vivienz

Welcome! I live in Bournemouth at the moment which has a large number of bungalows. Adding extra storeys to them is a very popular pursuit around here, particularly as the bungalows are often on good sized plots.

Wonderful. I just love seeing a roof go on, I suppose it takes away the 'raw' look of the build. Shame the view lets the place down, though ?

Looking really good. It's coming together at a cracking pace.

Thanks, both. I was concerned about not being able to fix into the external wall but as this isn't an issue, that's fine. The cladding isn't on yet and won't be for a while as there are various bits of extenal wiring that need to be run outside, e.g. lighting, alarm, motorised external roller blind. The louvres themselves will be fixed pitch and don't need to be adjustable, so that one less complication. Phew! Thanks again, chaps. The hive mind comes to the rescue again, and again, and again!

Thanks, @Mr Punter. Have you done any vertically hung ones? Mine needs to be like this:

I think may have hit a snag. All along, I have planned to have a brise soleil in front of my ground to roof height window in front of the stairwell, but I have stupidly neglected to think about how this is going to be supported against the sealed up timber frame without damaging that seal. The window is 1m wide and over 5m tall, so clearly there is quite a weight to be supported by my timber frame. I'm waiting for replies back from a couple of companies but I'm not feeling very optimistic at this stage having spoken to one who bombarded me with questions about what window system I'm having and then told me I should have called him 5 months ago when he might have been able to do something. He may have been right, but he was still an unhelpful and patronizing tosser. Has anyone else put a brise soleil up against a timber frame and how have you done it?

+1 for the silver birch but planted amongst dogwood. Cornus mid winter fire would give spectacular winter colour from the stems - they start off vibrant red at the base, go through to orange and then pale yellow at their tips. It really does look like the bush is on fire.

Thanks, @newhome. I've just called my DNO, SSE and they have confirmed that a first time connection into a new build should, indeed, be zero rated. I've confirmed the situation via email to them and attached the Grant of PP. They will issue a new quote and refund me the £496.75 of VAT. Result!

I've just paid the bill, in advance, in full, of course, for the service alteration to bring the electricity supply to where I will need it for the new house. There's about £400 of VAT on it, and I'm wondering whether it should have been zero rated. Does anyone have any guidance or experience on this?

I would categorise it more as radiant than convective heat. Besides, with all that beer and cider consumption on your side of things, I'm surprised that you haven't yet tried to hook yourself up to a natural gas burner.

I take the view that having the house heated to female ambient temperature will be a subtle but effective means of encouraging OH to go outdoors and continue with the garden and landscaping.

The Tier stone cladding system I'm using on my ground floor and stairwell comes as stone slips on a z-shape board. The best price I got was just over £47 ex VAT per square metre, from Sydenhams.

FWIW, I'm having vertically hung slate on the top storey and Tier system stone slips on the ground (and the full height stairwell). I reckon the tier cladding will come at about £9k, installation cost TBC.

Crumbs, that's quite a price. Is it worth getting a quote yourself on just the materials to check where the money is going and whether you;re paying over the odds for installation? I don't know if they stock it but I found Sydenhams to be very competitive on pricing and at least it would give you a guide.

And it all takes so much time! Fiddly, faffy, tiddly details that are for tiny things and take 80% of the time. Drives me nuts, but it's often this level of attention to detail that makes the finished build look like a quality job.

Sadly, my place is just off the edge of the map, otherwise I'd have ordered one in a jiffy. Very interesting.

Thanks for the heads-up, @Bitpipe. Fortunately/unfortunately, depending which way you look at it, my flat roofs are being worked on now. The flat roof company I'm using managed to squeeze me in PDQ as I was really concerned about leaving the decks exposed to the weather with autumn approaching. It may well mean that I will need to do some sort of retro-fit on the balustrade, but I think I would rather suffer that than get my decks soaked. I'll have a chat with the guys when I'm on site tomorrow and see what they have to say.

Ouchy! I know nothing of these things, but I'm guessing that you can't just sort of squish them back in somehow? No? I'll get my coat.

I haven't had a chance to go into the balustrades yet, I'm still playing catch-up with MBC! The balconies should be able to fix onto the parapets, though I need to get more information on that. I keep hoping for a bit of downtime for research, but it's scarce right now. The roof falls are pretty much pre-determined and already done, but we will tweak where we can - comments on puddles helpful and noted.

....is how my brother in law accurately described the state of the build now when I Whatsapped him the picture below, taken yesterday afternoon. As you can see, MBC have been at their blitzkrieg style building speed again and this morning I arrived to find my roof all covered in membrane and battens, too, and MBC noticeable by their absence. Actually, it's the silence that you notice as much as anything. There were about 7 in the team over the weekend and when all the nailguns are going it does sound either like gunfire skirmishes or lots of firecrackers going off. Either way, they were true to form and really shifted. This is the view from down the lane and you can see the membrane and battens all in place. Personally, I think that this is an interesting photo because it shows how, despite being a large building, the view of it from the lane is much less prominent than one might expect, due to the angles of the gables and pitched roof. The part that looks like it's covered in tin foil is the garage. Here's a more distant view from down the lane, taken before the membrane went on. Of course, in order to get the roof on, all the posi-joists needed to be put in place and this was being done over the weekend. My neighbours work in construction and have been fascinated by the process of the MBC build, which is all very new to them. It's great having neighbours who view the construction with such enthusiasm because instead of complaining about noise and disturbance about the teams and working late/working weekends, etc. (remember Peter powerfloating the slab till 12.45 am?), they gush about how hard working they are and give me full update reports on what's happened in my absence. Lucky me! And thus, according to my local spy network, there were 9 team members working on Saturday and there were 7 on Sunday. No wonder I came back to an empty site today. I was away from the site on Friday, dropping hubby off at Luton airport at 6.30am and then on to have a brief bit of R&R with a girlfriend in Birmingham before heading back south. On Friday, my temporary staircase was delivered from Howdens and MBC added a couple of extra treads to the bottom to bring it up to the necessary height. For £120 + delivery (and VAT, if applicable), it's a very useful bit of timber to have. Most of the stud walls are up now; there are only 2 that need to be put up when MBC come back, both off the hallway and have been left out for the time being for logistics. This photo is looking from our bedroom into the en suite and through to the main guest bedroom. We had a lucky save on the stud walls, not in financial terms but layouts. The architect had specified that each of the bedrooms should have a partial stud wall just inside the door and centrally located, almost making a corridor as you walk into the room. We were really unconvinced by the idea at the time, but went along with it as it can be hard to accurately imagine these things before the building goes up. When I came to the site on Thursday, however, it was clear that they would have been awful for a couple of reasons. Firstly, having gone to a lot of effort and expense to have bigger rooms, these immediately sliced off 25% to 30% of the room and made you feel like you were being pushed up against the window which, by the time a large bed is in the room, is exactly what would happen. The second reason is that because of the really high vault in the main bedrooms, 4.7m, having a run of about 3 along the floor from the partial stud wall the the window meant the proportions were really off and looked terrible. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and these weren't put in and are now a nice load of scrap or surplus timber lying around. The matter of the stud walls does, however, emphasise the value of being on site most days as had I been absent, they would have been put up according to the plan and I'd have regretted it bitterly. There have been many instances like this where what seems like a small, or even trivial, decision or alteration at the time which is quick and easy to deal with because I'm there, could have developed into a big deal or expensive issue at a later time. Coming back to those vaulted ceilings, the ridge height is such that when the scaffolders came back to put the second lift on and make some adjustments earlier in the week, we needed to get a tower in for the guys to reach the top internally. If I can give one bit of advice to anyone starting out, scaffolding is EXPENSIVE!! I know that very little comes cheap when paying others to build a house, but don't underestimate the cost of scaffolding. By the time I'm done, mine will be just over £5k. It isn't the simplest of buildings to scaffold with the balconies and vaults, but even so, it's a significant cost. Once all the internal stuff was getting done, the roof was getting boarded. This is the main, west facing bedroom with half of its roof boarded. And then the same once it was all covered. Finally for this post, the balconies have been made ready for boarding and flat roofing. I have to go back to the architect in the morning to check on the fall of these and the direction of the run-off as it doesn't make sense to me right now. I need to refresh my memory as to what was discussed and answer a couple of queries PDQ as my flat roofing is now imminent. But that's another subject for another post.

Abso-flippin-lutely! Mine is all in place now and doing a splendid job.

Ooo'! Don't worry - just found double sided membrane tape. Problem solved.

@PeterW - is it possible to stick lengths of DPM together? The widest DPM from SF is 4m wide but my garage is just over 5m. What's the best way to cover this width?

Thanks, Peter. I shall swing by there on my way to the site tomorrow.

MBC are pretty much done now and it looks like my luck with the weather is about to run out as some rain is due next week. I want to get a load of polythene that i can chuck over the roofs and anchor down to try and keep the worst of the rain off it. Its mostly the garage roof I'm concerned about. Does anyone have any suggestions of what I should use?