Stones

Quite a few house up here that use Decra / Metrotile. My neighbour has his house roof covered with slate, but an adjoined outbuilding covered with a roman tile effect Metrotile in teal blue. The contrast makes it work visually. It's mostly social housing up here that uses Decra / Metrotile, which does diminish it in the eyes of some. Looks okay from a distance, less so close up IMHO.

The only issue I had with my windows, was missing the order deadline for getting our windows delivered before the summer factory closedown, and that was down to lines of communication between myself, the builder and the window supplier. Other than that, it was all peachy. I provided the list of window sizes for the supplier to quote on, they produced a schedule which I signed off having checked each window to confirm correct size, interior colour, exterior colour, hinge type, inward/outward opening. Made available for collection (as I arranged my own haulage due to remote location) on the date specified after order confirmation. Same supplier used by @ProDave (ADW Ltd)

@nr projects, I think the main difficulty you face is being able to persuade self builders of the value you can bring to any project. Persuading someone who has self built before, and who has the benefit of hindsight, may well be easier than a first timer. As to the size of the market, you have to ask how many of the 10000 or so annual self builds in the UK, and more locally to the geographical area you want to work in, go over and above a standard building regs box. A lot of self builds in my part of the world are just that, friends helping friends erect a TF kit. Nothing complicated or extravagant, just a house that's a hell of lot more comfortable and significantly cheaper to heat / run than their old house. I can't see that group paying out any more than they have to. That perhaps restricts you to the smaller group of self builders who have a real and genuine interest in building something that exceeds a standard box, in terms of design, quality, energy efficiency etc.

Should add, no radio interference on the I-lumos panels I bought.

That's who I sourced all my LEDs from, and 6+ months on, so fa so good. eBay had £10 off for every £100 spent at the time vs the sellers own website. I bought a good number of spares in case of failure (in part buying extra to get the discount).

I've got one of these now surplus to requirements, and was due to list for sale shortly. I rigged up a funnel from a plastic flowerpot when I used it. Of any use?

I think range is the big issue, until such time as charging takes no longer than filling up your car with petrol. Whilst it's perfectly true that most journeys undertaken are short / local, I genuinely believe that people want and like the flexibility of being able to drive longer distances, even if only a few times a year. I can see shared vehicle schemes, Uber etc being viable for the short range market / those living in built up areas, but doubt they could be made to work for those outwith / out in the sticks, as the cost per mile would be too high, mirroring the current position in terms of public transport - not cost effective to run the frequency of service needed for people to switch from cars compared to what can be done in a city. Self driving / autonomous cars - at some point, somebody named Kevin* (*other names available) is going to 'service' such a vehicle in his garage, corrupt the programming, damage the sensor array and turn said vehicle into a runaway train. I also wonder how such vehicles will be programmed - in the event the vehicle is faced with a scenario of running down a group of children crossing the road, or swerving out of their path into the face of an oncoming truck or into a tree (potentially killing the occupants) what is it going to do?

That's my concern. @JanetE is gluing it down not an option?

Does the Kardean loose lay have any kind of interlocking system similar to the one linked to by @Ferdinand?

Hopefully allow you to sleep a little easier. I assume he has young children / grand children if fencing around the burn?

We had Kardean laid in a previous house (chipboard flooring). The Karedean fitter laid plywood over the floor, screwed at 100mm intervals and skimmed over all the joints with some kind of compound (not sure what it was) to ensure a smooth level surface for the Kardean. Have you spoken to the Kardean fitter?

Another satisfied Rationel customer.

@recoveringacademic, I can certainly empathize with you about the impact wind / wind speed has had on your build. Living somewhere with a near constant 15 - 20 mph breeze, frequent blasts of stronger winds and accompanying squalls coming off the Atlantic or North Sea, then building in an elevated position has given me a great respect for the construction community up here. Of course they don't have much choice but to get on with it, and simply adapt how and what they do to accommodate the weather. I'll readily admit to being more than a little concerned when our ICF blocks were taken up to wall plate height. I had visions of polystyrene blocks being blown half way across the county. I was fortunate, the weather was reasonable (for Orkney) and my builder is seasoned and experienced with the ICF system we used. He cut his teeth with ICF on his own house, and has been perfecting ever since. Whilst there will always be weather events which exceed predictions, and consequent damage to partly built structures due to their inherent vulnerability (a timber frame build was wrenched / twisted of the sole plate in one instance up here) experience of using a particular build system or method and mitigating risk is an important part of any build. Training of course is a good start, but nothing will ever beat gaining years of on the job experience. It's been a painful lesson, but one which you, your builder and others through the forum will learn by, and you will come out stronger for the rest of the build. Good to hear that replacement blocks are on their way and the builder will remediate.

Agreed, why would an individual invest unless he was going to make some kind of return from it? Given the potentially quite significant benefits to the grid, I can see them considering (or perhaps they should) a system whereby they install storage in individual homes before the meter, perhaps offering some minor payment (no standing charge for example) to householder who participate. The battery is kept topped up but can be drawn upon when local demand is high thus assisting the grid, consumers simply pay their standard tariff for whatever they use without the complication of buying in or selling.

I did a rough and ready cost comparison for debate on the old forum http://www.ebuild.co.uk/topic/14185-heating-and-dhw-using-an-ashp-or-immersion-based-system-a-comparison/ The conclusion was that if your heating and DHW energy requirement was around or below 2500 kWh/yr each, then direct electric was the most cost effective. As energy requirement increases, so the balance between capital and lower running cost changes. Working out what your actual energy requirement is going to be is something you need to do, especially in relation to DHW as in a well insulated house, this will probably be the higher of the two in terms of energy required. Working out the total of running and capital costs for various permutations of technology and energy requirements lets you make an informed decision which way to go. For us, we went ASHP with wet UFH, 300L cylinder for DHW fed by the ASHP. That configuration works for us because of our heating and DHW requirements. In addition it gives us the capability to cool in summer. The comfort of UFH vs A2A was something I was willing to pay a little extra for (I can't stand A2A heating systems).

Yep, rockwool / earthwool between rafters, then celotex or similar across rafters. Perfectly respectable U values can be obtained. Certainly worked for us and we live in a very exposed location.

A warm welcome.

We fitted Rationel Auraplus windows and couldn't be happier. Almost a year on now since they were fitted. Obviously time will tell in terms of longevity, but they are performing well keeping out all the wind and rain Orkney can throw at them. Certainly when I pushed the Rationel supplier, they came back with a better offer. Certainly worth trying.

How short are you, a few thousand, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? It may well be simpler to look at other finance, depending on the answer to the question above - Short term (1 to 3 years) unsecured loan, increase mortgage on current property, private banking etc

Very impressive!

Scaffold debris netting wrapped on the outer face of the scaffolding? Almost identical to garden wind break fabric (but usually cheaper) should help reduce wind impact for those on the scaffold, and might help shelter the actual structure a little.

Sorry to hear what's happened Ian. A very painful experience for you. Hope it all goes well sorting out with your builder. Certainly the one thing that was very evident in our build was the amount of bracing used, fitted as soon as the blocks went up.

+1 on lots of bracing for the openings. You can see in my blog various images of our window / door openings:

Depends how often you use a toaster. Prior to toast hungry kids, we put ours away in a cupboard. Kept the toaster on a tray to catch all the crumbs / mess and to make it easy to take back out the cupboard again.

But they do bear some responsibility for the current issues, they delayed the revaluation date, and they tinkered with the various exemptions. The net result, Scottish businesses are paying the same amount (roughly) overall, but the burden, as highlighted in this instance, is falling in a different way. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/38991273 There are always winners and losers when any change is made, and several examples like this have already been raised by constituency MSPs at Holyrood. Certainly worth raising with your MSP, and appealing.