ToughButterCup

Owning a SunAmp , for me, is a bit like a Guess-The-Weight-Of-The-Baby competition. You've had a rubble of your own babies, looked after God knows how many other ones, so you've got a good 'feel' for how much the little tike weighs. Oooops, a bit less now - sick down the back of your shirt. You know the routine. Same routine with a SunAmp: it makes you guess how much (be gentle @SteamyTea) energy (?) is left in the bloody thing after SWMBO has had one of her bath-of-the-century incidents, and the daughter has run the shower for gaud knows how long.... ( ask @ProDave, he knows the score ?) Mine's (SunAmp) a 13.7 kW machine. And up to today, I've assumed that the average bath gets rid of about 5kW, and a shower 3kW. Roughly. But today I thought I'd try a bit of slewthing. When the SunAmp's full, you see this on the Eddi thingy that shunts energy to the SunAmp From this image I can see that its taken 3.38 kWh to heat the PCM from what it was to 'Full' ( hmmmm waasat mean?) Quick sprint to the shower, play with my ducks and have rub down with the Sports News. A bit later that day (today) - no other hot water used Another 2 and a half kWh or more have been sucked into the SunAmp. Does that mean the shower I took earlier today consumed 5.82 - 3.38 kWh's worth of energy? Or am I missing something? Put differently, is my assumption that one of our showers consumes about 3kWh's worth of energy per average shower correct? (We have a quite powerful HansGrohe 'rain' head)

I think I weigh about a stone less than I did this morning. Honestly, I would rather have climbed a Lancastrian Mill chimney a la Fred Dibnah, no safety gear, no clothes on, a woodpecker snapping at my withers on a freezing morning before dawn. Here's why. Back in the mists of time, 6 years ago now, we got Outline Planning Permission, and then Full PP. We went throught Outline and Approved Matters route (2015). Then it was Head down Arse Up Go wasn't it? A few light traumas on the way - nowt like it will be for all those brave souls starting out now - but traumas there were. Successes too. And like the diligent person I am, I save all our invoices in a folder just like I was advised here. And promptly lost them in the move into our as yet unfinished-but-habitable house. Cue an extended office exercise, culling as many invoices as I could get by begging, cajoling (the people at the Screwfix head office are NASTY) and a bit of banter and using online accounts where I had had the forethought to create one. Local BM , Haldane Fisher were smashing. This time, all saved on my computer. VAT refund looms. Read the Application Form first page (VAT431C) , got the spreadsheet all bright shiny and accurate, skim the Notes - nay borra tae the likes o' me Jimmie Time to fill in the declaration and Checklist Nice people at HMRC, they give you a Checklist. This is what caused a sharp exit to the smallest room in the house Just about to type an X in the box marked Yes when I read '...and Approval of Reserve Matters...' Oh (expletive deleted)ety foockety foockety foockinghell. I have never even seen that document . Ever. Ever ever ever. And I'd downloaded all the documentation from that cursed website for future reference onto my hard disk. Hadn't I? Back onto the LPA website, that's where it'll be: (wyre brorough planning website) that den of juvenile web design, that fantasy playground invented by a demented drunken Planner. The relevant document MUST BE THERE musn't it? Oh Please God it is. Nother trip to the smallest room. On the website. Huh? Won't let me in ... need to register .... Whadya mean you twats, I've friggin registered years ago . Arghhh, you barstewards, you f.....ers New website Design. All over the place. Beads of cold sweat trickle down my face Decision Notices. Earliest ones: 2016. Panic is now real - a calm decends. Thats it, no time now before my submission deadline (next week). Oh Hell, how do I break this to Debbie? Divorce? Cat jumps on my lap. Starts to purr. Calm. A moment to think. Ring the architect. "Reserved Matters Approval? Yeah, why, haven't you got a copy? " 15 long seconds later it was in my In Box. The re-designed website had no documentation on it earlier than the summer of 2016. Our Reserved Matters Approval, August 2015. So if anyone wants to refer to a Planning Application before 2016 in Wyre Borough, yer stuffed. I hate Planners, I hate webdesigners, I hate the people who don't know how to handle Databases efficiently, and I really deeply loathe those lazy bastards that learn just enough about database normalisation to falsely claim they know how to design a Content Management system. There ought to be a law against it. Goin' dahn da pub ternight..... Coming?

Local. Pro Wood did us proud. Give Alex Wood 07881806650 and ask him if he knows someone local to you. We're just south of the Lakes. God's Own Country. Ian

... slept better, I'll bet.

No ground survey = worry. What if there's a .....? Harsh, but thats what we found. Piling contractor, groundworkers (we put in our own digester) and my instinct all clamoured for a proper survey. Locally its all glacial till, but in our site there is an (at the time) hidden incursion of sandstone. Had we not known that, the piling price would have been higher and we would have had to re-route our foul drainage. Deduct that cost from the cost of the survey. Neither would we have been able to do our SUDS program as planned. After the survey we were able to replan the SUDS provisionn and save about £2000. Deduct that from the survey cost too. Forewarned, forearmed, better nights sleep. More money in the bank. Simples.

Tiler? Coat's already off the hook.... bye.....

Our screeding company provided a checklist for us to go through before they came. That form had a question about distance from delivery point for the wagon to the floor to be screeded. I was surprised to find out that, as @nod says above 100m is fine - unless thats 100m vertically I suppose. ?

Welcome. Not sure what the issue is with the bank in relation to with gate posts. Remove enough of the bank to accomodate the gate and its posts . Yes, you might need a retaining wall. In relation to design ideas, put together a folder of ideas that you see (on Tinternet and elsewhere - your photos for example ) and then take the best of what you see and ask for quotes for '... something like this ...'

Exactly. Whenever there's a problem - especially in this sector - and you get either lies or silence (such as avoided phone calls) then the temperature goes up doesn't it? I have had two major wall-of-silence issues on our build. And in both cases the people I wanted to contact have the emotional intelligence of the average 3 year old. The vast majority of others just pick up the phone and talk. People show themselves for what they really are when things go wrong: not when everything in the garden's rosy. You have a good case to make: they can either listen and help solve the problem, or be awkward and have a resolution imposed with the help of the PWA. Try another knock on the door - cup of tea, piece of cake?

Hello. Welcome. You have the most important thing already in place: the network of trades who are going to be working for you. So far so good. Party Wall ... hmmm common enough issue on BH to warrant a quick search on this site. Since you are new, I've done one for you. Here it is, with the term Party Wall in the title. The subject often comes up in the text of posts, too often to bother you.... Good luck. Ian

Welcome. You have my sincere sympathy. Neighbours are sometimes Hell - whats the saying : Good fences make good neighbours. Bottom line? PWA route. Why? Because of the behaviours you have described. This is the 'kicker' and the real issue is Many (most) people lie to avoid conflict. Me included. The issue is the threshold at which I decide to lie. Rather than devote emotional intelligence to finding a solution to the problem. The only way I can think to mitigate that shoddiness issue is to offer to have it rendered in advance of any work you might do. Building a few mm short of any of our walls, and I'd be asking how on earth is the wall to be maintained? If you can point to a design locally which is the same as the one you propose ( and it seems theres a good chance of that) then your arguement will be stronger.

West Lancs it is for you then @SteamyTea. I ordered some sheets of WBP a week ago. Nowt changes up here

Ah, ticky tacky, ?

Welcome You are interested in turnkey building. Have you asked any of the turnkey companies for indicative prices?

Welcome. Quick BH survival tip. Dont say stuff like that. You'll get trampled in the stampede: specially in God's own county: Lancashire - well, West Lancs anyway

Tight financial control means restful sleep.

Hi!, welcome. You have a list of questions above, each of which could be answered by a service provider - and better still two or three service providers . We can just give you an indication. Its important to draw your attention to the fact that we aren't experts at anything much - except a few members and it doesn't take long to work out who they are and what their specialisms are. But some members sound like experts and aren't. You need to go through the process of Due Diligence (a self build is an business decision just like any other) with every single bit of your build. Here, you will always get a sympathetic ear about self-building, especially from those of us who are near the end or have completed our selfbuilds. Its very hard, nervy work. We know from bitter experience and I for one am very grateful to everyone who has supported me. Very grateful indeed. Shame I can't give back directly to those who helped. So instead, we help newbies like you. Good luck. Ian

Second thoughts Gary. The roof isn't flat enough. Think about it - if the photos are to be believed, you get your other half to do the roofing, so she'll appreciate a flatter roof now wouldn't she? I mean, think of the Brownie points.

I dropped in to our local firewood merchant the other day. He has transformed the way he works and sells wood. All the wood is stacked so that it dries better - by coincidence in the way it has been in Germany for many years. He's done it not quite as a Holzhaus (wood house), but very much neater, split into Toblerone shaped chunks, and stacked so that the air gets to his stock better. Yes, he'll still sell you a 1 tonne bag of random chunks of wet wood, but it's a start. In Germany, there's a kind of pride in doing it more neatly than your neighbour. And in the Black Forest, (outside towns) it is still more common to see wood stoves than any other heating Couldn't find an image on German sites, but this is the idea.....

Go fella, go! If anyone can make a success of it you can

Excellent. Now, off to cook HerInDoors' supper. Grilled goat's cheese and steak burritos. Trying to keep the cooking-disaster-level low this week. ?

Bad day @SteamyTea ? In one or two places (where I laid the blocks) there are 15mm gaps, which didn't matter, because the 10mm chippings in the mix blocked the gap easily. I am no sales person for Durisol: it's one of a few similar products. But it shouldn't be criticised on the basis of my unprofessional work. If memory serves me right, I was totally knackered while building the parapet along the top of our flat roof - the 'outside' temperature there is always the same as the 'inside' . Had the gap been 30mm, it would not have mattered.

For us, inaccuracy was the biggest issue with the second batch delivered. And I think that large demand for the product was the pressure that caused quality to slip. I went to visit another build after ours was finished: the quality of the blocks was noticeably better.

Here you are: some gaps caused by the usual issue - lack of care with the blocks : dropping one on the corner, or poor product handling. This image was taken after the pour. As you can see concrete hasn't leaked. So, foam gun in hand, I beetled round after the pour shoved some foam in where I thought the gap was excessive. As this photo shows, I missed some bits To the extent that my limited experience of one ICF is correct, gaps, if they occur are all remediable. There is no good reason to state that all Durisol has a problem with gaps and (and is claimed above) no grounds whatever to say that, where they occur, gaps are a major problem.

Precisely the question that I asked, spent about a week investigating. I'm on a phone now, when I get back to the office I'll dig out some photos, and come back. The short answer is that gaps up to about 15mm mend themselves during the pour: the stone jams itself in the gap. Bigger gaps need a bit of old board screwing on the outside, and the pour jams itself tight in the gap there. I'll be interested to see what @Adrian Walker has to say on the matter.