Gema

Good questions actually, you got me thinking. We are ready to ask for help when needed indeed. Like asking here for other people's experiences with Building Regs and others that will probably come up. Or hiring consultants for the things that we find our knowledge / time to handle lacking. We have hired a PD CDM, we have had a QS price things out; we have a friendly architect technician who we reach out to for questions (on a consulting basis). Someone from this forum is lending a hand with Windows/doors. We have a project Structural Engineer. We will be hiring a project manager that will be on site as needed when we cannot be. We decided we'd make the time to handle all the design, diligently - including detailed plans, simulation, modelling, etc. The fact that we are both engineers in different fields means that, for example, the PH light/overheating problem, an optimization problem, is something that we are naturally attracted to and want to solve. Analysis skills, yep. Decision making, sure. Risk management, we both do that at work with projects regularly. Pragmatic choices, also check, and we have a very clear non negotiables that we will uphold through the project. Since we became homeowners, I can say that I have developed the skills to manage the different trades and assess quality - as every other homeowner can probably attest to. And also when to ask someone to stop working if the quality of their work isn't up to scratch and they aren't minded to improve. Mind you, being a woman, this has taken a few by surprise over the years. At work, well, projects derail and need practical decisions all the time. So all good there too. Are we biting off more than we can chew? Maybe - but it's a challenge we are willing to face head-on. We'll get help as and when needed - including from this forum! Y'all are already helping. PS: my forum skills are still a work in progress, I was trying to split your questions in different quotes when I accidentally submitted ! PS2: @ToughButterCup... that moonlight comment has me wanting the house to be finished even more! Thank you!!!

Alex can add more details later, but we did look at the plot and where we wanted the garden to be, where the main road was going to be. The original orientation of the house according to outline planning was not optimal so we rotated the house's footprint ~20 degrees or so, trying to keep it within the outline application's footprint, making sure the house faces the street and adds passive security to the neighbourhood, etc. Our architect advised against that because of planning difficulties and other equally not strong enough reasons, so we stuck with it. We improved PV efficiency, solar gains optimisation (better solar gains in winter, reduction of overheating in summer). Just to be clear, our house is not full of glazing, we don't particularly like the idea of being on display (went back and forth on this to figure out if we were wrong). For the unavoidable big windows for views that face S-SW we have added brise soleils that help reduce the overheating in summer but do not affect the heat gains in winter. We did all our simulations and kept resizing and moving windows, brise soleis and spaces until we were happy with: 1) the way the different spaces flow. We tried many designs, moved the different rooms to different facades and split/joined living spaces several times until we landed on a design that was right for us. Thought about accessibility, public vs private spaces, avoid sensory overload in any given space (how noise travels through the walls from the different sources) 2) the way light hits all the different spaces at different times of the day through the year (daylight simulations). We made sure daylight reached as far in as possible, providing good daylight autonomy in all the different spaces. 3) the simulated solar gains (winter) and overheating (summer) through the year

Thanks all for the input, much appreciated. I realize we've touched on a few controversial topics 😅 @Nickfromwales - what constraints do you have in mind? We want to make sure we are not missing something here. The requirements around energy efficiency, and around airtightness, don't particularly seem at odds with a comfortable home. Not sure we'd have gotten the same reaction if we had said we are aiming for an airtight home with good insulation 😆

Hi, we are trying to decide whether to use Local Authority for building regulations or a private company. We are in South Cambridgeshire and would like to know if someone has had experience interacting with them (https://www.3csharedservices.org/) and they found them responsive or have some feedback. Alternatively, if we were to use a private company for this, any recommendations for this side of the country? We have Act Surveyors, Delta, and Gateway building control on our short list. Our reason to go with Local Authority would be that we've read that private BCAs are a bit hit and miss, so it seemed better to go with local authority. Until you read some of the posts here that have so many issues with constraint resources in some areas... At the end of the day, we'd like a BCA that's responsive, relatively fast to respond/iterate, and as clear as possible in their feedback.

Hi, last September we found a plot we liked in South Cambridgeshire and started to look into doing our own self build. This is something we had considered doing when we retire, but plots that align with our requirements are not super abundant, so we decided to do it now instead. We are looking to build a Passivhaus two storey dwelling and have it certified. Energy efficiency is important to us and so is having a home at the end that is really comfortable to live in. A few months later and we have exchanged contracts and are a couple of months into a planning application, awaiting the final outcome any week now. We started the journey with an architect, but two months into the relationship we realized our timeline would be heavily affected by the fact that we were not totally aligned and not fully listened to (despite very lengthy email threads back and forth) and decided to learn how to do the architecting ourselves, and hire any experts we needed to help with things along the way. But having a third party handling it all for us was... too low touch for our liking. We'll be managing the build ourselves, as we've decided against having a main contractor. Maybe we'll need a project manager at some point. We've been reading the forum and learning from you all, hopefully we contribute something back soon!