Buzz

The thought had crossed my mind

You must have the patience of a saint , three and a half years to try a resolve a boundary issue regarding a fence built on your land ! I can only echo the opinions above, if its your land then you are entitled to remove the fence (or anything else )whenever you want and you do not need to inform anyone what and when you intend to do it .

Thankfully no CIL in fenland , but definitely something not to forget if your in an area that does impose it.

You have 6 months for the date of issue of the Certificate to claim your VAT back . There are still a few items I want to buy before I claim, gravel extra paving and any thing else that I might want at a 20% discount.

Our certificate was emailed over today , feels like another milestone on the build, despite the fact this will be our second Xmas in the house officially we have(now) completed .

Have a large one and enjoy it . Fair play for posting this issue on the forum, it will serve as a reminder for those who follow as to the seriousness of CIL and how much of a financial benefit it is to us self builders ( if we reminder to fill out the forms 😀)

It can be done and has been done, many time before ,the real question is why has this not been used for mass house building? You would think that one of the big developers must have looked into this but decided that it's not financially viable?

Hi @Indy reading some of the replies above and based on my own experience i would agree with the fact that your architect has given you a build spec without any real consideration as to how difficult the wall and roof detail will be to build in the real world. The floor is a odd thickness, i was told a block is 225mm tall and the 1st row will sit on the B+B floor with a layer of DPM on top so you will need to lay DPM across the floor and up the walls 225mm, so you have 225mm to play with i opted for 175mm insulation and 50mm flow screed, your only adds up to 185 so not sure how that is going to work out on site for you . The walls with PIR are going to be a nightmare to install correctly personally I wouldn't even entertain the idea, I would even consider if you don't want to increase the size of the cavity going for full fill batts and accepting 0.017 u value done properly rather than 0.015 with PIR done half arsed. Totally agree with @Iceverge regarding the roof . IMHO putting PIR in between rafters should be the choice of last resort, fluffy stuff between the rafters and PIR above or below or combination of both . But most importantly whatever you choose to do make sure that it will be achievable on site in the real world, you would be far better of have a house built to basic building regs but done properly than having a higher spec but a difficult design and ends up being build poorly.

Hi @Firsttimer reading similar posts to this over the last few years on here is does appear that the price of electrics is very dependent on where you are in the country and how much your house will be worth when finished as to how much a self builder will be expected to pay . Ours for 365m2 was 7k supply and fit, I did put the invoice up on another post on here somewhere.

Definitely use the concrete at the front of the property, you will be amazed how quickly it will turn into a mud pit once you get started, you will need a lot of materials to be delivered and will need an area for lorry's to access the site without the risk of getting stuck . As you have plenty I would create a roadway for them back down with a large hard standing area to unload onto close ot the house .

Welcome to the insane world of utility connections, you may end up paying over 6k in road closure fees for water , electric and sewers .

Have sent you a PM , I was given his number from the building fraternity hope he can help you.

I do have another number ,he only wanted a copy of the plans and the number we wanted to get to ,he was £250 , I don't think it mattered to him where you are as I get the impression that an actual visit was highly unlikely if you know what I mean .

A 1 Airtesting, don't think he will travel up to you for that though.

Mine was zero rated for VAT ,£180

Hi @Dan1983 we used these https://www.pavingsuperstore.co.uk/strata-paving-porcelain-grey-sandstone-paving-slabs .

Hi @Nytram a lot will depend on where you are building as this has a major impact costs , going into the ground will be your biggest unknown, if you were building in fenland i could give you numbers of groundworks companies who based on my 3 year old quotes would be less than 50k for the above. Although we didn't have any demolition to worry about we did have to build a 6m culvert to access the plot and remove 3 20m-30m tall trees before we could start on the 300m2 foundation which was also block and beam, total cost including both set of drainage and a lot of stone around the plot was 52k

Yes it is reasonable to expect a fall on your patio and your paths too, the only thing up for discussion would be where to have the fall if not obvious but as you have a french drain I'd have thought that was a big enough clue and shouldn't need pointing out .

Hi @LaCuranderaI built in East Anglia during the nuts period and found then as it is very much today a buyer beware market, i had various estimates from trades who clearly didn't want the work but would be happy to do it at an inflated price , not sure how you are doing your build, one main contractor or individual trades with some diy for the simple stuff but if going trade by trade no harm getting new estimates for each part of the build and if you wish you can always post them on here and will always receive feedback as to whether or not it represents fair value for the job.

Bumped into the builder who built our house the other day and got talking about, amongst other things, the cost of building now compared to two years ago he said he is now £30 m2 for block work on a full build but that will include all materials, labour and scaffolding .

Another fan of glulam beams here , this one was just over 12m and tele handler friendly , you can leave some of it on show rather than boxing around steels.

Didn't aim for passive standards but didn't want B regs either, so ended up with 150 mm full fill in the walls for a u-value of .17 ,175mm in the floor , but the roof was more complex due to fact that we have 300m2 on the ground floor and only 120m2 upstairs (room in roof) and 100m2 of vaulted ceilings but achieved .11 using a mixture of pir and rafter roll in various configurations . To get a lower value on the walls would have been quite simple buy using insulated plaserboard but we were happy with what we had . Are you looking to build to passive standards?

The size for the house seems to be open to interpretation as to how you measure a house ! The architect has it at 365m2 the builder has it at 420m2 , when I questioned this the architect said he did not include the integral garage and only counts the internal floor area left after all the walls are in , the builder counts the total floor area to get his m2 number ,I did mention to the builder that the architect does not include the garage in his m2 and his reply was ,well they ain't f@!*ing free. The only reason for not using TF was cost , they worked out so much more expensive than brick and block on our build, May not be the case for everyone or you.

Hi @SBMS when i was going through this process i contacted 4 TF company's and sent over our plans for pricing, MBC , Fleming, Solo and English Brothers. MBC had the best product and a comprehensive list of what was included and what was not , they were as you would expect for the best product the most expensive at 120k for the passive frame and another 60k for the raft . Fleming were 90k but not passive spec , they came across as a decent company to do business with but with every step closer to signing with them the price just kept getting going up ,I expected a small uplift as the final details were added but from memory it went from 60k ish to 90k pretty quickly. Solo ended up around 60k but got the feeling that I wouldn't be happy with them, no idea why I thought this just had that feeling if know what I mean. English Brothers ended up at 68k and if I had have gone down the TF route these are the ones I would have brought from , liked the owner Jay and even had a tour of the factory and had a brew with some of his team, came across as I nice family business. I did contact all of them to let them know i wouldn't be using them for our build and did get a call back from Fleming and English Brothers to see how I was getting on which was nice, I asked them how was the timber frame business was doing as timber prices were at this point were going through the roof and they both said 30% more expensive now than when they priced my job and only going one way. They all priced our plans around 3 years ago MBC were the only ones who I didn't have anymore contact with after the 1st round of pricing so don't really know how much the price would have gone up from the original quote , but by far the best TF product I saw if you can afford it .

Yes mate , it is called whipping and any good carpet shop should be able to sell you a piece of carpet and have it whipped for you , normally pay per Lm + the carpet, nice thing is you can then have exactly the size you want or shape .