SimonD

Welcome to the world of architects. Some physicists say there are 10 dimensions, I think architects may reside in an 11th. We met with at least 6 architects who then sent us their proposals, all of which bore no resemblance to our budget but did promise us the award winning house. Who was that going to benefit? I wondered. Then there was the arrogance of some who, when I questioned their fee proposal because the numbers really didn't add up in terms of who was going to spend their time on our designs, they replied that in asking such a question we weren't the right client for them and obviously couldn't afford them. We did however, meet 2 on our journey that fell into the ballpark of those we could work with. One whose fee did turned out to be too much on the high side, the other whose fee was very modest and he had a very good eye for design. We couldn't say the same for his ability to produce the construction drawings, however. He really knew how to charm the planners mind you. We also tried to work with an architectural technician and that didn't work at all for us - it cost us a few grand in wasted designs too. I am both livid and delighted we worked with an architect and I still can't work out how that is even possible... The moral of this story is to focus on the working relationship; find someone you like, who gets your design preferences and who you feel you can work with but also be aware that you may not find the one person who can deliver all of it unless they're part of a practice where they've got the designers and techies to match each others' abilities. I found the facility of the 'meet the architect' sessions at the National self-build place in Swindow to be quite helpful, but I don't know if they're running those any more and also ask around as we've since found a whole load of independent architects through the school network that we never found via RIBA search or any other web search for that matter. Take your time if you can, it's worth it. HTH.

Tell me about it. How much stuff is usually left off the list when you see published build costs??? Dealing with waste is one of those where before deciding to do it myself, the builders quotes often exluded in the small the print the cost of skips and waste removal - can't believe how much we spent during our demolition phase for this, even when we had to demolish and remove more than we'd planned for. This is where the books can also be a bit misleading as I think the prices for skips listed in the latest edition of Homebuilding Bible we could only dream of. The last time I spent that little on a skip was in the mid 2000s. ?

IMVHO, it's all very enticing to look deeply into the new tech for heating the house, but for something like an ASHP, you really need to assess the fabric of your building and how well it is insulated over its entirety. It is usually much easier to passively reduce consumption compared to utilising higher capital intensive technologies to reduce consumption - particularly when the real world benefits of ASHP are still debatable. If you are able to do the calculations, or find someone who can help, you might find investing in wrapping the house in a better duvet could serve you better over the long term and worth investigating fully.

Hello and welome, Are you building yourself, project managing, or using contractors? The go to book is as always The Housebuilder's Bible. Another is the recently published Self-build Simplified by Barry Sutcliffe. I found Self-build simplified more hands than the Housebulder's Bible, and has some really good info on project managing. Both these will give you masses of food for thought to begin with. HTH

I did it all myself.

Adding insulation to the outside of the timber frame reduces cold bridging, compared to, for example, additional layers on the inside, which for some reason seems popular over here in the UK.

I've got OSB3 tg4 sub floor installed across the floors of my house. I'll be installing three bathrooms and one utility. When reading the BBA certificate for the OSB subfloor (did I really do that? Is that a sign of a newly acquired self-build abnormality? ) it says that when used in bathroom and kitchen areas the osb should be tanked before putting in the finished floor. Now, I was a bit surprised by this given this kind of osb's propensity to deal with moisture - it even survived several months of outdoor exposure and a lot of rain without any issue. (also surprised as I'm yet to find a bathroom installer recommending this kind of practise in a normal bathroom) So, given this product's suitability for use in moist environments, occasional wetting and even 'occasional' exposure to weather during construction, is this tanking suggestion mere overkill or something I should take seriously? (if I'm building a wetroom, which I may do, I'd obviously be tanking the thing). Thanks!

Mine were 600mm trays formed from 670mm wide coils in traditional 25mm profile - every little helps when installing on large surface with hand seaming tools ??

Sheeps wool works brilliantly in a garden office. I repurposed an old summer house for our temporary office while building the house and insulated it with 100mm of sheeps wool in wall floor and roof. My wife works in it every day and feedback it that it provides an incredibly comfortable environment, summer or winter. During two winters, used every day of the week up to 12 hours per day there's never been a drop of condensation in the space. I'd use it in preference to the celotex/kingspan stuff any day ? The wall buildup is similar to a standard 'breathable' wall: Inside: Finished internal wall (whatever you prefer like plasterboard, plywood or some other panelling) I chose just to stick with the below 11mm OSB. Service void (optional) 11mm OSB 3 (ideally taped at the seems but mine wasn't at the time) (osb acts as the vapour barrier but is hygroscopic so it allows the passage of moisture through the fabric of the building) Sheeps wool insulation between battens and studs (if you have the space, then an extra layer of 50mm or more outside the timber frame works better - reduces cold bridging more effectively than extralayer internally - see Trada research for this) Breather membrane Ventilation gap Cladding With mine I took some shortcuts in just putting the sheeps wool into the old frame right up against the original cladding. Because of the nature of wool to buffer moisture, it has been fine, but for proper permanent build, I'd used the above buildup, which is what I'm using for my breathable walls and roof in my new house. Last I look at prices, sheeps wool was cheaper per sqm than the wood fibre but that may have changed. Below is a photo of the same buildup going into my new roof. Hope that helps

Thanks everyone for the compliments - sometimes when you're at it all the time on your own, you only see the problems, scruffy bits, or everything that still needs to be done! Thanks, So far I've just crashed at the end of the day, but I have recently started blogging as I've recorded so much of the build as it's progressed. It's certainly not chronological, mind you. You can find it at buildingalone.com Haha, yes looks weird but that was for my son to practise his Taekwondo during lockdown and summer holidays ? Gladly, thanks

If it's any consolation I had a Protec membrane on my roof from December through to the beginning of May this year. It survived the February Storms including 70mph plus winds. Just make sure it's sufficiently lapped and battened down against uplift and it should be okay if you have a decent roof pitch. (Mine wasn't even battened down but stapled to the OSB and I just had minor leaks at the top of the curved roof where it's almost flat).

Looks nice. I had dealings with Metal Solutions and they were helpful, offering to fabricate and pre-form everything for me too. I also bought a load of the metal roofing tools from them. I didn't buy from them as I needed a bit more support due to my roof buildup and that I had no idea what I was doing at the time! It looks like you have narrower profiles on yours? Mine were 600mm centres, are yours 530mm?

Before I decided on timber windows I looked at Aluminium. Back then I found 3 smaller factories who make aluminium windows and doors in Bristol only and hour or so away from us. All were decent to deal with and I got quotes better than Velfac, for example. Some of them I'm aware use the aluminium profiles from companies like AluK which are also the systems used by bigger companies like Anglian. It's worth a shot to do a search for local aluminium window manufacturers near you and see what comes up. However, the problem is that the supply chains for all these things tend to span multiple countries and juristictions so even if you find a local window maker, you're going to hit the border issue somewhere up the line.

The windows I've ordered are the typical slow grown northern European pine. Given that the company are based in north west Norway, I'm hoping it's locally grown and sourced, if not in Norway, then at least over the border in Sweden! It's treated and laminated. They also have an aluminium bottom glazing bead. Future maintenance requirements basically ask for an annual check-up, some cleaning and with any visible issues sorted with paint touch-up - they provide a touch-up paint with the order. Longevity is a good question, but with this kind of maintenance, they should outlast Upvc, and provide a better whole of life cost than aluminium. In theory anyway. ?

Re Tata Steel & Greencoat PLX - can attest to my recent experience of Tata Steel and a massive hike in price. However, my quotation went up over double just for the supply (and then not even with the fascia and guttering included) with Tata telling me I needed lots of special fabrication at what I thought were pretty extortionate rates. I didn't receive much in the way of reciprocal communication when I went back to tell them I confirmed all my details with one of their regional technical managers who confirmed I didn't need any special fabrication way back when.. communication was certainly not their strong point for me. I went with the Lindab Greencoat PLX although you can also buy the SSAB Greencoat PLX (the Greencoat coating and the steel are made by SSAB which is basically Swedish Steel) - same product but strangely seem to be available with slightly different RAL colours depending on which brand you go for. I installed the Greencoat PLX roof myself but first obstained some installation quotations. I received a range of prices between about 33k down to just under 10k for essentially the same job of aout 126sqm - confusing. I got all my materials for the Lindab Greencoat PLX version from The Metal Roof Company who couldn't have been more helpful. They put me in touch with a couple of other companies so I could hire the tools and machinery and get a proper materials estimate. If you're looking for a local installer, then the Metal Roofing company will usually put you in touch with properly qualified installers that they know and work with. Worth a phone call. Re Oil canning - having looked around at a lot of installations and also from the Lindab technical info on this roofing system some oil canning is a natural feature of this product. Having handled it myself I'm not surprise. I had pans that were 8m long that are basically formed from something like 0.7mm mild steel with a width of 600mm. The steel is naturally stressed when it goes through the forming machinery which does create a 'texture' along those bends. You can reduce oil canning and pillowing by reducing the width of the pans and also from careful forming. You then also have the natural tendency of the expansion and contraction of the metal through weather. Having a mat colour definitely helps to reduce its visibility and someone, probably one of the roofing people I spoke to along the way, suggested lighter colours also mask the oil canning effect a bit more, who knows. When I laid my longest pans onto my large curved roof area - approx 76sqm - there was some oil canning visible as the pans self curved. Much of this didn't show when I removed the shiny plastic cover but as we've been through the summer with very hot days, the material has pillowed a little bit and is more visible when the sun hits it at certain angles. Oil canning was was a big worry for me, especially because I've seen to pretty bad examples on roofs, cladding and fascias in our region, but now that I've seen it on my roof I'm okay with it because it adds some texture.

I've just installed a traditional standing seam roof on my build, but because I have 2 curved roof sections, I had to form, cut and fold the entire roof myself on site. The products like Bradclad are simpler. They need to be fully supported and use the hidden clip systems so you don't run the same risks as the typical profiled sheets you see on barns that have the exposed fasteners and rely on rubber seals on the exterior etc. These companies will provide you with pre-formed pans for the width and length of your roof and the will also provide all the flashings pre-folded too. The flashings, clips and brackets make up for a surprising amount of the materials. There's a couple of other companies out there that provide the preformed 'kit' type standing seam roof. Tata Steel's Colourcoat Urban is one ( I was going to use them but backed off when they massively hiked the price for me and trying to have an adult discussion with them didn't work). Metal Solutions, UK distributor for the SSAB Greencoat PLX Pro BT provide them in all manner of finishes from Zinc, to coated steel to coated aluminium. If you wanted to go down the more hands on traditional forming, I'd highly recommend talking to the Metal Roof Company (where I bought all my supplies from in the end) who will also get you in touch with a local metal roof specialist. The last prices I got for the pre-formed versions of this kind of roof were back in March: Greencoat PLX coated steel at 530mm centres was a little over £12 per linear meter ex VAT, but then you have to add costs for flashings which vary according to girth as they're cut from a 600mm wide steel coil. On top of this you'll also need sliding and fixed clips, installed at about 220mm centres around the verges, ridges and eaves and about 380mm centres across the rest of the roof (but this does depend of wind uplift forces for your roof). This obviously doesn't include installation costs either. Specifying this stuff isn't straight forwards! They work well with Velux and any other upstands across the roof. I think these roofs are gorgeous and worth the effort mind you. Hope this helps and do let me know if you'd like more details.

I've recently put an order in with Nordvest windows who don't seem to come up much on this forum. I found their approach to specifying and detailing the window order to be helpful and reassuring, plus they gave input into preferred design of the windows compared to our original standard all 'side hung' request. We've thus ended up with a mixture of top hung fully reversible, tilt and turn, side hung etc. depending on the room and its use. They were also one of only two suppliers where we didn't need to compromise on the window designs and door sizes. My impression is that Nordvest provide a lot of design flexibility in their products. They are all timber only 3g windows with whole window U-values around the 1 mark so not your ultra high performance Passivhaus 3g units but that would have been overkill for our purposes and it saved us a good amount of money compared to the 0.7-0.9 U-value type units. Colour wise, we've chosen a lighter grey RAL 7040 which matches the steel coated roof. I went to most of the usual suspects including Green Building Store, Norrsken, Nordan, Rationel, etc. plus some local companies and outliers like Spar Windows and Jeld-wen. I've ordered them on a supply only basis. Interestingly for me those companies that did provide installation quotes only included the labour, typically four men x a few days, but with many of our units over 100kg, one over 200kg and being fitted on the first floor together with a large steep earth banking in front of the house, there was no way they could do it without additional machinery, which was of course was not mentioned. I've been given a delivery date of week commencing 7th December so will be able to update soon, I hope ?

Hi, as a new member, I'm just introducing myself to the forum. I've done a bit of lurking on the forums on the odd occasion as threads have come up in search results for me over the last year or so and I finally thought it was time to actually join up. I've been building a house on my own. It's part renovation/conversion, part new build with a total area just over 200sqm. The renovation/conversion is 1920s brick & brick, and some brick & block, or shall I say what was actually left of it once we scratched beneath the surface of the structure - all soon to be covered in woodfibre EWI & lime render. The new build part is mostly timber frame but a bit of a hybrid with a substantial steel structure amongst the glulams. The timber frame is all filled in and wrapped in sheeps wool and to be finished off with timber cladding. It's all built as a fully breathable wall system. Roof is now on and I've just ordered the windows for delivery early December all being well. I've never done this kind of thing before so it's been a major steep learning curve every single step of the way. It's been gruelling, interesting, and a but if a pig of a project because it has two curved & vaulted roofs with some flat roof in between. The architects detail drawings were all rubbish so I've had to work a lot of it out myself. Oh, and it's been fun too in parts ? Covid has, like for many, taken its toll in terms of progress so I'm well behind on my timeline, (the rain and storms last winter didn't help much either) but I've at least just installed the roof before winter and now getting the cladding on too. Much to do still but I've attached some pictures of the build.