DownSouth

We managed to get a refund for our design (£500 paid) because after a lot of back and forth they agreed they couldn’t design the system we wanted (one zone upstairs, one zone down) and wanted to do a zone per room. Worth discussing a refund if you need a low flow system and they can’t design what you want. Don’t let them give you nonsense solutions which you’ll not be using once you live in the house.

+1. Being 5’3’’ our new kitchen is designed to have 600-800 wide drawers everywhere, no tall units (3/4 fridge and 3/4 freezer) and no wall cupboards at all. We’re lucky to have a utility which will have tall cupboards and a ladder for all the stuff we don’t use so much. We’ve stuck a long window over where the sink will be and I honestly can’t wait to do some dishes! 🤣

I know you’re looking at the fenestration. We ended up with four bedrooms, all in corners of the house. One has only one window, the other 3 have windows on both aspects. It makes a massive difference to the feel of those rooms, light coming in at different times of the day instead of just one aspect and one view. The other bedroom feels a bit pokey by comparison. I’d be trying to get another window into the master bedroom. Your dining room window looks small, the dining/kitchen looks to be in the wrong place. Will your kitchen get enough natural light? It looks very symmetrical. Did they design the outside first without any thought to how the light will affect each room? We’ve got a similar shape but smaller footprint. I think the nicest view of it is one where all the windows are different shapes and sizes, designed to fit the function of each room.

Using a Scottish TF company who detailed fire battens around the doors and windows. Building in England and a local cladding company fitted them - it’s not that common to use TF round here. Struggling to find detailed design for how they are meant to be fitted so wanted to check: 1. Is it right to fit them so close to the frame? 2. How would they usually be detailed underneath? Our above window detail means they will always be visible. 3. Does doing it this way mean they’ll deteriorate faster than the windows as they’ll be exposed to light and weather? Grateful if anyone can share pics or diagram of what they’ve done.

We used Paul heat recovery and have installed the pipes ourselves to their design. as @JohnMo commented they are not the cheapest but they are helpful with advice, so as first timers it suited us. They supplied everything except the pipe from inside out to the ASHP itself. Of which we over ordered by 2 1/2 metres - I’ll stick the spare bit it on Marketplace - but if anyone reading this thread wants it then do message me.

It increased the cost by £17,000 in comparison to a 2.5-3m strip foundation. The cost of concrete was driving it, so if you need 3m you might be better piling.

We are on clay, 8m from trees and mature farm hedge. 20 CFA piles, ground beam and B&Beam was our SE’s solution.

We had Sainsburys insurance for our previous renovation - had to declare the cost of the work and timescale. Think they were happy with <£100k works within 1-2 years so if yours is bigger budget not sure they’d cover it.

Who is it asking for the checklist? We’re installing one too, no flue. My understanding is Part J Section 4 asks only that a carbon monoxide alarm is fitted in the same room. if you look at the checklist it doesn’t seem to apply (Appendix A). Also if it did it looks like competent self builders (us) could complete it themselves and just leave the ‘registered membership of…’ line blank.

Hoping someone has come across this before. We have Rationel aluclad doors installed by the TF erection team which look great but are stiff/almost impossible to open and close. The lock mechanism just doesn’t want to engage. In some we have to push from outside while someone is inside trying to lock - which is not ideal if we both want to be in the house! Our installers say it’s probably down to the additional cladding weight. The cladders say not their fault, doors should still work despite the extra weight and the cladding isn’t pressing on the frames. A spirit level shows the frame is bowed, but it did open when first installed. Now it’s almost impossible to shut and get the lock mechanism engaged. There’s no cladding on this one yet. We’ve tried adjusting it but how to deal with the frame issue is the question. Several doors have the issue of difficulty locking after opening them. Any ideas what to do next?

We have a window upstairs but not in the downstairs shower room so might need to add a sensor. Although it won’t be used that much…

@Bramco that’s the unit we are planning on getting. The website spec below talks about optional wall sensors for humidity and then later states there is an integral sensor. Do you need extra wall sensors fitted to measure the humidity? https://www.bpcventilation.com/zehnder-q350

I’ll leave someone more qualified than me to reply to your question - but just wanted to ask Is the cupboard insulated? I’d be worried about getting woken up every time the heating kicked in.

We had textured/rough sandstone in our previous house, found difficult to pressure wash as it flaked under pressure and had to reseal it afterwards to stop moss. Thinking of using castacrete textured concrete this time, although landscaping feels a long long way off! And it still should be sealed so not sure whether it’ll be less maintenance.

https://abi.bcis.co.uk You can use this calculator to get a ballpark rebuild estimate. Money Saving Expert also has a guide to it.

Our initial rebuild cost for the warranty and the site insurance took account of the fact we’re doing a load of work and all PM. The mortgage company however were only interested in what a professional rebuild cost was - their risk if it all goes wrong and a builder needs to finish it - they need to know what would that cost not self-builders working every hour. We didn’t know that when we took out policies so it cost us more money (hundreds of pounds) because we had to up both the site insurance and warranty to reflect ‘professional reinstatement costs’ in order to get the mortgage released. So going low might not be the best strategy. I’d be interested to know how many SQM the 8-15k quotes are for - is it a huge house or unusual construction you’ve gone for?

We had to provide a quote for warranty for initial mortgage offer and then demonstrate it was in place before the mortgage went through. Are you building a large house? Our warranty is £4k for 200sqm house through Build Store. LABC warranty quote was £11k. You might want to shop around. We also had to get site insurance (for full rebuild costs) in place before the mortgage was finalised. Lots to pay out before you even start.

No we just did this, showed the lights on the plan and had a drawing of it and wrote a supporting ‘scheme’ to go with it. We used information off the internet on lights for dark sky areas, and info from wildlife sites on creating refugia (messy areas of garden that you’ll leave undisturbed) for critters to use/hibernate in. We ended up removing the track lighting as well either be driving up or walking with a torch if needed and didn’t want them coming on with the sheep next door.

Have you spoken to anyone who has porcelain tiles? They seem to be out with brushes and squeegees constantly to keep them looking clean.

Congrats on planning permission. Do you already know you have foraging animals? Or do you just need to show you’ve considered them, so no lighting hedges, up lighting trees, etc? ‘no evidence of foraging mammals, bats, etc however to protect…’ We did our own design and scheme documents which were enough for our LPA to sign off. Happy to share if helpful but you could put ‘discharge of condition lighting’ or ‘lighting design scheme biodiversity’ into a planning portal and see what people in your area have done. Advice on discharging conditions is to try and go them all in one go. Our LPA charges each time you apply to discharge - but you can do as many as you want in one go. We didn’t realise that straight away - it can be an expensive process (we had 13 or 14 conditions!).

ignore me, just saw the comment

https://arrowfastener.com/tool/t50/ our TF erection team had one of these, a cut above our Stanley’s one which was always jamming. Easy to use, very solid.

There might be a handful who will do mortgages for 100% wood cladding. Bath BS and Darlington BS were able to offer mortgages on our 100% (metal) cladding, offered via Build Store (couldn't get them direct). We really wanted 100% metal but were about to compromise and change to 50% render until we met Tom McSherry at one of the Self Build shows. He was doing 15 minute consultations and by the end of it we were happy that they could get us an advance stage mortgage on it. Don’t regret going with them and now the cladding has started to go on it’s exactly what we wanted.

Depends where you are. We paid £8k incl VAT 2-storey, 100sqm footprint, 10 weeks with a flexible end date (which is proving handy after the last 2 storms). Went with a big local company, so they have loads of kit (no pressure to get it back), could accommodate the erect 3 sides for the TF company and then 4th side a few days later and weekly scaff tag check is easy because they’re down the road. On VAT you can ask them to zero rate the labour costs if you’re self building.