westbound

I read that blog about two months ago and wonder if that's where the idea came from 😂

The ICF blocks have an R-value of 30 (0.03 W / m2K) so we're aiming to go pretty strong on that side. Another advantage is that the only neighbour is directly to south (about 30 metres away) so the slightly dog-legged arrangement gives us and then privacy from the living area (which would be the largest spans of glass). Will see, exploring the big, sensible and bungalow designs with a surveyor next week.

Of course... So comparing our two fancier concepts (full height living space, wasteful 18m x 9m footprint, "big box" concept versus the coupled long house "bungalows"), using round numbers... 18 x 9m big box has (18 + 18 + 9 +9) linear metres of wall, 54 LM. Coupled long house "bungalows" have roughly (14 + 14 + (4 x 5.5) + 10 + 10 + 4 + 4) linear metres of wall, 78 LM. Assuming all walls were same height, "bungalows" concept is 45% more surface area/heat loss through walls, compared to big box...before getting to increased roof area. Coupled bungalows could probably get away with lower walls (gabled roof at 45° for height inside), say 1.6m high externally vs 2.4m high (numbers based on round multiples of 400mm high ICF blocks). 54 LM x 2.4 m = 130 m2 of external wall in big box 78 LM x 1.6 m = 125 m2 of external wall in bungalows Potentially about the same loss through walls between the two fancier concepts, assuming lower walls on bungalow and relying on high ceilings from gabled roof to keep the internals feeling spacious. Our smaller box concept is 14.5 x 8.5 m, and assuming it's same height as big box, is about 110 m2 of external walls, beating both of the others by ~20% (round numbers!) through walls. Bungalows have roughly 180 m2 of roof, versus 160 m2 for big box and 125 m2 for small box, quite a big difference there, although U should be better (not by a lot though). From a 5 metres rafter perspective, at 45° roof, don't want the width of a room to be larger than 7 metres. Concrete needed for the 3 concepts: (linear metres x height x ICF core width) Big box = 54 LM x 2.4 m x 0.318 = 43 m3 Bungalows = 78 x 1.6 x 0.318 = 40 m3 Small box = 35 m3 Trench foundations at £300 per LM (guesstimate) mean bungalows would be £10k more than small box, internal walls ignored. @Iceverge you've been really helpful at pointing a newbie to some good questions and context...sincerely, thank you!

Thanks for the help. Based on the feedback here, I've come up with a much more efficient footprint of 14.5m x 8.5m, 1.5 storey, with no full-height living space or overly fancy gabled windows, that ultimately gives more internal space than the previous concepts. It's probably a more comfortable house to live in, and is far more realistic, although is definitely a bit of a "plain box" (that we could probably add a bit of spice to with some thought). We're slightly struggling with the feeling that it's quite similar to the boring new builds we see, and it's not particularly exciting. It's definitely something we're struggling between, where the mind is saying "keep it simple, comfortable and affordable", and the heart is going, "if you're going through the effort of self-building, make it a bit more interesting". I'm an engineer, so practical/function wins...but also willing to explore options before they're closed out! With that last bit in mind, I'm wondering if the experts here could help contextualise something for me? How much harder/expensive/riskier would it be to build two, smaller long houses, connected by a flat-roofed "tunnel"? Assuming both are single storey, with exactly the same external dimensions so that ridge beams/joists/etc can all be sized the same (two smaller rectangular roofs versus one larger rectangular roof) Rough dimensions of each would be 15m x 5.5m, with a 5.5m x 4m flat roof tunnel connecting them With a rough sketch, it looks like enough internal supports could be worked in quite easily for the ridge beam to be supported every 5 metres or so Overall area of foundations and roof goes up (single storey), but height of overall building goes down and no need for structural second floor The floor plan below is just a 30 minute sketch - no real thought into it. So far we've constrained ourselves to thinking in a rectangular build, and never really explored anything beyond that. Is this worth spending architect/surveyor hours developing, or does the increased foundation/roof size just make it an impractical idea?

Wow @Iceverge and @ProDave, this is so helpful. Thank you. Will digest outside of work hours. Really means a lot, I'm diving into the deep end of a subject I don't know a huge amount about, so having discussions like this is so helpful to learning a bit quicker!

Shaping up to be quite a story!

Surveyor currently on holiday, so tinkering with plans based on some of the feedback here. Overall footprint reduced to 8.3m x 17.2m Fire-door added between kitchen and stairs, and all bedrooms have an exit that doesn't go via kitchen Still need to get to grips with Scottish building regs on fire exit windows in bedrooms - skylight is an option for top windowless room Sounds like the balcony might work if the sliding door is fire rated Added an indication that window feature can have central support, awaiting proper design Overall internal footprint is about 160m3, for a two-adult-two-kids scenario, plus guest room

Yeah, I really wouldn't be surprised if double-height goes, we're still very much in dream land around concepts. Central support makes a lot of sense, great shout. Not even a compromise, nice feature.

Not yet, family based there, moving out to join them. Rough plan of attack for us is get the planning permission and design work done, sell up our south-east house and rent in Kirkwall for the duration of the build (I'm aware of rental challenges). Could potentially stay with family if cash flow requires it, but some advantages to being in Kirkwall during the temporary phase.

Thanks, will have a think about the window upstairs. I've said we have a preference for ICF but not committed if it's impractical. With that in mind, assuming we did do ICF for the main walls, any suggestions on how to handle the feature glass wall? Something like a custom made SIP that gets made off-site, then assemble it and the windows at the same time on-site?

Added a floorplan with labels. Most commonly used entrance would be on north side - dog walking with a mudroom Second entrance (south side) would be the "formal entrance" - not going through a store room with dog cleaning being the main mission Top floor is based on lowest part of ceiling being at 1800mm, and vacancies being used for storage (travel bags, detritus from having a young family) Top floor only extends half-way on east-west axis to give a ridiculous full-height living space - concept/dream that we'll likely have to compromise on Stairs are down a corridor, yes...the (maybe misguided) logic being separating out private areas and public areas, with staircase also being centrally positioned to reduce need for an upstairs hallways Fully aware it's not the most efficient use of space - we're still trying to work out the architect/designer/surveyor gambit - slow responses so far, so have been sketching in mean time

Concept sketches here.

Following up to my introduction post, posting a few sketches of the concept house we'd like to build in Orkney. These drawings are done by myself, so there's no professional input or any construction experience - they're probably quite unrealistic. My wife and I designed this with a view of "this would be our ideal", to be able to start communicating clearly with a surveyor about what we want (to try and make those conversations as clear as possible). We're pragmatically expecting to scale down. A self-build lender suggested we could borrow about £450k for the build, but I think that would push the value of the property to be too high if we were ever to resell (mid 30s). My aim would be to do it for less than £350k, but that would require something of the order of £1,750 per m2 and that's unlikely given the remoteness. I wouldn't be surprised if footprint needs to come down. That said, the concept we've put together is trying to save costs - if you have any suggestions, we're all ears. External view Floor plan sketches Basic thinking going into this design: Aligned east-west for the sea view to the east, and hills view to the west. Additional windows on south to maximise light in the winter Gabled, rectangular box with a long aspect ratio, partly because we like the long house format, but also to keep the roof simple 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1 office (I am work from home), 1 mudroom/laundry/store room, 1 snug Very large open plan living area (kitchen/lounge) for long winters hiding from the wind Major glass feature on east wall for the view in triple-glazed aluminium. Estimated it to be about £32k alone, based on it being roughly 24m2 at about £1,300 per m2 Bedrooms/bathrooms/office/mechanical room are all single height (2.3m), with the kitchen and lounge being full-height to celebrate the gabled roof and large window wall Plumbing in bathrooms is stacked vertically, and bathrooms located on laundry/kitchen side of house to keep plumbing together Kitchen is based off a DIY Kitchens modular build (exactly), which I've put together myself in past and is a great cost-saving, delivery issues aside Apart from the feature glass wall, all the windows are sized to line up with the ICF blocks, and external doors are lined up with the ICF layout Size of building is similar in footprint to neighbouring properties Love Passivhaus concepts, but not going for full Passivhaus approach. ICF airtightness/insulation, MVHR, air source heat pump. If budget allowed, the south-facing long axis of house would be perfect for solar I work from home, so a larger-than-necessary office (could compromise), and my wife is gorgeous/dreams of having a walk-in closet (could compromise) - representing two things we'd love to have if possible Some aspects to keeping cost down: Lot of effort in design to try keep the plumbing localised Polished concrete floor downstairs rather than hardwood/carpets/etc (bedroom carpets could come later) DIY kitchen apart from plumbing and 32A supply DIY internal timber cladding to reduce total amount of plastering (labour and labour accommodation costs might offset timber cladding?) Built-in shelves/internal doors done by us, I have a CNC We'd love to have the functional parts of the house (MVHR ducting, plumbing, electrics) to actually be visible features - e.g. metal conduits visible, rather than concealing them - possible cost savings during fitting stage? No skylights, all windows are same size apart from feature wall (and fixed due to MVHR) We're new to this, so if people have any suggestions, we're flexible in terms of adapting our expectations to make this happen. Where we're at: Just about to start the planning permission process. Ideally, I'd love to get an estimate via a surveyor/builder in terms of whether they feel this is achievable within our budget (including scaling up DIY if needed) so that we can commit to the larger-than-expected footprint, else we'll have to shrink that down.

@Iceverge We're currently at concept stage. I have some sketches (which I'll post shortly), and I currently want to verify that they're within our budget before driving the planning permission mission, because the footprint is probably too expensive (being realistic, our concept is too ambitious...we're willing to compromise down). That's something I'm hoping a few of the experts can help with here - I'm an engineer who has pulled some drawings together, but I'm struggling to get hold of a surveyor to validate them/help estimating the cost. On thinking ICF: Mostly the airtightness/thermal mass features, but also the ridiculous notion of building something solid out of concrete to last as weather gets more extreme. We started scoping this out as we watched a lot of timber kit houses get blown away by the recent hurricane in the States, and I'm sure that's had an influence! I've had a chat with a local builder who specialises in ICF, and he didn't seem too concerned about getting the ICF structure up and running. @Jenki @ProDave I raised the issue about getting sufficient concrete, and he said they typically just resort to mixers on site and do it by hand. His biggest concern was the additional cost of having a team stay out at an island for a few days (both the financial cost, but also the personal cost to the team). If it ends up being too much, timber frame isn't out of the question.

Hi all, My wife and I are in the early stages of setting up a self-build home in Orkney. We don't have any construction experience, and am extremely glad to have found Build Hub - browsing around has shown how much experience and advice there is on here! In particular, I've been reading @Stones' blog and @MarcelHoldinga's updates on their similar projects with a great amount of interest. We're a couple with a young child, and our self-build ambitions come from a place of hoping to make a safe and comfortable haven for our daughter as she grows up. We have family in Orkney, and the friendliness of the local community was ultimately what made us want to make the leap - we've been searching for a stronger sense of community since the difficult COVID years. We've got a plot of land and are beginning the planning permission process. The intent is to build an efficient and open-plan ICF property on one of the North Isles. Happy to be here, glad there's such a rich source of info on self-building!