Thorfun

they offer the service but they charge handsomely for it. if you do it the way @Kelvin has and we did and how many others have on here by project managing after the TF company gets you to a watertight stage then you can save substantial amounts of money. but it can often take a lot longer and can be a lot of work managing it all. everyone has to take their own journey but for us doing it this way meant we could build a bigger house. to pay a turnkey or main contractor would've meant a much smaller house for the same amount of money.

Fair enough but also sounds like a not so easy job up a ladder or platform. Not saying £600 is the right price but probably in the ballpark for a ball-ache!

I'll give them a go! thanks. if it all fails miserably then I'll borrow the Spitfire off my mate and revert to explosives to get the job done. 😉

I thought Velux blinds were supremely DIY-able?

apart from the whole environmental and sustainability angle of course

my corrosion question was about shot fired nails. I'm a bit confused by the Tek screws though. I presume you guys means something like these? if so, I know they say self-drilling but surely there's no way that is going through a structural steel without drilling a hole first? even though it says no drilling first required? now that's my kind of testing.

yes but the stairs are temporary and the final stairs will be wider to fill the gap. the wall below in the basement will be built up to be level with the existing beam so it ends up being vertical all along. so the new wall will support some of the beam. as such, I'm now not worried at all. 🙂 I just need to build the wall, fill in between the steel and the wall and then shutter it for when the screed goes down so that doesn't pour down the stairwell! (I hope that makes sense)

corroding even internally?

yeah. that's what i've done before for fixing to steels. shot fired timber through the steel and then build out from that timber with more timber. figured i could do the same here now.

so, an apology is required from me for this for being a d**k! I got a laser out and lined it up with where I needed to bring the hallway in to and it appears I've already done the work on the end where the beam is and simply forgot about it! for some reason I still thought I had to bring that in a bit. I remember doing it now. I removed the blocks and moved the beam to the right (which is why it's overhanging the wall below slightly) and then infilled with new blocks. all done well over a year ago so I could be forgiven for forgetting as so much else has happened since. anyway, so I'm now down to having to build out from the steel to line up with the beam. what do you think? shot fire timber through the steel and build out with timber from there with it also sitting in the horizontal steel? then I'll build a timber wall below it to fill the gap from below and the staircase will eventually be made wider to fully fit the stairwell.

not spoken to the beam manufacturers. it's worth a shout, thanks. interesting, hadn't really thought about using timber as there'll be screed going on top and figured a concrete beam would be stronger to take that weight than timber. I could build that wall in the basement in timber as well and make the verticals double/triple thick to take most of the weight of the timber joists as well. interesting and worth thinking about. I'll investigate joist hangers or wall plates. thanks for the tips.

I need to figure out how to widen my hallway to fill in a bit of void down to the basement where the red lines are shown below. so the hallway need to come out by about 120mm. I discussed this with a friend and he suggested getting another beam to sit alongside the existing one (pretty much where the red lines are) which I thought was a good idea although I'd still need to fill in the gap between the steel and the new beam. one end of the beam could sit in an existing steel in this area circled red: which you can see if I look down the existing beam but the other end doesn't have any where to sit or be supported: my friend suggested a steel 'hanger' of some kind bolted/fitted to the existing beam but I didn't find anything like that on a Google search so guess it'd have to be bespoke? I will need to build a wall going down to the basement floor to stop sound coming up the stairs as shown below: so that could also help to support the beam as it goes in to the steel but that wall would only go to about here and half the beam would be unsupported. so, after all those pictures finally some questions: 1. how would be best to support the other end of the beam? 2. can anyone think of a better solution?

no sorry. never used it in the end so can't comment on how dark it makes things look. maybe speak to an installer and ask if they can give you an existing installation to see and a reference to discuss that with.

Thank you. We are so far. Just wish we were further along. But these things take time.

sounds like you've very firmly got your heads on right! it's great that you've considered lots of different options and the beauty of building your own house is that you can build what YOU want and not give a hoot about what anyone else says. 😉 I really look forward to following your journey if you're willing to share with us.

it's a shame that the main entrance is at the side of the house. I would've thought having a central atrium with the tree and staircase as a main wow feature as you walk in the front door (central-ish to the property) with rooms leading off it would be amazing. it would also mean you'd be able to remove the corridor feel upstairs to the bedrooms. you could treat the house as having 2 wings. one side of the house upstairs a large and luxurious master bedroom and then 2/3 bedrooms the other side of the house (personally I don't see the point of adding extra bedrooms just for the sake of it. if you're like us and never want to move again then the financial return of the extra bedroom will never be realised except for your dependents who inherit it. we're building a 400m2 house and only have 3 bedrooms as we only have 2 kids). then you should still have room upstairs for an upstairs living room. I also don't see the point of a laundry room upstairs and a large utility downstairs. why not put the laundry in the utility room? the above comment are with the caveat that I'm not a designer! we used an architect and let him let his creativity go wild within the confines of our brief. he came up with a few ideas of which we liked bits of each. he then amalgamated those bits into a design that we love. you're doing a great job but I wonder if with the size of the house your budget would stretch to using an architect or architectural designer then they might come up with something that you hadn't thought of? anyway, I'm not (or not wanting to) raining on your parade. as I said, the house looks lovely, I just feel that professionals are there for a reason as they do what we can't even though we think we can! during our build there are some things I've simply left to the professionals as I know it will be better than I can do as I know my limits.

my wife keeps one of these. basically a short sentence summing up each day. https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Line-Day-Memories-Rainbow/dp/B09MYXS2Z6/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=line+a+day+diary+5+year&qid=1677941670&sprefix=a+line+a+day+di%2Caps%2C202&sr=8-3 might be manageable for a self builder to write a line of a quick summary at the end of each day rather than worrying about keeping a full diary as that could take up a lot of time.

I certainly can! as per the site guidelines https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/guidelines/ Starting a Blog Many members choose to record their project by using the forum’s blog facility. A blog is a great way of recording your progress and sharing it with others. The blog functionality can be enabled via a request using the Contact Us link at the bottom of the forum. Once the functionality has been enabled you will have the ability to ‘Create Blog’ from within your user profile.

congratulations. one thing we learnt after appointing an architect is that they never work as fast as you want them too! 😂 start a blog! it's a great way to track your progress and a source to refer back to. it's also great to see how far you've actually come when things start to get on top of you and getting you down when you feel things aren't progressing. i don't regret starting our blog. also, even if for personal use only, take loads of photos and also timelapse video footage. you'll forget so much as you go through your journey it's great to look back occasionally to remind you of what you've achieved.

man maths wins every time. make sense. although you could install a dog slide.

actually, i believe the experts suggest rectangular rooms are better dimensions for a cinema than square! so removing the corridor and making the room 22'x15' might get you a better cinema experience. 😉 wrt your design and to throw a massive spanner in the works, have you considered an upside-down house? if you say that the best views all round are from the first floor then by having the bedrooms on the ground floor and the living spaces upstairs it means that you get the great views during the day.

thought about changing that? for us i figured it'd be easier to not have to worry about light fittings penetrating the airtight layer if at ceiling level. also, it means that anything i store in the loft will be at house temperature rather than outside temperature! it just kind of made more sense to me.

if you have a warm roof (or warm loft) with the insulation between the rafters then your loft space will be within the heated and airtight envelope which will allow you to run services in the loft space easily and without worrying about heat loss in to an uninsulated void or penetrating the airtight layer.

a few comments... i can't believe that 280mm Phenolic insulation on strip foundations with (i presume block and beam?) is cheaper than 300mm of EPS with a poured slab! Also, 280mm PIR (let alone phenolic) is overkill in my opinion. you get diminishing returns for thicker insulation and 300mm EPS is enough to satisfy Passive House critera. (note: i've not performed the calculations for 280mm phenolic insulation vs 300mm EPS with regards to U-value.)

our groundworkers did our insulated slab and didn't even use a precut system like Kore. they simply bought loads of sheets of the relevant EPS and cut to size on site. it was their first insulated slab and did it with no issues and with very good accuracy. i think an incompetent groundworker could probably do a pre-cut system like Kore! i saw our friends MBC build and the Kore insulation was basically like lego.