Conor

The ratio entirely depends on how much you spend fitting out the house... You can spend £5k or £50k on a kitchen. Your estimate seems good tho £15k for demolition is a lot, unless it's a large, difficult building.

@Declan52 that was my first thought.... I've a lot of clay to muck away, loads of stones to bring in and landscaping to do. they also have their own diggers, handlers and dumpers parked up over the weekends that would be very handy for me...

@markc and @ZacP thats in Northern Ireland btw - you'll need to adjust for your areas.

A building site for single dwelling here go from £250-£325k. Completed house worth around £600-£800k. For our potential site, would be on the low end of that range as it would be relatively small. Had a chat with the architect about this and said he's had cases where people have been able to build over drains/utilities with agreement with the owner. I'd be getting that in writing at the start that would allow me to build over the drain (within agreed limitation) without seeking approval from the owner. Meeting builder tomorrow and going to set out my situation and let them come back to me.

Looking at about £145k for us to get watertight - inc ground works but excluding design, planning, BC fees etc. (£15k ground works, £75k walls/floors, £25k roof, £30k doors and windows.) That's about 60% of our budget. That's for a 300m2 ICF 1.5 story house with basement, built to passive standards.

Very good question. I assume the developer would retain ownership. Another facet is that they need to sort this asap... As some of the houses are probably 2-3 months from completion. I know first hand that both a license to discharge application and any kind of private land agreement takes at least the same length of time... I can picture a route that would skirt our new house and not cause too much of a problem as we'd be keeping a good 4metre gap between us and the second house. An alternative would be for me to lay my own drain from the front of the property and allow them to connect to it for an modest annual fee ?

That's the issue... If we dont get PP for a second house, we'll be selling a 2-4m strip of land to our neighbours who want to build a garage and extension. Hmm

Long story short. There's a development of five large (300m² ish) houses being built across the road from us. The builder popped on Friday and said they haven't sorted their drainage yet.... Firstly I'm amazed they got planning permission with out a drainage plan but that's beside the point. Anyway, we are between them and the nearest river and he doesn't think they'll be allowed to discharged to the combined sewer. So they want to lay a drain pipe though about 40m of our land to the river at our rear boundary. I've no objection on principle.... And we're basically a building site anyway so no disruption to us. What's the usual procedure? Is a wayleave normally used for this or is there another way? My only concern is we may want to build a second house on that part of the land in the future... Would this be a (legal) hindrance?

It's a pretty simple and quick job to divert a small diameter pipe. As in you can do all the works before anybody notices. 7am on a Saturday morning for a 30min shutoff would be perfect... What size is it? And no, there's no way your solicitor would have found that in a search.

I've been told that of you ask (non trade), a 30% discount is likely. A friend of a friend got their order zero vat rated and then a 20% discount without even asking... My quote with them is sitting at £7.5k so I will be asking!!!

Hardi backer board. Pretty much standard way to tile on to wooden structures. I'm not sure of I'd have it as the only material on your stud walls.. you also have to bear in mind building regs re fire and sound. I'm sure somebody will come along and clarify.

Good luck. We've been browsing kitchens, windows, doors etc . All seem to have 8 week + lead in times.

That's over £140 a metre. That's excessive. That's the kind of money you'd pay for a large diameter public sewer. I'd be looking for a new contractor. But devil is in the detail... Is there difficult or specialist reinstatement? What depth does the main and manhood need to be? Does this include connection charge to the public sewer? Is it pvc pipe or two wall polythene?

Go back to the assessor and see what happens when you upgrade insulation to about 0.15 and put in triple glazing. This is kinda what we should all be doing as a min starting point before thinking about heat sources and power generation.

Two-stroke leaf blowers must be one of the most anti-social contraptions ever devised. First thing I'll ban when I'm king of the world.

Doesn't really work like that - there's a very long thread with lots of formulae and arguments about this subject. The wall should be considered as a single thermal element, where the concrete is in the profile, doesn't really matter. It's an order of magnitude cheaper to put a 40mm sheet of PIR on the inside vs a 100mm sheet of EWI grade EPS on the outside.

We're just sticking on 40mm of PIR on the insides of the walls (then plasterboard screwed through to the webs) to get the standard Amvic blocks down to 0.15. considerably cheaper than a larger block.

What's the normal method of bring water, electric and tele in through a tanked basement wall? I was thinking of sticking in 3x 50mm conduits through the ICF at about 300mm apart and tanking around them. How would I then airtight/tank them after the cables and pipes go in? Expanding foam and tanking tape? Same approach I assume for the waste pipes? Stick in a section of 110mm PVC pipe at the appropriate depth? Thanks

I'm also doing a great job of getting in my builders way ?

@ZacP what's your procurement strategy? Are you going to buy the Icf and assemble yourself along with some assistance? Bear in mind structural warranty erc. That was my plan but in the end I went with a contractor to supply and fit... Came in at £51k, a fair bit more than my DIY estimate of £40k... But I'm saving £3k on not needing a warranty and it'll be done 10x faster lol. And contractor takes all the risk. I recommend you price up a contractor to supply and fit the ICF along with all structural elements.

Have you priced AMVIC? They came out cheapest - about 50% cheaper than NUDURA for reference once you factored in all the "extras". FYI we're in th emiddle of our basement assembly: Looking like 2 weeks from delivery of forms to concrete pour. Once you factor in the setting out of tracks etc (1 day alone), a full week for assembling blocks and doing rebar, and other 2-3 days bracing and setting up props and checks before the pour. That assumes you've no complicated or large openings. Builder started forms on our simple 100m2 basement on Monday, will be finished tomorrow lunch time, bracing the four openings in the afternoon and into next week assuming props arrive on Monday, with pour hopefully on Wednesday. Extra insulation will go on with the tanking the week after.

I just got the main contractor to do in the end. Much simpler and cheaper as he provides the guarantee.

I think you can do better. I was getting quotes around that or less, for a house three times a big.

Should be at least double that. Roughly min of £1000/m² for a new build. A developer can build it cheaper, but that's not the market rate for rebuild. The BICS estimate is closer to reality.

I'd fire this back to the vendor and ask them to upgrade the warranty at their cost. Threaten to pull out of the sale... The vendor will just have the issue again with the next potential buyer and will cough up and sort it.