Thorfun

I guess I'm the only cynical old git on here then! everyone else's guess seems reasonable when it comes to dealing with councils and parking.

Parking in Brighton is a nightmare and extremely expensive. So I’m going to say they’d need 3 parking bays booked out for an entire day. And then add a nice council ‘fee’ on top. And then an admin fee. Then a notification fee. All-in......I reckon £1800.

Thanks @Rob99 I’m sure I’ll be in touch a little further down the line when I have time to dedicate to the planning of the home automation. I notice you’re in West Sussex too, which is convenient.

I had pretty reasonable quotes for external Warema blinds from https://cornerstaraluminium.com and https://www.brightablind.com. I wouldn't discount them entirely.

ok, makes sense. best of luck with it all! I hope you find what you need at a good price.

ahh...ok. they don't do full aluminium! ?‍♂️ I'm surprised that IdealCombi are expensive. they were one of the cheapest quotes we had.

the sliding doors will add a lot to the quote as they're more expensive than French doors. good luck. Norrsken are great quality windows and we're very happy with our choice. (just for clarity we haven't started building yet but we saw the windows at their showroom so have no real-world experience with them....yet)

our large gable entrance hall windows and doors from Norrsken (alu-clad triple) came in at around £11k (excluding VAT and fitting). drawings of it are attached. think it's about 32m2 in total.

thanks. I'll happily give an idea of costs once/if I get a quote back from the installer. I have a few months before I think I'd need to make a decision about this whole thing so it's on my list of things to research. every little bit of information I can get from threads like these is priceless.

thanks for the information. I was passed to a local installer by Loxone head office and that guy said that he would build the cabinet off site and come and do the installation and then leave me to it. but I'm pretty technical and confident I can do it myself so would prefer to buy the bits myself and put it all together. sounds like you've got a good arrangement with your installer though. nice to have the backup if required! I'm very interested that you've gone for DMX lighting. I also thought that it was expensive when compared to standard lighting controlled by Loxone but from your research it would seem that I have much more research to do on the matter! it's probably the lighting that is the area I probably need most help with, the rest of it seems pretty straight forward.

@joth out of interest, who supplies your Loxone equipment now it’s not possible to buy direct? nice cabinet btw!

welcome and good luck with your search for a plot!

ahh, yes. the 'pour buckets of bleach in to the drains' scenario. hadn't thought of that! thank you so much. I'm glad I read these threads and will go back to the civil engineers with the request that all ACOs go direct to the water course.

ok, so if they're not near the driveway or garage it would be ok to drain to the RWH tank? our one is at the back of the house by the door leading to the patio

apologies for resurrecting this thread but @Bitpipe I've seen it mentioned a few times while investigating rain water harvesting that ACOs must drain separately to the soak away. can you please explain the reasoning behind this? I ask because the Civil engineer designing our drainage has the ground floor ACO feeding in to the rain water harvesting tank but the basement ACO being pumped to the water course. before I go back and ask about this discrepancy I thought I'd ask what your reasoning was for the statement.

I had a quote from brightablind.com. pretty good price from what I can tell. I asked Corner Star for a quote as well but they've not got back to me. this was a good reminder to chase them up! ?

good points. I might contact the oft spoken about SE on this site. my GI report should be with me next week so I'll have the exact details of what's underground then.

damn! I only wish for such low SE fees. the quotes we've had range from £3.5k - £6k!

it is an interesting idea. I might have to speak to the accountants but I'm not holding out much hope.

ok. thanks. I understand it now. my business is VAT registered but I'm not sure an excavator can be considered a business purchase for an IT company! unless I were building my own datacenter of course. hmmm......I wonder......

Please can someone explain to me why second hand excavators/diggers/dumpers etc all attract VAT? I thought second hand goods didn't have VAT added as the VAT was paid when bought new?

yeah, it's the first quote I've had back so there's plenty of shopping around to do. also I reckon we can store most of the spoil on our site and then when the existing building is demolished us it to fill and landscape so I can definitely get the costs down. thanks for the costing of the tanking. if this guy hasn't added tanking and that's going to add a further £15k then it's getting to a level where we might have to ditch it. but I'd rather do a lot of the work myself and it just take longer than ditch the basement as it's not really something I can do later!

my quote for our foundations for the basement came in at £105k without a lid! £30k of that was just dealing with the digging of the hole, £30k for dealing with the muck away and the rest for an insulated slab. 3.1m deep, 130m2, clay on top of sandstone. seems expensive to me. the actual basement walls were reasonable though at about £30k, although no mention of waterproofing was made in the quote so I assume I'll be adding extra on for that. will continue to shop around.

welcome. good luck with the planning. this place is a great source of information and I have learnt loads! still have loads to learn though....

yeah, I had that too! the website is Roma.de just in case you want/need it. I found it a better search to specify a type of blind. e.g. Roma Venetian blinds.