Oldsteel

My builder is worried about delays having two inspectors to deal with, and also if they may disagree. So it does make sense to have one person doing both jobs. I am not too botherd about the Warranty - I have read posts on this but we do need to have one in place, its a box ticking exercise as far as I am concerned. I have contacted the inspection company that self-build-zone were going to assign and they are trying to establish contact from their end. Its unusual for a business not to answer the phone to customers wanting to pay them ......

I have been trying to contact self-build-zone all week to assign them to my project. I have had a number of quotes from them and I am now ready to go. They have offered BCO and Structural Warranty inspections using the same inspector, which is bonus in terms of efficiency - the only provider who is able to do that. My build is due to start in 2 weeks and now I cannot contact them at all. They say on the ir website that due to COVID they have people working from home. As this has been the case all year this is wearing a bit thin as an excuse for poor service. Does anyone know if there are any problems with their business? If so I need to switch to another provider and pretty quick.

Both the last properties we bought to build on were affected by restrictive covenants. The last one (10 years ago) cost me a fortune as the beneficiary was a neighbour who was originally co-operative when we built, then turned nasty when we sold the place and we had to pay him off, thanks to purchaser's solicitors making mountains out of molehills. Our current plot is affected similarly to @Jvh2012 with covenant dating back to 1970 and when we bought the plot we purchased an indemnity policy for £600 and added it to the seller's bill because its a 'defect in title'. Seller not happy but my solicitor said that the way it is usually done. The good thing about buying insurance is that the company assesses the risk on your behalf - covenants can be incredibly complex to unravel. If they agree to sell you insurance they must think the risk of follow-up legal action is acceptable. And any subsequent sale of the property is covered as the policy runs with the property in perpituity and solicitors will accept it. I wish I could have purchased insurance on my first build, but it was not available as the beneficiary was live and well and living next door. Insurance is only available when the beneficiary is hard to track down or there is doubt about whether it can be enforced. I am convinced covenants were invented by the legal profession to create a future fat revenue stream.

Glad you have fixed it - looked like a balancing issue. I have a traditional system - but had the same issue with upstairs taking the lions share of heat. Went through a balancing exercise as described earlier and now its fine. Although downstairs rads are closer to the boiler, I suspect I may have microbore pipes downstairs (through a manifold) and copper 15mm upstairs but I am not ripping up floors just to find out. To comment on your earlier experience, those lockshield valves don't regulate flow in a linear fashion, they are designed to be on or off. My experience is that the first full turn is the difference between full on and full off. So the 1/4 turn (the hissing noise is the valve restricting the flow) would be about 25% open. This may vary dending on the type of valve of course.

I agree. We paid £150k for our 0.25 acre plot without pp in the Cotswolds, in a conservation area, in 2018. We had looked at similar plots with pp for sale at up to £400k (nuts, by the way). It was valued by a surveyor for finance purposes 2 months ago at £260k. The surveyor looks at the end market value of the proposed build and works back from there, ending up with the valuation. For us, its fine as we intend to live in the property and not sell it on. The shortage of plots tends to push up prices, however when buyers look at the total costs of the build (compared with what they could buy a completed build for) they may well end up pulling out of the deal. I think realistic valuations work in our favour, keeping agreed prices down, so do keep trying!

With the specified insulation, yes. 100mm minimum in the slab if you dont want to lose heat into the ground.

In tune with many others here (this thread was started in 2019!) the MVHR was the best thing I installed in my previous self-build - which we finished in 2009 and lived in for 8 years. The original reason to install it was to avoid those awful trickle vents in windows, which as somneone rightly said create a draught in windy weather and dont work when there is no wind. Our system was one of the original Orca systems, with minimal controls. The only problem was the humidity sensors which failed quite quickly and I couldnt get replacement - it semeed to work fine without them though. But it kept the whole house fresh and dry including those rarely-used spare rooms, and other than an annual clean of the filters (and probably a 4 year scrub of the fan blades) it worked well and silently. During hot summers I turned it off as we had windows open most of the time. It is a prime requirement for our new build starting in April and I am looking forward to improved controls over our previous system. We are currently living in an older house which has no vents at all but is probably porous enough not to need them ?

Hmm yes I hadnt thought of the £ falling. I think the exchange rate with the € will probably stay where it is so there will be an immediate increase on anything imported, plus the cost of the extra paperwork. But we have no choice but to suck it up. I am resigned to a 5-10% increase in material costs overall, hopefully labour will be about the same.

Thanks for this thread @Ferdinand. I have been dipping in and out of this forum for a good while because I was due to start in March last year ('nuff said) and then again in October but the builder and groundworker then didnt fancy the timing. We are on a sloping site and previous ground clearance work in Feb saw machinery sliding down the hill though the mud! Would have reluctantly postponed again with no-deal but now we have a deal the planned start date is April 1st (!). Will be on a bridging loan so time is money and I am concerned about material delivery delays. Nearly all the suppliers I am asking for requotes (last quotes were Autumn 2019) are putting prices up by 10%. Timber seems to be in the spotlight as most of it is imported from Eastern Europe, but hopefully by April things will have settled down a bit. Nevertheless I will ask the builder to pre-order more than he would normally (and he has a yard to store it) to ensure we are not sitting waiting for anything. My roof tile supplier is quoting orders now for October delivery! That order has gone in (no deposit thankfully). Anyone else looking at a start within the next 6 months? How are you feeling about it? Most builders are up to their necks in work so I see no option than to lock them in for the April start based on their availability. In any case I want to finally get this house built!

Just tried the Wickes website and there was a 3 minute queue to get in ??. And when you do get in theres no stock on most items. Cant figure whether there really are shortages or whether there are no staff to handle the orders?

Rats. Filled up on 19th Feb at 48p/ltr. What a difference a month makes .... Trump just doing a favour for his mates in the shale gas industry crying on his shoulder. He doesnt have a great track record on his predictions!

We have planning (July-19) and finally discharged all conditions about 5 weeks ago - we are in a conservation area and that's a whole other story. Luckily as it happens I decided to split the build into two phases - ground clearance and levelling as we are on a medium sloping site, then crack into the build. Appointed the groundworker who just finished yesterday, funded that myself. In the meantime got detailed quotes from 4 builders - which took about 3 months - whittled it down to two then went away to source finance, as we will be funding the build by the sale of the house we are in - we live adjacent to the site. Bridging finance is expensive, and I have spoken to a few brokers who have been very good at coming up with creative finance solutions. Then we get hit by this virus situation, I have ground cleared next door (very pleased with the groundworker) and ready to go, I just have to flip the switch on one of the pricey finance options and dive into serious debt for a while. Here's the thing though, if I was spending my own hard earned savings I would be raring to go as builders will be keen to get the business - builders merchants might close their shops but they wont stop delivering as that's their business - so maybe some supply chain concerns but only if goods are coming from abroad. However - and its a big However, as I am essentially funding my build by the sale of my house in 12 months time I need some assurance house prices will hold up. As we are heading into a full-blown recession I think house prices will only go one way - and that isn't up. So although part of me says be bold and do it - its a good time to build while few others are - my head rules and says if house prices fall I could be saddled with a large mortgage to fund the difference - or maybe not if I cant get one - and have some finance provider breathing down my neck. No thanks - self-build is enough stress without adding that into the mix. So sadly the project is now on hold until we see some way out of this corona-mess - weeks, months or years - who knows?

I am in the same situation, wondering whether to shell out on a warranty on our upcoming build. Interesting the FMB Warranty is not on the list as this is usually quoted as #2 after the NHBC warranty. I agree with all other comments, and as we are building the house to live in until the year dot I would rather just take care during the build than shell out on a warranty where you know the provider will do their best to weedle out of any subsequent claim. BUT, you never know what might happen which is the reason for any insurance I guess. So I will probably go with one on your list, thanks for posting it.

LEDs are great, they cost next to nothing to run and as regards CRI, colour temp and dimming are improving all the time. But - we are just completing the lighting schedule for our new build and its now a lot more complicated than it used to be. We have spent hours poring through websites, the OH chooses based on design and I look at the specs. There are tens of thousands of LED fittings available, and you now have to look at whether they are integrated, dimmable, low or mains voltage, wattage, lumens, whether they need a transformer, is that transformer dimmable, will it only work with specific dimmers, is the dimmer training edge, colour temp and CRI (which often isn't quoted on the spec) - it goes on! There is a huge disparity on prices as well, for instance you can spend £8 or £108 on a pretty standard downlighter and price is not necessarily an indication of better quality. It seems there is no substitute (other than employing a lighting designer at vast cost) for putting in hours of planning up front to make sure it will all work together successfully. We have made a rule up front for 3000k colour temp everywhere which simplifies things a little. Our current house is all LED, albeit different hues and brightnesses but as long as each room is consistent it probably doesn't matter too much. We don't have any dimmers .......

Our architect did us a huge favour (we only paid for the design) by submitting all the required CIL documents just after we obtained planning. That only leaves me to submit the CIL Form 6 before we start any work on site, which, per advice elsewhere on this forum, should be done as soon as possible. However, if you have planning conditions attached to your permission, then the LPA will likely only accept the CIL commencement Form 6 after you have discharged all the planning conditions, which can take a long time at an overworked and under resourced LPA.

Struggling with OH over shadow gaps, she is set on them and I see many downsides, not least allowances for expansion per JH and the extra cost. I can't find the Moduleo LVT you refer to - the Moduleo website has no search facility. What is LVT - can you post a specific link? Looking for any alternatives to the dreaded shadow gap.

Caveat Emptor - first rule of self build .....

Thanks Andrew, we are still working on the final planning conditions negotiations/queries, so maybe good to wait until that is done (SuDS doing my head in). Thanks for the reminder on Form 7, could easily be forgotten in the excitement of moving in ......

I have been pondering for a while whether there are any issues with submitting the CIL commencement notice a couple of months before we start the development? It would be nice to just get it ticked off the long list of tasks, and also allow for a potential wait for it to be acknowledged by the CIL team. I read somewhere on this forum that bringing in machinery constitutes the start of the development, site clearance is scheduled for the end of February but might slip. At the moment the site is untouched. In summary, any issues with submitting CIL Form 6 with a start date of now, but not actually starting for another couple of months?

I went for an online estimate from estimators-online.com. Pretty easy, I sent them my BR drawings and they sent me back a fully detailed estimate, BOQ style, within a couple of days. There were some exclusions, odd items such as pocket doors, fill under garage, MVHR etc but these were all listed. For about £180 it has proved really useful for getting a ball-park cost for the early back-of-the-envelope budgeting. It was also useful as a guide to all of those small items you don't think about that must be included. Its worth noting they use standard materials and labour costs (albeit regionalised) so for me, my costs are going to increase where I opt for higher quality finishes. They also provide a detailed project plan, and all costs include contingency, builders margin etc. I have used the main cost breakdown as a template for my own cost assessments, adding in the costs I am aware of so far. I am now out to tender to four local builders, and I have included the BOQ at their request, excluding the costs, and asked them all to quote using the same sections as the online estimate, eg, foundations and excavation, ground floor,first floor, roof etc etc. I would recommend using online service to anyone who wants to get a good handle on costs prior to engaging builders, PMs or subbies, and of course raising finance.

In my last build I put in wet UFH upstairs and although I didn't use it a lot in the bedrooms it was used in the bathrooms a fair bit, as the ladies in the house (well, me also!) need to keep bathrooms dry and warm. The key is good zone controls, isolate your bathrooms so they can be controlled separately to the bedrooms. To use electric UFH on a separate system and control seems a bit clunky to me, but of course would be easier to install. I am planning wet UFH upstairs and down in my imminent new build.

Sorry I have no idea, moved out of that house 2 years ago!

In my last house build (okay it was 10 years ago) the MVHR was the best investment I made. Reading all the above posts has highlighted many things about the installation I took for granted at the time: 1. It had the silver flexible pipes on all connections to the unit which led onto rigid ducting throughout the house. I didn't realise they were silencers! 2. It was mounted in the loft but not directly on the ceiling, but on two A-frame horizontal joists. I plan to do the same - if there is no available joist I would add it just to mount the unit. 3. It was an Orcon HRV unit and ran silently, with the loft door closed we never heard it in operation on any setting anywhere in the house 4. It had no remote controls at all. It was a 'set and forget' on the internal control board dip switches. 5. Its humidity sensors only worked for about 2 years. When I tried to get replacements they implied the things never worked properly and they stopped supplying spares. Might it still be the case that humidity sensors are flaky? 6. It did need an annual clean/service/filter change. In spite of pretty dense filters dirt built up over time on the fan blades which were a b*ger to clean. I am now planning to install an MVHR in the next house and love the idea of the PIR to control the velocity in the bathrooms - and the DHW return pump! In the last house the DHW return pump was on a timer and although very convenient was probably quite inefficient. I am looking forward to much smarter MVHR controls in the next build. The interaction between MVHR and kitchen extractors has been covered in other threads, IMO you can't rely on increased velocity MVHR to take the place of the extractor, it simply wont be powerful enough.

@Sensus Credit where its due - your last link there is what I ended up with, and its far cheaper than the hydrobrake manhole, and I get the added bonus of rainwater harvester built in. And yes I have had the tests done and the water goes nowhere, so no option for soakaway.

The more I learn about the hydro-brake (time spent wildly out of proportion with other build aspects!) the more I think the hydro-brake is a commercial solution mis-applied to a domestic requirement. There is good video here which implies its a solution for large developments, but also shows how it works https://fpmccann.co.uk/product-category/stormbrake-gb/ . @Jeremy Harris looks like you are right, the cost starting at £950 is because each one is custom made according to the head, volume and outflow requirement. I was thinking - whats wrong with a small diameter outflow pipe to limit the flow? Pressure will increase as the head rises, and debris needs to be dealt with, but a vortex brake seems like an over-engineered solution. Sure enough I received a much better quote for an all-in-one grp attenuation tank, proprietary outflow limiter, rainwater harvester and pump from https://rainwaterharvesting.co.uk at just over half the cost of the concrete manhole and hydro-brake. All I need now is to gauge installation costs.