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Declan52

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Everything posted by Declan52

  1. Declan52
    When that's all finished and oiled up it will look outstanding. Really superb skills on show there. And a lot of patience.
  2. Declan52
    I have a pop up socket in my island and to be honest it always has someone's phone plugged into it. Plus if I take a notion and go on a baking spree it is great to have all the cables from the equipment not in the way. You can get them with a built in bluetooth speaker for listening to any music you have access to on your phone. Don't forget in a few years the majority of quality phones will have wireless charging.
  3. Declan52
    They don't mark but with the sun shining on them you can see every minute piece of dirt. Reckon mine won't see this date next year!!
  4. Declan52
    My porcelain tiles in my sunroom really absorb the heat. They are 600*600 and the area surrounding the door and big window gets pretty warm if the sun is shining on it all day. I just used a flexible adhesive to glue them down and 4 years later they haven't moved yet.
  5. Declan52
    Could double up as a hard hat when she does miss it.
  6. Declan52
    Cheap waxing kit for you then.
  7. Declan52
    Plus we have way nicer crisps, proper tayto not that stuff from southern Ireland, plenty of clean fresh air and open country side and a way more relaxed lifestyle. As you have said where else in the world would function better without those in power running it. But you have Stephen Nolan in the morning and uncle Hugo in the afternoon and am not sure people from outside NI would grasp what either of them are going on about.
  8. Declan52
    There are some very stylish looking laminate worktops available now. Doesn't have to be plain Oak or a butcher's block type effect.
  9. Declan52
    My house takes about 1.5t of pellets per year. What I pay in electric and I get back from my fit payments are near enough the same. This year I was in profit by a few quid and last year I was down. With the hot spell last month I will probably be up again next year but it's only ever around £30-£50 either way. Pellets are £425 this year. Electric zero House is 220 sqm Cost £1.93 per sqm.
  10. Declan52
    So realistically what are the main bits I would need to include to get a better figure for the per m2 cost. Fuel for my pellet stove My rates( council tax equivalent ) Electric bills No water charge ( it's in our rates ) Anything else You can't include phone and broadband as they are optional costs.
  11. Declan52
    All I can say is thank God I don't live in the south of England .
  12. Declan52
    £18,000 for childcare is unreal!! For that they would need to be getting Heston Blumenthal in for lunches.
  13. Declan52
    Think when Dave goes out for a day in the new boat the wife and daughter will have it cranked up to 55 and be enjoying hot water that would take the skin off a man.
  14. Declan52
    You aren't far from summing my circumstances up. I was 36 and living in a row of terraced houses. We bought if from the council fairly cheap and over the course of 15 years gutted it and when it was ready sold it on to complete the build. Getting a mortgage was fairly difficult as it was during 2010 when the banks weren't lending any money. Took 4 attempts to get one approved. Was lucky enough with my work rota that I had plenty of time to be on site but still took 2 years to complete.
  15. Declan52
    Not true. Two of the best examples of no frills value for money self build is what both @Crofter and @Tennentslager both managed to achieve. What both of these guys achieved is nothing short of unbelievable in my eyes. Not many people in the UK under 40 are in a position financially to afford to go down the self build route. That's either due to the land availablity and cost where they live or maybe there salary isn't enough to go down this road. Not sure how this forum can contribute towards that.
  16. Declan52
    Going by that link your hole is under 2m wide so your digger will be plenty able. Why would you not be digging the sides vertical??? Do you have a high water table as I know a local guy here put one of them in and it floated out of the ground. He had to dig it out and instead of pea gravel he used a dry mix concrete to hold in place.
  17. Declan52
    I am signed up for the fit scheme. I got £545.67 back this year so my house is generating enough money to cover my yearly electric costs. Plus I then have close on free hot water from may to September. I think between them dates this year I have had to put the stove on 3 times as the sun wasn't enough to heat the tank fully.
  18. Declan52
    My electric meter already measures what I export. I get roughly £60 back a year from what I send back to the grid.
  19. Declan52
    How would you work out the solar PV aspect of your running costs. My wood pellet fuel is pretty easy as I know the quantity I am buying in but how would I guage what amount of pv excess I use during the year to heat my water. I have the generation amount and how much I sold back but how would you split the difference. Some the house will have used to power various things and the rest will have been used by the immersion.
  20. Declan52
    So is it a question of whoever has the lowest cost per sqm is the winner in your eyes. If I hadn't of wanted a quartz worktop, solid oak doors, oak flooring, triple glazed windows, Italian handless kitchen doors, mhrv unit, stone clad sections outside, massive bath and walk in shower I would have saved myself maybe £15k-£18k in my build costs. But these are all the things that I wanted to look at for the rest of my days. Otherwise I would have been safer just refurbishing the house I was in.
  21. Declan52
    You are just being an arse now. Your costing of under £1000/ sqm doesn't really mean much. The main factor in how much your build will cost is it's location. Anyone building in the south East of England will have more to pay than I did in NI. It's just how it is. Mine isn't passiv. I just had a budget of just over £100k and built the best house I could with that.i kept it simple and doing most of the work myself I could put the money saved here into the fabric of the building. I have a wbs and a pellet stove so am about as far away Mongolian wool and roof gardens as you can get. Apart from grand designs it wasn't a term I was even aware of. So to basically make fun of people here who have chosen to go down that route ain't on in my book. Why even spout all that. It might have seemed funny to you when you typed it out but it's really not. Comes across as a bit sad to be honest. Lots here have saved for years and spent all that time researching how they could build a passiv house and just because you have lifted a few blocks and ordered some concrete you think it is fine too post that.
  22. Declan52
    Don't think you could be further from the truth. My own house is a simple block cavity build bungalow built using motar and with a dry dash finish. I even have some stonework so is about as traditional as you get. Lots of people here have went for block builds and timber frame. Both the 2 most popular traditional build methods in the UK. Are you not going for a thin motar type build. It's not exactly a traditional method. Could you point out the posts where some one has posted about building using a traditional method and have asked for help and not been welcomed.
  23. Declan52
    If you do go down that route then a good supply of water is a must to keep the dust down. A few sprinklers well placed should be enough. When it's done then some polythene over the mound to stop it blowing away.
  24. Declan52
    The main reason people don't buy a wimpy home is they want it done right and not just to the bare minimum of standards. No point in buying one and then hopefully by the time your mortgage is paid off you will have the house where it would have been if you had of done it yourself. Why did you not just hand the cheque over to potton homes and then you wouldn't have to ask all the questions on here?? Maybe it's because you wanted to oversee the build and make sure it was done right or maybe your some kind of masochistic who enjoys sleeps nights, stress, sore muscles, hacked fingers etc.
  25. Declan52
    What are we meant to do then just post funny remarks mocking someones plight. I think you will find most of the posts start with empathy and then move on towards how a solution can be found. Just because you don't have time doesn't mean you shouldn't be going over every detail. Also just because you hand the reins over to a higher calibre crew won't mean it's done right either. Plenty of examples on here to illustrate both.
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