Thorfun

also this.

this might be a bit off the wall but have you considered a complete redesign of the house? maybe a contemporary style property with a flat-ish roof which will give you more room upstairs might be in order? not sure what your local council is like on contemporary design but might be worth considering? anyway, just a thought.

that's what I'm thinking but 100mm PIR instead of the 70mm. this is good to know and another tick in the box for the omnifit. thanks.

this is what I've decided to do. no need for sarking board outside as far as I know (in the south of England at least) as the BCO has said it's fine to have the relevant membrane touching the insulation and then counter battens/battens for roof tiles. we're having 197mm rafters so I will fill that with 200mm of some form of mineral wool (I quite like the look of that omnifit for a price performance material) and put Roofshield membrane above taught and touching the insulation. our architect specified a 50mm gap and very expensive Kingspan phenolic insulation. so not only a lot of money but also a pain to install! even when I take into consideration the extra timber cost for the counter battens, Roofshield membrane and labour for the roofer I'm still a lot better off fully filling with cheaper mineral wool and slightly thicker PIR internally.

we've got a load bearing wall in our basement that runs through the spine of it to take the load of the block and beam ceiling. SE specified 215 x 100mm blocks laid flat to give enough room for both beams to rest. maybe it depends on the engineer?

fair enough then

so the original architect quoted you £2k and someone else quoted £4k. I'd say the original architect is a bargain. probably as he already has the drawings so there's less work to do? Our architect didn't do the building regulations drawing but got the office architectural technician to do them. that's pretty much the same as outsourcing but just keeping it in house. ? unless there's a personality clash or you're not happy with the original architect's work I'd be going back to him to do the work. £2k is a lot of money to save!

did you seal the concrete in any way? if not I presume no concrete dust comes off in to the plant room?

that's a good idea actually as I do like the raw concrete so leaving that room bare will be a nice touch I think.

thanks. I remember you saying that your guys did 2 x corners and then moved the formwork around to the other corners so I knew what they were going to do before they even told me. we have 6 ducts leaving the plant room in the basement for utilities coming in (and potentially going out if required) and 1 duct for a soil pipe. You can see them here circled on this photo: we have one other waste pipe leaving the house but that isn't above the basement so will be a regular penetration in the slab above ground.

yep, land drain is in around the entire footprint of the basement. it feeds in to a sump in the courtyard (it's under that wooden cover in the last basement photo) and from there the water pumps out to a ditch outside the property. The sump will also collect any rainwater from the courtyard as well. Our waterproofing is Type A and Type B so no internal waterproofing or sump/pumps.

well done. UKPN wouldn't let me run ducts, they said they had to do that work. I think you did well there! Openreach came out and said they could run their cable in the same trench but they'd still need to dig to get to that point and would charge for that and to run the cable under the road as we're in an overhead area. they then said I could have a pole erected, the cable run and all the ducting for free. I just run the duct from the bottom of the pole to our house. so my telephone connection is £0 apart from my time digging the trench. that's a real bonus!

It’s been a while since my last blog post and over the last 5 weeks the basement contractors have been busy and have finished the basement. Well, the external walls at least as we still need to build the internal walls and put the block and beam on top. It’s looking really good although it is a bit reminiscent of a prison with all the concrete and 3m high walls (not that I’ve been in many/any prisons that is, it’s just from watching movies). The groundworkers are back on-site tomorrow to carry on with fitting the external EPS insulation, backfill and the rest of the foundations for the above ground arms of our property. Here’s a sped up time-lapse video of the entire basement build. 3:40s long so it shouldn’t be too onerous to watch. We had one hiccup with the basement construction when the digger driver decided to turn the cab a bit too close to our existing house and crunch into the wall causing a massive horizontal and vertical crack. Luckily it was a room we use as a larder that is attached to the main building of our existing house but I still wasn’t happy especially when the main response I got was “well, you’re going to knock it down anyway” and “it’s only cosmetic”. Like that’s ok then ?. Anyway, they resined helibars in place to sure up the walls and, even though it doesn’t look great, I am at least happy that it won’t fall down before we knock it down. Apart from that, all is well and we’re happy with the basement and the progress so far and are looking forward to next week to see some more progress. Here are a few photos of the finished basement (although it's a lot cleaner now they've finished, I just don't have any photos since that happened! ?‍♂️). the sunken courtyard: During the basement build we had a road closure of our single track road to allow UK Power Networks and Southern Water to install our new 3-phase electricity connection and water. A road closure is a very expensive thing as the local council want their pound of flesh to pay for administration and notification of the road closure. So we had to pay for this twice. But, I managed to persuade both utility companies (actually Clancy Docwra for the water) to work under one road closure at the same time. Unbelievable and anyone I’ve ever spoken to has said “yeah, good luck with that!”. So, if anyone ever doubts that you can get utilities to work together I am proof that it’s possible. I will be getting a refund for the other road closure (that's about £2k saved thank you very much) which is a very nice bonus. UKPN came and dug the trench across the road, Clancy then put in their water main, backfilled a little and then UKPN put in their cable and then Clancy backfilled ready for Clancy to come along the next day and tarmac it. All done and dusted in 1 1/2 days. Very organised and efficient. I was suitably impressed. Here are some photos. ? water main being laid: now the electricity (in ducting): multiple utility companies working happily together (who'd have thought it?): our connected 3-phase head: Both water and electrics won't be connected until a long way down the line but at least they're in and that's another potential headache out of the way. Thanks again for reading and, until the next instalment, it’s goodbye from me.

I can list ours out as I have a spreadsheet. at the time you're like "it's only £1k let's just pay it". but £1k here and another £1k there etc and it soon adds up! we had planning fees, architects fees, ecologist fees, utilities, warranty, insurance, structural engineers, civil engineers, mortgage survey and fees, timber frame deposit, M&E deposits, building control fees, windows and doors deposit, surveyors and plant that I bought (to save money!). that all made a massive dent in our budget and we hadn't even broken ground so you start thinking I've spent a huge amount of money and have absolutely nothing to show for it apart from a few drawings! obviously, that's not entirely true as everything was then in place to get started but it's a psychological hurdle to overcome. At least now we have our basement almost finished so we have something to show for the money we've spent.

This is what surprised me the most. The amount of money we’d spent before we’d even broken ground was hard to fathom.

I think this answers your question. local parish councils don't have any real powers when it comes to planning as far as I know. they can 'make suggestions' to the planning department on applications but don't have much more of a say. our local parish council said that 'flat roofs were against the parish council policy', the council planning department still approved our application that has 2 x flat roofs!

that's exactly what we found ?

err...that's me! ? but I'm planning on battening it out as then plaster boarding on top so the long screws will be for the battens then standard drywall screws for the plasterboard.

I wonder if the whole self-build register is just a box ticking exercise and most councils have no intention of doing anything about it. has anyone ever actually got a plot from the scheme? personally, I'd be looking at other options rather than waiting on the council to find you a plot. please note: I am a cynical b*****d so maybe don't pay attention to me. ?

we're having attic trusses and after reading about everyones thoughts on cutting PIR for between the rafters on this and many other threads I've decided to ditch the architects plans of 50mm ventilation gap, 150mm phenolic between the rafters and 60mm phenolic under the rafters and I'm fully filling the rafters with 200mm of mineral wool and 100mm PIR below which should give similar U-values by my calculations but result in a lot fewer PIR cuts and is also a LOT cheaper than the Kingspan phenolic specified. I've checked with BC and she's ok with fully filled rafters with Roofshield membrane, battens and counter battens above the rafters. should be a lot easier to install and as it's just storage space in the loft the extra thickness of PIR is not an issue with reduced room space.

good luck. have fun down the rabbit hole. ?

Had a projector in my last house. 120” screen. The plasma TV never got a look in! there are amazing projectors out there but they are very expensive. caveat: I’ve not done AV research for a while so I’m a little out of touch

fair enough. it was one of the first hits on Google. I've not used it before. actually, seems to work ok for me from what I can tell. what r-value is the celotex?

that's interesting as I thought the inner layer was a vapour control layer to stop vapour leaving the building? I know the smart ones let vapour in during the summer but wasn't sure that was entirely necessary in our climate.

these guys https://robinsofherstmonceux.co.uk/supplies/aggregates/ do recycled concrete cobbles (2" - 4"). think I'm going to ask the groundworkers to use this stuff.