miike

It's a full new build, so no existing heating system. It's also reasonably well insulated - I've been monitoring the internal temperature and it seems to lose 1C overnight, with a 10C difference in external temperatures. The issue I have is size - it's c5500 sqft. Hybrid system is an interesting suggestion, I've already connected gas so could definitely be an option. I'll have a look into that.

You're right that a used unit is probably not worth the hassle. Issue I have, is that I need a min 15kW unit and 300L cylinder, which gets on the more expensive side of units. I've written off the grant as just covering labour install, so I still have £7k+ of supply costs. Has anyone ordered units from Alibaba before? I recognise a few units which are rebranded in the UK but are just imports from the same manufacturer in China. I've ordered a lot through Alibaba in the past for work and the hardest part is knowing which company to trust and buy from.

I'm struggling to get a firm answer on this, but does anyone know if the gov ASHP grant would still be paid out if the pump you install was preowned? My plumber said that as part of the grant process, he registers the unit with them before they pay out the grant. The issue that I can see arising here, if the unit is preowned, is what if it had already been registered by the previous owner to get the grant? My plumber was unsure, and I can't find any specific details relating to this. Has anyone had any experience with this situation?

I got a DeWalt heavy duty stapler that has no issues going into OSB. It requires quite a bit of pressure to use though, which you can certainly feel after a few thousand staples.

Does anyone remember 2-3 years ago the Tories had a similar plan to increase building and cut red tape - and then they immediately lost some local elections in response to the plans so they completely backed down on them? And they're the party that gets a substantial % of their donations from house builders. I can't see a different pattern playing out with Labour as at the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is votes and c80% people who are 65+ vote vs just over 50% of people under 34. And nothing unites the older demographic of the UK like opposing new homes does.

I wonder how CIL liability and commencement works if it's extending an already existing house - you have 3 years to start from pp but what if you want to do other permitted development works first? Maybe you want to replace the roof or other significant works. What if in this situation the home owner had responded that they hadn't commenced works on the CIL liable work, they're just doing a separate extension which doesn't require pp?

I feel like going underground is always easier with planning as no one can see it, so people care a lot less. I recently had a look at walk on glazing as there's a few areas I thought it would work really well - I then looked at the pricing and decided actually I could do without!

What is the sqm of the actual living areas? Looks to me like <50% of the 13k sqft is actual living space, with the rest as garages/courtyards/terraces. If I'm correct, then I think it could be built for a lot less than some of the above estimates. I recently built a not entirely dissimilar 3 storey house on a sloped site with 500m2 internal space + ~200m2 of terraces. The semi-submerged basement used two skins of blockwork, with a concrete filled cavity. The upper two floors were built with brick/block. There's about 75 structural steel beams. I would suggest looking at this method of construction rather than other more specialist types. I'd then approach groundworks companies and only provide limited drawings and ask to quote for specific sections - eg. the excavation, slab and blockwork for the basement floor. If you send all these drawings over then you'll probably get 50% added on to the price as they'll assume you can afford it based on the design. Excluding windows, I'd expect c£1m for building the shell of this house. You should budget for a lift though if you're going to have parking on the basement floor and the kitchen two floors above - it's quite a journey when bringing in grocery shopping.

I've looked into this previously. Plenty of metal fabricators can make the spine and a fairly reasonable price - I was quoted <£3k for a steel spine with 2 bends in it. They wanted to wait until the final floor finishes were in to measure though. They said they had 3rd party providers who could provide the oak treads + glass balustrades, and they could install the stairs. This added massively to the cost - came to about £15k.

Getting towards the end of my build and I've been reflecting on what I would have done differently if I started again. For me, the biggest obstacle during building was the weather. The rain was incessant - there was barely a full day without at least some rain. This caused big delays as the constant stopping of brickwork caused knock-on effects of other scheduled work. As an example, we had a window production slot booked but they wanted the 'as-built' measurements of the openings, but the brickwork couldn't be finished in time so we missed the slot and got put to the back of the queue. I would say an extra 6 months got added onto the build because of the weather. If I was building again, the number 1 thing I'd do differently is fork out for the cost of a temporary scaffolding roof right at the start. I didn't even consider it originally due to the cost (c£15k) but if it could have allowed us to ignore the rain then it would have paid for itself several times over. I'm curious what others would do differently after they've got the experience of their first house build under them?

I'm not sure how many conclusions you can make from this survey for social relations impacting the adoption of heat pumps as the questions are quite limited. For me it was 100% financial, and I was only interested after the £7.5k grant was introduced - the previous one at £5k wasn't worth it for me, and the £7.5k only really puts the ASHP on equal ground with a gas boiler. Without the grant, I think interest in heat pumps would drop to basically 0 until the price comes way down, regardless of how much friends/family recommend them.

Ah I've been looking at the 'notional dwelling specification' and reading it as the standard which must be achieved. The limiting fabric u-value of 0.20 makes things much easier. The 0.13 came from the target value for the pre-2022 regs.

For a pre-2022 Part L building reg on new builds, the min u-value is 0.13 for flat roofs. If the building has multiple flat roofs and terraces, does the SAP assessor/bc work out the worst performing part of the roof and pass/fail based on whether this is within the min values? I'm wondering if the u-value can be averaged out across all areas - for example equal parts are 0.11 and 0.15. I've heard that the SAP assessor can also consider the building performance as a whole, and a below standard roof can be offset by improvements in other areas. However, I haven't been able to find confirmation of this. Is anyone familiar with these rules who can advise?

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).