Sue B

Our last slab was laid badly and dipped towards one corner. Our builders sorted out the walls and the grounds contractors paid for the additional work and materials. A year later we were ready to finish the real floor on the ground floor. We laid the insulation and the UFH pipes. The screed co arrived and told us that they couldn’t put the screed down because of the slope - the screed would be so think in one corner of the house the UFH wouldn’t work and also the cost would be much more. Fixing the problem entailed Peter crawling UNDER the UFH pipes and insulation, pushing additional insulation in appropriate places. It was an absolute nightmare but we did it! We just hadn’t twigged that the initial error, which had been spotted and corrected had additional consequences we had not thought about

MIL is just waiting for her shower chair from OH following her assessment. We are going for a wetroom rather that low profile shower tray in our downstairs cloakroom. We can use the heavy duty vinyl stuff on the floor which is very grippy and removes the trip hazard completely. Retro fitting may of course be more difficult.

I love the idea of a whole area of self-builders. It does make for a community feel when people have only just met. Our build now will feel quite lonely - the last one we were just another of the neighbours, going through the same thing. We all knew and understood how other families were feeling as we had all been there.

We really need a new emoji. A ? or a ? or for some of these a ?. i feel quite queasy now!

Soil type?

The trouble that we found with cracks like this is that surveyors get it wrong. Our last house was bought with an ongoing subsidence claim. We knew about it and bought it on those terms. The house next door had also had cracks which had been investigated by the insurers surveyors. They had been sent a letter confirming that they were not suffering from subsidence so repaired the cracks and subsequently sold up and moved away. The people that moved in noticed after about a year that cracks were re-appearing. Eventually subsidence was confirmed and they contacted the previous owners as they felt they had “covered up” the issue. Luckily they had the letter confirming that the house was subsidence free. It meant that the new owners ended up getting over £350k to cover the cost of a re-build rather than nothing. Luckily they had continued to use the same building insurance company which did stop insurers battling between themselves over liability. The only way to actually know if is it subsidence is to put pins each side and measure the distance regularly. We ended up with about 10 pairs of pins around our house for nearly 2 years before a payout was offered. If all the houses are new, are they all showing similar signs? What type of ground is it on? What area of the country? Are you on a hill?

Is it a small builder or a national well known name? I too thought it was an old house that you had just bought, and were uncovering DIY bodge jobs. I would now go out and get quotes to fix the work to my satisfaction, send them to the company with a deadline for them to agree the work, or you will go to court and invite the relevant media outlets to the court proceedings.

I could buy an umbrella from the pound shop - or 4.

Oh you’re a mean man ?

Is it over my £2 bid yet

I don’t have an EV so I don’t know about this stuff. My assumption was that the ability to plug into any charging point anywhere entailed signing up to a price plan with the provider - is that what this is about? You can’t use their charging points without being a member of their gang? An EV is a few years away for us so haven’t done any research at all.

A few revisions have been made and we are now on version 5 - we have got the floor area down to just under 200m2 excluding balconies which brings us back into the just about affordable bracket. From the Drive in looking at the front door From the South west corner of the garden From the east of the plot (stable end)

I am really starting to think that your build will be our first site pour @Tom's Barn. Our plans are still within an inch of going in - so near yet so far

My D & A statement is 17 pages and I thought that was a lot!! Unfortunately I don’t have the skills to offer any real advice other than I sent our first draft back with over a page of queries / corrections. The whole ole issue is not particularly size - each dwelling brings an additional household with the necessary cars & inhabitants etc. With it. I had tried to design our place as someone above - so it could be divided after completion. I just couldn’t do it well enough and small enough for us to be able to do it.

We have a neighbour who works in a solicitors office doing conveyancing but she is very very able and understands planning and planning laws. She knows what is likely to get approved and what they are likely to say no to - and also what they are able to say no to. She is VERY unusual and probably the only person I know, who works in a solicitors office, that I would trust with a planning application.

Also - I’m assuming that RatedPeople is something like Check a Trade? If so, again you are not going to get a great builder that way. You may be lucky but in all probability you will end up with a builder short of work. A builder short of work generally means they are not very good - of course a job may have fallen through and so they are suddenly looking for work for their workforce but that is less likely. Local recommendations are the best way to find good builders.

Ummmm, it’s an unusual way to work. I understand cost certainty - we currently have no idea how we are going to afford to build our house yet but have a rough idea. We may end up with planning permission and will then have to sell up and move on - time will tell. Everyone will tell you that ground works are the most uncertain costs - you really won’t know the cost until you have finished. You can test the ground as much as you like but until you actually start to put the foundations down, you don’t know if you are going to find something unusual. Planning permission is your first step - either designing yourself or via an architect or an architect technician. Deciding on that particular window supplier because they have given you a price is probably not the most cost effective choice. They may well have given a price that is not competitive as they will not be viewing you as a serious prospect. I may be wrong but pricing on a house that hasn’t even gone to planning, if I was the owner of the window company, would not be a considered quote - it would be a “back of the fag packet” estimate.

I was very impressed with both “couples”. The now single chap will get there and from the look of the outside will do a brilliant job of the inside. I loved the “make do” attitude and willingness to re-use stuff wherever possible. Fabric first builds first and foremost. Although the yellow door was ................. noticeable! Our world is in in good hands with youngsters like these.

It’s not the getting down I have problems with, it’s the standing up again ??

Welcome to the forum. A real quote takes some time to get right so if I read your post correctly, you haven’t got planning permission and a builder will not want to spend time doing a quote that has no real prospect at the moment of work coming from it. it sounds like you need to start at the beginning - real quotes are a long way from where you are at the moment.

We had a similar issue a few years ago. Both HDMI leads within a month of each other. I googled, I watched you tube then we hacked away at part of the wall and fed through the new cable where we could. It was a nightmare.

Excellent - who new another skill required of a self builder was private investigator!

Jeez - is that from The new BCP council or the old Bournemouth council? We have a flat roof and I really don’t want to get involved in a mansafe system after the hassles of using one in a new school I was BM in. It was never ever used!

Are you sure that the council will allow conversion of the stables into a dwelling house? Are they habitable at the moment?

Our house, we bought for just under £400k in 2015. It is Dorset and 1.5 acres with PP. we were terrified we were making a huge mistake. Once we have built, we expect the kids to be able to sell for over £800k (at today’s prices). We don’t intend to be here on Earth to see it happen ?