vivienz

Cooks and Company supply them.

I'm in the final stages of my project with trades doing the majority of the work. Even so, it's crazy busy and you often feel like your head is going to burst with the amount of detail and activity. Having to dance to the tune of a TV production at the same time, who have no interest in things going smoothly for you, is a step way too far in my view. I would question your objectives - do you want to be on telly or have a lovely house without inviting additional stress and hassle. I can't see that they compatible objectives.

0.25 for mine. Not sure what it will be after completion but I shan't bother with a second test afterwards unless I have to, on the basis that there will be so little that I can change and the house is already warm and comfortable.

For those in the south, Brewers Decorators Centres offer a 20% discount off everything in your first order if you register for a trade account. This applies to absolutely everything, not just paint. Also, they have a price match policy, so for the non-paint bits and pieces, they will (usually) match whatever price you've seen elsewhere and you can knock off 20% if it's on your first order. When you open the trade account, they will email you a voucher for the 20% off discount. The standard trade discount is 10%.

11, of which 5 were pre-commencement.

I guess the order will vary from build to build as to what's the 'best' order, but this is how it happened for mine: 1. Engaged and commissioned architect with a relatively detailed brief of how we wanted the house to function for us. 2. Whilst waiting for PP: decided what type of build we wanted, researched TF and slab main contractors, decided on main contractor (subject to satisfactory quote) 3. Immediately after PP, engaged TF/slab main contractor and M&E consultant. 4. Commissioned architect to do building regs drawings. 5. Architect, TF/slab supplier and M&E consultant worked together to make sure that the house could be built as conceived and that the systems would go into the building. Thinking here about ensuring space for plant and equipment early on and things like penetrations through steel beams where MVHR ducts would need to run. 6. Had a soil survey done, indentified need for piles on site due to clay. 7. Engaged SE for piles but didn't use their advice in the end, for 2 reasons. Their initial proposed solution was too expensive and, in the end, the piling company had their own SE who did the calculations and liaised with the TF/slab provider. 8. It's also worth bringing in your window supplier early on - we needed to form recesses in the concrete slab so that when the lift and slide doors went in we could get close to a level threshold.

The upstairs cladding looks similar to mine - vertical slate. Watch out for lead times if you use Marley vertigo.

My application wasn't looked at for ages - this was called the validation period and didn't count towards the 8 week time limit. Validation consisted of making sure that all the information needed was there, even to the extent of checking that plan view details corresponded with elevations as well as the financial side of things. Once validated, i had my application granted dead on 8 weeks afterwards.

That's tomorrow's job!

That's precisely my concern if I buy them separately, even though they are an integral part of the solar system.

I'll update on the system in the next few days - a few wrinkles to iron out first on price and confirmation of what the DNO response has been to my export application. Watch out for a blog post.

Thanks, @newhome. I'm looking at actual batteries, not heat batteries. At a push, I could get my PV supplier to supply them, but not sure how good a price I will get versus going direct.

A great result. I actually made mine worse after the airtest was done as I had to remove/split the airtight tape at the bottom of some windows to let out water that had come in over the top of the frame before the cladding went on. All fixed now, mind you!

I can only hope that all things window start to improve for you this year. Awful.

Can you post a link to the relevant part of the rules, please, Neil?

Apologies, I posted on @Big Neil's thread in energy storage but I think this query is more appropriate here. I'm going to place an order for my batteries very soon but want to be absolutely certain that I can claim back the VAT in due course, along with everything else that's going into the building. I'm going to order them myself rather than source them via my PV supplier as that system has already been installed and paid for. Can anyone point me in the direction of the section of the VAT reclaim regs that confirms that I can do this? Thanks!

I'm going to place an order for my batteries very soon but want to be absolutely certain that I can claim back the VAT in due course, along with everything else that's going into the building. I'm going to order them myself rather than source them via my PV supplier as that system has already been installed and paid for. Can anyone point me in the direction of the section of the VAT reclaim regs that confirms that I can do this? Thanks!

Lovely. The immediate change in temperature is amazing. Love the fancy, shmancy patches - ours used rolls of the same airtight tape as MBC.

Blimey, it's like a mirror image of my place in December! I bought mine from Condell Ltd who were very competitive on the price.

We're going to see what happens by letting nature take its own course for the first year or so. We're not intending to use tap water, that's for sure - way too expensive and demanding for a pond of that size.

At the same time that all the indoors first fix was going on during December, there was plenty going on outside, too. From the perspective of the build, the main event was the slate cladding but the thing that drew by far the most attention was the digging of the pond. I use the term 'pond' loosely, and it has been the subject of great debate, but it is a wildlife pond. Not a swimming pond, not a boating lake, nor a flight pond, which are all alternative suggestions that have been made. It will be a wildlife pond. Let's begin with the simplest thing - a old inspection whiteboard from work and a permanent marker meant that I finally got a sign up to stop all our delivery drivers carrying on down the lane and annoying the farmer. During the design stage, the architect was very keen for us to have the super-trendy (around Dorset, anyway) burnt larch effect cladding, but we really didn't like it at all. Not the colour, but the overall effect, and so when we saw a house with slate hung vertically as a type of cladding, we decided that was the one for us. I persuaded our roofer, Dylan Faber, that this would be a really good job for him to undertake and add another string to his bow. We had originally intended to use Marley vertigo slates, which are designed to be used for that purpose, but it turned out that they aren't used much in the UK and would have to be made to order in France and then shipped over, giving a lead time of somewhere in the region of 8 to 10 weeks. Instead, we used the same slates as are on the roof, but with the Marley trims and accessories, and it all worked out well, particularly as the slates were slightly cheaper than the Marley ones. The brand is SVK. The process is exactly the same as for the main roof - membrane, batten and counterbatten with the slight variation of using copper rivets rather than the hooks that were used on the roof and they're nasty scratchy things that you don't want to lean up against. Here's the first stage of the prep work: Once all the counter batten was up, the slating could start. The team started at the front as this is the most weather exposed area and I was keen to get some protection on it and make the building more water tight. A little later that day: Other than the stairwell section, the whole of the upper floor of the house is now clad with the slate, and a fine bit of work it is. Dylan Faber and team have been a pleasure to work with and I would gladly use them again. The stairwell section will be clad with the stone slip Tier system that's going to cover the ground floor. This gives a nice break to the slate and reduces the visual impact of the upstairs, and this work should be getting underway at the start of February. It's a little later than I had planned, but that's largely due to the lead time to get the materials in as the supplier has stock of every colour apart from the one we're having. Besides the slate and the stone slip, one of the more dramatic features outside is the brise soleil that sits in front of the stairwell window. This is a vertical run of horizontal cedar fins that are held in position on a RAL coated steel frame. The brackets and coach bolts that hold the frame and fins in place had to be done as a first fix item and before the cellulose was blown in. There are 3 sets of brackets, top, middle and bottom, and it's the top and middle ones that take the majority of the weight of the entire structure. The MBC timber frame construction means that there is nothing behind the outer boards and so the positions for the brackets had to be packed out before installation. This meant cutting out a section of the airtight board on the inside, attaching some nice sturdy noggins to the external wall from the inside, then re-sealing the cut out. Clearly, trying to do this once the cellulose had been blown in would be more than tricky. Once packed, the guys from Contrasol Ltd, who are supplying the system came along and first fixed the brackets. Here are the top ones: And here are the centre ones: In due course, once the cladding is complete, the framework will be attached to the brackets and the timber fins fitted. Contrasol have been a really good firm to deal with and the standard of how they approach things has been very professional. Besides working out all the loads for the framework, etc., they also calculate the optimum angles for the fins and the fins themselves are engineered and precision cut. The fins are actually manufactured by Vincent Timber Ltd in Birmingham, and they are things of beauty in their own right. Here are the fins carefully stacked up just after delivery: And here's a close-up of them: Besides the house itself, we've intended from the outset that the garden and field were every bit as important a feature and fundamental to this is the wildlife pond. One could ask what else we would do with such a large plot otherwise, but this has allowed OH to realise a long-held ambition of having what we hope will develop into a fabulous haven for wildlife. Given that, there seemed little point in limiting our ambition at the start so our groundworkers, Keith and Gail, got digging. This started off with me using a couple of cans of line marker paint to give the outline and then Keith scraping off the turf. Next up was scraping off the topsoil so that we could retain that for later use. Here's the outline of the pond, as seen from the scaffolding. Keith had just started digging out the deeper part of the pond when the tracks came off the digger - the first of many times that day. That will teach me to try and save money by hiring kit from the local farmer. This is what he had to contend with multiple times: We finally got there over the course of a few days, and here's the pond with the deeper centre dug out, prior to having these scraped a bit more and given gradients rather than steps. Once things were smoothed off a bit, this is how it ended up. The water you can see coming in is from a land drain that we broke through, which we will leave broken as it's as good a source as any to fill it up. Our attempts to block the other end of the land drain haven't worked so we need to give this another go in due course as we'd really like the water to stay in the pond. Finally, this is to prove that I'm an equal opportunities employer and that ladies can do groundwork as well. And because Gail felt very neglected about not being pictured on the blog when she and Keith have done so much work on the site. This one's for you, Gail! Keith's other act of vandalism work that week was to give the old electricity pole a good shove and get it out of the way once and for all. Most satisfying. Next up on the blog will be more inside work involving vast amounts of plasterboard and rockwool, but that's for another evening. TTFN

Thanks, chaps. All sorted now.

I'm looking at ordering my kitchen worktops from Worktop Express and I've never had an undermounted sink before. I know which sink I'm having, but what dimensions should the hole in the worksurface be compared to the dimensions of the sink itself?

Yup, exciting and terrifying in equal measure. I said that at the very start of our project and nothing has changed my mind yet!

More a belt and braces than anything else. The downstairs runs to the far end of the living area are as longest permissible, according to the supplier so it just goes some small way to preserving the cold air. It may also have something to do with the supplier wildly over-estimating what insulation we would need so it seemed like as good a place as any to put it.