dnb

Writing well specified work packages and employ a "critical friend" (your architect might be a good call for this) to make sure all bases are covered as far as possible mitigates a lot of risk to my mind along with a robust QA process by either you or someone you trust. I chose to do a lot of this myself. I have a professional engineering background so am used to risk management to some extent. The rest of them can be written down in a risk register (something simple like a notebook is fine) and then discussed with relevant contractors etc to cost the risk and find out if there is a cost effective mitigation activity to reduce the likelihood or cost/timescale impact. It's easy to give this sort of advice but quite another to follow it... I have mostly done the above but I never thought to include material and labour shortages, and lockdowns caused by a pandemic in my list of risks!

I have come to the conclusion that all houses look better in photos than in real life. So I now try not to worry about the small imperfections unless it is something I will look at on a daily basis or it is a functional defect. The 1mm error on the nailing of the front gable apex trim does still annoy me of course. Nobody else can see it from ground level of course.

Proctors roofshield on mine too. Was suppliedad part of the SIPS package. It seems a very good product but I haven't had much to do with any others.

Thank you @joth. That's just the sort of information I was looking for. Especially with the hardware side. Not liking the 30W permanant draw! I've considered my requirements in light of your post (pun intended) and concluded that I do want centralised lighting controls. Mainly because I want the switches to be able to configure the house for what we are currently doing rather than because we are in a particular place. There is a temporal consideration too - for instance SWMBO is disturbed easily by hallway lights at night, and I am a typical night owl. So I would prefer that the system could centrally decide to have a "night mode" at a particular time where everything is dim or biased to red. Such things need to be configurable as a global setting and not be something per light fitting. I was playing with Freestyler today and it turns out that it can receive windows API calls or UDP packets as control inputs. This means at worst case I could roll my own very simple ESS32 microcontroller switches that transmit wifi packets to a windows PC running Freestyler on an airgapped network to control everything. (I could even use a smartphone app to do this). It's clunky in the extreme but very cheap. Not suggesting this is actually a good option , but it is relatively low risk in terms of vendor support. And it lets me continue testing on the cheap for the moment. I am really trying not to roll my own solution here. I've simply not got time unless I can convince SWMBO to make use of her software engineering degree (she's said 'no' very pointedly in the past)! I have to confess that I really like the Loxone switches. They represent a near perfect interface for what I want to achieve. Oh well, budgets are a bit elastic aren't they? You are of course right. The industry does seem in a mess. It appears to not be able to be pulled in a sensible direction at the moment. Where sensible is defined from the end user point of view, not the revenue stream.

I am doing much the same. SIPS house with the significant "difficult" work done by contractors and me undertaking a few well contained work packages. That was the plan. In reality I've spent a large part of my time doing rather larger work packages because of availability issues - both people and materials, learning a lot along the way. Currently learning about slates and the pitfalls of using a roofing material that weighs in at approx. 5 tonnes.

@Russell griffiths I am not particularly concerned with the counterbattens on the SIPS other than what my BCO and warranty provider will accept. They don't span anything when all said and done. The fixings and spacing are indeed a large concern as discussed (and concluded from my viewpoint) earlier in the thread. I don't expect the counterbattens to be pulled out by anything the weather can do because they are more secure than the battens.

I have seen DMX discussed here before - I think it was @joth doing an installation using Loxone controlling DMX? If this is correct, what DMX decoders did you use, and are you happy with them? I have just started to look at lighting control schemes and pretty much decided DMX is the most sensible standard because it's most unlikely to go away any time soon or be depricated at the whim of a single business. I have bought a few DMX toys - a cheap USB interface and a few decoder boxes and had great fun making computer controlled LED strings using an old laptop - so I am happy with DMX responsiveness etc and it's not exactly expensive in the grand scheme. But what ways are there to provide the human inputs so that normal people don't hate visiting? Loxone is an (looks good but very expensive) option of course, but it does seem to be going closed shop so I would prefer cheaper and more open if it's possible. What else that supports DMX is out there? Preferably not involving wifi or anything that can't run properly on an airgapped network.

I am planning to do similar to @JamesP but create a void at the bottom edges of the vaulted ceiling. The SIPS roof is a 40 degree pitch, and if I batten the inside with tapered battens aiming for the inside plasterboard to be approximately 45 degrees I will create a sufficient void down each side of the room for all the services. The walls are tall enough that they won't loose too much height and look odd and of course I gain "easy" access to the services. Better than them being nearly 5m up, anyway!

That wasn't my main concern, but I'm often that lucky! It's one of the first full SIPS builds on this little island to my knowledge so I'm expecting scrutiny and a few interesting questions from the BCO since he may have very limited experience of this sort of build. That's a very useful document you referenced too. It interprets of many horrible documents in a much clearer form - and has pictures! Just what I needed while recovering from the 'flu. (Proper 'flu, not Covid19 or man flu! )

Welcome! Is it a listed building or is there a threat of this in the future? This can make life interesting. It does look like there are a lot of issues. (Watch the 1980s film "The money pit" for inspiration ? ) Sadly the cold hard financial reality might say that starting again is the cheaper option. Certainly something to keep in mind as an alternative hypothesis when pricing the renovations and working out your upper limit on the offer. I can't answer all the questions, but my take on the whole thing is yes, anything can be fixed. But price everything carefully. 20% cost error from my very short journey into old houses is going to be very much the best case - I would want a siginficant fighting fund for finding out bad things, probably at very short notice. I got very close to buying a large 1760s house a few years ago. We had enough money for one "blank cheque" issue. We had a survey (from an expert in old churches and houses) and he informed us that there was potential for two. It could have been worse of course. It didn't appear to have many of the problems you list, but potential for dodgy foundations, and removal of some key supporting woodwork from the cellar by the previous owner and grade 2 listing was sufficient to put me off - it could easily have eaten £200,000, look no different, still cost £4000 in gas to heat each year and not be worth £200k more than when we started. It was still a beautiful house when all said and done. It was one of the big drivers for me to want to do my own new build. I'm sure that in the daylight the real experts here will have some more useful advice.

Tell me about it! My SIPS team had a stretch of water to contend with too... Getting anything done all seems really hard at the moment and I expect it isn't going to get easier any time soon. I agree with everyone else that since you're paying someone, then these problems ought not to even get as far as you other than in progress reports. "Pulling together" is fine, but the word "compromise" shouldn't imply a quality reduction. Perhaps this is why I struggle a bit to employ contractors. Are the whole of the telescopic vent thingies missing, or is it just the brick sized vent covers in the outer skin that are missing?

I have a 600 centres and 50x25 battens. Yes it can be a little bouncy but so far it isn't being a problem in the slightest. But I am only an amateur with roofing!

A couple of litres of sloe vodka in production! That's the sloe harvest dealt with... Now to finish getting the Bramleys peeled, cored and frozen. Can't do much else with them this year - too much risk of them being pre-enjoyed by critters. I ought to do something with the crab apples and the undesclosed eating apples too. Shame the birds beat me to more or less all the blackberries this year.

Good to know for the future. I think for the moment the contents will be used as kindling for the odd bonfire to clear away all the garden waste that won't compost that is building up on site.

A lot has happened on site in the last month. But nothing really seems to look different yet. We start with the soffit and fascia. A 15.1 metre run, in 4 pieces. Why the house grew that extra 100mm I don't know. I blame the boss and the architect! It can't possibly be anything to do with me! What a pain this was to get straight - the process was to cut the splines down to the right size, both at the edge and bottom (the 'alien' was good for this) and then insert some reinforcement timbers to allow the fascia to be nailed at 600mm centres top and bottom. I used a few shims to get it to come out right, but far fewer than I feared. The gable ends were a bit of fun. It took 3 of us to manoeuvre the snake-like soffit flat board and capping fascia in to place. Only six full lengths and four parts to do... Won't take long, honestly. Next we installed the felt support trays and over fascia vents for the first time. It turns out that my planning isn't infallible and I hadn't allowed for the correct thickness of slates at the bottom of the roof. Oh well, lesson learned. Testing a sample slate on the roof with the shim in place to demonstrate the loose eaves slate issue was actually fixed. Still waiting for slates. So let's look at fibreglass valley pieces... I have a few batten offcuts in place to stand on and hold on to in various useful places so I can reach to put up the supporting battens for the valley. I'm now hoping the other side lines up with this one! The first pallet of slates! A bit of a problem with delivery and quantities, so I had to collect them with my long suffering trailer. The wheels didn't fall off, but it was a close run thing. The slaves (or do I mean family?) hard at work grading slates. The table was a maths lesson on the Gaussian distribution later that day. Thankfully medium is most common. I really need to work on getting the junk pile sorted out too. I have no idea why I have an old toilet and radar antenna on site. Meanwhile I made a jig for cutting the eaves slates, using the thin slates. Tests have shown the grinder breaks fewer slates than trying to cut them by traditional methods. It looks like I need more practice, but not at current slate prices! The first few slates on the roof. It's going to take a fair while... Just over 10% done with this side now. Going to need more slates and more people to finish in anything like sensible time! I don't think it's looking too bad so far... Only 1850 more slates to go on the house.

I have killed my old inherited shop vac, so I need to replace it before I inhale a whole trees worth of sawdust. I don't need H rated (I have a small one of those already) but wet operation might be useful. Price is a significant factor in this because it's yet another unbudgeted spend in an already expensive month - the Lotus needs some new toe links for its MOT. What's a good buy? I quite like the 20 litre Clarke wet and dry vacuum in Toolstation at the moment. Also considering making a cyclone dust extractor out of an old dustbin and some parts I have lying around to put inline with the new vac so I don't have to empty it quite so often. Anyone tried this?

Problem solved. I made a few shim strips out of a roofing batten using a table saw and inserted them on the fascia, under the felt trays and vents. It all screwed back together nicely. I will probably use the thinnest neoprene foam strip I can find on the vents - say 2-3mm - to give the slates something to bed on. The boss is very keen to not have a roof with rattles!

That would be the plan if I go this way. It is not a hipped roof so yes, this side is isolated. I would use tape thicker than 6mm so it can compress. I don't want any rattles in the wind! I am still considering route 2 on my original list having found what looks like suitable way of "stretching" the fascia upwards.

I like the foam rubber idea! Might even have some from various car projects. Really not keen to move the fascia...

It would appear I have failed to do basic maths when I put up the fascia, felt trays and vents on the north side of the roof. (Thankfully we haven't done the south side yet). I put a handful of slates up yesterday evening so I could check everything was OK before I started on paying for help, and found that the eaves slates rattle a bit because they are lifted just off the vents at the bottom. This is of course unacceptable. If we were in America, I would be accused of incorrectly (or not) fitting a 'cant strip'. But this appears to be US terminology not in common use in the UK - do we have an equivilent term? I have obviously not allowed for the correct number of slate thicknesses when putting up the fascia etc, allowing a 6mm gap to appear between the eaves slates and the over fascia vents when the field slates are laid. I'm very cross with myself naturally enough for such a trivial oversight, but now it needs fixing, preferably in an easy way. Options, from hard to easy: 1 - remove fascia and nail it back up 6mm higher. (A LOT of work) 2 - Put a shim on the top of the fascia under the felt trays and then screw the vents back down. (A couple of hours work at the most) 3 - any suggestions from here?

Nowhere is a pretty big place if all 3 of us are in the middle of it!

Shortages are evident over on my little island too. Can't get 2"x2" treated battening for anything like a reasonable price and delivery schedule at the moment. (Not holding me up yet, but give it a couple of weeks...) Slate battens are still available, but I have a big pile of those. I was told a similar story that it is stuck in the supply chain getting in to the country.

First sloes have been harvested and are now in the freezer to split them. Next step is to get a couple of bottles of gin.

Plenty of blackthorn bushes in the jungle. The hedgerow at the front is mixed hawthorn, blackthorn and others. I have no plans to do anything other than maintain it at 6 feet in height and keep it looking full. Looks like I will get a good crop of sloes this year. Plenty of gin needed!

I downloaded a trial version of "PV Sol". Not the easiest to use, but it produces nice pictures and seems to match reality - I modelled a friend's existing PV scheme and got good agreement with historic results.