Great_scot_selfbuild

It’s only for the walls (just realised I only said ‘cladding’ in the first post).

Interesting - mine came in at £6103 (CVC) for not far off a similar size.

I’m doing that, but also asking here to find out what others have experienced first hand.

@gaz_moose thanks!

I’ve got a lot of steel to paint another layer of bitumen onto. I’m not fussed about being neat and tidy. Has anyone used a paint sprayer with particularly thick paint like this?: https://www.wickes.co.uk/IKOpro-Black-Bitumen-Paint---22-5L/p/282332

Yes - seen this, plus various cabinet builds (in the UK) on Instagram, but none mention fire stops, and from what I can judge by some, they are well over 30sqm but don’t appear to be bothering with any of the detail that we are.

Monarch is one we’ve heard of, but also intrigued as to why it’s so much cheaper than others - Got us wondering what’s the difference etc…

This is a separate issue I’ve just been pondering - unsoftened to the kitchen tap… which is going to be a quooker cube. How do they cope with a hard water supply, what are the options etc (clearly, I’m about to google combimate as a starter…)

Just looking to start a thread on the use of timber shingles and see what detailing people have had specified by their PD. I’ve done a lot of reading, but haven’t seen any of this in practice. Timber shingles on timber frame house Assuming batten & counter battens (25mmx50mm) Specifically interested in: Fire stopping Detailing around windows & doors Ventilation - size of gaps top & bottom Gable Roofline What are your experiences in practice?… (photos encouraged 😁)

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.