EverHopefull

That's fine but the wide track for sliding units in my present house cause a step of 10cm high and 35cm wide between inside and outside. More step onto the track than over. New house has to be flush tracking.

If designing in a balcony from first floor lounge that spans the length of the house approx 12m What would be the optimum method to prevent cold bridges. 1) external hung style 2) inboard so as it sits inside the dimensions of the house. It would be 1.5 depth.

Makes sense. I was concerned about putting weight on the outer I insulated layers but am determined to have level thresholds on the door system.

Thinking as you do at 3am this morning. If you were building with Nudura and the house was "upside down" with lounge upstairs and were planning wide opening glazed units. Would the really heavy glazed units have to sit centred on the concrete middle of the ICF? Is this the same for all windows and doors? I was thinking of the visual appearance as well as the structural and thermal issues. Would you be able to have block and beam floors on the first floor?

I could do that of course but I am applying for AP1 on a small area of my garden plot that appears to be inclusive to the plot on the plans I can download from this company's website. The process of AP appears to be more a case of having the boundary certified/amended by Land Registry rather than full AP. I am not sure at this stage if it would be best to continue with AP with the LReg and wait for them to refer to OS (that is what they seem to do to clarify matters) or just go for a amend to the boundary with LReg making a reference to the mapping OS have?

Has anyone on the BH forum any experience of the maps available on the UK Map Centre website? I notice that the maps are certified "Land Registry compliant" "Council Compliant" and licenced from Ordinance Survey themselves. My concern is that the boundary show on the Land Registry documents differ somewhat to the ones available on this website. Clearly the website purchased ones are usable in a planning process and produced under a third party licence from the OS themselves. Anyone ever experienced this differential before? I have been told that Land Registry are trying to "upgrade" the property boundary nightmare whenever a property goes through the process of conveyance and that they are using OS data to perform this upgrade. Anyone herd or experienced this?

The allowance for the car opens up a world of choice but BIK is where the real deal is won or lost in my book. I work with a guy who has chosen a Discovery Sport as a company chariot and he still cannot see why his take home pay is hammered as it is because of the percentage charge on the Co2 against forecourt price! ?

Strangely I drive an i3 (non extender) and my lease expires in May. I have a fairly healthy budget from my company that would let me drive a lot of very upmarket cars. My personal aim is to make my BIK payment as low as possible. At renewal last time whilst driving a Bluemotion Golf the i3 was being offered and made my BIK liability less, so that's the way I went. Free installed £2500 BMW wall charger Plus. This time around the lease guys have no glut of e vehicles so I am going in to direct opposite now and chosen a NIssan Navara 2.3 Diesel of all things!! Cutting my BIK by almost 4/5's Crazy world eh. Like others have said what people drive these days is often nothing to do with wealth or desire of the car itself. Mine is a method of pretending I have had a pay rise as I have not actually had one for more than 7 years. The Navara will also come in very handy for the project ahead too.

Hanse Haus are my preferred if I had to choose but they all look very "German" not that I dislike that but the reason we thought a architect might take ours out of the pigeon hole. We would be going for an almost turnkey service due to work commitments so accept that we will be paying a premium.

They are advising £2650 pm2 for a new residential build. The 11% fee has also had the CDM 2015 & contractor procurement fee added on top. We are aware of the things that can escalate costs as there is a Scandia property in the in-laws past. I have been looking at some of the German options that wrap the architect fees into the price which they halve if you actually build with them as well. We are staying calm at this point and can't thank you guys enough for the kind words and encouraging tales!

Hi, I guess I find myself in a fairly normal situation for a self builder? After 6 months of the normal wrangling to purchase a next door property and preventing a developer from muscling in on the very quiet area I live, finally it is done. I remortgaged my current property and now own the new place outright. Excellent, what is the issue you ask? Both myself and SWMBO are currently over the success of winning the property and now overwhelmed with the feelings of doom over how we can manoeuvre financially to build anything. It's very early days but tension has already prompted the "we're screwed" and "Why did we" moments. Maybe we should just sell it again but something tells me no, there is a way! Probably stupidly we had had a meeting with a local architect and to pile more negatives into the equation they are quoting £48k (~11%) for proposed services to replace the old ruin with a fairly restrained 3 bed. We would sell our current home to pay off the entire mortgage and finance the start of the new build whilst living with family. It all sounds good in theory but can't ignore these feelings of over commitment. Is this a normal stage?

I have had West facing only for the last 8 years. They produce a similar total to another system in the family that is purely South facing but as is suggested at different times of the day. The survey prior to install did warn of less production and the non ideal facing but I can produce longer and higher into the evening which would benefit some. On the new house I will go for East facing exclusively as the peak demand is first thing in the morning and so I can feed my Solar Boost before lunchtime. This is purely a personal decision and would not suit all. *The most surreal situation is when I have been wondering the house at night and found that the moon is reflecting enough sun to power the house in slumber! Unless i had seen it I would not have believed it possible.

I will be doing many runs to the local tip to clear the place out firstly. During that time our architect should be knocking about some sketches based on the ever important budget.. I am planning a personal visit to the council office armed with the sales material we had for the house stating it was a development potential sale to see if that wins me any concessions regarding council tax. To be honest I went round the house and it has a leaking roof, around the chimney breast. The carpets and walls are covered in black mould so from a health angle it cannot be safe to live in. The electrics are old bakerlite kind and half the house is dead electrically, possibly a ring failed some how. Let's see how I get on.

It will be knock down and rebuild. I am trying to conserve the budget until that can happen. Just really glad to have the plot in my name at last. I know this is very early in the process and I should feel elated about it but that little voice in my head says this is just a small victory in what is in real terms a war!

OK, completion day today. Should be but feeling more like ? with so many decisions. 1) Electricity account set up, readings given for change of owner. Power switched off. Should master fuse be removed? 2) Water meter reading being taken today to notify supplier and change ownership/set up new account. Should water be shut off at external stop cock? 3) Have to tackle council about being new owners. No grace given for property that is not habitable. Does demolition remove council tax liability? I know you have to apply to demolish a building that gives a notice period. Does requesting exemption from CIL have to occur before demolition? I am just trying to minimise outgoings during the "design/planning stages" Any advice welcome as it all gets very real tomorrow morning!

Excellent, that is why this forum is so damn good. Cheers

Hi all, a quick consensus please ? I take ownership of my building and plot next Monday, getting "real" at last. I am trying to decide what of the following is the best option? 1) Have electric disconnected until the build starts, or is planned. 2) Change supplier to one of the only tariffs with no standing charge. Really the aim is to reduce costs until we need site power, maybe a year from now. ?

They are quite interesting although I would still hedge my bets with an alternative source of heat than electrical for peace of mind.

My plan was for something like this or actually to divide the lounge and dining areas.

Those were the days when old plasma tv's were better performing COP than radiators! ?

Hmmm I have always wanted a flame, call it the romantic in me maybe. I have inlaws that have a Scandia Haus and things get out of hand very quickly with the wood burner they have resulting in swimwear being worn on Christmas Day on one occasion! Whatever I go for may only be used for a few hours on a couple of nights so does not need to be very powerful. The house we are demolishing by comparison is only heated with a wood burner (12kw) in the lounge and it literally does heat two floors easily with windows that were usually left open all year and even had a couple of hot plates for cooking on! I have to compare the prospect to owning the rather fine Italian motorcycle I had. It was everything it needed to be but over performed in all areas, and only used one or two days a month.

I decided to break into a new post subject to avoid diluting the other one I am observing. Has anyone here ventured in to bio ethanol fires? I have decided to rule out a wood burner/fireplace as such to eliminate punching a big hole in the planned nicely sealed house. The only real option it seems to have a flame without all the fumes and co2 worrying issues is to go down the bio ethanol route. I can see they are not cheap to run with fluid costing about £30 for 6 litres. This I read should burn upto 6 hours depending on the design you buy (read size) There are auto ignition models and the stunning "007" style long tray options so will probably have something suitable to provide back up instant "take the chill off" heat as required. Anyone have any experiences of living with these things?

I can accept that there will be moments in the lifetime of any heating system that there will be "outages" due to breakdowns and possibly power cuts. I plan to have a Bioethanol type fireplace in the living room to give the backup in that instance. Only planning on about a 4kw version which I hope will provide a boost at the time of year that a flame gives a psychological uplift as well as an emergency to cover breakdowns and no power. I guess underspec does occur with conventional boilers and rads but I cannot ever remember hearing of any such situation in 30 years of home ownership. Could we one day get phone calls and emails bombarding us about being miss-sold heat pumps in the vain of PPI.......

It does highlight to me that there are possibly a lot of people that have been sold the heat pump solution by inexperienced people that either offer poor advice, incorrect spec devices for the property and or lack of knowledge by the installers when setting up and handing over the systems. Leaving a home owner high and dry for the winter is probably a very upsetting and sobering moment after such huge efforts and probably financial commitment.

Ok that all makes sense. Maybe I am letting the posts regarding the inability of some installs to provide the required comfort levels worry me too much. I really could not face the prospect (or the other half to that matter) if the day ever came that once living in our completed modern marvel that it was deemed not able to keep us warm enough. Our current 15 year old house over three floors is a drafty place that is a complete pain to keep evenly heated as the middle floor (front door) is open plan, letting cld air downstairs to the bedrooms and all the generated heat to the top floor! We did toy with fitting aftermarket heat recovery to attempt to balance the temp between floors or at least circulate it evenly but thankfully the prospect of new build has saved me from that not working as well!