RandAbuild

Is there space in front for a detached garage? Seems a shame to use valuable (and costly) internal space to park a car! I agree about a having a plant room for MVHR etc. The main bathroom is huge! Could this be split to provide upstairs storage or reconfigure the en-suites? Don't know if it helps, but your design is similar to ours (even down to the balcony) - see attached. You can see we went for fewer, larger rooms. So many houses these days compromise on space in individual rooms for having a lot of them, but perhaps we did want a more open-plan layout. Good luck with planning! 33 GL Site-Plan-Proposed-1-200@A3 edit.pdf 33GL - AS PROPOSED - FLOORPLANS & ELEVATIONS - REV C.pdf

That's really good to know Jeremy , as I need a couple of these. Roughly how much did it cost?

Ours are 5.4m long 254x122mm (TR26) Posijoists from Wolf Systems at 480mm centres, with glued 22mm thick Eggar Protect board. Like Jeremy it's rock-solid

Unfortunately the Sussex house isn't quite the Grand Design now... https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/grand-designs-family-devastated-after-blaze-burns-down-ecohome-hailed-as-cheapest-home-in-britain-a3732361.html Tragic

May 2016 Nov 2017

Things that worked Getting into the foul drain by having external soil pipes. I knew our levels were going to be very tight, but until we made the final connection, we were unsure how tight. We had measured the invert level of the drain we had to connect to (which was about 12m from the house) and concluded that internal SVPs were not going to work without a pumping station somehwere. So we introduced external Soil pipes on either side of the house, which would not be visible from the front. In the end, we had about 10mm to spare. This saved us in the region of £3k, as well as avoiding the pain of having to do regular pump maintenance. Always use gravity if you can! The MVHR. With easijoists, it is very easy to install an MVHR system and I think all the benefits far outweigh the costs. No bathroom fans to deal with or trickle vents that lose heat. A managed passive ventilation system that virtually no maintenance is an essential. But you do need good levels of airtightness. Underfloor heating. Although we haven't moved in yet, we've had the heating on a tickover setting and it's clear it is going to be fantastic - consistent, controllable, uniform heat throughout the house Things that we'd do differently Watch out for messy bricklayers. Our brickies were incredibly messy, leaving piles of broken bricks and mortar all over the place. It took me the best part of a day to hack off the snots from the scaffold poles. This would have been so much easier if we had put down down groundsheets and taped the ends of the poles. Try to get subbies to hire in the plant they needed, rather than paying for it yourself. We didn't have a main contractor and ended up paying £1600 of VAT that can't be recovered on plant hire. This goes for scaffolding too. Keep it simple. We used a Jetfloor beam and insulated block floor. It was fairly cost-effective but I'm not sure it has many benefits over a traditional beam and block with 300mm insulation construction. Also think about when your underfloor heating and screed will be installed. Use SIPs for the roof, especially if like us you have rooms in the roof. A traditional raftered roof is time consuming to make airtight and well insulated. I think SIPs could offer a much more simple solution. Make sure to think whether you need any holes pre-cut in your steels. We have one large RSJ running across our living room. As soon as it went in, I thought how are we going to get the MVHR ducts through that! I considered using a magdrill to cut a couple of holes (no room) and even taking it out to cut them (very time consuming and difficult). In the end we went over the top into boxed in areas, but it would have been so much better to have thought about it before, or use a castellated beam. Understand that good subbies will be busy. They'll always have a lot of work on. Hanging onto them means being patient and expecting they'll screw up any notion of planning and coordinating trades that are inter-dependent.

Here's a few of our installation. Running at the normal setting (30%) you can barely hear it.

This is a subject very close to my heart and with a new build designed from scratch, there should be few reasons not to try to minimise future maintenance. Here is our (almost completed) MVHR cupboard, which also houses the network /data hub and TV aerial hub. I've also just finished the soffit ceiling under the entrance porch, which is finished in cream uPVC soffit boards. Even though this is very sheltered, it will never need painting.

We’re in Wootton, Northampton

@Vijay why don't you pop in to see us when you're next over to Northampton?

A quick update on this. I needn't have worried - Wooden Stairs delivered and fitted the stairs on time and budget. We're very pleased with the result!

We've got 2 of the Geberit Duofix frames with Sigma cisterns. These are 112cm high (which is quite high if you want a shelf behind) but they have the advantage that the seat doesn't bang against the flush mechanism when it's in the up position. Everything you need comes in the box and they fit a wide range of WCs. They are well made and pretty easy to fix into studwork too and can be fitted into a depth of 12cm. The attached might help. Geberit Duofix frame for wall-hung WC.pdf Geberit_Compatibility_July_2013.pdf

Geberit frames are supposed to take 61 stone. Bit tough if you're 62

We've got MVHR so I've been looking at a recirculating extractor. These tend to be a lot noisier as the motor isn't buried in the ceiling. Have researched what's available, we've decided on one of these http://www.applianceconsultants.co.uk/lux-air-la90verdestratoswht-recirculating-only-ceiling-hood-in-white-950m3h-8628-p.asp It has a lower profile than many ceiling mounted ones. They're all pretty expensive!

A pretty complex build. I like the explanation of the tortuous planning process. He's clearly put a lot of effort and money into getting the final consent. Not sure about that waterproofing though. What's the matter with a DPM?

For all the benefits you get from MVHR (filtered air, minimised heat losses, no noisy or problematic bathroom vents, trickle vents and droughts), I think it's a no brainer in a new build. Ours cost us £2600 from BPC. It's easy to fit if you have easijoists and a suitable location for the box and ductwork.

We've just placed an order with Wooden Stairs. They came out to survey the stairwell with their laser Flexijet kit. This produces a 3D model that is then used to create a 3D CAD design for inputting directly into the CNC cutting machine. I believe it is accurate to +/-2mm. The survey was done with the stairwell boarded out, but not skimmed. they will allow for this. All sounds very impressive - we wait to see the results!

Our First Direct card is black. Maybe we'll use that

Thanks for all your contributions. I'll post what happens next,,.

We're about to pay the 50% up front deposit for our new stairs. I've asked the supplier to split it so that we pay £100 with a credit card and the balance of the initial payment by BACS, in order to obtain Section 75 protection. However, the supplier says they use Worldpay for credit card payments and they have had awful problems in the past getting payment from them. Further digging suggests there might be a glitch where an intermediary is involved. Martin Lewis's website has some interesting things to say about how credit card companies can refuse to meet the full cost in the event of a default, as Worldpay stands between the debtor and the supplier - see http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/cards/2017/04/revealed-section-75-credit-card-protection-may-fail-due-to-payment-processing-loophole---shoppers-beware Anyone come across this? How can I secure some protection using a credit card or other means?

This is likely to be a flat sold under the right to buy, then sold on and made available for letting. Looks like they've spent a fair bit on it, but even so someone was making a killing at £500 a week.

Here's how I fixed our terminals - the plasterboard is cut around it, before the pipe is trimmed off prior to skimming. The Airflex stuff from BPC is very good by the way - fits together well and is well made.

What about an LED strip running in an aluminium channel, hidden behind a timber pelmet, like this: (This is what we're doing)

Funnily enough, I've just done this last week - added 2 dwangs from the other side of a stud wall to provide a hand shower attachment and rain head to the shower. On the shower side, I added a sheet of ply before the blue plasterboard (we needed to pack out this wall to avoid a floor joist fouling the shower drain; it's also better for hanging a wall-hung double sink from!). This extra depth meant the usual wall plate elbow ( http://www.screwfix.com/p/p803wp-2-wall-plate-elbow-15mm-x/92934 ) wouldn't be long enough, so I added a female coupler ( http://www.screwfix.com/p/female-coupler-15mm-x/93992 ). All this was done from the other side of the wall, and I screwed the assembly to a piece of ply before adding the dwang so it would all line up:

You're right to focus on getting the site first, and securing planning for what you want to build. As RA says, there's loads of stuff here and eBuild on buying sites under a conditional contract that enables you to get your design approved before you complete. Depending on where you are located, if this is going to cost 400k + fees, that's your equity gone! But you will then have something you can use as security for borrowing. It won't be cheap, but build the costs into your budget. You have age and income on your side! That just leaves somewhere to live. You could rent, but that's money down the drain. We are very lucky, in that we managed to buy another place while we do the self build. And I'm glad we did or we would have seen 25k+ disappear. I'm also too decrepit to camp out on site, but at your age it could be part of the adventure!