SimonD

Thanks for the suggestion. Initially my plan was to bolt my plywood boxing into the wall and also screw the windows to this box frame as well as using the straps. However, the 4 windows being installed outside the old house wall weigh between 49 and 68kg. I've installed straps all round the windows so with the number used for each window, none of the straps carry a dead load of more than 5kg each. Once I got them fully fixed it became apparent that they're sitting solid as a rock. I personally don't have any qualms about this being strong enough but if I'm overcome by a wave of OCD when the time comes, I may just fix the windows to the plywood box too. ? All my big windows and doors sit within the new structural timber frame so that's a different story.

Great suggestion, thanks! I'll do that. My biggest unit will be 197kg, and about 2.4m x 2.6m with a lifting height of about 5m. The top of the window will be a bit over 6m. I know the equipment will do it but I know I'm putting it off until my nerves settle a bit.

Those brackets at the base I installed so we could lift the windows up and rest them on there while truing them up with air wedges and fixing with the straps. The straps to the masonry do all the holding. I will be adding some plywood boxing around the window frame to seal it all up for airtightness etc. The only bracket that does provide permanent support is the cantilevered one for the back door. Then, yes, ewi and render.

And goodness is it scary when attaching the thing, getting to vacuum pressure and then finding the pump starts to run constantly as the window hangs high in the air!

Just a minor share of some positive progress. I know there are a lot of problems with window supplies at the moment. The hire company supplying my window lifting equipments says load of projects have been held up due to this. However, true to their word, when I ordered my windows, Nordvest Windows told me my order would be delivered w/c 7th December. And that they did. The telehandler I hired was another story as it caused one of those classic Grand Designs moments where the telehandler stopped working, stuck and going nowhere with a partial load half off the lorry, blocking the main road at rush hour! My heart has recovered and once the transport company got round to re-delivering the pallets, the replacement telehandler did the job. Now I've just got to wait for a day when it isn't raining to actually use the glass lifting machine to install the upstairs windows. (and yes, I know the back windows are sticking out of the house, soon they won't be ?)

Hello Jilly, Mirroring the other comments, that doesn't look right. With our steel structure the steels to be installed below ground level were all specified (and supplied) galvanised and any steels installed below DPC to be coated with bituminous paint - our SE specified 'RIW Toughseal or equivalent approved.' For steel coating and protection, I've previously received very good advice from the technical department at Promain. Not cheap but their service for me has always been first class. Your builder definitely has a remediation job to do there I think. HTH

Wow, that's steep!

Thanks that's a helpful suggestion. I'm not anywhere near up to date on these systems and which are the better performers, nor do I seem to be able to find where to go to get a choice in my area. The quote I received was based upon using low temperature radiators. I must admit that given the derth of installers based in our local area, I've been somewhat tempted to get myself trained and certified to install the things!

That's ideal. Our house will not be passivehaus but low energy and if we can reduce consumption anywhere near that, I'd be very happy indeed, but with boys who just seem to leave the doors open all the time, I don't think any system is going to sort that out ?. I think I am going to stick with gas for the moment.

Additive approach would be wonderful, but then I suppose the government knoiws it would end up paying us to heaat our homes. Shame, it could have been a good one! ? Yes, that is how I understood the scheme would work. I agree, that's what motivated me to get some current quotes, the upfront capital assistance does make things more palatable, but only marginally given the overall figures.

Goodness me, I've actually managed to receive a quotation for an Air source heat pump installation ?. It seems that getting installers interested in talking to me, calling me back etc. is a bit like getting blood out of a stone, but that's another story. My initial gambit on getting some quotations was that a combined Green Homes Grant together with the RHI might get to the point of an ASHP that makes sense from a financial perspective, but now I've seen the figures, I'm less sure. (BTW I don't want this to be a discussion about carbon footprint and emission because, for example, based on the ASHP supplier information, riding my electric moped around town for 3 months has saved me the equivalent to 2/3 of the projected annual reduction in emisions of the ASHP compared to a gas boiler). Now back to the roughest of rough, back-of-the-fag-packet finance stuff. One thing I do note is that the supplier hasn't given estimated energy figures or load for our hot water, which seems a bit amiss, so I'm just going to go with the space heating side of things. My quote for the system, a Daikin high temperature unit (14kW SCOP 3.46) is just over 13k plus 5% vat. That is only for the installation & commissioning of the heatpump (indoor and outdoor units) and water tank. Estimated annual energy consumption for space heating is 4596.2 kWh Estimated annual thermal energy for space heating is 14491.2 kWh I've done my own heat loss calcs for the house and think their's is actually a bit optimistic where, for example, it estimates about 500Kwh/annum less energy than mine for the main bedroom. I'm willing to accept mine might be a bit pessimistic, mind you. Basic figures are that I may get a GHG for £5000 My RHI figures are calculated to be just over £1100 per year so just under £8k over the 7 year period Taking into consideration my current energy costs of just over 20p/kWh all green electricity and just under 5p/kWh for a green gas plan the ASHP would leave me with a space heating cost of about £200 per year in excess of the same energy in gas (okay I need to take some off that for boiler inefficiency, so lets say £180), plus the residual cost to me of the ASHP system after grant and RHI of a little over £5000. All in all between £6-7k. This obviously doesn't include added cost of low temp radiators and/or under floor heating, nor does it take into consideration the hot water heating requirements, nor the upfront borrowing costs of buying the system in the first place. (and obviously these figures are incomplete and don't consider price inflation etc.) From a basic financial perspective this doesn't seem to make sense compared to installing and running a gas boiler (which in my particular case is merely the purchase price of the boiler and hot water cylinder). I'd love to get some other quotations to understand if this is really the amount I'd need to spend but I'd also love to understand if I'm missing something here? Have I made some fundamental mistake in my figures? And finally, has there been a recent price inflation in the ASHP market due to the GHG or something else that accounts for this rather ridiculous quotation? Perhaps I need to consider buying a unit and installing myself but at what kind of cost?

Having gone through all this myself, my first piece of advice on this is to talk to some of this architect's previous clients. Don't decide just on your personal interaction. The architect we eventually used (see below) who we 'clicked' with turned out to be a nightmare when it came to delivering on the content of the project - e.g. the actual drawings and doing the admin stuff. He could definitely talk the talk...OMG. In addition, our architect was terrible at producng the construction drawings often trying to avoid producing the stuff by telling us that the builders will just change it all anyway so there isn't any point.. not entirely untrue but you do need an appropriate balance! Since our frustrating experience I've got to know some other local architects who run or work in medium to large practices and some who are one man/woman bands and the general flavour is that it's unusual to get one that does both the design and technical stuff well - often they'll have strengths on one side or the other. The architecture practice can balance this by passing the work on to the right person. We found it impossible to find someone who was willing to work with the existing drawings to provide the construction/technical detailing but maybe that's just a feature of where we're based. The other side of the coin is that the first designer we went for, an architectual technician, we decided more on the price and as a pragmatic choice - he was very technical but we didn't like any of his designs. This cost us a couple of grand and a good 6 months of wasted time and effort. Depending on the design of the house, the technical detailing could be a lot more than the design. Overall, I'm still happy we went for the inspiring choice, despite the frustrations we experienced Not sure if that directly helps you but hope it does provide some food for thought.

Yes, Bath area is generally a really nice place to live, we certainly like it and everyone we've so far met who's moved into the area has been really happy with the move too. Property prices are a bit silly mind you.

Ah, what a shame, it did look amazing. We're located outside Bath and there was a development recently up on one of the hills just south of the city centre where they had the side of the hill collapse on them after digging iit out, lots of rain, and insufficient retaining wall (according to local heresay) ?

It may be in your opinion, but I don't think it's a silly idea at all. It would be silly not to play with the options and check them out, but ideas, just like questions, are never silly in themselves? You may well be right that a stud wall with acoustic insulation is easier, but it won't be cheaper given I've got all the existing materials I need for free and it may also not suit the outcome I'm looking for; to do it properly will take a lot of space from what is already a tight galley area. Whatever I do it with this will have to be an infill wall because it all sits within a steel frame.

Sounds like the perfect self-builder plot then! ?? Some of the plots I saw on my long search were similar - nobody else wanted to touch them. However, it's always worth exploring these things as a self-builder as developers do tend to have a narrower view on the sites they buy and there may be hidden opportunities. Assuming it didn't sell, have you taken an architect and/or builder friend down to the plot the have a look?

Thanks, yes sealing it all up to enusre there are no gaps will certainly be key here.

Not exactly what I'd planned... I was actually going to build a proper wall using mortar. Perhaps building the wall up from the sleeper wall. A solid wall is going to outperform the acoustic insulation, will it not? I've seen this done in other places where the stud wall had been load bearing and wall bricked up within the studs.

The designs for our project were for basic stud walls between some rooms on the ground floor. I've got suspended timber floors. I've got a couple of thousand bricks left over from demolition and thought that filling a couple of these partitions wall with masonry could be a useful acoustic solution as they'll be for bedrooms next to the utility room. The walls I'm thinking of filling sit exactly over sleeper walls which have sufficient foundations to deal with the load. The buildup is foundations, sleeper wall, dpc, 75 x 100 treated timber, floors joists filled with insulation, osb3 subfloor, partition stud wall. Any suggestion about how best to go about this? Is is feasible to simply build up this brick infill from the partition wall sole plate, or do I need to consider a different approach? Neither of these walls are load bearing. Thanks!

Here are some other hopefully useful tips that can save you money without reducing the quality of your build. 1. put together a complete material list for the whole house and then add a resonable contingency - you can then send out this list to all your potential material suppliers, but sometimes you may need to separate out types of materials for specialist supplier - e.g. timber only merchant versus masonry. 2. When calculating materials, don't just go by lengths and area. Why? Because if you walk into a builders merchant and say you need 647 meters of 47x175 c24 carcassing, they'll likely chuck a load of timbers the same length, like 4.8 or 6 meters. This can end up really inefficient for your build and more expensive as sometimes longer length timber can be more expensive than the shorter ones per meter. Instead I suggest you sit down with a spreadsheet and calculate the lengths you need for each part of your build, including noggins etc. So for example, if you're building an intermediate floor at 400 centres with a span of 3.2 meters, a 3.6 meter length will give you the span and the noggin (you can see the potential wastage here if you're working with 4.8 or 6 meter lengths. You'll end up with something like a list of 32 @ 3.6m, 24 @ 4.8m, 28 @ 6m. Same thing with the flooring - lay it all out across the building rather than simply taking the square meter figure, you'll get a more accurate number of boards. 3. You draw down on the material list as your build progesses at that agree price. Sometimes the price may change simply due to timescale but you have a better starting point for that negotiation. It's time consuming but will save you money and will reduce waste. I filled less than half an 8 yard skip for the entire superstructure of the build and I've used thousands of meters of timber. And where we are skips cost a lot of money too! I completely agree with other comments about buying plant and machinery where you can. I bought a digger and small dumper and within a few months calculated than if I'd hired the same stuff it would have cost 3k more. I also sympathise with your frustration about estimating build costs. Neither my wife nor I could fathom this inability of anyone in the construction industry we spoke to to be able to predict the outcome build costs. Now I understand a bit more, it's in part due to the dysfunctional and inefficient way the UK construction industry works, including I think a signficant portion of the professionals associated with the industry. I've found that those per square meter figures are pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things and it seems costing is more down to licking the index finger and sticking it up there in the wind - but as has already been meantioned it's also down the building design, site location, specification etc. etc.. One things that caused us trouble was that finding local builders with the experience of working with the materials we chose were non-existent so suitable builders would have to travel some way which has a big impact of cost. With our build we'd assumed we could squeeze it in at about £1200/m2 but local prices meant we'd more likely be looking at around the 2k/m2 if not more ( we had one quote that was 2k/m2 to shell only!). If I get it in at the price I think I can manage, I will have build it myself for about 900 and that will likely include many sacrifices along the way in terms of spec.

You clearly have the advantage of serial scaled projects. I approached our build in the same way that I would have approached projects I used to manage in a large firm, which mirros exactly what you suggest. However, I've found that if you're building a one-off, which suppliers easily sniff out in discussions, they may not give two hoots what they've previously quoted (unless you buy within the quote window). My architect warned about this - as an architect he got better responses from some companies than I did because they're after the repeat business. For example, I've had several suppliers hike their prices when I came to ordering. I often wonder whether they do this because they know you're committed at that point. Here are some examples: Insulation: price for ground floor wall insulation originally quoted at just over £42/square meter for the full system at order the proforma invoice came to £71/square meter (maybe they were hoping I wouldn't notice). The company refused to negotiate. Roof cover : Original price at just 4300, wanted over 12000 at order then reduced is to just over 8k Windows: went from 22k to 29k even with significant reduction in glazed area as we had to reduce this due 'overglazing.' I've also experienced the wonderful tactic of the builders merchants to give you a good welcome discount only to follow up with awful prices worse than the local diy centres. And be warned if you want something not on your initial materials list you'll have to haggle for each item. That's not to say I haven't managed some major discounts by finding the right supplier and doing the negotiation. Even tricks like not buying throught a supplier's website but instead picking up the phone to speak to someone - many times I've received discounts of up to 30-50% on the web price. Now that I've got some building experience under my belt, when reps ask me I always tell them I'm a developer rather than self-builder. I've even registered a new domain name so I have an email that looks like a company. As I'm self employed, it's also allowed me to order direct from suppliers who don't deal direct with the public. This can save some pretty pennies too. All in all, I've found it to be like one big hustle and not surpised so many trades simply use Wickes and B&Q.

That's brilliant!

Well, if you read the book Self-build Simplified by Barry Sutcliffe, you can do it all in about 12 weeks apparently. That is for a bog-standard, no frills simple house design with pretty much everything off the shelf. I'd love to see that as I don't even see professional developers do it in 12 weeks around me, not a single one of them. Not that I'm jealous or anything ?

Nice one, there's not a chance I could have done this with a full time job. My wife and sister like lists - I refuse to do them ? I know that one!

I think your architect is designing in some tolerance for typical building site practise! Recent experience and research myself suggested design to 1 in 60 for the 1 in 80 minimum. What tends to trump both is the opinion of your BCO I reckon ?