!

You can have my drawings any time. 🙂👍

Thanks guys, the upstairs of the garage is my man-cave/home office. Wanted to do it for a while and probably took 2 years including planning. Planning didn’t take long but finding a builder did and then we had to wait before they could start. Then the dug the hole in December and everything froze up. It was really start of Feb before we got going. Finished mid August. Could have been finished faster but we weren’t in a rush and have a good relationship with the builders.

Very pleased with it. I need to organise the downstairs now somewhat. Can anyone recommend any good wall storage solutions. I’m looking for some robust, deep shelving that can go floor to ceiling but just running down blind alleys.

Nice to meet you all. I built my house 7 years ago. Found a 3 acre plot with detailed planning on it and made a few internal layout changes. We then contracted the sellers, who happened to build houses, to do the build. it went fairly smoothly and have never regretted it. I have tried to encourage so many people to self build but they are just daunted. this year we have kicked it on a level. We’ve just finished finally building the garage. We made do with a shed for 7 years as we spent the money on the build, adding things like underfloor heating, wood burner, oak fittings etc. I also changed the oil boiler this year for an ASHP. Got at £9k gov grant and it’s been great. On the garage we added a 5.46kW solar array and a 10KW battery. Didn’t get much out of it this weekend but we’ve hardly spent a penny all summer. we are allowed one more building on the property for certain. A lot of people round here have those green steel barns but now I’m looking for inspiration for something that’s more multi-purpose/ convertible so will probably be checking out the garage/workshop pages quite a bit. Will also enjoy looking at other new builds as they go. we have a family plot in the highlands as well, might need to look at doing that in the next couple of years.