vivienz

Mess? That's tidied than my kitchen has been for the last 15 years! Nice kitchen. I do like the uplighters above the top cupboards.

So, as the guy has said that it has failed general compliance requirements, does that actually mean what it implies and do I need to get the figures re-done to accurately reflect the situation?

Welcome and good luck with the project. There's nothing wrong with a state of ignorance, I've found it's a permanent thing with building houses as as soon as you learn one thing, you realise there are 100 others about which you know nothing. Speaking personally, of course!

Okay, thanks both. I shall worry about more important things for the time being and deal with this at the end of the build.

He has no thermal store at all and DHW is entered as 'independent' and instantaneous at point of use. Unless I'm reading the report wrongly, I don't think it has passed at this stage as it says in the header block to the report that it has failed the general compliance requirements.

I've had my as designed SAP report done and I'm wondering whether it's worth querying the figures or whether it doesn't matter in the slightest. The house isn't designed to PHPP but is an energy efficient build with passive slab; it has lots of glazing. The as designed score is coming in at 84. From what I can see, the chap doesn't understand that I have a pcm thermal store; in fact, he has assumed no thermal store whatsoever as I told him that I wouldn't have a hot water cylinder and sent him info on the sunamp instead. From looking at the figures, it assumes that all heating is electric (correct) and when not powered by PV, will be at a standard electricity day time tariff. The figures also appear to include a whole host of thermal bridges, including sills, lintels and the intermediate floor. Am I making a fuss about nothing?

Bad luck, Will. Better to find out at the start if someone is going to be difficult.

Surely it is classed according to the work he is doing rather than whatever he does in the rest of his time? Otherwise, builders and the like would argue that they can't zero rate because they normally do work rated at 20%.

Stunningly beautiful.

One of our spare rooms is actually going to be a hobby room but it would be useful to have a bed in it. I don't want to have a sofa bed as they take up a lot of room and are usually uncomfortable as sofas and beds. I've been looking at murphy beds, pull down beds as I used to know them, and how people have built Ikea wardrobes around them. This is one example that I quite like the look of:

They look great, Lizzie. Was it just the fittings or the doors as well that came from Howdens? Edit: just spotted the doors on the Howdens website.

It's a long way off but we will need wardrobes in the new place. I picked up a brochure in Ikea when I was there the other day and quite like the look of some of their stuff, particularly all the internal organising bits which I thought were excellent. Does any one have any other recommendations for decent wardrobes?

If you google the name of the council covering your parents' area and add CIL, it should bring up a whole load of stuff direct from the council itself. Another easy way to check is to look at other planning permissions and see if a CIL has been imposed on them - it will say on the planning permission if this is the case. It's always interesting to have a snoop around other planning permissions in the area, as well, to see the kind of thing that gets granted and what is refused.

Which calculations?

As I'm getting the roof taken off the bungalow next week, I thought that I had best get my site insurance sorted out. When I was ringing around for quotes, every organisation asked whether the build would need piles in the foundations to which I answered in the negative as I had not heard anything to the contrary. HOWEVER, the lack of information in one area doesn't equate to certainty in another so I contacted MBC for some information from their SE as to whether he felt, at this stage, I would need to have piled foundations before going ahead and purchasing insurance. The SE, via MBC, got back very quickly indeed. This is the plan of our site with the existing and new structures superimposed, as well as where hedges and trees have been. The handwritten comments are self explanatory, but the orange areas are where the excavation needs to go much deeper than usual, probably about 1200mm, then back-filled with hardcore. Zarucki Fill_Excavation Depths.pdf So, to dig deep or to go for piles? The SE has said that both will work and the deciding factor is which is cheapest. In the sums I will need to do next week, I will also need to account for the cost of getting any piling system designed as MBC don't do this, then also getting the piles, foundation and super structure all connected up; please excuse the lack of technical terms. At the moment, I have no idea of what piling system would be needed, but if it's anything like @recoveringacademic experience, then it could be a process that requires a piling mat meaning I'll have almost formed the MBC foundation anyway. For those who want to read about Ian's experience, his excellent blog account of piles is here: Recovering academic's pile blog Of particular note is @Calvinmiddle's comment about his deeper foundation on clay for an MBC build. At the moment, I'm heavily leaning towards the deeper foundation and no piles. I will check out the economics of it; if it's a close thing, I would prefer to avoid piling just because I feel more comfortable with the principles involved in the deeper hard core layer and it avoids involving yet another contractor. But who knows - until 10.00am this morning, I had no idea what a piling mat was and a week is a long time in self-building.

Very neat. I like the idea of the decor panel under the bridging units.

I looked into getting an MCS PV install recently, in north Dorset. I couldn't even get a quote from the firm's I tried, they said their installers were booked for the foreseeable future. Sounded rather like bs and they just didn't want the work but it does negate the argument over whether to go for an MCS install.

Hardly on the same scale, but OH was using coloured mortar in some paving he was laying and he complained bitterly about the price back then. It seems that nothing has changed, unfortunately.

It's looking like I will get my kitchen units from DIY-kitchens. I've mapped out the design and like what they have available and their price is competitive. The only problem is that the main worktop run is a bit over 4m and the island is worthy of its name and too big for their standard sizes. I got a quote from Worktop express by emailing their fabrication department. They got back to me with the quote in a couple of days and it's very competitive. I was originally seduced by some flashy looking granite but kept getting drawn back to solid walnut and that's what I've got the quote for. I received my samples yesterday, too, and they are very lovely and go well with the door sample that I ordered from DIY-kitchens. Worktop express are certainly worth checking out.

Another day, yet another little gem of learning. I've been getting a bit worried because although I got the bat licence last week, my glacial paced architect had done nothing about getting the pre-commencement planning conditions discharged for several weeks, even though everything was in place for some time. But that's another grumble for another day. Anyhow, I've got to get the roof off by the end of April, which is why I was getting my proverbial knickers in a twist over the pre-commencement stuff, so I decided to cut out the middle man and rang the planning officer to ask whether, pleeeease, nice Mr Planning Officer, would you mind awfully, as you're such a nice chap, if I sort of, kind of, well, take the roof off the bungalow to make sure no pesky bats come back? Pretty pleeeeeease? Nice Mr Planning Officer said 'no problem at all, no need to grovel, you are entitled to re-roof your house any time you like. Just because you don't get around to putting new tiles back on, that doesn't stop you taking off the existing ones to begin with. Now stop grovelling.' He didn't really tell me stop grovelling, but his tone implied it, along with the strong impression that he couldn't care less about the bats. Either way, result. Fate being the fickle creature that she is, but no more so than the aforesaid architect, I got an email from the architect's admin person late this afternoon to say that they had submitted for discharge of the initial planning conditions. I prodded them with a very sharp stick on Monday morning - the architect has possibly just taken this long to notice. I'm waiting to co-ordinate availability of ground worker and bat guy over the next 2 weeks, then off comes the roof. Followed by the rest of the house shortly afterwards, with luck.

There was an extensive and involved thread on this last year: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/2376-principal-designer-role/ And a good summary of the thread by @recoveringacademic, here: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/2514-cdm-2015-and-the-domestic-client/

Most of our stuff gets washed at 30, but proper dirty work and gardening stuff gets done at 40 or higher (hubby's overalls are covered in oil and grease at the end of a busy week). I occasionally do an empty run through with the machine on a boil wash to get rid of all the gunk that builds up. The tumble dryer gets used if I'm in a hurry, but in the winter we have an open coal fire and I put the drying rack in front of it overnight and that takes care of most things. I don't mind a crispy towel, myself, saves on using a loofah in the shower.

Good shout, @Hecateh. As you say, not a deal breaker with those prices, but if you want a Monday-Friday date that you can specify, it will add £250 to the bill. I won't be in time for their April sale, but by the time I get around to ordering another one may have come along.

A little bump to this thread. I've been researching kitchens over the last couple of months. I've looked at choices from the standard sheds to kitchen designer shops and DIY-Kitchens, and priced them all up. Although I won't be ordering for a while, I've pretty much decided that I will use DIY-Kitchens - it looks like a very nice product and excellent prices. I will get most of my appliances elsewhere and will need to source my worktop and island surface from another supplier as DIY can't provide the size I need. I'll report back on the outcome later this year.

I have my bat licence! Woohoo! Albeit that ours was a pretty simple case (summer roost only, no breeding evidence, unoccupied building and no big trees in close proximity), I'm chuffed that we got our licence through quite speedily. I nagged our architect yesterday about the lack of progress with discharging the planning conditions and this has rather caught him out now, as that's the only thing standing between me and having the property demolished, so time to get on with things. As soon as the roof is off, I will contact the VOA and have the property de-listed to save on council tax - because the property had been vacant for so long, I didn't get any reduction for it being unoccupied, so I'm keen to get this done. I've got my site insurance quotes yesterday and my groundworker is on notice, so we're under starters orders.