puntloos

Interesting question, because it depends on who 'you' is. Me, puntloos- yes. Us, the puntfamily - "maybe". Interesting idea. If you go to my showcase site - https://focusky.com/uqqn/baxy - top right section, is all the 'pro' drawings I currently have. Is that a good level of detail? Or would you do more? And how do I find an arch technician? 😃

Well main reason is that it would be 'separate' and not in the way. Yeah that's why I was effectively looking at some 'parking' sites, people who have a lockable garage available near my house. But @SimonDis not wrong that quality problems, warranty etc are somewhat of an issue, I suppose I might buy a fridge, say, 4 months ahead of kitchen install time.. Fair point.

Prices being crazy and going up and down all the time, in theory renting storage and buying stuff (windows? fridge? tiles?) seems like a somewhat sensible idea. But what are the practicalities here: - Is one-garage-worth actually enough to make a dent? Or do I need *serious* storage - Are suppliers themselves (e.g. kitchen company) able to store for you instead? - Can it be insured? - Builders storing equipment such as drills? - How close to the site does it have to be? Is 10 miles away useless? Basically - is it worth the hassle?

One thing I did was teach myself an architecting program. I can jump into the house and move the couch 5cm to the left and then jump into VR to see what happens. I have literally 80 major revisions of the house on file now. (started a new file version every time I changed a big amount of things). Would be interesting to create a movie/time progression of all these designs. It's safe to say I know the house fairly well, but really only at a superficial level, I couldn't tell you the build-up of the walls (I was involved, but don't remember). @Adsibob- supply chain - yeah I'm debating arranging storage and start buying stuff right now for the provisionals. I'm not sure how the builder will handle e.g. "concrete". @Adsibob- what do you mean arch technician? my design was a full architect team, so that's done? I am debating doing a professional 3D render of my house (into a gaming engine so you can truly feel reality). @MikeSharp01- You're right, I think my marriage is pretty good at communication on 'general issues' but building a house, and seeing it shape up in unexpected ways is quite another. @JohnMo- Liked the beach story, although ha as said I have literally 82 versions of my house drawn and shown in 3D to the wife, so same idea. Interesting point about not being allowed onsite, i wonder if I should insist, I'm really not in a place to do stuff myself anyway, but I don't like mystery - also I think people underestimate how amazing a large hall is, sounds like a good call. @Kelvin- seems like we're somewhat similar, of course my partner is a very different person. I'm pretty optimistic that I can handle most situations (hey, it'll cost time, but not too much money since my builder is 'turnkey' - in most things it's their problem if concrete price doubles etc. But yeah, finances in general, I've been trying to get a super clear view of any "extra" costs beyond the quoted, not to mention that my money is partially in the stock market so I am worrying about how much I should put money in the proverbial mattress so I'm sure I have the number asked, vs doing the 'right investment strategy' which is 95% likely to end me up with more but 5% I can't afford the house.. etc..

Words of wisdom, for sure. I guess nothing in life is certain, but given how the building process is set up, the likelihood of ending up with a hole in the ground and no money is pretty darn low. As long as you don't do dumb things such as ignoring advice from your architect/builder without good reasons. And absolutely, any random house could have plenty of downsides that add up.

Very very different starting point though 😃 - congrats on your path but mine is post-midlife-crisis (at least, I probably am 50+% through with my life) and therefore decent career and bank status etc. Need people to do the work for me and I'll... "supervise" somewhat. Also the 30% seems very realistic if you are going to do it all yourself and you have to deal with market quirks and bad luck. My method is giving the builder a pre-agreed, and inflated amount of monies and they have to figure out all the rest.

"Can't take a joke", @ToughButterCupposted on April 1st. Ha. Well, here's an interesting one. Looking at the date for the starting post - March 2021. Well hello from July 2022. NOW we have the full work done. Of course I didn't have building regs yet. No soil testing done. I didn't have the full SE and Mechanical design yet. No discharge of conditions (roof tiles.. ) But .. a year+? Wow. Mostly people not moving their ass until prodded MANY times, and I felt I was pretty pushy at times. And my money became worth what - 25% less? Anyway. I now know all I could reasonably know as an amateur/buyer. Tender is done and has returned. I can still theoretically afford it. The provisionals could cut down the price by maybe 20% (if I go for IKEA throughout, no smart home etc) It's quite interesting that "finally" I am at a stage where the 'build' route is a bit clearer than the "buy" route, since of course the house we'd buy has not come on the market yet, no idea about its hidden flaws, its EPC rating etc. Not to mention that buying will cost time as well, buying our "plot" (+house) the first time took 6 months from offer accepted to keys. It will certainly be a worse quality house, or a more expensive house. One important difference I think I'm picking up on is that many people here do 50-80% of project managing themselves. Instead my approach has been pretty much ultra hands-on during the design, but intending to just hand the builder +QSthe plans and going 'call me when you're done" as the default. Certainly I intend to be much more present, and I still have some work around kitchen/bathroom/AV design but the basic structure of the house should (?) be oven ready, but not boris-style. Or am I dreaming? As I noted in my topic elsewhere - I think a lot of the choices have been narrowed down in design to such a degree that outrageously wrong choices are hard-ish to make, assuming the builder is good-faith doing their best.

Ah, I missed this one @Jilly sorry. Yes it's this strange balance. Absolutely intend to live in there yes. On the one hand, I'm sure that I would literally find fault with how high a lightswitch is up on a wall (I'm 1m93 tall, so whatever the builder picks certainly stands a risk of being 5cm down from my ideal. But would it bug me? (not when in alien restraints circling saturn..) But normally, yes, teensy bit, but certainly aiming for perfection is impossible, even if you truly decide every minute detail yourself. What do I know about truly the ideal height of a switch? My hand might be higher than average, but my kid won't reach that for 10 more years. My wife never gets there.. etc. Just a dumb example. As for ergonomics, well, yes, there certainly is a chance people are bad at their job, or uncaring, and won't do sanity checks like clashing doors. It's better I look myself but only the truly structural stuff is unchangable afterwards, which I'm not sure I'd evn be qualified for. And as a final thought, certainly when buying a current house, the chance that it isn't ideal is almost a given. Reaching a good standard even if I pay zero attention is not too unlikely, that's somewhat the point with 'turnkey', no?

Quick update on this one - so indeed this is lighting design + supply (20K) and the rest - sockets, cables, switches - 10K. It excludes alarm/cameras so as before I'd love to see an actual quote but it's not unreasonable I think

"House burned down, the culprit, Thorfun's kettle was found sealed into the wall, plugged in."

Thanks - yep, those are the tradeoffs. I can imagine it's quite gratifying to build a house with your own hands, but for me.. well, I was heavily involved in design but I'm going to have to let the professionals do the actual building. Learning that skill from scratch, including doing it poorly for a while and dealing with bad work.. not in the cards. We'll see how it goes (IF we decide to go for it.. will decide that pretty soon).

Yeah it's always the question which one is the best, I think the mitsu's are probably the best performance specs (noise level, COP), no idea about build quality, and I guess not in price. Always tough to balance. Yeah, I will, the moment we decide to build (or not!) Right now the crucial question is: "Is the self build a better deal than buying something off the market", when all is said and done.

Right now I just want to build something solid (no compromises on things I can't fix later) for as cheap as possible - especially given the risen prices. But yeah, a few 1000 quid are probably not going to break the bank..

@AliGand others do make a fair point, this house is perhaps "strangely balanced"... but are you all simply "slate and gutter snobs" or is there a tangible difference in visuals and performance not worth the cost saving.. Would a non-builder - a picky mother in law or somesuch - look at those tiles and pull up her nose? I doubt it but.. maybe?

Hey Ali, thanks for going into such detail. appreciated. Answers below One thing I would point out is that GU10's are bad. They are trying to fit a hot(ish) led array in too small space with no cooling so they burn out. There is a certain risk, but even assuming it's safe, proper LED lighting will last a lifetime. But overall yes, lighting designer is an intentional cost Ah! No absolutely ignore the renders, they are my own and I have not taking into account any of the lighting design, I just kinda stretched a few sensible lights across the house. Yeah I think this is excluding the demo too, meaning the demo will be separate. Nice call-out, will make sure we do this properly There's a few considerations around with regards to materials.. for me, I don't care it is plastic, if you can't tell and/or it is actually better. I didn't look this up, I think we had some discussion on guttering elsewhere in this forum but I thought plastic was actually the more practical material? What happened was that I specced a system pretty loosely and the one team came back with a quote. This is what we all ran with but not a lot of critical thougt has been given to the detail need etc. Reasonable.. I don't agree for 'heating', and lighting one can debate.. but indeed AV is certainly true and you're not the first mentioning a few 'cheap choices'.. I guess I'd like to know what price increase I'd get for "one level up" again I'm very practical, so indeed e.g. "slate" vs "slate colored cement tiles".. eh <shrug> as far as I can tell this fall somewhat under the "do we want a tshirt for $, or a tshirt with a nike logo on it for $$$"....

Agreed, a lot of limits are just luck/circumstance. Maybe if we tendered with other builders etc etc but at the end of the day at least C1 seems 'ok' .. and C2 is *weird* - I wonder if they made mistakes.. Yep, fixed fee 😃

35,000/250 = 140.. where do you get 70? If I look at this though - first hit on google: https://www.plumb.build/product/forterra-73n-medium-density-100mm-fenlite-block-floor-grade/6108 - 10 blocks per m2, that's 17 quid Seems.. accurate? Yeah, a little heavy but not insane?

That's a very interesting insight in the 'multiplication factor' that they are trying to use to build in their risk, or ha trying to fleece me Are there any downsides to liquid that I'm not aware of?

Would you mind sharing your cost sheet or a quote or something?

You sound like you have an awesome house, congratulations! Yeah, I wonder if that is a mistake. It's certainly possible. I can very well imagine builders just looking to 'hit a number' rather than derive the number from the actual facts. And indeed, as I said elsewhere, to the best of my estimation (always hard to compare houses, huge differences in distance-to-station, garden size, etc) the resulting house would be maybe 15% cheaper than buying a similar quality one off-the-shelf. Obviously very tough to factor in luck, ability to even close a deal, the current houses on the market etc. Looking back to the last 5 years of daily rightmove checks we've only seen (and bid on.. and lost..) 1 house that had amazing value for money, probably outweighing the selfbuild route. But again how do you factor in stress, and time, and risk, and effort.. I'd love to see your cost sheets

Interesting point. I guess it all depends and could be a big cost saving. Of course the theory is that I have UFH, MVHR and A2A(aircon) not to mention blinds and awnings in every room, so if the sensor picks up humidity or temp or lots of light the entire house could respond in some clever fashion by opening the awnings but only if no rain and if the temperature etc.etcetc. But is it worth the money.. Fair enough, although I also have a network/server cabinet and a projector box that generates a lot of heat, MVHR might be able to help - anyway overdimensioing it a little will perhaps be a cost I can reduce if I need to but not 'urgent', thanks for the info!

Just as a small side-note I definitely struggle untangling the risk from this all. Yes, 1 brick is 1 GBP and the builder is charging 1.50, so poohpooh but the harder question is what is a reasonable amount to pay for the "guarantee" that once I've paid the money I will have a solid house. Many people on this forum of course can point out prices asked are higher than what you can find with 10 minutes of Googling but the included risk, both standard as well as potential inflation-caused craziness and brexit delays etc..

Yeah quite so. Also I keep contrasting it with real house asking prices. For a house of this scale (say 250m2+) in my area, most of them of course are 1970s houses extended in early 2010. And then they land at 2.25M, which is 9000/sqm, not even counting the stamp duty. I do feel that I'm getting better value for money even with a full service team.. but I would love to tighten that statement up and back it up by numbers etc so this topic has been very helpful already..

Got it, but if I add up all the project management line items it comes to 8.25 days? Where do you see 20? True, so... where does the 1000/m2 go towards? Do you think this quote is structurally unreasonable? As before I do wonder how much buffer they are building into various pots here and there to make sure they don't get swatted by "another ukraine" or something, but would love to have a generic verdict (also the discussion here is getting to that so that's cool too )

Thanks for looking into it, it is helping me a ton. Sadly I don't quite understand every point you make, below.. Yeah, this one can certainly lose some fat, but I do think that having a big sensor array in every room (I am hoping for at least light, co2, temp, humid, voc, pm2.5 sensor for each room, not to mention separate smoke as per reqs) and wiring them into a central brain is quite a challenge. Well the actual equipment quote of 23,000 is "quality stuff".. it's certainly worth considering to go to "GU10 downlighters" so to speak but I imagine that even if you switch the entire lighting system to "IKEA" you will not drop below 10,000.. so yes, 13,000 for premium is, until I really need to make painful cuts.. not too bad? Or am I way off? and 30K (contractor1) 60K (contractor2) for installation. Do you think 30K is unreasonable for a 300sqm house install+supply of basics (mostly power sockets and cabling, the rest is in the AV section)? Are you saying BR and PH are fundamentally disagreeing on what flow rate the MVHR should be set to? I suppose just picking the larger one is OK and turning it down if 'the other team' comes to check? That's contractor 2, yes. Too much? C1 asks 57,000 Hmm, I guess it's a balance between sound and air? I think I care less about insulation (inside the house, not in-to-outside) Embarassing question but what is ground floor installation? It sounds like I should know..