Bancroft

When I did some Googling around regarding this I quickly noticed that each local council seems to take a different approach to the process and what requirements they want (probably proportional to the feeling of self-importance the council officer dreams of). I put myself down as the owner and the 'company' doing the work, kept detail to an absolute minimum, and just got an approval email a few days later.

That should be on a t-shirt!

I'm not sure if it's readily apparent how many spare connections might be available - even the Openreach guy who came to survey our site couldn't be sure. Not sure if it helps in your situation but here's what's happening with us: Although we already have fibre to the site, we want an additional fibre connection. I went through the living hell which is Openreach's online system and Indian call centre. Once I finally managed to register they came back to me and without any visits or other details, sent me a bill for £12k + vat. Once I'd returned from my quick circuit around the solar system, I called them and said I wasn't going to sign up for a £12k bill with no details, and that I wanted to speak with a field engineer and have them visit. After another round of inconclusive phone calls they finally explained that I could only have a field engineer allocated once I'd accepted their quote. The key thing to know - after accepting their quote you have 30 days to pay it. if you don't pay it then they cancel the whole process and you need to start again. That's your get out clause. (Stupid way to do it but we are dealing with Openreach/BT here, remember?) However, by accepting the quote you now have a field engineer you can talk to and who can visit the site. Mine was in touch within days and on site 2 days later (and couldn't have been more helpful). He agreed the whole system was stupid and has now gone in to bat on our behalf saying the £12k bill is stupid too. Still waiting for the final outcome but I have a lot more confidence in a positive outcome now that I'm actually speaking to someone who knows what they're doing.

No-one has mentioned steel frame yet so I'll go for that!🤣

...and anti-insect mesh?

One hidden benefit of having both is the ability to do things like drill pilot holes then screw into them - without the need to keep swapping a drill bit for a screwdriver bit. Even with a quick change system it can become a real pain.

Our architect has proposed the attached solution for our roof/guttering interface. He’s suggesting the roof stop short of the external edge of the ICF wall. This is to allow the downpipe from the box guttering to be inside the cladding (which will mean cutting 60mm into the ICF outer foam to accommodate the downpipe behind the cladding). I get the feeling this is all for aesthetic purposes rather than practical. To my mind, this just builds in added complexity and risks the watertight integrity of the roof system. Any leaks in the box guttering over time could result in water ingress into the wooden elements at the top of the ICF wall – which may go unnoticed for years and thus create rot. My proposal is that we extend the roof out beyond the outer edge of the ICF and locate the box guttering external to the outer edge of the ICF too. This would result in the downpipes being outside the cladding but I don’t see that as an issue. Any thoughts on the architect's proposal? Any thoughts on my proposal? Am I being too sensitive about potential water ingress?

+1 for @JohnMo's comment. I too was a little confused about this so I spoke to a UFH supplier and they confirmed - it's just there for the commissioning/build period then flush out and replace with water (plus inhibitors/biocide if you feel the need).

Main supplies are coming into the utility/plant room and most of the equipment needing the supplies externally are the other side of the bedroom/en-suite between the plant room and the equipment. So, to my mind, it makes sense to put under rather than through the ICF wall. The only solar panels will be above the carport area, hence the inverter etc also being in the car port area - and I don't want batteries within the house. EV charger, driveway and external lights also in the same area. With the ASHP mounted behind the car port we will be putting the inlet/outlet pipework up and over the doorway you can see that gives access to the rear of the house from the car port (top of drawing is rear of house). The house is single storey so these will enter the house into the loft space above the bedroom. Yes, we could take all the other cables across there too but I think that would end up looking like a snake's wedding of pipes and cables if we're not careful. It does give us a joker card, though, if we do forget something fundamental (and important enough to want to drill through the ICF) at a later date. My thoughts are to run one large electrical cable through a duct to a suitably placed/waterproof panel in the car port area where different supplies can then be branched off - rather than lots of smaller cables. The house will have three-phase so done correctly there shouldn't be any issues regarding supply suitability. Another conduit for data and potential water and we can keep conduits to a minimum. Useful to know how you've done it - thanks. One question though - you have different conduits for data in and data out. - is one of those the fibre supply and the other is everything else or have you split things out some other way?

Not sure if this should be under the foundations forum or the electrical so I flipped a coin. We will soon be in a position where we can start building our slab foundation. I have a long list of different supplies that need to go in/out of the house, all of which will reside in/under the slab, and I'm doing some fine tuning of what needs to go where. A high proportion of the external supplies will be electrical. These will go out to connect up to things like the ASHP, car charger, solar input/output, external lighting, car port power, power for the gate/drive lighting, power for the sewage system, etc etc. I was wondering how best to minimise the number of conduits as it looks like our foundation is going to be more conduit than concrete/gravel at the moment. Most of the outgoing electrical supplies will/can be grouped to head off in one general direction (car port/driveway) and I was wondering: Do they all need to go out as separate cables (possibly spread across a small number of conduits), or would it be easier/legal/sensible to just have one cable/conduit from the main house supply out to a secondary switchboard suitably located on the external wall of the house/under the car port? I expect it may be necessary to have a separate one for the solar (not really sure why I think that but, hey) and any PoE ethernet cables might also want to be in their own conduit, but are there any reasons why all the 'normal' electrical supplies couldn't run from an external switchboard?

well at least it saves on the lawn mowing!

Have a look at the 'Registering a Site with Openreach' thread that I've just put up. Might find some answers there. Note that if an existing system belongs to someone else (eg Virgin Media) my Openreach guy said they wouldn't touch it so beware of falling between two stones.

Thought my experience with Openreach recently might be of use to others who are signing up for a new account and fibre to their new build. Bit of a long post but could be useful. Registering your site. There is no menu system for “individual building own home”. You have to pretend you’re a full-blown developer. Live with it. But, when filling out the details take particular care over the following: • They will require quite a few specific plans of your intended build and site. Keep these as simple as possible. They couldn’t get their heads around the fact that our planning permission only covered part of our overall land. Instead of calling to ask for clarification they just rejected the registration. • Don’t try to use the new name for your property as it probably won’t come up in their database. Use the existing address details if at all possible. • When filling out your name and signature, make sure you use exactly the same details. One of my failed registration attempts was because I put my full first name in the Developer’s Name box but then just put my initial in the signature box. The registration was rejected because they were different… • When you’re asked who you’re ‘signing on behalf of…’ use the same name that you put at the top of the form. Another registration failure I had was because the Openreach form somehow incorrectly picked up the wrong data field and created a developer called ‘On behalf of Developer’. (I’d inputted ‘on behalf of developer’ at the direct request of the Openreach assistant who was filling out the form with me, line by line over the phone, but it was still rejected). • When putting your address in, check and double check. My fourth attempt at registering our site was rejected because I apparently kept putting my own address in incorrectly. The Openreach assistant eventually told me that I had put in our village name rather than the large main town under which our postcode lies so their system rejected the application. • Be aware that they probably won’t tell you your application has been rejected. It will simply say ‘delayed’ on their website, with no amplifying reasons. Use the online contact system to ask why it has been delayed. • When talking with Openreach assistants during this phase be aware that they are simply human forms of ‘computer says no’. They have no autonomy or ability to think for themselves. Once registered When you do finally get registered, they will send you an email telling you how much it’s going to cost you. On ours it said: Just a heads up—according to your Building Regulations, you only need to go for Full Fibre if we can hook you up with an offer under the £2000 cap. Unfortunately, we couldn't do that this time around, but we can still get you Full Fibre for £ 11,278 + VAT. No other explanation of the cost was given – no breakdown of costs, no indication of what work was/was not included. Nothing. The only way to get any more information is to sign the contract. Further down the email they do explain that after signing the contract they will allocate a Field Based Co-ordinator. You will then be able to talk directly to them and have a sensible conversation. You then have 30 days to pay the bill. If you don’t pay, then they will just void the contract. This is a stupid way to go about business but we’re talking Openreach here, so… Talking to a human on site Having gone through that process (nearly 2 weeks in total) and signed the contract I finally got to talk to our FBC today. Absolutely brilliant. He agreed their systems are stupid, took a very pragmatic view about what we were doing and how we’re doing it, and even gave some great advice for how we can make our installation even better. He’s now gone away to find the real cost of what we will have to pay. Wider considerations If you do all this early enough, Openreach will provide you with any ducting you need. The ducting needs to be grey, rigid polypipe, 96mm for the main run, dropping to 54mm for the final connection. Openreach have guidance on their system about this and how to lay it if doing your own. We bought our own simply because I hadn’t registered with them early enough (despite my best efforts) and we want to put the ducting in a trench that’s being filled in tomorrow. Hopefully, things will get easier now that I have a local FBC to talk to. I will update you if anything useful is learnt. Overall thoughts I’ve had similar experiences with Openreach/BT in the past – you need to go through hell on the phone/online but, when an engineer turns up they’re really helpful. Just hang in there while you go through your apprenticeship phase.

To be fair, I think he said it as a way which he thought was showing he was open and flexible, ie 'I don't mind how you contact me'. That was fine but didn't help me in my quest to find a best way of working. We are going to have weekly catch ups, starting tomorrow. This idea is really a way to be able to capture all those bits in between in order to give him a heads up. That way, when he arrives at the weekly catch up he isn't met with a barrage of questions/queries and, hopefully, will already have had time to consider what needs to be done/how to answer the questions.

Agree, which is why I'm looking for a more passive/structured system that he can look at when it suits him rather than be bothered at random times during the day. This should be possible once his other project(s) start to wind down and he is on site here more often. One other thing I'm looking at is Trello. It looks like it does all I think we need and, after another discussion with the builder, he seems willing to look at other options.