Great_scot_selfbuild

We're in a (very) hard water location and need a water softener plumbed in at the plant room (kitchen tap and utility room sink will be unsoftened). We've done some research but interested to hear any recommendations (good and bad experiences). TIA

CVC Systems - https://cvcsystems.co.uk I know that some others on here have used them too (I believe positively). I've attached a couple of screenshots of the design document - although my comment above was a little critical, it was a lot better than anything I was likely to get from the PD.

I'm impressed. I had a real challenge trying to get this done. Principal Designer wasn't really up to this level of detail, and the design I had from the MVHR provider was ok but really very simplistic not far off the level of detail seen by UFH providers producing their off-the-shelf layouts. I was still happy with them overall because the cost was so competitive, but I can empathise with others about the challenge of getting a detailed design of duct and service runs.

@Adele Tractor we had to get fire officer assessment but they refused to speak to us directly and would only deal with requests from a Building Control Officer / approved inspector. Quite frustrating but we got there in the end. We’re with private (Stroma). No personal experience of our local council BC - good luck.

Both have their place - I also do this a lot too!

@Square Feet congratulations - what a cracking view! I do hope it all goes well for you in the planning process. A small ‘admin’ tip I would recommend starting as early as possible is to log all your activity and communications. As much as this sounds tedious (which it is), I did ours a bit later in the day, back-dating it with all my emails in the many months of ‘quiet time’ (unresponsive council and sometimes paid professionals on my side). The reason for this was that much later, it became *exceptionally* useful when the council suddenly changed their mind and ultimately refused our first application. This log of activity allowed my planning consultant to easily and quickly reference the specific communications that were relevant (in our case the many broken promises of when a response or decision would be made) and we managed to weave it in to an element of our appeal. My point being that if you populates it as you go from the start it is sooooo much easier. Here’s a screenshot of the format I used (3rd column is ‘Interaction with Council’ - I added later when this became an issue and just put an ‘x’ in so I could filter to compile a shorter extract). Columns: A - numbered rows (in the table) for ease of reference in emails B - Month C - Date D - Interaction with Council E - Event F - Days Passed; Formula: =[@Date]-C$6 G - Weeks since; Formula: =([@Date]-C$6)/7 The splurg of black is just redaction of names / addresses. Rather than share a blank template I thought it would give an idea of how little / much I entered in the summary. Some emails I included an extracted quote if particularly relevant e.g. “I’m minded to recommend for approval”, before then refusing many months later. In this particular extract, the gap between the yellow highlighted lines showed the application being registered on 14 Oct, followed by zero responses from the assigned Planning Officer (PO), before an automated email reply on 8 Dec saying he was leaving the council. I really do hope the Scottish behaviours are better than ours! Best of luck.

Hmmm, it still lacked any constructive ‘now what’ that this forum (and you) are often so good at. That was all - just an observation, given that @Spinny is clearly so frustrated and probably wishing he’d done xyz… @Spinny Absolutely this! ☝🏻

This is stunning. Great inspiration. Very much like the resin-bound path. 👏🏻

Absolutely. As it was, I did all my planning and documents the old way before discovering the utility of AI for adding things like this. I would absolutely take this approach in the future with similar tasks.

@Conor Can you share a link please? I did a quick search but nothing obvious came up - some brands have a ‘click’ model it seems. Just interested to see the power ratings as I’d done a bunch of searches before posting this but hadn’t come across that one.

@Spinny really sorry to hear about this. I realise you’ve put a huge amount of prep, thinking and planning in advance, but could you live with it? I realised that you may not be able to ‘unsee’ what they’ve done, buy just a suggestion before you throw it all in and start ripping elements up: 1. Have a friend/colleague (who doesn’t know about the issue) visit and give their opinion on the floor. Try not to lead the witness, but invite them to cast a critical eye over it as you’ve been so close to the detail it can be difficult to step back and see the wood for the trees. 2. Is it flat? 3. What are the edges like? 4. Are there ripples/other aspects separate to the sequence and configuration of the planks? Building a house definitely comes with a free pair of retrospective 20:20 vision specs and ‘I wish I I’d just done … differently’. I’ve had my own experience of these. Just trying to offer an alternative way of looking at the situation - you may only see these details, but how important are they to resolve *now*? Obviously this doesn’t detract from the frustration of having briefed someone, checked understanding and been on hand for any questions / points to check and then had them just go and do this: … @Nickfromwales Bit of a harsh opening line imho. We’re a way off floor being laid, and I could understand that a glue-down floor can’t have anyone else who may generate dust / in the vicinity, but why wouldn’t you have any other trade on the whole site if they’re working in a completely different area? I could have easily fallen foul of this (but have taken note 😁)

Thank goodness I posted this. I have changed my mind! (A self-builder, changing their mind based on opinions counter to their starting position?!? It’ll never catch on). Well, firstly, @-rick-, I hadn’t been aware or considered this at all. Thanks. I hadn’t considered (though it’s obvious now I pause to think about it, but the ‘permanently on’ current draw of the USB ports is negligible in terms of cost, but adds a faff-factor. I could do without when it comes to electrical commissioning / testing etc. I can totally relate to this. Where I’ve ended up… I hadn’t paused to double-check the varying (and ever-increasing) power demands of even the simple phone. Having done a quick search for the power requirements of different devices to check what sockets would be required, it quickly points towards very high power consumption (45w may do a current laptop / tablet, but in a few years, it’ll probably want more to power a bigger battery / processing chip etc…). 65W sockets often get close to £70, plus you have to watch out for whether the claimed power rating is shared or per-socket (they often like to hide this little ‘gem’. So, given that we still have locations that will be primary/most frequent charging spots, I’m now looking at plug-in docking stations, some of which I may leave almost permanently in place (and as it’s early enough I could have the cabling hidden). This Anker 200W 6-port option (each USB-C port supports max 100W output - there are others that go up to 140W) comes in well below the cost of a Knightsbridge 65W integrated socket! Thanks all

I was quoted over £10k for a landscape visual impact assessment (this was the most likely tactic for council to refuse my planning application. I enddd up writing my own (despite some comments that it needed to be by someone with Landscape architectural post-nominals or such). At some point I’ll revisit my costings and share as much as I can - we bought land without any PP and worked very hard to achieve it, against some very strong advice that it was ‘nigh on impossible’.

We are putting a select few sockets with integrated USB ports in our build. We’ve given thought to where we *really* need / would value the fast charge ones (as they’re so much more expensive), but I’d like to throw out the question of whether we go for USB-C only or USB-A sockets. Worked example: Under the kitchen island (has seating) we will have a fast charge integrated USB socket (2 ports). Do we go double-C or A&C. I have my own initial thought, this thread is more to gather a bit of the wider view without leading the witness as it were. TIA

This. (I agree with so many points already made, but this made me laugh at its accuracy - thanks @Ed_)