JohnnyB

Hi all, a quick intro as I've been reading posts for a while but only just signed up. We are building in a house and annexe with double garage in Suffolk. Building with timber frame and using hempcrete just to make things complicated. The hempcrete will be laid with an experienced local builder who has worked with hemp for several years. This will be lime rendered on the house with timber cladding on the annexe. It hasn't been simple so far to get a timber frame designed that works for the hempcrete that a structural engineer was happy with but we have got there and have started building our annexe building. I'm building the frame myself with a local carpenter helping to erect it. The grind for walls went up this week. My background is joinery so building the timber frame is simple enough. For the main house we have a local timber frame company build the frame to keep that moving forward this year. This should be delivered and up in the next 6-7 weeks. We are living on site, in a static, and are concentrating on getting the annexe watertight first so we don't freeze in the static over winter. Life is very busy so I'm not online that much but I've be using the site for research a bit and thought I should start posting. Johnny

Hi all, I've been looking around the forum for a while but haven't posted before. We've started our self build and had quotes for with Protec being the cheapest, still £4k. I've read a few posts on here about Protec being fussy about the checks or trying to pass the risk over to other professionals and I'm wondering if that's normal experience with warranty or if Protec are worse than others? We will need a mortgage at the end of the build so want a warranty to keep the options open. The next quote was at least £2k more but no point buying cheap but paying lots of extras as we go. I haven't asked build store for a quote, but from comments I've read here they may be having issues anyway? We are up to DPC with our annexe, the house just has the concrete in the ground, and I've had a quote for the warranty inspections to start at stage 3, structural. The difference in price between starting from stage 1, foundations, to starting at stage 3 was tiny. It's very much a self build, I'm doing a lot of work myself and using smaller local companies and tradespeople with lots of experience so no main contractor, an architectural technician, and lots of work by a structural engineering company.