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I think there would be a trail of parts leading to the caravan thief if they tried with mine!

Yes, the weather has been awful. Most of this has been done in mild drizzle. Good job the caravan has a working heater! All being well I will be doing the inside jobs when it is sunny.

Here goes the next stage. Building the reinforced concrete ring beam. The plan is to build the steel cages off site in a shed due to awful weather, then deliver to the site. Lots of things arriving on site! The yellow plastic takes the place of traditional shuttering. Apparently this is faster and therefore cheaper. This will help pay for the huge amount of claymaster I need. It's still a little wet out here so digging might get interesting. We're armed with pumps and a couple of diggers so what could possibly go wrong? It took a couple of hours on Monday morning to measure out the site accurately, then the team got on with digging and cutting the piles to the right height. The cages started to arrive on Tuesday and installation was swift. The kitchen and family room cages nearly complete. The building inspector was happy with the progress on Wednesday so on with the show! With a bit of luck the concrete arrives on Friday. Then we can open the first of the four bottles of Cava allocated to the significant milestones.

Ready made look nicer. But it would probably be a lot cheaper to make my own... nobody will see them again with any luck.

I bought a £250 touring caravan (even came with an awning!) for exactly the purpose you describe. During the initial stages it's been really useful. I've been able to get out of the rain, make coffee, eat lunch etc. The awning has been useful for site meetings and the like because I put a large table in there so we can look at plans. I have a separate toilet that has a clean and empty contract on site now that there's a small team of professionals working on site, but they're using the caravan for making drinks and keeping out of the heavy rain. Once the team gets larger (during the SIPS erection) I will have to get a welfare pod for a couple of weeks simply to have sufficient space. All in all, it was £250 well spent even if I get none of it back. (and I expect to get a lot of it back even if I weigh in the aluminum from it, sell the fittings and build a trailer for taking my Lotus to the track from the chassis!)

I had my BCO round today to look at the ring beam progress. We had a few minutes spare so discussed a few of the up coming things on my build. (He's really helpful and very knowledgable about low energy houses and efficiency, so we have a shared interest). The upshot is that he would prefer me to hang the soil pipes from the floor beams due to the site ground conditions. So who sells such things? The internet doesn't seem to yeild much of any use probably because I'm calling them by the wrong name.

Thanks both. That clears things up a lot. I know it's all fairly simple and easy to over think things but the last thing I need right now are more delays. I guess you're suggesting I go with 2.24a in document H where you have flexible connections within 150mm of the wall so I don't need to leave a gap to fill. Otherwise having 210mm of clear space in a wall that is 225 high doesn't give much room for concrete!

With any luck I will soon have a RC ground beam (by a contractor) so can get on with installing the beam and block floor (my job, with a couple of competent friends). This means I need to finalise the designs of the soil pipes under the beam and block. My architect has done a pretty good job of getting my sketches and desires to comply with building control on paper, but I now need to make this a reality. 1. When the 110mm soil pipe goes through the blocks that will support the B&B floor, is it OK to leave a 200ish mm gap in the blocks (they are only 225mm high) and cover with a steel lintel to support the B&B - I believe the drains all fall to not require the lintel supporting a beam. I am not sure what filler material is acceptable. I would assume expanding foam is not. 2. What is the best way to support the pipes that will sit under the B&B floor to ensure a proper gradient? One pipe is quite long (just under 3m) so I'm keen to get it right. The surface under the B&B floor will be gravel over a membrane assuming the BCO doesn't change his mind. I thought about building this grave up surrounding the pipes to support them. 3. I know the fresh water needs insulating. Does anything need to be done with the soil pipes? Document H doesn't mention it so I assume not.

I usually go to work and play with equipment that emits non-ionising radiation into the atmosphere. It seems it is a lot safer than building and renovating houses. I'm not allowed to have sharp objects like chisels to drop on my hand only to be stopped by the bones in my thumb. Neither am I allowed to walk on floor joists while soldering new pipes together only to fall half way through the ceiling. The bruise on my leg was about 2 feet long the next day. Both of the above were from trying to finish some work on the house far too late in the eveing. I don't do this any more.

A Twizzy would work for my work commute quite well. If only Renault had a more sensible ownership scheme than the silly battery rental thing that makes the twizzy more expensive for commuting than my Lotus Elise.

There's clay and clay. I have clay soil and your design wouldn't work on my land at all. I had a couple of soil samples taken (by hand) and analysed by a friend. It cost a few pounds but confirmed what nearby house owners had told me - that I had highly shrinkable clay with signicant heave potential. And a lot of trees of course. I didn't bother with expensive bore holes (after all, the piling people would do this for me eventually ? ), instead I had the SE specify everything for the sensible worst case outcome based on what next door had done 2 years previously. Next stop piles and a lot of claymaster. (It was more cost effective than my other option of 2.6m deep strip) In the end, the pile design changed slightly because of a higher percentage chalk in the clay at 3 to 5 metre depth at one end of the site, but the cost of the change was less than the survey would have cost and I lost no time. Your clay might be much more forgiving of course - the clay back where I grew up only needed a metre or so depth of strip foundation. Talk to people who have built recently in the immediate area if possible so you can ask informed questions of the SE. Both my SE and BCO turned out to be quite knowledgable about the geology of the area around my house because it's a well studied ANOB and the SE did the pile design for my next but one neighbour. Building control and warranty people will all want to see a design that works else they will just say no.

Have no idea on that particular rule. The BCO didn't have objections, probably because the tarmac isn't being left under the house. I have other uses for it making some pathways in my woodland. The underfloor area is getting dug out by 4 inches (so I get 300mm air gap to the floor beams) and covered with a membrane and gravel. My BCO is quite insistent that I give the vegetation no chances. And since the local brambles seem to be cross bred with Japanese knot weed I will follow the advice! This was all going to be in the next chapter should it ever stop raining for more than a day here.

I think it was a g98. But it isn't totally obvious from their website other than specifying microgeneration with less than 17A per phase.

Application is submitted now, so we'll soon see what SSEN will let me have. Anything over zero makes the plan work.

Happily the inverter I referenced is g100 compliant if I get the latest version. The older ones are apparently not. I do intend to apply to see what i will be allowed but I am not hopeful.

Nothing like answering your own question... Is the Solis 6.0kW 4G Dual MPPT any good? It seems to be "about right" for my 20 panels if I stick to this, but I haven't found much information yet about how it is monitoring output except that it's by current clamp. So it could be a fun game trying to work out if the inverter has backed off generating or the sun has gone when it comes to deciding to switch in loads for self consumption.

I would like PV on the roof of my new build. I believe I can easily fit 20 300W panels on the main roof (and I am considering an additional 4 on the SE side of the house). The snag is that I am in a very rural location served by a single phase wire that already has a lot of PV hanging off it from other houses. I already have a 100A supply to site from the house I demolished (parked in a box at the site entrance). Looking on the map SSEN provide, all the transformers in my area are marked red - presumably meaning they're close to their limits. So my large scale PV system is going to meet resistance (pun intended) from SSEN. Apparently I need to make a G98 or G99 application now, not a G83 etc as these are about to be superseded. Practically this seems to change little if I only want to export 3.75kW, other than a bit more detail seems to be required and there is the chance of them saying that I can't. It looks rather more complicated if I want to try to export more and I expect it to be very costly too. So the question is what G100 compliant kit is out there? Is there a nice 6 to 8kW single phase inverter that will monitor output, switch on loads (eg immersion heaters) and throttle output based on "spare" power the house can't currently use (even after all the loads are on) that has the right paperwork so I can put it in my application to demonstrate compliance with whatever power they will let me export? It seems to me that this is quite a new standard so compliant parts are not common yet.

Absolutely not. Unfortunately the billing department are much more pragmatic. ? And nobody has to inspect this? Or do I simply photograph it in case it is needed in evidence later like I did with the site electricity supply? Thanks everyone. Looks like this could be another build hub cost saving ?

I have an existing water connection on my property that uses the correct sort of 25mm blue pipe. It's connected to a meter at the property boundary that SW installed a year ago to replace a broken meter in the property I have demolished. (We lifted the old wooden shack off the water stop tap, so didn't need to move it!) I have since put in a post to make the tap more visible. Now I need to put in a water pipe to feed the new house. My plan is to reuse the existing water supply pipe and extend it by a couple of meters to the new location. This gets around a lot of planning grief because it means I don't have to work in a tree protection zone. Southern water of course don't want to believe I have a water supply already and are saying I need to apply for a new connection with an SN45 form. This seems to be a route to me paying them £90 to calculate that I need to pay them a lot of money for very little. They aren't very helpful at present. Have I found the right process to follow? All I think I want at this stage is an inspection of the trench and with ducting, pipe & insulation going under the new foundations. But later on of course it will need connecting to the existing supply. The temptation to ignore them is high (based on my work aproach of asking for forgiveness instead of permission), but this is going to be a terrible plan in the long run because they don't seem to be a forgiving organisation. ?

I'm not sure either. But will it be a problem if there's enough depth of reinforced concrete on the top for the securing bolts and the imposed loads are kept within spec? I can only see it doubling the "point" loading versus a car parked on all four wheels - tyre contact patches are very small when all said and done. It's one of the questions awaiting an answer with the beam and block people. They aren't the most comunicative people around and tend to do exactly as asked, therefore I need to have a bit of understanding so I can ask for the right thing. More RC depth does of course reduce insulation opportunity. I was hoping to avoid too much heating in the garage, but a nice warm floor to lie on and curse my cars does sound pleasant now I'm getting older. I don't kneel too much - it's bad for my knees.

I have a Lotus too. Best double up on the insulation...

The ring beam is 600x450mm of steel re-enforced concrete. The spans are in the main a generous 3 metres each. I trust the structural engineer's calculations. What could possibly go wrong? ?

The piling crew phoned me early on Monday morning. Can we come to site on Thursday? We're going to be done earlier than planned and we don't want to waste money on the ferry. Fair enough I think - the ferries are silly money if you're moving equipment. It left me a little problem though - the site wasn't graded to the right level and I had no piling mats. They were on my weekend list so they would be ready for Monday when I was originally expecting the piling team. So a few phone calls later and I had my stone order accelerated and had found a very speedy digger driver for a day and a half. I'm still learning the art of grading with a digger and I haven't got time to mess about. Besides, who is going to walk around with the surveying stick saying "a bit more off here!" if I don't? Job one was to complete a piece of French drain along the front third of the southern edge of the property. Due to the lack of dumper truck, we improvised a stone carrier. We skip a few steps now because I didn't have a camera for most of the grading work. The crushed tarmac arrived for most of Wednesday morning and I spread it about until it got dark. I didn't get all of it finished but there was enough flat ground to get a good start on the first few piles. This is after the first 20 tonnes arrived. There should be no surprise that it rained the previous night so I had to deploy a pump to empty the garage footprint lest it turn to a swimming pool. I spent the morning of Thursday marking out the site with a couple of decent tapes and a laser level. It should be good to 10mm or so all things considered. This is (hopefully) adequate for groundworks. The ring beam will cover the multitude of sins, I am reliably informed by the machine operators! The first pile hole being drilled. A momentus occasion - we are finally under way with the build. The plan with the piles is to auger down to 3 metres, through the reasonably clean clay to where it starts to contain a lot of chalk particles and an awful lot of water . The anti-heave sleeves will then be fitted (the most expensive toilet roll middles I've ever seen) and an end driven steel pile will be installed to approximately 8 metres. More drilling and shovelling. The team can work at quite a pace! Even an attack of super moles doesn't put the team off their game. Most of the sleeves are now installed. Little did you all know, I am secretly building a multi-story car park. The piles are ready to be hit with the large hammer on a string. Sometimes brute force is the best way. All piles installed and concreted. Oh and it rained again for a change.

I have a grand plan for a large detatched garage with my new house. Surprisingly the planning department agreed to it, so it would be rude not to build it if the cost over-runs on the house allow ? It has to have a beam and block floor due to heavy clay soil, trees and other annoyances, but other than that, I have a pretty clear run at building a 6 metre by 12.5 metre "man cave". I am currently working through my options for the floor. I will be spending time there with broken TVRs - so a comfortably insulated floor seems a good idea. I will also be installing a 2 post lift in one end. The beam and block will naturally be specced with this in mind. I am wondering how much and what type of insulation I should use. EPS200 seems a sensible choice from my limited reading so far. (I can't see me converting the garage into a dwelling so I wasn't going to allow for this other than saying the effective ceiling height would easily allow a second floor to be laid) Any pointers gratefully received.

Zones 1 and 2 are still up to 2.25 metres high in my 18th edn book. Here's the zone description from the book of words: