Ness

Lol @Crofter, I know what you mean there! We was hoping to be further along, but I am sure the mobile home and newborn will be cosy ??

I know this is an old thread, but I thought I would comment in case it helps anyone reading it at a later date! So many great comments and I completely agree. As @Fallingditch said.... we have found the structural engineer the most difficult. With delays of a year and a half now and all the problems are still not ironed out. Our architect was amazing and actually quoted us a fixed price on a no win no fee basis, although I do agree with the build cost element. We gained our house under the "paragraph 55" clause in the NPPF and it was meant to be a 200k build, but it's more like a 300k and that's with hubby (who is a builder) doing pretty much everything and we are project managing etc.... Our problem is that the same architect wanted 11k for building regs with structural engineer fees on top and we decided to take this on ourselves. Although we have saved a lot of money, the hassle and stress from having a crap SE and a not much better "new Architect" does leave me thinking we should have just coughed up the money as we would probably be living in our house now. We have made changes to "downscale" the build to make it more cost effective, but my advice would be, the builders, engineers, trades, that get back to you quickly and effectively (in my experience) seem to be the ones that are on the ball and efficient at their jobs. So look into them better than we did..... lol! Some corners in my experience are not worth cutting (like the SE) I wish we had chosen the more expensive one, as I know my limits and this stuff just goes over our head. Good luck, it sounds very exciting!

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone..... apologies, I thought I would get an email when I had comments. Plus I am 8 months pregnant.... lol! What is it with self builders and babies ?? Excited to use the site..... it looks great! @Crofter I was going to post on ebuild and thought it was a real shame it had turned off comments. Then just googled self build forum and this came up as the "new and improved" version! Lol! @Nickfromwales..... thank you, that is a super handy tool to know! Thank you @Fallingditch..... I will have a look at that now and where abouts in Essex are you? We are originally from Essex (Southend) and moved for the country life.... lol! 2nd fix is exciting.... we seem a long way off that yet! Looking forwsrd to chatting with you all..... thanks for the welcome ??

Hi Everyone! I am Ness and we are self building what was a CSH level 6 in Norfolk. When the government scrapped the code, we changed it but we are still pretty much building to the same spec. I have joined here here as I was an e-build member and loved it. I am having LABC and structural engineer issues at the moment and wanted to post for help (which I will do in a separate thread) but we have foundations poured and we are just waiting for the sale of our house to go through so we can free up our equity and carry on.... yay! Great to meet you all and look look forward to using this forum! Hope you all had a great Christmas