LSB

Our current council tax is band C because the house was a small farmers cottage when we purchased in 2000. That said we are rural so have zero facilities offered to townies But, we are converting a barn on the same site which will probably be worth less than the host house in selling value but it's unlikely to be in the same CT band. Does anyone know, do houses get revalued when they are sold.

We cover the cavities because we put the insulation sheets in every 4 rows and don't want them to get soaked.

I seem to use this blog to complain all the time about what goes wrong. And yet, it happened again. The weather was improving so it should have been full steam ahead, but as DIY builders life gets in the way. This time I became ill, my gall bladder exploded, started on a Saturday afternoon an by the following Thursday nothing had been improved. Turns out ambulances only come out for heart attacks so we had to make our own way to the hospital. Then the queue was 7 hours, albeit was a morphine drip. It took weeks to get tests and each time we had the 50 mile trip home as I wasn't unwell enough to stay in, not that I wanted to. 4 weeks this carried out, doctors, hospitals, tests and no building. Pain unbearable, acid from throat to bladder burning its way through. Thankfully the pain has subsided, but not because of any treatment which I still haven't had. I'm on waiting lists, whatever that means, and a very limited diet. The diet, fish, chicken breast and rice does work, but I'm stuck with NO sugar, NO fat, NO diary, NO salt so pretty bland. If you ever wish to lose a lot of weight very quickly then this is the diet for you. Anyway, back to the build. Progress is steady with some real milestones. From this To this, complete with lintels Internal temporary door frames The North wall from to So, compare with most of the builds on here not much progress. But, considering everything that's happened then we are pleased. Maybe by next time we will finish with these walls and can think about a temporary roof.

The one in Benhall Aldeburgh are metal Brothers who don't get on 🙂

Peggs can do this, they have cut lots for us, assuming that you can move it.

thinking about this, won't that damage the DPC ?

Hello Please can you advise what we can do about this without knocking down the bit of wall to redo. HID forgot to put in the DPM skirt on this bit of wall (DPC is there) and we are wondering if any of you lovely peeps have any suggestions. For context FFL will be at the block level below the red bricks which will be coming out, they are just there to hold the door frame. There is another layer of insulation and concrete to go in. Thanks

The final roof is still a couple of years away. We broke the conversion down into 3 phases. The big stables done first, then this end of the build which was pig housing. The final phase is still standing and is on clay, a case of leave the worse until we have more experience. We live at the site in the host house, this was a barn that we have converted.

As a literal self builder everything delays us, but we continue to slog away. There is a field where the footpath is going past our build as the farmer won't clear the proper one. But, you know you are progressing when the church people on the palm Sunday walk all commented on how much we've done. Since my last update last summer (remember that - heat) when it looked like this. It now looks like this We had a pretty major disaster last Autumn when a 70 mph storm came right over the field and a wall came tumbling down. For context that's the wall by HID and dog. To say that was a low point is a huge understatement. Comments over the dinner table included knocking everything down and reinstating the stables. The corner was left but we just knocked that down as well and when it was rebuilt then we've only gone up to 5 blocks so it's not such a wind target. Obviously, in hindsight we shouldn't have built one wall so high with no support and we are now going up one layer at a time all round. This disaster also cost us lots in money as the 'wall' is now on the rubbish heap along with the lintels. I've not got any photos after it fell as I was just too peed off. We also lost another month because the BCO wanted some technical details of the slab confirmed by the SE as he was concerned that we didn't have the right grade of mesh and it turns out that this was a verbal discussion and I couldn't find anything written down. It turned out fine, but it took weeks for the SE to get around to confirming this. It was only when I threatened to go to his office to discuss that they suddenly arrived. One corner of the site (not yet touched) is clay, everything else is sand and the SE had originally specced for all clay when the BCO said not necessary. The SE came to site and met with the BCO, but it was all a conversation with no official documentation. To replace the look of the barn we have a sloping flat roof and this middle wall is going to hold the joists for each side. These are 140 wide rather than 100. We are looking forward to having the temp window and internal door frames in place soon as that will really start to look like a house. We reckon that at our usual rate of progress that the walls will be up by end Sept. As we want to put the whole roof on at the same time we are going to put up temp joists to ensure that all walls are held together. Then we have a lot more concrete to break and the clay area to consider. Being a hands on builder can be satisfying, but it can also be very stressful and slow. Back again at some point in the future with another update.

definitely,

well done Geoff, not that far from the finish line, just as it warms up for the rental.

where shall we do this.

ours was 120 with an extra 600 for pump regardless of how much we had. we had 3 lorry loads. they co-ordinated themselves, sent one and then the other one despatched whilst the first pouring and same for the third one as not enough room for multiple lorries We've found, not sure why, that we've needed more for every pour than we originally thought. First lot was mix on site, next 2 were ready mixed. There is a company near here who are slightly cheaper, but they are supplying Sizewell C build and a huge wind farm and I wasn't convinced that we would be treated seriously. the guys were brilliant and worked really hard in 30 degree heat, anyone remember that last summer 🙂 But, not perfectly level due to drying very quickly, but as we need insulation and screed for UFH it's fine.

we have been building ours block by block ourselves, we also have a blog, little stud farm. its been going on for years and will be many more before finished, but the only external people is concrete and the (very expensive) preliminaries, planning, drawings, architects, building control. I must get around to putting our latest blog update as I think the last one is months ago.

Our barn conversion is 120m from the road. Bins will go road side same as our host house, bit of a trek down a slope, but hey ho. We have to have sprinklers with their own water supply. So we have normal house water on a meter and a separate bigger supply just for sprinklers. Both pipes run from the road up the slope. No way a fire engine could turn, but was approved because of existing building and conversion with sprinkers.