Sue B

Found a google earth snip that I've annotated. The paddock to the left will be mosly garden as will the area to the south of the new house. Just under the N is the startings of a kitchen garden. The soil is really poor so we are putting raised beds in to improve the soil and get the roots out of the waterlogged ground in the winter. The paddock where the E is had wild flowers sown last year and it looked beautiful. We kept the paddock between the E and the kitchen garden clear for the 3 wild beasts to run and play in like the idiots they are. The pink circle is the electric metre and the approx supply path into the house. Obviously going to have to do something with that before we put the foundations in. Red is the existing house, blue is the proposed siting of the new house. The purplish sqaure is my new sewing room - ooops, garage, which will replace the building you can see a little to the left of it. It is a wooden carport type thing at the moment with sheds on each side that leak and need replacing. We won't need LPG with the new house so it will be removed once we are in but don't want to disturb it during the build.

We have planning for a 4 bedroomed house that doesn’t meet our needs at all and is pretty boring so I know PP is possible. We seem to have acquired one mobility scooter from a friend’s parent who passed away already ??. It’s sitting in the stable waiting patiently for us. However, we have seen locally a TANDEM mobility scooter. It is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen and causes chaos on the high street - I need to get one, nothing like old age indifference to inconveniencing others to stir some young tempers ?. North is the left of the plan so the living room doors face south. There are no views to be had to the north or south - out of the living room will be straight into the garden which will be beautiful one the current house is demolished. West is not unpleasant but is really just the greenery of the side of a hill of trees and shrubbery. East is a view down our plot and onwards onto the Avon floodplains - quite pleasant but nothing spectacular. I have avoided windows north and south on the first floor - partially because of south facing glazing and overheating issues but also because of overlooking other plots which I think will be a no no. The plot is 1.5 acres - I’ll see if I can find the google earth snip I took a while back. We have a few trees on the plot and in the surrounding areas but nothing that impacts on the house. Not really sure which direction the prevailing wind comes from - we’re quite sheltered and have never noticed any particular direction. The ground floor will have a patio all down the south side of the building, some of which will be under the overhang of the first floor. I am not good at sitting in the sun, being particularly pale skinned, so I hog the shade whenever I can. This will be my place to sit whenever an overheating “moment” gets me. Not sure if the plans are any better on the first thread I put them on. I think as you have said - they are OK and while this may seem bizarre - I am fine with that. Spectacular or stunning plans tend to “age” in my experience as ideas and fashions change. I’ll have a look at the printouts again and see if scanning them in gets them any clearer. Thanks for your input @Ferdinand provocation is good - it diverts thinking into different pathways not necessarily considered previously. I’m off to find the plot picture.

Employers cope the same way they always have. I remember my mum and dad talking about the “younger generation” - meaning me and my friends, expecting to walk into a job as MD without getting any experience or qualifications first.

But can you generate more and store it in batteries or just let it “ escape” so that you are not pushing it back into the network if you are not using it? It was you thread that I was reading that made me wonder if I was going to struggle to do what I was expecting to do.

I uploaded my draft floor plans a while ago and I have lived with them a while and am fairly content that they will meet our needs. We have one elderly parent left who we could easily argue needs to move in with us ( that is closer to the truth than I like to think about as it is my MIL not my own mum). That gives us the need to a downstairs bedroom and en-suite. Everything else is fairly normal but of reasonably generous proportions in line with most self builds. We hope to have a comfortable, energy efficient home that we can live in for as long as possible. Our need to move as we get older and frailer will be more to do with the lane that we live on and our inability to get the 1 mile down the track to the nearest corner shop than the house with luck. Low maintenance is a biggie for us of course - we have no wish to be doing regular maintenance as we get older. We have appointed an architect technician to look at my floor plans and check that it is buildable but we have given them permission to come up with better ideas if they can. The house will run from east to west - the longest wall faces south and I have planned an overhang from the floor above along the entire length of that wall to keep the ground floor cooler in the summer. The only window I have planned on the first floor facing south is on the stair well. The east and west balconies will again give shade to the bedroom windows hopefully helping to keep them cool in the summer aswell - a woman of my age needs no help at all to get to hot, especially overnight. I've posted these plans before but as this thread is going to be all about the design i thought it would be a good starting point so that we can see the progression up to and including planning consent being granted (note the confindence in that sentence ). My intention was to have a flat roof so the house would have a very modern look - all render and block like with maybe a little wood cladding as a feature to break up the render in a couple of places. The architects are trying to talk me out of the flat roof as they believe we will struggle to get the plans approved as they are not in keeping with other houses in the area. It's a bit hard to know what other houses they may consider as our nearest neighbours are horses on each side who do have stables but tend not to object to planning permission so long as they get a carrot or apple in payment. Neither plot is likely to get planning appoval for a house in my lifetime (one side has tried and failed). Very few plots down the lane have lawful houses on them but there are a few plots occuplied by one of more travelling caravans, most of which have enforcement notices served on them. So finding what is "normal" is a little tricky. The SSSI which we are close to is a hill that is home to a number of reptiles. We have walked up the hill many times and you cannot see our house from anywhere on the hill, you can see the end of the plot, but not the house. I understand that flat roofs have inherant issues that require careful detailing by good roofers - I have been reading @pocster's thread today to remind me of how badly things can go. I don't like flat roofs. However I like the look of PV panels even less but I know that I want them. We have considered putting the PV panels in one of the paddocks on a ground mount system but the dogs love rompng up and down like idiots. Having space for them to run was one of the big drivers for our move so filling up ground with panels is not something I want to do. A flat roof to me would be the lesser of the two evils and it means I can have PV panels facing any direction that I want. So here are the opions I am seeking from the collective: Is a flat roof a sensible compromise to allow PV panels to be hidden from my view? Is it worth having PV panels facing east, south and west to get the optimum solar generation? What limits are there on PV generation - I saw something today mentioning 4kw and not sure what dictates that? I know we won't be getting the FIT tariff so is there anything stopping us going above the 4kw limit (if that is what it is) and just "wasting" the excess if that is possible so that we don't overload the network? As you can probably tell, I know very little about PV but am reading whatever I can find. I've been meaning to put this thread up for a while now and seeing @Russell griffiths post about solar panels reminded me to pull my finger out and ask the questions. Thank you

Avoid

I have an updated date for the Durisol pour in Poole today so will be going to that later this month. No word on the date for the Isotex Leatherhead pour yet but I think there may be some in North London that are equally close for you. Thanks for the list - all good points. Well done on the planning permission - I would go to your build insurance and make sure they will cover it. They listed the big companies with the exception of NHBC who are overpriced anyway so I do not see an issue. I think Durisol only get the NHBC covered if using Parex render so you are in the same boat with both products for wood cladding.

Why not look at ICF then? In effect you have solid walls with the insulation all in place?

On our last build, Peter built a wooden box with a hinged lid. The lid was oversized and covered in roofing felt. His carpentry skills leave a lot to be desired so it was not a pretty box but it was very functional. It moved on to our next door neighbour once we had a letter box who were also building. it worked well and cost nothing.

This just came up on my phone. Crikey - I had no idea they were so cheap. I presume this is basement bucket end of the market.

Today we went to the free training day at Swindon NHBRC for the Isotex build system. The day was a very similar format to the Durisol training day but the whole day felt less formal and went really well. The actual hand's on part of the day, I thoroughly enjoyed, I felt we learnt much more about how to actually use this product, including how to fix something that we know is likely to happen (putting a block round the wrong way so that the insulation is on the inside and not the outside). The issue with this is the break it will make in the concrete honeycomb - the wall will have a weak spot so you have to fix it. We built over a window frame, cut some blocks, talked about door openings and left feeling quite confident about the product. So now I have seen the 2 products that are in contention in a training environment. My verdict comes down 100% on the side of Isotex, luckily Peter agrees and I didn't even have to tell him what his decision was! The reasons for this are really a confirmation of my thoughts prior to the training: Less webbing so that the concrete honeycomb is more complete Smoother so that they appear to "shed" less The pass block which keeps your "brick bond" does make life easier as there will be less cutting of blocks on site. The design of the block increases the air-tightness of the finished wall - Durisol has two woodcrete faces that butt together, Isotex has open ended blocks that fill with concrete, sealing the air gap. I felt that the support during a build would be better - that is purely a gut feeling of course, but there is no way of quantifying this without talking to lots of previous self builders. It was clear however, if we needed a visit, they said they would come out to us in addition to the visit that they actually schedule in to make sure you are getting on ok at the start of the build. The choice of build methond is one of the more fundamental of any self build and in addition to the quantifiable benefits that have helped us favour this product is the inevitable personal prejudices that we all have regardless of how much we may try to neutralise them. For me, having the saleperson talk positively about a foundation system that I have only heard good things about on this forum made me feel that they were on the right page with how builds should be today. Durisol were quite dismissive of insulated slabs. MVHR - again, Durisol were dismissive, let the house breath and you don't need an MVHR. Isotex understood the need for air-tightness and therefore an MVHR to give you the ventilation that is needed to keep the house healthy. Our next steps are to visit a site for both product on pour day. Hopefully we should be able to do this in March as they both have pours quite locally to us. The BBA certification is still rumbling along, however for me it not a particular concern. If we can get a mortgage and the 10 year warranty insurance, I really can't see an issue. That along with the fact that we will not be bulding until next year, when BBA certification (for what it's worth) should be in place means for us it is a minor item. So, for us, we have a product in a clear lead, it will come down to real world usage on a site with people like us and of course price. Finally, it was lovely to see @Tom's Barn again and to meet Karen who is hopefully a member of Build Hub in the very near future.

Oh well - looks like we will have a 5 burner SMEG gas hob with lpg jets currently attached for sale in probably 5 years (judging by the time it took to get a kitchen last time ?). Thanks chaps - good to know that gas hob lovers took to an induction hob easily. The pantry will be without the underfloor heating but I think it it going to end up in the middle of the house unfortunately.

Things to remember in a couple of years: I want a pantry A second dishwasher (which is on someone else's wishlist) sounds a great idea - I want it in my utility room for the large items that never fit into the dishwasher first time round. A large stainless steel belfast type sink for oven racks to soak (great to bath puppies of course too) in the utility/plant room. Indoor drying area in the plant room - in the last house it was too small to have the item that I wanted hanging from the ceiling to hang the washing that couldn't go in the tunble dryer. Induction hob or gas hob? It will be the only gas in the house and is it worth having a little LPG cylinder just because I love my gas hob? Somewhere to have all my lovely gadgets (Kenwood Chef, Magimix, Bread maker, Actifry, Grill') where I can use them easily - storing in a cupboard will mean they don't get used. A pantry Drawers, deep pan drawers for easy access to the various sizes Somewhere for the bin to go (so easy to miss that part out) Somewhere for the tea towel, hand towel and oven gloves to hang One of the new fandangled hot water taps for boiling water Where is the water softner going to go? Somewhere for the vegetables to be stored from the kitchen garden, cool and dark, where puppies can't get in to nab the produce! Did I mention a pantry? Where will the dogs get fed?

This week is half term in school so I have had two days at work, in splendid isolation, making the many many changes to the timetable ready for the first day back. Today we have the architect round to do a proper start on the plans and while I'm waiting for him to arrive, I started to do some batch cooking of things to last me through the next 6 weeks or so. Being in the kitchen, turned my thoughts to what I really wanted out of the new house in terms of cooking, eating and washing. This blog entry is likely to go on the longest - after all, the kitchen will be going in quite late in the process but I don't want to forget what I really want. I remember the further into the build we got last time, the easier it was to lose sight of the end goal. The photo attached is the kitchen oin our last house, 3 years after we started building. I've put it here to remind me of just how dog tired of the whole process you become. We just stopped for about 2 years and regained our strength to get to the final rooms. How we lived like that for 3 years is a mystery to me now. We had family parties and fed 20 people easily (slow cookers and large BBQs are wonderful things),. So here goes another thread in this very unusual way of blogging.

And the pour has been delayed - sturctural engineers disagreeing over what is required.

And breathe............... Yes, your feelings are completely normal. However, it is also the most exciting time of the new build - everything open and ready for you to choose what you want. My advice would be to go to a few homebuilding type shows, there are plenty of seminars over every topic possible. I would wait for a little while before going to an architect, you want your ideas for your house to be the main driver behind the house rather than an architects best guess at what you want. Visiting a whole host of seminars (the tickets are normally available free if you book in advance) will initially start to confuse you with the overwhelming choices, but after a few nights to sleep on the ideas, you should start to know what you want out of the house. Welcome to the rollercoaster.

We have just had the word that the Durisol build near us has the first concrete pour on Tuesday 26th. Just booked my half day holiday so that we can go there first thing. Very excited so I can't imagine how they are feeling

Our credit was just over £600!! I wouldn’t have thought it possible to use that much in such a short time but that is what the water company offered and we ripped their arm off.

We have never had “quality” kitchens. Over the years we have bought from Texas Homecare (remember them!) x2, Homebase, B&Q x3 taking into account all the kitchens and utility rooms we have re-modelled. In my sewing room I have Ikea kitchen cupboards and really like their range of drawer sizes. I’ve found them all perfectly acceptable and the new house will probably be B&Q unless I find something cheaper. The last kitchen was huge and I dread to think how much it would have cost with quality units. i have always designed the kitchens myself. All fitted by us, just trades in to fit the worktops for the corner cuts (the laminate kitchens) or the last kitchen which was granite composite.

We have an overground pool that the fish lived in when we first moved in here. The fish have now moved into their lovely large pond but I’m working on the OH to set it up every spring and build some staging round it and a ramp inside so that me and the doods can wallow when it’s too hot. We already have an outside dog shower for them so they can be clean before they get in.

We don’t have a doggy pool but they have been know to go in the fish pond when it’s too hot.

Can you take a meter reading first thing in the morning, turn everything off in the house and take another reading much later that day? As long as you know everything is off, you should be fine.

Is there a garden tap anywhere? We had a sink at the end of our last garden in a gazebo. At the start of winter, we turned off the supply under the kitchen sink and opened the tap in the gazebo - to protect from frost. We had some plumbing work done a few months later and unbeknownst to us, the plumber turned the supply back on under the sink. We were going off to the Caribbean the next day completely unaware. When we got home, we looked at the garden and scratched our head at the waterlogged shrub bed. It took a while to realise that the tap was running full blast. The drain, being in a garden gazebo, just went into the bed. The water company actually gave us a credit for the bill surprisingly enough as it was completely accidental.

We are considering Durisol and Isotex. We like Velox but it is simply too heavy for us to manage. We are building as much as possible ourselves and both of us are getting on a bit ?. We have been on the Durisol training day and due to go on the Isotex training day next week. We have requested visits on pour days for both systems from the sales guys and it looks like both have first pours later this month fairly local to us. I have started a blog on here, the first thread of which is all about choosing which ICF we are going for.

The block size thing is causing me concern at the moment. The architects are coming round next week and we won’t know which system our build is at that point. I want the design based on the block size. I am thinking: 1) get the plans drawn up roughly the right size. 2) get the prices in for two systems we are considering based on those plans 3) adjust plans to fit system chosen 4) apply for planning permission