G and J

We've just has a gang of 3 do our plinth and the majority of the ground floor blocks. They were super speedy and the quality of the work excellent, but they are used to having a "foreman" and their speed meant that without regular "eyes on" they could have completed a whole lot of "wrong" in no time at all. They'll be back to do the remaining blocks to just under joist level and the single skin garage, and this time we'll be ready 😉

“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity”. Think that actually both apply, however good the plan, sometimes you also need that following wind to fly

Me too. And many peeps struggle to understand me, so I know how they feel. My vote is for laterer.

Hang on now, it’s not just a fan. It’s a fan with an app. Therefore providing endless pointless distraction.

Welcome. Post your plans and I’m sure the grown ups on here will help you get a handle on things. And by plans I don’t just mean drawings, I also mean whether you’ll be wielding the nail gun or employing or whatever.

I take offence at that. I know I’m not very tall but to count me as half a person is just plain rude! 😉 I’m with @Nick Laslett on this one, next month would definitely be better. I’ve a highbrow social diary including things like a roof truss delivery this Friday, much as I’d like to come see.

Genie lift till above the balustrade and four strong peeps to lift it off the lift down onto the landing?

Going great.....very impressive and a good tip re the front door that we will seriously consider copying

Is there a translation into English available? 😕

Good grief I simply couldn’t cope with that. We are four months into the demo/founds/frame stage. I’ve been pretty much full time on site throughout so far. At some point I need to reduce my hours/intensity to make the project more reasonable for both of us. Working with a joiner now means keeping up with him, but once that’s over I can reduce my hours a bit to restore balance to the force - J will raise her eyes at that and shake her head almost imperceptibly, probably refusing to believe I can be less full on foc-used. She’s probably correct. But we’ll soon be getting more trades in: roofer; solar dudes; brickies; k-rend peeps; etc. In that way we will hopefully complete in less than the 15months site insurance we took out in March. If I took 3 years that would mean 2 more years out of the rest of our lives trashed. Ouch. That’s probably at least 10% of my remaining active years. I know we could do more than we are intending to, but at the core of it we designed our house. We made it happen. Regardless of how little I/we do I’m going to continue to think of us as self builders. Hopefully, eventually, happy (and quietly proud) ones.

We did some research before we finalised our designs and found exactly this.

Caveat.....we are not yet watertight (!)....but do have estimates/quotes to get us there Referencing @nod it does look like watertight will be about 50% (give or take) of what we set out to spend (obviously if we were to go wild with finishes, designer everything ...very unlikely....this could shift ). Once we'd built our budget, based on researching prices for materials and trades in relation to our m2 (rather than just £ what we had available wanted to spend!) we compared our budget to the " build it" pie chart and whilst initially it was tempting to think " we won't need to spend x on y" However it is easy for individual items to vary quite a lot when it comes to it e.g. services, given we already had all services in the bungalow we were demolishing we didn't expect a 10k payment to remedy a now "unacceptable" overhead connection, but overall, as a guide, it has proved to be fairly accurate.

The SE we didn’t use told us to engage a bore hole based ground survey costing £1.5k plus for three little holes which, in hindsight, would have told us nothing. Bob, the SE we are working with told me to get me spade out and dug 4 holes a meter deep and let me know when he can look down them. As I’m a Boy Scout at heart (never did get the Blue Peter badge I so dearly deserved) I complied and in addition made a water level and I did a site level survey which has proved itself to be invaluable. It was more pertinent for us as we rather inconveniently had a knackered bungalow filling the site back then, but still useful to have hard data on your levels. The test pits proved their worth, big time - we still hit a few soft bits but we managed with fairly close to designed foundation levels. In your shoes I’d seek agreement to visit site with a spade.

I think the only safe option regards what constitutes development in Proteks mind is to ask them......we've found them to be very helpful. Maybe a call and then a follow up email to confirm what you've understood?

The subtext to the post above was more in the spirit that we actually want a house that is fit for purpose, if not better, and by having 2 parties involved we feel we've got a bit more value.....it was not intended as a dig at the insurers, who are providing a service that we wanted (i.e. the safety net of future mortgagability). Protek never saw our drawings, but they had links to planning documents

Good grief, and I thought it was a simple question. We have a professionally created design that satisfies all the relevant regs. Tick. We are sticking to that design except where we perceive it can be enhanced in which case we seek agreement from our SE, who is brilliant apart from his long summer holidays. At times we have what seems to us, good ideas, so we research them before asking any grown ups. That research involves google and buildhub amongst other online resources, but often we fail to garner enough info from just searching so we ask for opinions. We aren’t trying to pull a fast one, or cut corners, quite the reverse. I can believe that a fire resistant/rated/whatever VCL is a waste of money, and maybe when I ask our retained grown up (Bob, our SE) thats what he will say, but I thought it worth asking. I’ll learn one day, perhaps. No gin, no cement dust yesterday, but I did spend the day inhaling polyurethane glue vapour, and generally getting too tired to think straight. Oh hang on, I can’t think straight any other time either. Perhaps that’s why I’m enjoying self build.

No, there shouldn't be, both are working to same regs, but as in all situations individuals may have a keener eye on areas of interest to them, so you do need to keep them all on side. Some warranty providers do also offer building regs, whether having them do both is a good idea, Idk, our building control guy is experienced and pragmatic.

It’s hard to believe that it’s a good idea to have a basic VCL when, for a few pennies more, I can have a fire rated one. But do I need one? Are there any downsides to having one? Has anyone here had one and found the downsides? What fire rated VCLs have peeps used?

The structural warranty technical audits are completely separate to those undertaken for building regulations (although there is of course some overlap in what they are looking at). The warranty company are basically trying to make sure they never have to pay out. Building control that you are following the regulations.

A big well done on spinning so many (contractor) plates at once. I’m trying to continue to erect our frame with our chippy whilst a team of brickies are on site and frankly I’m struggling big time. Hats off to you.

@Nickfromwales we are wrapping the ends of the joist in a water vapour permeable membrane as mentioned in articles found on the net. We had already planned to fill the ends of the joists with insulation. The ends of the joists are closed with a rim board and the gap between the joists and the header plate will be filled with mineral wool.

Yes. Rather than clog the blog I’ll respond in the original thread.

Ummmm, no. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, as we keep saying. But I then immediately try and sprint and fall over. Quite a rollercoaster too, emotionally. So was it so much smoother 34 years ago or was I better at dealing with it?

On your marks: Get set : Wait! Day 1 of panel erecting was rained off. Humph. I tried to pretend to be human again by popping into town with J for a spot of bargain hunting (for stuff we don’t need, natch) but inside I’m still a self build automaton. My recovery won’t really start till we move in methinks. Next day we start the day by admiring my new paddling pools. The previous week I carefully swathed the piles of panels with tarps before it rained oodles. Good theory. But without me noticing the panels with doors or windows happened to be uppermost so they filled with gallons of water - pulling the tarps into the hole with them, so parts of the panels got a bit wet as I wasted time bailing and lifting tarps to get rid of the water. Eventually we started fitting sole plates. Happily the blockwork was very close to mm perfect so there was little in the way of adjusting needed. Next job was to fix trimmers to the outsides of the windframe which stabilises the rear of the house, and was, we felt, the safest place to start fitting panels. Cue Hilti gun. I was dead clever at this point. Instead of wasting money hiring I bought a cheap ex-hire one. After a false start requiring the gun to be swapped I tried to use it to fix a trimmer to the windframe. Nil pois. The flange was 12mm and there was no way a Hilti nail was getting through. So I’d ended up wasting more money than hiring. Damn. Will try and resell. The self drilling screws I’d bought as a backup didn’t work either, they just snap. So the cavalry, in the form of J, raced to Grip Fixings for some FB self drilling screws which, after some experimentation we did get to work. Once the sole plates were down and the trimmers were on it was time to play musical panels (without music, we are a no radio site). The panels were stacked for most effective transportation, not in installation order. But that doesn’t matter as each panel has easily removable lifting straps so it’s dead easy for the crane to pull them off from the top, drop them into position, apply a temporary prop and go on to the next one till they are all up and can be stapled together. If you have a crane that is. Our site is oversailed by next doors telephone and mains cable, and the front of the site has both kinds of wire strung across it too. That’s why almost all of the timber frame companies I talked to at the self build show wouldn’t quote. Just one SIPs company would but they gave every impression of not caring about minor details like feasibility, perhaps because with the prices they charge they could hire a Chinook. The company we are using typically supply builders who instal themselves, which suited us a treat as tins of spinach aren’t that expensive, and otherwise it would be stick built on site which was a bridge too far. We’ve benefitted greatly from the experience and engineering knowledge of the panel company so in hindsight right now it feels like a really good plan. But on the ground, when the panel that logically should be installed next is at the bottom of the biggest pile with the biggest, heaviest panels sitting on top of it, one questions previous decisions. Many times I called time out to consider if we needed more muscle on the team. I have excess bloody minded JFDI determination but compared to Rolly the Chippy I’m a snowflake. I’m not sure he understands the word can’t, which makes ensuring on site safety requires both strength of character and a big gob. And firmly resisting the temptation to ‘just go for it’. To start with it really did resemble one of the old sliding tile puzzles I used to do as a kid. Only with tiles that don’t slide and are up to 8’ x 11’ and weigh up to 135kg. It started getting better when I took some time one evening to ship as much possible down to the man cave slab at the bottom of the garden. With each panel it got easier and we steadily accelerated. Happy days. Not so happy when it rained though, but we erected the little camping shelter I had in reserve which gave us somewhere to sit and plan in the dry and it gave us the chance to deploy my table saw, which is useful. On the Friday the joist delivery and subsequent stacking took me most of the day. The delivery driver was about 4 decades younger than me, a foot taller, looked strong and was brilliantly helpful. At first, us moving 6.3m 47kg posijoists from the lorry to our slab saw me running to keep up. After the first few he slowed down to match my speed, or so I thought. A few more and I found myself wondering why we were going so slow. I’d worn him out. By the time we’d finished he was visibly wilted, but we’d done it. I separated the flat roof stuff out and shipped that down the garden too, which used up the last of my day. Thankfully nothing stops Rolly the Chippy so he’d carried on doing useful stuff. By the end of the week we’d got the two sides mostly done. I stood in the back garden and looked back at the pics of the site when it was first cleared. We’ve come a long way. It was a needed boost. The next Monday our big glulam arrived, easily transported on my super useful little trolley. I’ve been laughed at and teased about my trolley, but it’s moved an awful lot both on the slab and up and down the garden. Rolly’s little board with casters is better for moving panels on the flat slab but my DeWalt trolley is the bee’s knees otherwise. By the end of Tuesday we had all load bearing panes (external and internal) up, with header plates in place so we were ready for the metal men to come and instal about 800kg of steel atop the panels. So Thursday Rolly and I rechecked everything was still plumb (small adjustments needed) after the weight of the steels had landed and then it was time to focus on getting ready for joist hanging. Friday saw the arrival of the same team of brickies who saved our plant based bacon equivalent two weeks previously. They are a team of celebrity look alikes: Pete Townshend; Paul Weller and Charles Branson. Despite this they are a whirlwind. It hadn’t occurred to me that hitherto I’ve only worked with builders, not brickies. They are brilliant at what they do, but they only do brick and blockwork. So I needed to ensure that all was done/planned ready for them. That meant sorting all the breather membrane on Friday late afternoon ready for the brickies’ Saturday shift. J and I worked late to do enough to be ready for them and whilst we managed it, with only a modicum of tetchiness, I now realise, that looking back, I really needed to stop and carefully think through how the brickies would work in with the project. They are a force of nature. Light the blue touch paper and dive for cover, but in a good way. Sort of. Once they start things happen so fast that there s no time for me to think, and frankly I wasn’t ready. I think we’ve just avoided cocking up but only by overusing J and my combined brainpower and if I’d been on my own the project would now be in trouble. It isn’t helped by the fact that they’d offered to do two days to sort the plinth bricks. That bit I was ready for. But then they announced that they could stay till the house blockwork was all finished, so things I thought were a good few days away were suddenly NOW! I’m loving working with Rolly on the frame, he’s precise, informative, patient with my constant stream of dumb questions, and he makes us productive. But I need to do my part of project management too. And it turns out I find it too easy to get lost in the woodshavings. J and I are project managing between us and that is working well. At least I think it is, if you’ve seen Arthur Christmas we’re a bit like his parents, Dad, like me, wears bright clothes, smiles a lot and peeps think he is leading, but in reality Mum, like J, is keeping track and thinking and usually quietly steering. I must try harder next week or we won’t be ready for the upstairs panel delivery next Friday! And like Rolly the Chippy, I can’t let the word can’t onto site.

Have you got the SE report yet? This will hopefully provide an objective view of the situation. What does the rest of the contract cover, terms etc. Are there any clear specs that you can reference that they haven't done e.g I think material below damp was incorrect? It's hard, but try to keep factual (even though emotions are raging).