LSB

OR came up with a quote yesterday for the new service of £567 So, not free, but not as high as some people. But, it has the caveat, final price after inspection. Now, we are pretty sure that they will need another pole, there is no way of getting underground to our trench as the supply is the other side of the road and I'm wondering if that will be at more considerable expense. Does anyone have any experience of getting an initial quote and then it increasing hugely after inspection, and if their quote does this can we back out and look for alternative.

Definitely different rules, as per my other comments to you, we are 120m from the mains, uphill and the water company and BC are happy with 32mm mains water. But, I do know that you have issues with water pressure currently. Is there any way that you can get mains and then 'boost' it somehow for the sprinkler.

I have some of my build budget in Zopa savings. I used to use them for Peer to Peer lending, but that was all stopped post covid. Pity good returns. But Zopa saving is easy and they raise the rates as the bank rate goes up, of course it will also go down. I don't know who owns them, but does have the 85k protection for another angle

I'm using yours, tomorrow if they will go ahead, said that I had to do it last week of August.

I did take out an endowment mortgage in 1986 on a 80% purchase. Interest rates hiked to 15%+, but houses were cheaper, I didn't need to move and had a safe job so I just ignored it. You can do that sort of thing in your twenties and leave to later. My mortgage was only twice my salary. On came the crash and negative equity, that did at least mean when I paid the 20% back after about 3 years I paid less than when it started. I was also lucky that my 42k mortgage would have been paid off by my endowment in 2018 as it was worth 43k. In reality I'd paid off the money part of the mortgage many moons ago so the endowment just became a savings scheme. There were many times over the years that I considered selling it, but never did because I was always offered less than I had paid. It became part of our build budget 🙂 Now 3 of my 4 kids have mortgages for huge amounts for small houses in my opinion, but still beats renting, at least what they pay is paying of their mortgage and not someone elses. Two have fixed, 1 has variable and has had some real hikes this year. The 4th kid is a carer and will never buy because the money is so poor. Her only chance is to meet someone and buy with them or wait until we die to get a deposit. I don't know where it will end, but people will still need houses whether they buy or rent and it will even out, because it must.

I just noticed that my last entry was 1st June and now it's mid August. Where does the time go. Once again we've lost time on the build, HID did too much breaking and hurt his back and we got a new puppy who is a huge time waster. Although I WFH I also have to visit clients so quite a bit of puppy sitting going on. Then there has been the weather, total opposite of last year. So, down to what has been done. The first main wall is now up to lintel level. First all the door frames then the inside skin This one has the external wall on one part and the insulation so is covered. HID has found fixing the string levels tricky, hence some of the early blocks are not totally level, but improving as he goes through. We have also been breaking up the floor of the hall & snug to be Layer 1 already gone, now layers 2, 3 & 4 to break and clear as well as knocking down the 2 internal walls that are not in the right place being corridors to feed the pigs. Also lots of drain pipes and heavy duty foundation concrete. getting there done and digging on the other side to start prepping for under pinning, the current foundations are 200mm They need to be min of 500 and possibly deeper, until we get to good ground as agreed by BC The nearest soil is definitely showing hints of clay. of course we have an issue though, if you look just above puppy, you can see the drain culvert, totally buried in concrete. We knew that there was a drain, but how deep is it and how much effort to dig out The other necessary task was clearing the space for the water pipe trench. After booking the water they came and inspected and showed us where it joins us. That turns out to be behind the long shed so we had to clear. Not as bad as ScottishJohn, but a small area similar that I can't find the photo of, but completely covered in brambles and a sloping bank dug out to be level enough for trench digging. Anyway this is the after the pile of bricks turned out to be an old culvert, we dug out brick by brick to 1m then just decided not to go any further. It was solid laid bricks about 1m square, so not a well as solid and not foundation as nothing there, but laid properly so must have been for something. The sheds on the right are storage from the last 20 years and will need to go as that will be our driveway as we don't want to share the existing one . We are holding off digging the trench until we get and answer from OpenReach about their ducting as we want to lay that and both water pipes in one trench. NSW water are happy to see photos of trench and pipe and they realised that digging all 120m trench will probably collapse. When you note what you've done in a 2 month period it has changed, but it's not much for that length of time. If it does continue at that rate then I reckon about another 4 years 🙂 Thanks for reading. Jill

Our track is 120m, so much less than yours, but we had the same stipulation, cannot be changed. As we had a lot of excess concrete from our Class Q, this has been crushed and 'dumped' on the driveway, which is also a slope. No issues with using it, except for transit vans if it's been very wet. My audi goes up there quite happily. Is yours flat The grass still grows on ours during the summer and it does look a lot better (in my opinion) than having a road.

Thanks, power comes from a different direction, in this trench will be water * 2 (32mm & 25mm) and fibre. We'll take your advice re pull rope though and making sure it's long enough for each direction.

this is a DIY self build and it will take at least another couple years before we can move in, possibly more. no point paying for a service that we don't need. But, we have ordered the water from the road to the build and that needs a 750 trench. BT need to approve the ducting, also for some of the posters here BT have provided it for free. 150m of the stuff is pretty expensive when you are building on a tight budget if we don't need to pay. The other thing we've noticed is that the BT ducting is pretty rigid, our trench, because of the path it must take is not straight at all. It needs to go behind out buildings, stables, bike sheds and where 100 ton of concrete is currently dumped until it can be crushed.

I rang on the number that Susie gave and got a lad who was very helpful. He admitted that the form cannot be submitted without a company so he gave me an email address to send a request to explaining my situation. He then admitted that the email would just get sent back to him and he could arrange a survey, but he couldn't do it without a referral. the email was nsrecep@openreach.co.uk Correct because I got a reply saying that they had received my request. My request is slightly odd because the build is 120m from the road and we need to dig a 750 trench for the water pipe and want to put in ducting for fibre at the same time. But, we don't want a service for probably another couple of years, if ever. There are other options like Starlink which i may investigate, but I'll kick myself if the ducting isn't there. The lad wasn't sure if they would survey if we don't want a service straight away, but did say he will investigate. We also need to know for BR in case they insist on fibre and won't accept a satellite service. So, now to wait and see.

Alan, did you get hold of OR

I've just placed the order with the 'water board' for our new water supply in East Suffolk. This comes along the road to the edge of our property and we then need to run both pipes to the build, total 120m trench 750mm deep, but can be done in sections and photographed. They are going to install 2 pipes, one 25mm for the dwelling (metered) and one 32mm for the sprinkler system (unmetered). For the building supply they are only going to install the 32mm, but this will be metered until we have finished. At some point we have to get these pressure tested and chlorinated, but it's not clear if this is now or when we finish or both. I'm also struggling to find anyone to do this locally. When I use Google it just give me 'sponsored' links of national companies. Is there a better way to find local companies. The guy who came to do the water quote said one person, but I don't really want to just have a single quote. It this doesn't need doing until occupation then I won't do anything now as it's going to be another couple of years before we move in. We won't even be using this water supply as we are using the host house for supply at the moment. TIA

I rang them and they said that I need to contact again in a couple of weeks as my current tariff doesn't end until end of August so now is too soon.

how do we find out what the track size is, is it marked on the track somewhere like a car tyre.

the only meter it will allow me to select online is economy 7

apparently tension is fine 🙂 Hubby is more worried about if it's safe to use until we source a replacement track as we need it every day at the moment. He's happy about replacing and tensioning, just wondered if it can be done by one person or if we need to draft in someone else. Currently, it's a single man build

I have a question from HID about our digger, a Kubota 1.5 ton rubber tracked mini excavator Yesterday, it stripped one of the metal guides off the inner lining of one of the tracks. 1. Is it safe to carry on driving it, or will it throw the track. If it can be used any idea how long before it has to be replaced. 2. Where can we get a replacement track. 3. Is this possible to replace as a DIY job, by one person. We are currently digging a 120m long 750mm deep trench with the water pipes. The meter is being fitted in about 3 weeks and I'm wondering if I need to postpone them.

I've just spoken to Octopus and I have to ring back in 2 weeks as my fixed rate finishes at the end of August. But, they say that they don't promote their fixed rate and would rather clients signed up with the variable rate. They also say that I can only use a referral by signing up online, yet it won't let me sign up online so that's pretty unfair. Do others have fixed rate and if so what term, or are Octopus correct and genuinely looking after the customer as rates may reduce so variable is better. I like having my payments fixed for budgeting.

pity it's not working then, 'meter mismatch' back to email

Hi, please give me a referral, hope you get something for it as well.

I've got to switch in Aug otherwise sign up again for EON for a year. Will I be able to get an Octopus account that quickly. This is for my house not the barn conversion.

So, I've been looking at Octopus, but you only seem to be able to apply online and there doesn't seem to be anywhere to state that we have 3P. Does it matter, will that come later and what difference does it make to the cost.

Alan contact Andrew Read (andrew.reid@suffolk.gov.uk), until recently he was our local councillor, taken over by Sally Noble, but she's not been to any meeting yet so don't know her yet. Andrew has always responded to our requests or at the very least told us who we need to talk to, I think he is now our district councillor. Sorry Big Jimbo, but you should be able to find out these details for your parish. Google your parish as it's a legal obligation for the PC to publish minutes which will have the name and email address of your local councillor. Planning meeting dates are also published, find out when the next one is and go, then you should be able to get names from there, possibly no chance of talking, but will give you some details. Nag nag and nag again, don't bother with phone calls, emails / letters are more difficult for them to ignore. Jill

involve the parish council, they approved and the local councillor will attend or have the minutes of all the meetings. As the local councillor to follow up, if you ask formally via letter / email then they have to, they can't just ignore you. Then do that at every parish council meeting, ours are monthly, not sure how often yours are.

I have no idea why 3P is an issue with meters, but there are lots of posts here and elsewhere that says that many a time fitters have turned up and gone away again we have no gas and no EV and won't have in this house. new build (same land) will have EV as planning condition, but as we are very unlikely to buy EV cars then we will install wiring, but not the charging point until we have no choice.