Andeh

A keen, enthusiastic, team who has put so much effort into a quote gets some brownie points there! If you can afford it, like them, and like their advice... I'd go with it!

Mineral woolen bats, check every couple of days for snug fit!

That is so uncannily similar to our build it's scary!! Floating corner, massive high single pitch... Black and wood cladding (though we used white render and the wood cladding for features)

Always an important rule in self building, everyone has an opinion... But its your choice, and build it for you! BuildHub disapproved of our designs, for fair reasons, but our bespoke needs/wants meant we took the good ideas, but stuck with our core option. A year later, and it's coming together, and we love it!! stick with what you want, but do ensure you take counter factuals into consideration to ensure you are totally sure.

Thanks all, the ducting is within our property. Original bungalow was connected to a pole in the verge just outside our boundary, so I assumed they would connect this pole underground back to the cabinet for FTTP. On the call I did stipulate FTTC is in place, and if all I was paying for was for them to run fibre from my house to the pole, then connect it to copper until village gets FTTP then I was not interested... she totally assured me full FTTP. Still sounds to good to be true, but I think I will spend the money and then if they don't provide the service of full FTTP demand money back. Ill keep progressing with Sky in the back ground as our fall back.

We knocked down an old bungalow and are rebuilding it. I raised a new build connection with BT Openreach a few months ago, who quoted £567 for FTTP. The village we are in is ''lobbying'' for Gov funded support to bring FTTP to the village, with me ''committing'' £1000 along with lots of other houses to show we would be serious if the application was progressed (when we would pay the £1000) ....so I assumed this £567 would be to lay ducting and connect our property, via fibre, to the BT Pole that is about 5ft from our boundary. With this i mind I declined, as builder will lay ducting for free and I dont want to spend £560 when the village is prob years & years away from getting anywhere with fibre to the village. However....Openreach rang to chase up the quote and told me very clearly that the £567 would be full FTTP to the property, and they would manage the rest of the fibre connection off site....which sounds to good to be true??? I am now worried about losing out on this good deal, but we are 5 weeks from moving in. Openreach said I sign the contract within 30 days engineers would plan it all out, give me timing (which they couldn't tell me how long i would be....) and then FTTP would be installed. We have no mobile signal in the property & both WFH so really need internet ASAP when we move in. The alternative/what I was going with is standard Sky Broadband, and they have Bt Openreach planned to pull a new copper cable through, and get us all connected with copper by 2nd June. Any thoughts on how best to proceed? I am tempted to pay the £567 and try and get an engineer to confirm timings and details and ALSO get Sky to get openreach to run Copper...and hope they don't realise I am 'double dipping'. Or if they do, Sky have a 48 hour before installation cooling off period, so I can pull out there worse case scenario. Any thoughts on this situation? Thanks

I would go for that, that'll be a very cold floor otherwise!!

What's the quote to have old floor relaid? I probably would if it has a nothing there insulation wise....

Leave it, for an extension it's fine. It's below average for this specialist /uber passionate forum but for average household 125mm PIR is fine...if slab is poured nothing more you can do anyway. .. Edit... Several years ago my folks had UFH installed on 100mm PIR and then 22mm chipboard and 9mm engineered wood. System still worked, just with a slower initial warm up time.

Remove bath, clean existing tiles thoroughly, extend tiles down one layer lower (find mosaic pattern or something to create a feature line if ran out of tiles?), push bath against them, weight it down and resilicone? Is the bath adjustable? Can it be jacked up a few cm to reduce the tile gap??

Thanks all! Painful to say the least. EDF gave me the run around for a week, so i raised a complaint (thank you Dave, took one look at your post & went straight to EDF.....). The complaint has kicked my original request up a gear, but they have still have to give their engineers 10-14 days to respond with equipment & timing to swap the meter - worrying what they may come back with, seeing as EDF have shown to be hopeless so far. National Grid have us booked in for June 15th to do the actual digging & connection, due to shortage of teams its longer then normal. I am really hoping they get a cancellation (they are trying for me) and can fit us in that way, but dont hold much hope. Ill keep chasing them on it. Really worrying as we are due to move in late May, and I had hoped to have electrics tested by then. We do have a single phase connection, but I don't know if this can be connected up the the house until the three phase comes a few weeks later!? (3 phase because we installed 3 x vehicle chargers - these wont be connected for many many years in reality)

aaaaachoo with extra AAAAHHHH??

Thanks John, very similar to our visions. What brand of stone slip is that? Also, your wood cladding.... Western red Cedar? Osmo oiled?

Very impressive unit that, looks great! Do you have a build thread for your main house? I'm intregued by the slim slither of it shown in your photo, especially the external brick cladding. Thanks

Apologies!! Should have read the thread better, I thought it was an extension being discussed. In which case ignore my previous post... £3k is a very reasonable assumption, and VAT no issue with new build on vast majority of stuff.

I would tread carefully on that £3000psqm, depending on location I would not get to comfy with it, especially if going for a high spec /passive house standards. VAT needs considering, and extensions can reveal hidden costs. Materials, labour etc are also still high. It's a good starting point to consider though.

Standard JCT contract work on interim valuations which are then invoiced to the client, ie payment in arrears. Of course these can be amended, but it is not the norm for builders to need upfront payment.... Because their entire industry works on credit for the above reason. Walk into any builders merchants and ask for their credit terms, all will discuss, run credit checks and assess financial situation. Good builders generally will have no issues, bad builders won't generally get the credit... Hence a good way of vetting builders (to help OP) in advance. Advising a new starter to self building that paying up front is normal or encouraged is frankly dangerous, there are no shortage of horror stories on this forum where people have lost money due to builders/Companies taking money and then losing interest in the job. Most problem builds end up with the question 'I hope you haven't paid him' for this very reason....

No, because most reputable builders have at least 30 days credit on those materials. Maybe on delivery but never at point of order... If a builder insists on payment ahead of/at point of ordering I would be concerned as to WHY he can't get credit...

Be sure they accept payment end of each month, and need no deposit or advance payments... Good builders will have large credit allowances at their merchants so don't even pay up front themselves!

3 Phase as we installed a few car chargers, ASHP, Hobb, multiple A/C units and a lot of electric circuits internal & external! We blew through the single phase allowance very quickly. DNO have given us a quote & are proving very user friendly (National Grid)...just EDF who continue to be a bunch of utter morons. I will update as we progress!

Expanding foam? Whats the void made up of, any pics?

We had to have 4 of them, and were only told when half the wall was built!! A frustrating situation, as they needed bolting to the foundation.... below block and beam!! Ours were 4.5m tall cavity walls, utterly ridiculously over engineered when the internal walls T Off this wall and are also block built... Brickies on site ment we couldn't argue the toss due to loss of time whist we did, so had to suck it up.

Much more long standing damage if he does you a favour, feels you've been ungrateful ... and tells the whole town! Pay the monies, accept it and move on

+1 to PV, it's the future! Especially if looking at ASHP.

Once filled & painted, it would look MUCH better. The job isn't finished yet! An extra day of work, for a family friend...AND keeping a good guy on side....class it as an investment into reducing stress & keeping friends!