DownSouth

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.