miike

I have a £250k CIL exemption on my build so I've also been naturally paranoid about falling through into one of the loopholes that loses you the exemption. My CIL officer was helpful though - I submitted all the necessary forms, then asked them to confirm that I have done everything correctly and if I can now submit the building commencement notice. They confirmed in writing, then I submitted the commencement notice, and after they acknowledged it, I once again asked them to confirm in writing that all necessary steps for the CIL self build exemption have been completed. They replied back saying I was good to go and what the remaining steps would be once the building was complete. Prior to the building commencement date, I didn't even go on the plot with so much as a pair of hedge trimmers in fear of being accused of starting work (I think in reality it's when you bring on heavy machinery). You can ask your officer to explicitly state that all steps have been completed so far, and if you can now submit the commencement notice.

Why are you paying a right to light surveyor to come out? It has already been granted planning permission, and planners seemingly took this into account. Are you planning to change the design and submit a new application based off the new assessment? If you're not, then what benefit will the new assessment be to you? Do you have an example of a single case anywhere in the UK where someone has been granted planning permission, built to their approved design, and then been successfully sued by their neighbour for loss of light? If not, what exactly are you worrying (and spending money) about?

They also mention in their last post about seeing plots going for £30-40k. If they’re looking at the very bottom of the market, price wise, for plots, then it’s probably worth pointing out when an architect they’re looking at is at the other end of the spectrum. @morsing Just to prepare yourself on planning time lines, I bought a plot already with planning permission. I applied to change the design to a more contemporary one and it took 2 years from the app being verified to receiving approval. The actual building work is straightforward in comparison.

Strom are one of the top end architects. I'm pretty sure I read someone on here saying they got told by Strom that they don't work with people with less than a £3.5k pm budget, and that was a few years ago when things were cheaper. But if you can afford them, I think their houses look great.

How many did you get on the Grand Designs bingo card?

That does include the windows, so I'm at £1,161 m2 to watertight. I definitely feel that the build industry has cooled down a lot recently, it is much easier to find people with availability and negotiate discounts on materials than a year ago. The 200k would be to finish but based on prices I've recently managed to secure for a number of different things (tiles, bathrooms, flooring), I'm feeling reasonably good about it.

Build Update: For anyone curious how costs have been stacking up so far, we are getting close to a shell. All the hard stuff has now been completed (~100 muck away loads, leveling out the sloping site, foundations, basement, steel beams etc.). The semi-submerged basement has been completed and we're building the brickwork for the upper floors now. I changed from TF as their engineer wanted to use a huge amount of steel to support the frame so it ended up being more cost effective to continue with masonry. 3G windows have been ordered and should be here early November. I've changed the cladding from render to a long format Scandinavian brick that I really love (google 'the burnt timber pavilion' to see an example of it). My original estimate was £544k to bring it to a shell, I'm currently on track for £590k, with the main increase coming from additional steel beams and the fancy brick. This leaves me with £200k for the internals. I've been pretty active the past few months in sourcing bargains for this stage and I've done pretty well - I've been managing to source materials/items at massive discounts which leaves the majority of the budget for labour. I've already bought a kitchen for the house for £4.5k which was a used designer one with gaggenau appliances, but the owner just needed it gone from their Chelsea townhouse ASAP so sold it for peanuts. Bit early to buy it but it was the perfect size and couldn't pass up at that price.

Thanks I'll take a look. What I've found in my current apartment is that the sun heats the place up through the glazing and the insulation then stops that heat leaving. So I would assume a similar situation in the new house but I'm not sure how you would factor the sun into heating requirements. Does your first floor gain much heat from the UFH on the floors below? I have a semi submerged basement and then two floors on top, so I could have UFH in the basement and rely on that to heat the upper floors as well. I can use a gas boiler for hot water.

My timber frame is going up in about 6 weeks time and I'm considering my options for heating the property. The house is 508m2 and I've been quoted £58 supply and install for UFH. An ASHP would be ~£10k installed, even with the £5k grant, for a house this size. This brings my total cost to fully heat the property at £40k. The timber frame has a U value of 0.15 - 0.09 and the windows (140m2 total) are triple glazed and U 0.6 - 0.8. So the property is going to be well insulated. I'm currently living in a new build apartment which has extensive double glazing and a B EPC rating (81 score). In the year I've lived here, I've turned the UFH on for 4 days when London was -8C and the internal temperature dropped to 17C. The heating has been off every other day and it is usually too hot in here and I'm trying to cool the place down. I would imagine my new house is going to similar, with keeping it cool due to the large amount of glazing being a bigger issue than keeping it warm. I'm connecting gas regardless as it was only £750 to do, so I can use that for hot water, but for heating the actual house I'm considering alternatives to UFH as I'm anticipating minimal demand. I see three options for me: 1. Suck up the cost and do full UFH throughout. Use either an ASHP or gas boiler to power it. 2. Partial UFH - instead of doing the full house, put it in the bedrooms, bathrooms and main living spaces. This would be about 250m2. 3. No UFH - I can get a good price on german made infrared heaters and place them in most rooms in the house. I anticipate only occasional need to heat the property so they wouldn't be used very often and would cost ~£10k. There will be a MVHR system. If I could go with option 3, then it would enable enough funds to install air con in some of the rooms, which I feel would be a better use of the money. Curious to hear from people who have a highly insulated house and how often they actually need to use their heating.

I was advised something similar. Paid £2500 + VAT.

Use upwork to hire someone. I paid ~£200 per CGI image.

If they'll send you a BIMx model of the house, you can use the BIMx mobile app which has a 3d mode that you can use with Google Cardboard VR (£20).

£35.1k for new stairs, £17.6k for an ASHP on a 122m2 house that's (presumably) already hooked up to gas 😬 Maybe there was a miscommunication about what 'mates rates' means, and you're actually paying him a lot extra to help out his company's profits, rather than the other way around. Why don't you tell him what your actual budget is and ask if he can advise on what changes you'd need to make to get it there.

That's a very good price but I don't see them listed as one of the companies that Natwest would accept a warranty from - https://www.intermediary.natwest.com/intermediary-solutions/new-build-hub.html#structural Not sure if it's different with other banks.

I applied for quotes from LABC, Self-Build Zone and Protek. LABC - £13.5k inc audit fees SBZ - £7.5k inc audit fees Protek - No quote received after 2 weeks For me, the warranty is just a piece of paper that lets me either get a mortgage or sell the house in the future, so I went with whichever company could provide it the cheapest.