vivienz

One of the major reasons we chose the site we have done to build a new house on was the adjacent part of a field that came with the property and the ability to meld together decreasing levels of formality from the garden (proper) to the field, which will be wildlife oriented. When interviewing architects for the project, I gave a clear brief that we wanted a house design in sympathy with what we wanted to do outside (large wildlife pond, wildflower area, etc). I rejected one firm straight after the first interview when, having given the brief and stated that we, and OH in particular, would be taking care of the outside and are very keen gardeners, they said that they would want to do this as well on the basis that although they didn't know the names of any of the plants and shrubs that they wanted to use, they new exactly how they wanted them to look. They never claimed to be landscape architects but I thought this was a terrible case of not listening to a client's brief for a project and how such a large outdoor area could be incorporated. I can understand why people would use someone with an architectural bent for garden design as, certainly in urban/suburban areas, people often don't want gardens in the traditional sense, but garden rooms that work better with their lifestyles. Friends of ours moved into a new build house a couple of years ago and although it's 4 bedroom (you could just about fit a bed into one of those!), it has a tiny garden. They had the garden designed to be a mediterranean style courtyard garden where it doesn't change all that much through the seasons and they certainly don't stuff the borders with wallflowers in spring and other seasonal bedding. Although I loathe the term 'outdoor space', this is exactly what it is and consequently far more useful to them than a traditional garden would be. Your list is a really good one to consider when putting any size of garden together. In my case, repose is a category that I will keep waving under OH's nose as he has a tendancy to stuff everywhere so full of plants that there is nowhere left to sit, as is very nearly the case with our current garden.

The firm that we have used are all ATs. They did the design and are working their socks off now to make sure that the design and all proportions are retained whilst incorporating an MBC passive style build, with all its super-thick walls, for the building regs. They weren't the cheapest of the ATs around here, but they were competitive and certainly much cheaper than the firms of architects that I interviewed for the job. Architects around here seem to add an additional Sandbanks premium to the RIBA one and they are VERY expensive, in my view. I'm not saying that they may not represent value for money for the right client, but I didn't judge myself to be that person.

Aldi now sell bags of frozen cauliflower rice. I understand that frozen vegetables retain a much higher proportion of nutrients than fresh ones kept in the fridge for about a week.

Agree with Jamie. Block out at least a couple of days in your diary and have nothing to do with build. If you can, go somewhere else where you have none of the usual stress triggers. If you do get away, or even if you don't, above all don't feel guilty for taking the time off.

Thrilled for you! How long will you need before it feels like your permanent home and you don't pick up your keys to overnight elsewhere?!

What a difference. I bet you can't wait to get in.

I like the sink and cabinet - may I ask where you bought them?

I think that we will be going deeper than that, even with our piling. We will be able to lose quite a bit of the spoil into the garden and possibly elsewhere on site but there will still be a fair few truck loads to get rid of.

Nah, the heatwave will come when you want to do the garden and the clay soil has dried to natural concrete; not thinking about my own build at all!

What depth are you digging to, Mike? I didn't do an exacting calculation on the cost of muckaway for my site as there are other (time) advantages for me with piling, but I reckoned it would pretty much double the cost of my original groundworks budget, and I'd been generous with that. Even so, we will still need to excavate a fair amount to get the door of the house level with the site as the cellcore layer that soaks up the heave is of significant thickness by itself.

I suspect there is an element of the male/female concept of what is comfortable ambient temperature going on here. 20 to 21 degrees indoors is still light jumper temperature for me, although draughts have a lot to do with making it feel cooler.

It may be worth checking with all the various utilities that you can connect in easily. Quite a number of BH members gave commented recently about getting expensive surprises in the form of having to pay for new connections as the existing ones were full or too old to allow an addition. This seems to have cropped up with mains sewers and electricity. Good luck with the project!

I'm planning a ground floor extension to a student property that we own. It will be to make a couple of bedrooms more spacious and form a new kitchen/diner/lounge area. One side of our house forms the boundary with a neighbour, and the other side of the house is within 3m of the other neighbours. I understand that I do need to comply with the party wall act. Both neighbours are nice people and accommodating and I'll be speaking to them next week to see whether they have any objections to my plans. I understand the notices that I need to serve on them to comply with the act - do I need to get a solicitor involved if everything proves to be straightforward?

Watch out for hawthorn near to anything to do with the build as it had a really high water consumption, pretty much top of the list for that kind of thing. It may not be a big tree but it's the equivalent of a much larger but less thirsty species.

Very best of luck!

When ringing any form of customer services with a complaint or problem and they begin with 'Obviously.....'

Aldi have all their gardening stuff in and they have self watering pots, about 27l capacity, square, in terracotta and green colours. The troughs are the window box type. Although they are being sold under their own Gardenline name, they are from Stewart. Excellent quality and about half the usual price at £3.99. If you haven't tried self watering pots, give them a go as they save a lot of effort and crispy plants in the summer. They also have weed suppressant fabric, either 5x2 or 10x1 for the same price. Good value again.

If it makes you feel any better, Lizzie, I had an as-designed SAP and first time around it came back as B84 and failed! This is in spite of having a whole bunch of PV and a sunamp to store the excess energy. The guy didn't seem to know or care too much so I asked him to do the figures again, this time with a thermal store. They also included a bunch of cold bridges as standard. The second lot of figures came back as a B86 but, more importantly, a pass. I could argue the toss and try and get them improved but i don't care at this stage. I'm not sure that I will be too bothered at the as-built stage, either, TBH, as I don't think it will make any difference to anything for me.

I've ordered from Norrsken. I'm having alu clad French windows upstairs, 3 sets, and sliders downstairs. All triple glazed with a paint wash finish to the interior. Prices no more than rational and a nice product. They have a showroom in Poole, Dorset. Nice people to deal with and a good range. My French windows will be inward opening.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a reply to my PM to @AndyT. I have had a reply from the SAP assessor this morning, though, and he has added in a 90l hot water tank linked into the PV. This has made the difference of +2 points on the score but, more importantly, graded as acceptable in the overall design. I will post detailed comments later but it's a bit tricky at the moment as my internet connection is down for a couple of days.

Chance meetings, research and no fear of being nosy have stood me in good stead for many years and it's proving no different with getting a house built. The 'dig deep' thing was bothering me, mainly the thought of having to go down 2m over the entire footprint of the build and the cost of all that muckaway, as well as the risk of it all turning into a giant, muddy swimming pool during the process. I will freely admit that up until about 10 days ago, the thought of having to get piling included in the build struck terror into me due to what I perceived as the potential cost and complexity involved, all down to my own ignorance about piling. As a new comer to the world of self building, the only thing I'd really picked up on in the past was hearing about remedial work to houses that were falling down and the huge amounts of cash involved. I'd already had a mooch around this site to see what I could see on the matter of piles and had a look at @recoveringacademic's blog and his comments and rapidly lost my fear but not my trepidation over costs. I also had a visit to the build site of another BH member who has been very helpful and encouraging. It was a spontaneous visit as I was really, truly just passing by his site on the way to my own, but his structural engineer was there at the time so I stood quietly by and ear-wigged, as you do, and then one thing led to another and we started chatting about my site and my clay dilemma. The upshot is that the SEs were really helpful guys and I'm engaging them to design a piling system to support my MBC build and overcome the risk of both lateral and vertical movement that my site is very vulnerable to. I'm also having them design the drainage system while they're at it. They will liaise with the architect, building control and the timber frame company and make sure that my build not only gets out of the ground but stays in the same place once it's done. I've never had an issue with professional fees as long as they are ones that are genuine and add value to a project. In this case, it will be money very well spent and a huge weight off my mind. How best to approach the drainage plan had been vexing me for the last few weeks, particularly as my clay soil means that soakaways don't function. One thing that I think may be worth mentioning is the combination of the passive slab and a piling system. The soil beneath the building is not just highly shrinkable clay, but also very dessicated thanks to the long term presence of a few trees and a super thirsty hawthorn hedge. Although these are all now gone, their long term potential affect on the soil will remain for a long time. In particular, the risk of heave. The piling system will keep the building in place, but does nothing to stop the swelling of the clay directly underneath from pushing up and breaking the floor of the new structure. The SE started to talk about a suspended floor to mitigate against this. However, a few days ago I read a BH discussion where @JSHarris mentioned the issue of an airgap under a passive slab having a detrimental affect on the insulation of a slab so was able to say with some confidence that I wanted the slab to rest on the ground, and my reasons why. The SE was fine with this and all the gubbins under the floor will now include a layer that is a honeycomb structure with the face of the cells resting on the ground so that if it does expand, it has somewhere to expand into without damaging the slab. The helical piles are part of an impressive system - no piling mat, no excavation if you don't need it (I need some to make sure that the floor level of the house is level with the ground), super quick to install and little vibration. This will save a huge amount of time and money compared with digging deep and a far more elegant solution with the dangers of heave solved as well. In all, the cost of the SE and the piling won't cost me any more and it may be somewhat cheaper. The time element is important, too, as the lesser amount of excavation will be much speedier and keep me on track for the main part of the build to take place from end of May onwards, assuming everything else is ready. The cherry on the cake was put in place this morning with full discharge of all the pre-commencement planning conditions. All in all, a good week.

I wouldn't get anything done there - I'd stand and stare at the view all day!

Do you know what you want the house to look like? One of the skills that architects can really earn their salt on is making the house look lovely as well as fulfill all the functional requirements that you have. If you can have both, why not? Whilst you have OPP, there's plenty of scope for tweaking things. Be clear on what your budget is, ask him if it's realistic and if not, why not. Have you considered setting up a board on Pinterest where you can put lots of pictures of things you like so that the architect can get a feel for your tastes? The clearer you are with what you want, the more the house will reflect your actual tastes and requirements rather than what the architect may think you want. It's a combination of being open-minded but not afraid to say 'no' to stuff that you don't feel would work for you. Above all, make sure that you can get along with them.

Seems reasonable to me. Mine is about £5k + VAT but they are earning all of that at the moment in making their design work with the MBC build system as there's lots of back and forth and tweaks to ensure that the original design is retained but that it works as a building.

In so far as any more work that he does, is it possible to insist that any variations are agreed up front (as you already tried to do) but with the mind focussing condition that if they aren't detailed on the bill each week, then he doesn't get paid for them? I understand that stuff needs to get done and additional costs are never good, but the lack of transparency is what's put you into such a difficult spot with the cost of all the extras snowballing without your knowledge.