nod

If we where to include best money spent I would say local authority BC £850 Similar to private The difference being unlimited visits Call before 10am for same day Twice in one day with foundations and drainage Fantastic value for money

Ah we haven’t included the cost of the plot Just build cost and services

The Architect I’d dealt with before and told him We couldn’t afford to go over 2000 His able assistant did most of the work There was your standard county Counsul submission fees on top which we paid directly He only had one site visit and no involvement after materials had been passed Not a bad earner The SE has done quite a bit for me over the years and is the local authority guy to go to 350 for foundations and 150 for lintels steels and a couple of alterations Planning had insisted on peculation and ground tests He said your across from a sand pit quarry No point I will speak to planning One phone call and that was that we didn’t have any rental costs But if we had I wouldn’t have included in the build cost Same with tools bought or hired I have most things But I did include the scaf hire and two months for a diesel.cement mixer a roller dumper two excavators Though If I’d purchased these I would have knocked the sale price off my calcs

The 850 per mtr I quoted included all fees and connections But we didn’t have any borrowing Architects and SE where kept to a minimum 2500 We were also dry lucky with Conections 800 840 1250 But we overspent by 4000 on difficult Groundworks I included Three German bathrooms and Kitchen But at the time had no idea of cost for landscaping and 400 mtrs of driveway paving However the vat refund will cover what we have since spend With enough over for a couple of holidays

I’m just hoping BC don’t start being Arsey about this one that I’ve fitted

Amazing bit of plastic Love it

The best one that we have had for coping with what you describe and price have been Nil Fisk

We received a parcel this morning containing all our invoices and a note saying the amount claimed will be paid in the next 21 days We submitted on June 13 So not that long a wait To help others with some of the uncertainties The build has taken us 24 months to move into a 90 % complete house By the time we moved in we had been paying a reduce rate of Counsul tax on a inhabitable house Even though we where paying full CT on our home Thats another story We moved in in December But wasn’t ready for sign off I built my infamous Timber Disabled access in March in order to be signed off BC duly signed us off in May With a footnote saying Landscaping incomplete Temporary DA access Its very difficult to know how long you can leave your vat claim after moving in But we carried on purchasing items for the build on pretty much a daily basis Two of the invoices where for the day of the claim Thankfully all been pretty straight forward

Yeah Russ problem with plasticiser and anything white It tends to bless through Back in the day any SC that was tiled had to be plasticiser free The mix above will dry brilliant white Wet dash mix We called it a Cumbria mix

Four spades of silver sand 1 white cement 1 spade Of hydrated lime NO plasticiser

Green Oak we have the same cracks They will be standing long after we have gone

I do a lot of these We normally counter baton the ceiling to stop the insulation sitting on the airtight barrier and fix the airtight barrier taught onto the counter batons The board with duplex Again with the slopes Baton then run your barrier 200 mil onto the upright

From the horses mouth Don’t do it

Your house looks amazing We watched the GD program with interest Though I suspect the plot prices where more than on GDs to

Site rates in lancs Manchester £20 sq mtr Most guaranteeing a basic Tele handler and silo

Similar answer to above I’m afraid We have multiple lines of ash trees Shallow rooted medium amounts of water On Clay also My first thoughts where to chop them down But our SE explained that it would have the opposite effect and advised foundations at 1.8 and clay board around the perimeter to cope with the heave

In the end we opted for unfinished and followed Peters lead with two coats of Osmo With 26 doors purchase Unfinished is quite a saving

Don’t agree I’ve put thousands of mtrs of parge on and it’s a waste of money for airtightness Correct pointing is far more effective Why on earth would you climb into a chimney to parge when you can simply point it as building Ours is BB and I could have parged the internal skin in a afternoon But chose to point On dot and dab the air shouldn’t get through to the block in the first place Ours showed no leakage at all around the PB Parge is useful for sound deafening But a waste of money for airtightness

Really poor block work It should have been pointed and bar jointed as it was built Chuck it back at the builder

Simalar ground conditions to ours We initially scraped the site Most trenches where full filled at 1.8 By the time we had added drainage under the BB floor There wasn’t much of a void

I should have said Getting an exact price from Wickes is like pulling Teeth They seem to have that 50% off fitting most of the time For me that would be worrying if fitters are working for half pay They told us all fitters are employed by them But while we where in They were telling someone We have left numerous messages with the fitter He could even be on holiday

Give Chris Dewhirst a call Of Dewhirst’s estates He still does all the valuations

Most are happy to come and give you a valuation Once water tight If only to get your business when you sell your current home The one we chose is a large independent A young lady called us from his office every month for a year to see how we were getting on We had overspent on Groundworks and had about to start first fixing Do we pull the overspend back Or go ahead with the planed fit out It’s a tricky one Even if your not thinking of selling you don’t want to spend more than the market value Back to forever home You never know what is around the corner My wife’s furious with me I’ve made an offer on two plots of land While she doesn’t refer to our house as forever She has no intention of selling anytime soon

There seems to be a lot of confusion over vat and mark up on materials Andy explains it pretty well I answered a post a couple days back stating as a commercial Plastering and tiling contractor I invoice the company’s for labour and materials Someone rightly pointed out that I am charging vat on my mark up on materials I answered that I don’t make anything on the materials I suspect your main contractor will get the materials for your roof slightly cheaper than you and that should be his markup So you shouldn’t be paying any extra Its all about cash flow HMRC will get the same amount weather you pay or your contractor