Stones

@dnoble Now that the Planning Authority (regardless of the complaint) are aware of the unauthorised roofing material, they will seek to regularise the development, either by way of an application (your Planning Officer will be able to advise you what sort of application they want - depends on whether they consider it a 'material' change) or if that fails, having the unauthorised material removed. To compel you to remove the material they would have to serve an enforcement notice. Have a read of the Planning Authority Enforcement Charter which should set out the process they follow.

https://www.fscs.org.uk/news/2015/july/new-protection-from-today-for-temporary-high-balances/ Protection for temporary high balances.

That's what we have, DHW water heated to 50C. 4 of us in the house inc a teenager who likes long showers (but still never seems clean!) and we haven't been able to run the tank cold, and that includes drawing off a deep bath and aforesaid teenager showering at the same time. I've got the FTC5 controller with my Mitsubishi ASHP and preplumb cylinder package, and very nice it is. In terms of plug and play, it does away with all the reverse engineering and working out being described. Basic electric connection, plug in controller cable and off you go. Cooling function instructions are provided in the manual of mine, but to access the function via the controller, you have to flip a dip switch in the control box to activate it. Ours is an MCS approved install.

Two pairs of hands better than one when routing the ducts. I would also sit down and work out a cutting list so you get the most out of each roll of ducting / save having to join pieces of duct.

Dave is correct, there is short term protection designed to cover the proceeds of a house sale. Difficult to advise what to do because of where we currently are - stock markets are at record highs and interest rates (unless you count Turkey and Argentina) at very low levels. My own view is that when the inevitable (colossal) Brexit deal fudge is presented in a couple of months, the £ will begin to strengthen and the stock market start to fall. Of course throw in the 'Trump' card and who knows!

They might. I guess a lot depends on the context - e.g. conservation area and what the prevailing finish is. If say, you should be putting on Welsh slate, but put up Spanish or Chinese that looks different...

A warm welcome. Do you have any specific plans as yet for the renovation. If it's anything like Orkney, I'm guessing there will be some frenetic activity just now with fuel poverty reduction measures being rolled out (insulation, schemes to use curtailed wind generation) so you may be able to get some grant assisted support. ?

Agree that 1200mm to position a hob is going to be far too tight. Ours sits in an 1800mm run and that's about the minimum I think would be acceptable (see first picture in blog entry) Do you have an idea as yet whether the eating area is to be formed from a simple overhang of worktop or raised structure of some sort? Have you thought about doing as we have done (also pictured) of hiding the worktop area with a dwarf wall?

Dave, your figures don't seem too bad to me (see my energy usage figures as posted earlier). Excluding heating we average 17.65 kWh / day. We make no particular effort to limit use. Given there are only three of you, your DHW use will be lower than ours.

@recoveringacademic How does it look from the outside? Our windows were sealed in place with Soudall fixall (secured with brackets) as my builder wasn't happy with compriband (doesn't have a great reputation up her albeit that may be from poor installation at some point in the past), then foamed on the inside. No issue in terms of the window manufacturer as either method of sealing was acceptable. May be the same for your windows and be a possible solution if you end up having to rake out some foam to provide a gap to put in a weather tight seal?

We use the following: 9.75 kWh per day on general use (TV, washing machine, cooking which is all electric) figure is a bit higher in winter when more lighting used, lower in summer 1.4 kWh per day on running the treatment plant air pump 6.5kWh per day for DHW (input) 1763kWh for the year heating Depending on how you look at it our house is 165m2 floor area or 210m2 equivalent (if you factored in all the vaulted areas which could very easily have been made into useable floor area) Overall not bad, DHW circa £300 a year (should reduce when the kids leave home), £225 for heating, £65 running the treatment plant pump, £90 p.a. de-sludge (assuming de-sludge every 2 years), Water £247 (paid with Council tax), In terms of how to encourage people to start caring about the energy efficiency of their homes, taxation is probably the only way. I recently read about a proposal for local government taxation which was a combination of a land value tax (based on a value per m2) and an energy element, with no charge being applied to super efficient / properties with negative energy impact, higher charges for the least efficient. Sounds great in principle until you start thinking about the consequences. The main element of any charge will I think always be based on property or land, as it doesn't move and is easy to tax, so energy efficiency is only ever going to be a minor part of any charge, and all political parties will be wary of bringing in another 'poll tax' which hits people hard (or at least hits a lot of people hard). If assessing energy, you need a methodology which can be applied, and I think even government understands there are issues with SAP and rdSAP. I suspect that Valuation boards would have to take on responsibility for doing such energy assessments to avoid the issue of private assessors being overly generous or slapdash in conducting assessments. Presumably such assessments would also need to be open to appeal and you can readily envisage the arguments - the methodology is wrong we only use x per year - see our energy bills. Not easy...

The relevant entry from my blog regarding installation of our treatment plant. As Jeremy says, the lugs/wedges provide the anchor to concrete in (as we did).

I built my first house in my early 20's, primarily on the basis that having looked at a couple of terraced developer starter homes (I distinctly remember going into the first one and asking where the lounge was - the sales woman said your in it - a glorified corridor with staircase!) I worked out I could build something bigger, and detached by self building. I started out with precisely zero savings, borrowed to fund everything. I (and my wife) made the decision to forgo holidays and material items to get the house we wanted. It was a choice. Scoffed at by others over the course of the years for being tight fisted and not having the latest mod cons, new car etc, the same people moan when it all comes together and you have a really nice house, and little or no mortgage. I could have built my current house for a lot less if I had made different choices, but they were my choices. I'll relate these in my blog in due course.

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC), not something I know a great deal about, but looks to be some interesting applications / possibilities with the technology (going by a brief internet search). Question for @JSHarris - worthwhile / need further development or snake oil?

I'd be very interested too, to see how it stacks up with what my builder told me. I suppose a lot depends on the quantity of material that can be processed per hour, and the quality of said concrete... I had a lot of rotten rock on my site, and top soil / sub soil riddled with stone. It did cross my mind to riddle it, but I thought the cost would be prohibitive. It really would be interesting to find out how it would have stacked up vs the cost of buying in and transporting aggregate to site. @epsilonGreedy I was looking back at your intro post. Am I right in thinking this is your 1st self build? I've built 6 now, and have learnt on all of them, not least how damn exhausting it is and the trade off between time / cost / sanity. There are many different ways to skin a cat...

+1

Generally it's been the plumber (5 of our builds) but on our current house, the general builders did it.

I know crushers have been mentioned, but chatting to my builder recently, he was telling me how he used his groundworks contractor, who happened to have a concrete crusher for his excavator, to deal with all of the demolished material (concrete and rotten rock) on a site he was developing. He was initially sceptical on cost as there wasn't much activity for his circa £45 per hour. However, having processed all of the material, he was able to use it all on site as crushed aggregate for road and path sub bases at a total cost of £3 / tonne. May still be worth considering if you can use crushed / processed material on site?

Given all you have on your plate, the best advice I think is to grit your teeth, and move on.

@Will lindsay Welcome to the forum. Can't help with your specific questions, but agree 100% could be a fantastic feature if you are prepared to spend money it (have seen something similar in a hotel, albeit that was running water). Might save you a lot of heartache paying for a consultation with a private building inspector to determine what they would require for it to be compliant and take things from there?

In the short term I'd be moving the Heras fencing out so there is just a standard verge width left, perhaps forming a site entrance of sorts. Long term I think you will need something there, planters, rocks, trees even, otherwise people will continue to use it as they already are. Any chance of a longer shot photo showing how this area fits into the lane, neighbouring property etc?

+1, you need to take the film off as soon as possible.

Clean, clean and clean again, remove all worktop clutter to give the impression of vast swathes of worktop, buff the sink to a shine, adjust all the doors and drawers so they are all hanging straight. Agree the floor needs done - vinyl / lino type flooring?

Out of interest, where was the plot you looked at? From what you describe somewhere near Cottasgarth?

Hi Ed, and welcome. I'm a little further north (and a ferry ride) away from you, but can certainly relate to the weather! Hopefully I'll be able to stop by your build at some point when I'm heading south.