vivienz

Just to confirm on this. I spoke to HMRC some months back and explained that I was having a battery storage system installed as part of the building's systems, connected up to the PV array. HMRC confirmed that although the PV system and the battery system came from different suppliers/installers, as it was all part of the building's power system, I can claim back the VAT on the batteries.

I recently bought eight horbeam frans fontaine from mailordertrees.com It was only about 3 weeks ago so may be worth a look there. Nice plants, good service.

Many self builders, such as myself, do precisely that.

I'm not familiar with the Scottish system, which is why I specified England. Under English law, if you buy a second property whilst retaining your main residence, you pay a stamp duty surcharge of 3% on the entire amount of the purchase. You currently have 3 years to sell the old property and reclaim the surcharge. This has been the case for a few years now and applied when we bought ours in February 2017. My point in response to the OP was that it would be a relatively easy way to raise some tax to remove the ability to reclaim the surcharge.

I was thinking more along the lines of not being able to reclaim it. I just got in on my own reclaim with 1 month to spare before the end of the 3 year limit that applies to England.

Second homes is an obvious one to go for; this will affect any self builders who keep their own property whilst building the new one, as well as any buy to let purchases.

Bugger! I had a couple of panes do that but during installation - decided to be a manufacturing fault. How long have these been in?

Thrilling! I found that going from the virtual to the real was exciting and terrifying in equal measure - I'm sure your build is the same. Exciting times.

Same here!

When we bought our plot, we still owned our old house and so had to pay a 3% SDLT surcharge on the whole price of the new place, with 3 years to reclaim it if the old place was sold within that time. We sold our old house on 19th December and I put in the reclaim online on 6th January. I was expecting to wait a couple of months but was amazed when checking my bank account today to see that it was repaid on 10th January. Very pleased indeed!

I don't have awnings, but I do have 2 exterior motorised blinds on each of my south facing windows, one upstairs and one downstairs. They are each controlled independently by a manual switch inside, next to the window. They are also attached to a wind speed detector that will raise them up into the cassette (recessed into the cladding) if the wind speed is too high for them to safely remain down. They are very effective at reducing solar gain but as they are a mesh type fabric you can still see outside when they are down.

Harsh. Buying a plot should come with a CIL alarm.

Just the ticket! Thanks, Peter.

Yes, had a look on Ironmongery but couldn't see anything comparable there. I'll check again, as they have proven to be very good throughout the build for fixings.

We're going to make our raised beds soon from tanalised timber 'sleepers' and I'm looking at the hex head bolts used to attach them. Prices range enormously - from just over £5 for 10 at Wickes, to £16 for 10 of Titan brand. Is there a happy medium? Are the Wickes ones just as good? I'm going to need a couple of hundred of these by the time I'm done, so the price differential is significant. Any suggestions?

The former sits on and is surrounded by a thick layer of insulation, expanded polystyrene in the case of my build. The difference to the building is greatly reduced loss of heat through the floor.

It seems reasonable value to me. If you are planning on managing the build yourself, it is also worthwhile having ownership of the plans yourself. Should you fall out with your builder or any of your trades, you want to retain ownership of the plans so that your project doesn't get too badly interrupted and you can find others to continue with it. Also, it gives you a way of checking that what should be done is getting done. Money well spent, in my opinion.

Not wishing to put a dampener on things, but the work that is supposed to be done on the cables overflying my plot still hasn't happened after it all came to light in about August/September 2018. That said, this is down to my refusal to sign any paperwork until they get theirs right. Have now presented me with paperwork for signing 3 times but each time the map they have included has been incorrect. The first was with the old bungalow that was demolished and no sign of the new build. The next had both the bungalow and the new build but the power cable was shown in the wrong place. Finally, they removed the old and new buildings completely, showing only the power cables! They keep insisting that the plan of the plot doesn't really matter but given that an incorrect plan led to the cables being inadvertently too close in the first place, I disagree. I have told them that I have no intention of giving them a right in perpetuity (wayleave) over my property if they can't even get a plan correct but they don't seem to employ the brightest and the best in their legal departments.

Thanks, Jeremy, good to have this on BH. On the other hand, looks like I need a new plumber!

Does anyone have experience of Denon amps? I'm tentatively looking at the DNp-800NE as a substitute for the sonos amps that had originally been planned to go into the loft to then be hard wired into ceiling speakers. Certainly, the price is much more attractive and it seems to do the same thing. Scratch that - didn't realise that it's not an amp and receiver combined.

I understood that the thin glue down works better with UFH and a concrete slab, which we have on the ground floor. Upstairs, we have egger board and UFH (not yet connected) onto which I had the same LVT laid. No rocket science on the upstairs, simply that I couldn't be bothered with thinking of different colours/effects and wanted to be able to lay the same stuff throughout. I've managed to put a couple of scratches in mine, but they aren't deep and it may be that these are just on the surface coating. The floor has been washed many times, but I was given a care kit with it and haven't used this yet. One of the bottles of gunk is the final coat that makes it look a bit glossy, or less dull, as you please. I'm saving it for once everything is finished as we have a large area to go at and I don't want to repeat it too often.

No such thing. The sooner the better. Don't start any work at all on site until you have the exemption, including demolition.

Very glad I haven't got any amps fitted yet! I really hate this idea of being blackmailed like this. It's what puts me off companies like Apple and Microsoft - their stuff looks lovely and performs well, but the level of devotion that they require just isn't for me. I recently got a new desktop as my old one from 2008 was in need of an upgrade and W10 installation but the new version of MS office and outlook hacked me right off when I found that the only way to get support on the product was by effectively signing up for an annual subscription. I installed all the free equivalents from LibreOffice and Thunderbird email and they're working very nicely for my purposes. It's not that I don't want to pay for anything, it's that I'm not paying a whole heap of cash for something that won't get support (the one-off Office) or risk something disappearing into the ether if I no longer want to subscribe. And, yes, the inability to recycle is awful. I still have my 30 year old hifi which is just as well, because OH still plays his even older vinyl on it. Grrrrr!

Mind you, it is possible to go too far with these things. The shower at our old house was a horrible thing to clean and we had hard water to make it worse. OH came up with a great idea in principle and gave the inside of the screen a good coat of carnuba wax to make it easier to clean. It was easier, but also smelled very strongly (and unpleasantly) of oily polish every time a shower was had.

Thanks, chaps. All in hand - Norrsken are here as I type, they have replaced the seal and are tweaking the door. It seems that the seal put on the door during manufacture was less than ideal but it should be fine now. As has been said so many times, it's not so much that problems happen but how they are dealt with and Norrsken's customer service has been excellent. But I still want a canopy.