vivienz

@Russdl - yes, it's Norrsken's own crew, which meant that everything was zero rated for VAT as well, since it's supply and fit.

So far this week, things are going okay, but in their usual messy sort of way, and with a few time slippages thrown in that are keeping me on my toes. Let's start with the main show of this week which is the arrival and installation of all my glazing. Woohoo! All arrived intact and, as far as I can see for the moment, undamaged. Everything turned up on a lorry from Poole yesterday morning, so a relatively local delivery as I'm only at the other end of the county rather than the country. My glazing firm, Norrsken are based in Poole and that's where it was all loaded up from before trundling northwards. It seems that it's standard practice for the customer to have to supply a telehandler to get the windows off the lorry and then assist in getting them up to any heights on the building. I think I knew this way back when I agreed everything with the windows but it faded into distant memory but I was able to get organised in time for it. The only comment I would add here is that it's not cheap getting one of these bits of kit out along with a driver, so if you're on a tight budget you may need to factor in this cost and add it to your bill. I had my guy there for 2 days and it cost me a total of £600. As there was so much else going on today, there was plenty of other shifting around for him to do, so I minimized down time as far as possible. For those, like myself, who have no prior experience in the world of construction, a telehandler is basically an extendible forklift. Imagine the forks, as usual, but then on a massive extendable hydraulic arm; apparently these bits of kit cost about £80k, so they aren't your cheap and cheerful forklift type thing that you see running around industrial estates and warehouses up and down the country. The driver also needs to be very skilled at the slow and steady approach and a damn fine judge of distance and clearance. You'll see why shortly. My guy, Andy, was all of these and he did a fine job of getting everything into place, guided by the installation team. After the storms of last weekend, we are having lovely weather again in north Dorset and things have dried out nicely since the deluge. My windows arrived yesterday on a truck with a type of articulated trailer that was much more manoeuvrable than many of the delivery trucks that have been on site to date. In the photo below, you can see the big lift and slide doors for the living room as well as one of the apex pieces for the gable in the bedrooms upstairs. Here's the rest of the load. Nicely packaged up, all secured with bracing timber and heavy duty cling film. Here's Andy, my telehandler driver, swinging into action first thing. This is the telehandler lifting all the slates up to the top scaffolding lift. Earlier, the apex pieces had been lifted to the same level so the window installation team could put them into position from above. It went really quiet when that was happening. The installation team have paid very close attention to everything, included how the windows were left overnight before the main work started today. Instead of just propping the windows up against a wall, as I might have done, everything was stood upright and braced into that position until they are put into their final placements. Now, bear in mind that this for the upstairs. By some way, the largest of my windows are the lift and slide doors for the living room area, each of them coming in at around 300kg. The 3 installation guys, headed up by Val, quite literally man-handled these out of their packaging and then onto a (seemingly) tiny set of wheels, then into the building and ready to go into the recesses that were formed in the slab by MBC when the foundation team were on site. Incredible work, skillfully done, and one heck of a job. Here's the big window on what looks like a roller skate for windows. In the above photo, you can see a tripod set up to the left of the window. This is for a laser that puts a laser level line across the windows to make sure that everything is, well, level. The installation team have now got both of the big lift and slide windows in and they seem to have gone in nicely. They've got a couple of the upstairs windows in, but before doing the rest, the flat roof guys need to run some of their membrane up under the thresholds so that a seal can be formed once done. They will get onto this tomorrow and work ahead of the window guys to prep the thresholds. Ah, my roof. What a tricky affair that is turning out to be. It's all getting done, and will be done, but it truly is roofing by iteration with little nibbles of each thing needing to be done before another team can do their bit. I know that construction people often don't come with the best of reputations for working in a co-operative or helpful fashion but, if that's really the case, then I have the exceptions to that rule working for me. There were 3 teams working on the roof today - the flat roof guys (County Flat Roofing Ltd), the pitch roof guys (Dylan Faber Roofing Ltd) and my solar PV guys (Environment Logic Ltd) and everyone needed a bit of work doing by the others before they could do their thing. They all worked together incredibly well, happy to do collective head scratching and work out exactly what everyone needed to do and in what order to get the job done. It was a masterclass in problem solving and co-operation. So where does the delay to my gratification come into all this? Well, I admit that this is entirely my own fault. I had no idea it would be so tricky to get hold of roof windows without vents. In my ignorance, I assumed that it would just be a case of dropping by to my local roof window supplier, pointing to the ones I wanted and getting them delivered. Not so. It turns out that unvented roof windows are so tricky to get in the size that I need that they simply don't exist as a stock item and so they have to be made to order. Current lead time is 3 - 4 weeks. Rats. Still, never mind. My pitched roofing guys reckoned that the solar panel tray system would be okay to go up anyway as they knew how much clearance they would need for the flashing around the trays and then around the roof windows, but, of course, it has turned out to be more complex than that and the roof windows do need to be in so that the tiling that will support the trays will be in, and so on. I could have given myself a hard time over this but as the morning went on, it turned out that I didn't need to give myself too hard a kicking as the PV guys have been sent the wrong size trays. Quite clearly, my full roof covering just wasn't meant to be today. However, the flat roof guys are still beavering away and they are with me until and including Friday, so they should get the decks and parapet linings finished this week, or most of it. I've been most keen to get the area over the stairwell finished off as it's like a sieve when any rain comes in, so it will be a relief to have that done. I've opted to have the pitched roof tiles secured by tile hooks as this is more secure in areas that are exposed to high winds. I've often seen this method used in France and admired the look of it, so I'm quite happy to have this. The next photo is part of the eaves course and you can just see the end of the tile hooks at the centre bottom of each slate. As well as the pitched roof, Dylan Faber and his guys are going to do the vertical tiling on the upstairs for me. This makes sense given that it's the same material. The only difference is that on the balconies in particular, they will use copper rivets to attach the tiles. This is because whilst the tile hooks are very secure, they are vicious pointy little things that are easy to scratch yourself on, so these give a more forgiving finish should anyone come into contact with them. With the delay to the roof windows and everything else that's going up there, I won't be ready for the air tight prep work and the test itself on the original date. MBC had been scheduled to return on 8th October to do this, but they're now due back in the first week of November, so that will be 5th November. I commented on a previous entry that MBC left site very quickly after their last stint and, in my opinion, they left a little too quickly without the opportunity to check that everything was in order for the follow on trades. There wasn't a great deal that needed doing, but I thought it was poor practice not to make sure that the building was up together for what came after. This was evident with what was a relatively minor issue but caused some difficulty. You can't miss the fact that my house is blue on the outside. This is a breathable membrane that envelopes all the board and is meant to come all the way in over the window reveals as well. It needs to be there for the window installation, too, but the installation manager came out for a site visit early last week and picked up that a few of the windows, including the long stairwell window, were missing the membrane running into the reveal. I contacted MBC to get this resolved as soon as the window guy left and was assured that someone would be out in time to rectify it and indeed they did, but not until after 8am yesterday morning once the windows were already on site and after numerous chasing emails. It's a job that I looked into doing myself, but the minimum quantity of membrane that I could buy was 50m and it seemed overkill for it. In the end, I've no idea how far the MBC guy had to travel to get to me, but I doubt it was local and a potentially stressful situation could have been avoided entirely by taking a little extra time to check things over before going off to the next job. What next? Well, as mentioned, the flat roof guys are continuing this for the rest of this week. Here's the section above the stairwell: It's actually a lot further on than this now but you can see the construction of the flat roof area. A few plumbing/heating things get kicked off tomorrow. We can't start first fix until the air test is done, just be sure that it's not MBC who have put a hole in the structure before it's done, but there's still quite a bit that can be done before then, such as putting underfloor heating manifolds in place and getting foul water runs in the right place. NThere may even be a bit of MVHR ducting action. Calm yourselves, everyone. Off site, I've been chasing up my stone cladding. Hitting my head on the lead time for the roof windows was a salutary lesson and so I'm checking out how long it will take to get my stone cladding delivered in case I need to do it now. Last, but not least, it seems that the build is continuing to provoke interest from military aircraft. I mentioned that there has been a lot of interest from a passing Navy Lynx helicopter during the summer. Well, today they really took the piss and have upped the stakes. We were buzzed by a Hercules transport airplane. I mean really buzzed. The damn thing barely cleared the powerlines and was incredibly low and close to the house, I'm amazed that there were no burst ear drums or centre partings from the thunderous low pass. For goodness sake, if they're that interested they could just drop by. No, on second thoughts, let me re-phrase that as I wouldn't trust the buggers to not come in by parachute or under slung load the way things are going. Haven't they heard of cars and, you know, just asking for a look around? Still to come this week: the rest of the window installation; flat roofing and lining parapets; a visit from the DNO. Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode. With or without Hercules aircraft.

My experience is that it depends on your project. I have a student property that I'm going to extend next year and the building control drawings have been sufficient for builders to quote off and eventually do the actual work. The house is a fairly standard 1930s suburban detached. My self build is a different matter. There were drawings for planning permission and then more for building control, both drawn up by the architect, then the timber frame firm did their own engineering drawings for the actual construction. From the plans they brought with them to site, parts of this were subcontracted out, wherever there was specialist input from a structural engineer. Typically, the foundation requirements where ring beams and piles were, then for the superstructure, wherever there were critical loading points or interaction with the steels.

I wrote a blog entry some while ago about a lighting order I made from China, but it's buried amongst all the other posts now, so I thought I'd start a thread here. My search into ordering lights direct from China came about because I saw a picture of the vibia cosmos pendant lights on Pinterest and was smitten by the lights but not the price. I originally ordered some from one Chinese source that I had been pointed in the direction of, DHGate. This is similar to AliExpress in that it's just a market place for squillions of different sellers. I can't recommend DHGate based on my experience. I originally ordered my lights from them back in June and despite being told 3 times that they had been despatched, they have never arrived. I cancelled the order but was ignored and my payment was released anyway and I'm currently struggling to get a refund, so I wouldn't use them again. On the other hand, my experience of AliExpress has been very positivve. It has a good user interface and, if anything, appears to be cheaper than DHGate. My goods were shipped via air freight but with zero transport costs to me (Chinese companies get massive subsidies from their government for transport costs) and they have arrived just over two weeks later. I'm in possession of one half of the order, the remaining half is with the Post Office delivery office as they hang onto it until you've paid the customs charges, which I did this evening and the final lot will be delivered on Wednesday. The goods I've received so far have been very well packaged with corner reinforcement on the boxes and a wooden framework inside it to protect the pendant light. Hopefully, the others will be as good. Anyhow, I reckon I've saved quite a bit of cash on these and the customs charges weren't onerous at a total of £27.34. Blog update to follow once I've got the complete order and taken photos.

Giving this thread a little bump. @Vijay and @Alexphd1 Did either of you find any good options? I'm having a mooch around at the moment. Plenty of FD30 but not so many FD60 choices that I can see at the moment.

The ones that have been sourced by my roofer are only 2G and have a uW of, I think, 1.3 without looking back at the quote. The supply and install cost per window is £498 plus £72 for each flashing kit. The uW value is higher than I would like, but I can live with it on the basis that the large triple glazed windows in the house have uW values of about 1.2. I went through an online quote system on one of the websites this morning for passive roof windows and they came out at about £1500 each just for the window. So, for a total of 3 windows with fitting and all the kit, I reckon I would be looking at about £5k+ all in. The difference of £3500 can buy a lot of heat and I'm not sure that the extra cost for 3G is worth it for me.

I don't mind whether they are opening or not as I don't plan to open them, but they definitely have to be non-vented. I've had a look at plenty of suppliers on the web, but I think I will struggle to get the size I need as an off the shelf item. Hey ho, you can't win them all. I'll stick with my roofer's option and hope that they arrive in time.

Goodness! Are you going to take up dry stone walling as a hobby? Might be time to think about it, if not!

I have 3 roof windows, all of opening size 895 x 1145 and they need to be non-vented. My roofer has sourced some, but says that they are made to order and the lead time is 15 - 21 days; I'm not sure yet whether this is calendar or working days. Either way, I would ideally like to get some sooner than this as it's highly likely that they won't be in before the due date of my air test. Does anyone know of a source for these that are off the shelf or have a shorter lead time?

20 degrees? Brrrrrr! You've clearly acclimatised to being at the northern end of things. 21 degrees for me and even then I might think about a jumper.

I will check on the spec of the stuff my roofer is about to use. There's all sorts of stuff going up there, but I'm pretty sure that none of it is lead. Will get back with details tomorrow.

Hmm. Yes, food for thought, thanks Ferdinand, and I admit that behind my ire this had popped into my thoughts. The email has gone and can't be withdrawn so that's where the situation lies right now. I actually have no objection to reaching a negotiated settlement with the DNO and I'm still aiming for that. I also suspect that's where it will end up. However, the approach of the wayleave officer has been such that he is not a person who seems able to negotiate in a reasonable manner, which was the essence of my complaint and doesn't change, regardless of anyone's legal position. I plan to give his boss a call today and arrange a meeting as I don't want to waste more time on unnecessary and unproductive arguments over something that can, in principle, be easily agreed.

Already planning to do that, but thanks for the tip. I don't trust them an inch.

Having vented my spleen about the DNO and AJ, its wayleave officer, it's time to move on to more interesting things, like the puzzle of getting my roofing done, amongst other things. For my sins, whilst our house is an interesting design and has quite a few twiddly bits, they have proved to be less than straightforward to actually get built. For a start, the house has a combination of pitched and flat roof sections, there will be an in-roof solar PV system up there and the parapet that extends above the level of the ground floor ceiling also needs to be lined. In addition to this, there are the balustrades that need to go on the balconies, leading to a chicken and egg scenario - balcony covering first, or balustrade? Thanks to the helpful comments of both my flat roofers and @Bitpipe I was able to stop the parapets getting covered over before the balustrade went in and thus making life (more) difficult and (more) expensive for myself than necessary. The flat roofing guys suggested that it would be better to get the balustrade installed into the cavity in the parapet, then they could wrap the membrane over and around and seal it against the supports of the glass panels of the balustrade. Before they could get started, though, they had to correct a problem that arose from the architect's plans that had an error in them. My balconies and the drainage plan is such that the water needs to run off to the outer corners. For some reason, however, the architect's plans show the fall of the balconies going inward and to the centre, and that's exactly how MBC constructed the firring pieces on the decks. I guess I should have spotted it earlier, but can only claim that I was working on the assumption that I'm the ignorant one in this building process and that everyone else had it right. Being me, however, I can never entirely accept that I'm wrong and I couldn't figure out how the devil any water was actually going to flow off the balconies unless the architect had some super sneaky clever plan that I wasn't aware of. I rang the architect and it turned out that they didn't have a super sneaky plan and they had indicated the fall incorrectly on the balconies. Bugger! Flat roof guys to the rescue - before they started on the first balcony, I asked them if they could just lift up the firring pieces and reverse them to point the flow to the outer corners. We'd worked out a labour rate for a few other things I needed doing, so it's all being corrected and I won't end up with a pool of water lapping against the centre of the windows onto the deck. I have to add that the flat roofers have been great. They, along with seemingly every other person involved in construction right now, are fully booked for weeks to come and when I first got my quote from them, the earliest they could schedule my job was the end of October. Oh god, I thought, my building will have drowned by then and I'll loose my next MBC slot for the airtest, and so on. Despair. So I wallowed for a few hours and then rang them back and put my best grovelling voice on. It's getting lots of practice at the moment. Anyhow, I asked them whether by splitting the job up into smaller chunks, they could squeeze me in between other jobs. The single largest area that needs doing is the garage but the least important in terms of time constraints as it's outside the thermal and airtight envelope so doesn't need to be done for when MBC return on 8th October. The splendid people at County Flat Roofing Ltd agreed that I was grovelling so nicely and had come to them by recommendation, they would get the decks, parapets and flat roof over the stairwell done for me over the next few weeks. They are currently due back for a couple of days next week and I can get the area over the stairwell done, which will be a great relief as there's an awful lot of water coming in through there right now. My pitched roof sections aren't straight forward, either. Because I'm having an in-roof solar PV system, the PV guys need an eaves course put in so that they have something to rest the trays on. They have also asked that the velux windows are in, but this isn't so much about having the windows in as being able to avoid a clash of flashing (their own and that for the velux). Cue my trusty roofer, Dylan Faber of Dylan Faber Roofing Ltd. His firm is very local to me, just the next small town along, and he has been really helpful already. I met 3 in total, the other two being either arrogant or disinterested, so Dylan got the job. He's more than happy to work around the PV guys and knows what their requirements are. He's also helped to overcome a potential problem with the roof tiles, which were originally going to be Marley Eternit, birkdale for the pitch and vertigo for the cladding on the first floor. It turns out that there's a bit of a lead time on the birkdale for the pitch and the vertigo ones need to be manufactured to order in France. Mince, alors! We're now going to use tiles by SVK that are barely a shade different to the Marley ones - I put the two samples side by side and they are close enough to be the same. Even better, the SVK ones are cheaper and can be used for the vertical cladding as well. Phew, another bump in the road traversed. Next up were the balustrade people. I rang around for prices and to chat about what I needed. Whilst the architect's photoshop concept of the property shows a frameless system for the balustrade, these generally sit in a rail or shoe and that won't work with my parapet. I need to keep the parapet cavity clear to allow airflow through it to keep the cold roof of the balcony suitably ventilated; the shoe or rail would block the cavity and so it was a non-starter. Additionally, the balustrade people advised that it wouldn't meet safety regulations, so that was the end of the frameless sytem. In truth, I much prefer the idea of a hand rail as leaning on the edge of a pane of even toughened glass somehow doesn't appeal. I'm using Balustrade UK Ltd, who are based in Dudley in the West Midlands. They are fabricators and so make most of the components themselves and are very knowledgeable and helpful. I will admit to having a soft spot as I'm Birmingham born and bred as well as working in manufacturing myself, so it's nice to be able to support a British manufacturer and one that's close to my old stamping ground. The final balustrade won't be as elegant or clean looking as a frameless system, without a doubt, but it's a compromise I'm happy to live with to make the whole balcony thing work and keep the build moving along. Finally, MBC need to send someone down for a quick bit of snagging before the glazing arrives on Tuesday. I felt at the time that they left the site a little too quickly after the last session and this was the case. There's nothing major but the reveals of some of the windows don't have the outer membrane continuing into the reveal as they are meant to - this was actually picked up by the glazing installations manager when he came out for a site visit earlier this week. The internal service battens also could do with putting up before the 8th October as although first fix can't start until the airtest has been done, the battens are needed to clip bits of MVHR and things to in order to keep them out of the way for when they do return. All in all, it's been a quiet week. Or at least, quiet on site, but with lots going on in lining up the next load of activity. Next week, all hell breaks loose with lots of trades on site and I need to make sure that everything is properly co-ordinated and happening in the right order if I'm going to successfully pull it off, but it looks okay so far. I just hope the house doesn't suffer too much in the gales that are due at the weekend and that the chemical toilet is still upright on Monday. Brace yourselves, winter is coming.

If there's one thing that really gets my back up, it's someone trying to bully or intimidate me. It rarely works, it just makes me angry. If you've been following this blog, you may recall a post some time back in August concerning the high voltage power lines that oversail my plot, sadly very close to our new house. They do, in fact, just about cross directly over the very furthest corner of the garage. Now whilst these lines do not supply my new house and there is no equipment actually on my land, their proximity to the garage means that they are below a safe working distance, according to the regulations of the DNO, who is SSEPD in my area. I had a meeting with the local wayleave officer, let's call him AJ, on 14th August to discuss the situation and how to resolve matters. From the outset, I have stated that I have no issue with the oversailing lines and I'm not asking the DNO to remove them or do anything drastic, I would just like them to be made safe. AJ had a long look around the plot and came up with a rather complex proposal to bury the cables, via a somewhat convoluted route, digging up the lane and digging on the land of 3 different owners. The local linesman came out and had a look a few days later and suggested that the existing poles could simply be replaced by taller ones that would lift the cables up high enough to give safe clearance underneath them. The DNO has issued me with quotes for both sets of work, both expensive, one slightly less so. The lesser of the two evils, raising the poles up, comes to the princely sum of £7,600 + VAT, so not much change out of £9k when all's said and done. If I accept, the raising of the pole height will take some time: the new poles would be more than 10% greater in height than the old ones and so the DNO requires planning approval for this. Then, it seems, they have to put some other sort of submission to another official body that will take another few months, so all told, it will be well into next year before anything happens, if it does. This is the basic outline of what passed. What I haven't mentioned yet is the attitude and approach of AJ in all of this, which is what provoked my opening statement. From the very first telephone conversation that we had back at the beginning of August, he has been highly combative in a passive aggressive kind of way. So, no raising of voices, but very much a 'we're bigger than you and you will do as we say' style. This came to a head on Tuesday evening when AJ rang me at 5.10pm to discuss the quotes that had been sent through. In fact, what he actually wanted to do was rattle my cage because 30 minutes before his call, the local linesman had rung me to discuss the dates for burying my supply cable and had clearly been in the same office, chatting to AJ and saying that the garage had already been constructed. AJ laid it on pretty thick. He said that SSEPD would 'make a contribution' towards the cost of increasing the height of the oversailing lines, and he clearly expected me to be grateful. They were offering to pay 25% of the cost (no VAT to charge to themselves), i.e. in the region of £1,500, but in exchange for this, they wanted an easement. Just as a refresher, the wayleave on my property currently is a voluntary one which I can serve notice on. An easement is a right in perpetuity, well beyond my lifetime, lodged against the deeds of the property. As with all AJ's conversations, there were lots of long and deliberate pauses of the type that some idiots use when they think they are masters of manipulation and want to make the other party feel uncomfortable and force them into filling the silence. I shan't quote chapter and verse on it because it's far too tedious but suffice it to say, he really pissed me off and to the extent that I sent a forthright email to him later that night summarising what he had said and how he had said it. I also requested that he no longer contacted me by phone, but put everything in writing (email) so that I would have an audit trail. Now, it may be that this gets me no further, but I have received a request from AJ's boss this afternoon, requesting a meeting to discuss the points I have raised. I have said that I will meet her, but I want to know in advance exactly what points she wants to discuss and how this will move things on. We shall see. In the meantime, for the record, here's the email I sent that gives more detail on what annoyed me so much. "Dear AJ Further to our telephone conversation late this afternoon, I feel that I need to email with my comments regarding this and my planned actions as a consequence, since I have been left very troubled by both your comments and your tone. When we first met on site on 14th August, I explained to you that throughout the entire process of building my new house, I have used and relied upon professionals and have sought to do everything correctly and legally, as far as I have been able. To this end, the house was designed by a qualified architect who chose the location of the building on the site according to a topographical survey that was produced by a firm of chartered surveyors. Once the build was ready to commence, setting out of the building on site was again carried out by a chartered surveyor and there was no change from the original plans as detailed in the approved planning permission. Unfortunately, it later became evident that the north east corner of the garage of the new house is directly under the power lines that oversail but which do not supply my property . However, I did not realise that these were high tension lines until my scaffolder contacted SSE to establish what type of lines these were and their nature then became clear. As a result, I have made all contractors who have come on site aware of these power lines. The builder who constructed my house and garage was completely aware of the high tension lines and proceeded with the construction of the garage on a day when I wasn’t on site. I am told, however, that this was all done from floor level and inside the garage. Indeed, it is clear that it could not have been achieved in any other way, since there is no scaffolding around the garage to facilitate its construction from the outside. I can confirm that the timber frame of the garage has been completed, but the flat roof surface has not been put on it and I have advised my flat roofer that this is not to be done until such time as it can be completed safely. I have no desire to see anyone injured as a result of working on my site, whether it is due to ignorance or carelessness, and I deeply resent any assertion to the contrary. If I wish to take a risk with my own safety, I am free to do so, but I would not deliberately endanger others. As evidenced by my approach to this build, at no point have I tried to cut corners or take any risks. I have also engaged with you in a co-operative, straight forward and positive manner during our meeting and our conversations. Regrettably, I cannot say the same for you or your approach. I understand that you are paid to represent the interests of your company and, thus, your company’s shareholders. I also understand that a DNO has a public duty to ensure continuing and safe supply of electricity to its customers and have never disputed this, but I find your assertion that my seeking adequate financial compensation for SSE to have permanent rights over my property in the form of an easement will somehow increase everyone’s electricity bill to be an insulting one. Any charges paid by me to SSE are taken into the business as a whole which pays profits to its shareholders by way of distributing electricity and each DNO has an effective monopoly over its distribution area, so I have no choice in whom I deal with. The wayleave that exists over my property is a very old one, dating back to the 1950s, and it is a voluntary wayleave agreement. My husband and I have owned this property since February 2017 and have never received any compensation due through this wayleave, although this would be an insignificant sum, in any event. I understand from the previous owner of the property that no payments have been received in respect of the wayleave as far as they are aware. The wayleave grants permission to the DNO to place its equipment on or over my land and I have no desire to have SSE remove its equipment from my property and have stated this since the outset of our discussions. I have also stated my willingness to offer SSE a far more secure tenure in the form of an easement which gives rights in perpetuity rather than on a voluntary basis as is the current situation. Given the longevity of an easement, its nature is very different from a wayleave, as you know, and despite your assertions to the contrary, it is a valuable difference to the property owner. You kept referring back to the fact that the original wayleave is very old and that the equipment has been in situ for a long time, thus the financial impact on my property is negligible. I do not agree with this statement. It may have been true when the wayleave was first set up but that was over 60 years ago and property values have increased considerably in that time, particularly residential ones. The direct consequence of the oversailing wires is my inability to fully use and enjoy my property, as is my legal right; were the wires not oversailing my property, this would not be the case and I would be free to develop it as I choose. Therefore, there is a direct financial loss to me as a result of your company’s equipment passing over my land. One solution that has been put forward to remove the danger posed by your equipment passing over my land is to increase the height of the existing poles so that the clearance between a person standing on my garage and the overhead lines is greater than the required safe distance. This seems like a very sensible solution and one with which I am in agreement. On 22 August SSE quoted a cost of £7,231.45 + VAT, a total of £8,677.74. I have researched the amount of compensation a property owner might reasonably expect to receive for granting permanent rights to their property by way of an easement to a DNO and I am advised that these are typically between 1% and 2% of the property value, when negotiated by parties familiar with this process. Based on a reasonable estimate, my property is conservatively valued at in the region of £800,000, thus giving a minimum expectation of £8,000 of compensation for granting an easement. You today stated that SSE are prepared to contribute 25% of the cost of increasing the pole height for the overhead lines, i.e. £1,807.86 since SSE will not need to charge themselves VAT on the cost of any works. I also doubt whether the quote provided to me is at cost to SSE and there will be a margin of profit in that so, in effect, the true cost to SSE of this contribution is far below 25% of the cost to me. I believe that this valuation of permanent rights over my property is an extremely poor offer and not one that I am prepared to accept. In the interests of overcoming the issue of SSE’s equipment over my land, I have not sought to profit from the matter in any way; I have only sought to reach a fair and equitable solution and have dealt with you in a very transparent and fair manner. Indeed, I have already agreed to pay the charges for re-routing the power supply to my house and have no issue with this, since it is of direct benefit to me. On the other hand, you, on behalf of your employer, have been guarded and done all that you can to avoid straight answers, instead almost treating the process as though it is a game of poker where he who bluffs the best, gets the best deal. This has included difficult telephone conversations where you deliberately insert long, awkward silences presumably in an attempt to make me feel ill at ease or intimidated, and this has been the case in every conversation I have had with you. In addition to this, you constantly allude to issuing notices and starting other processes, without any explanation of what these are or what the outcome of them is, instead leaving these veiled threats hanging until I continually had to press you for answers to them. When you do finally explain what these other actions are, it seemed to be a circular argument that brings us back to where we began in the conversation and no further forward. Your rang me at 5.10pm this evening and our conversation lasted 37 minutes, in which time all your main objective seemed to be to attempt to intimidate me into accepting the above financial offer, otherwise you would serve me with legal notices and generally make things difficult for me to progress my house build. For the record, I do not appreciate attempts to bully me, no matter how passive aggressive they are, and I think that it is disgraceful behaviour. It has also made me re-think my approach to this situation, since being transparent and fair does not seem to have produced any meaningful progress. Towards the end of our conversation, you stated that you want to continue our dialogue and see if we can reach a resolution. This, however, is not a poker game for me nor is it an enjoyable sport of seeing who will blink first and give in to the other’s proposal. As a result, I have no wish to continue any conversations with you since I feel it is a very stressful waste of my time. Therefore, unless you are prepared to deal with matters in a clear and straightforward way, next week I shall issue formal notice to SSE of withdrawal of the wayleave on our property. Once this is done, I shall instruct a firm of chartered surveyors experienced in negotiating financial compensation agreements with DNOs for the grant of wayleaves and easements and I feel confident that will, in due course, more than adequately cover the costs of any work to the oversailing wires. Please contact me via email only from now on as I want to have a permanent record of precisely how you respond to me."

Awesome.

Oh, wow, what an interesting build! I'm guessing from the first elevation that the house is built into a hillside. Have you had to take any 'special measures' to make sure it stays put? Can we see a photo of the views? Pleeeeease?

That looks adorable! I'm sure it's different when you have to fit most of your life in it, but it really does look great. How many sq metres is the living space?

I'm quite a way through my build in so far as being clear on prices is concerned and I'm still on track for i.r.o. £1500 per square metre. That is helped a lot by the fact that it's only 3 bedrooms with 2 bathrooms upstairs but the design has been trickier to build than I anticipated, due to clay soil and some architectural details. It's not a passive house but is being built to passive standards and has will have a good quality finish. I wouldn't describe myself as a project manager but i am organising the sequence of main contractors. I would be cautious about giving zn architect a target budget of 2k per sq m at the outset as they will rarely underspend and your build will always throw up unanticipated costs.

Can i butt in with a slightly off topic query? My slab was powerfloated - does this still need sanding or can i lay stuff straight onto the powerfloated surface?

I had an ACL graft last December, 25 years after a skiing injury that finally caught up with me. The physio has been hard work and so I bought an Aircast ice pack system that wraps around the knee. It compresses and ices the joint and is incredibly good for reducing inflammation without needing drugs. It's not cheap, coming in at around £120 for the whole thing but it's worth it if you have a longer term need.

I suspect that there will be a lot of damage to trees. Especially awkward ones with TPOs on them. Ahem.

The cowling on our chimney came loose last night but it didn't come off. Instead the damn thing is banging like a dustbin lid in an echo chamber - time for earplugs until we can either prise it loose or get it fixed back on.

I looked into local disposal when I had the roofs taken off the old garage block on our site, and the amount they will accept is surprisingly small. I think it only amounted to a couple of refuse sacks in total.

Have you seen any examples of this type of work locally, apart from your neighbours? If so, make a note of the address and then have a mooch around on the planning permission part of your council's website. You can get a vast amount of information from there, including the names of any architects involved.