Thedreamer

Good luck @SuperJohnG Looking forward to seeing your build develop.

Our stove draws air from under the timber floor. Works well for us.

Get the electricity in as early as possible. We had ours done and quite a bit before the build. The connection quote jumped considerably and I was happy paying a minimal standing charge. This box was whipped together from scraps and SSE were happy.

I expect they view the DIY VAT self build scheme as being a bit of a folly. For us this was our first home built out of necessity because of a lack of affordable housing. I factored in the short term financing of the 'VAT gap' when constructing the home and for the subsequent reclaim waiting period. When we get the VAT reclaim back it's already accounted for within the build project. As an accountant my mind has been warped to think in terms of balance sheets and profit & loss. I do wonder if this will be area the government target to cover COVID costs.

If anybody is interested, I was told today by the HMRC VAT team, they are dealing with early September applications, I lodged mine around the middle of November so probably going to be early March before I get the payment back. They have also stopped doing the partial refund. I was told that my claim had been accepted and I should get the full amount back as long as my invoices meet their criteria.

I take it you are not going to be fitting PV and charging one of these. I live in a rural area where people rely on oil, peats etc, but that doesn't mean you need to follow the same approach for a new build. As mentioned above I think you will struggle to get pass building control with what you want. Presumably when you were designing and building pipes etc you would do this in the most efficient way to transport oil and gas, why would you not adopt the same approach with your build?

Give up on the idea of the Openfire. When we started I wanted one and was annoyed that the Scottish Building regulation prevented it. But using a stove is vastly superior, if we had put in a open fireplace I would 100% have regretted that. Openfire are less efficient, more harmful, blow downs , messy, costly, the list could go on. We have a lot of trees and managed an area of woodlands. The more efficient our set-up better for us. Using our stove I can heat the entire house, with two wheel barrows of poor quality home grown spruce logs for the week.

I would not even bother attaching it to the wall, why not just get the below and keep in a cupboard and wheel out when necessary. Rather than having an eyesore on the wall? We have this and have used it once when it was frosty, -5 and overcast, back in the cupboard afterwards. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dimplex-Cadiz-Electric-Free-Radiator/dp/B002G09OXQ

So is it that longer showers allows the waste water recovery unit to be more efficient? If my layout was different and the shower was close to the cylinder perhaps one of these would have been considered, but it just wasn't top of the priorities at design stage. Waste Water Heat Recovery Unit (earthsaveproducts.com) I have an exhaust style heat pump, the showers have steamy air extracted (but the hot water is lost), but if we have the occasional bath I can leave the water in till it's cold and a proportion of the heat goes back into the system.

If you need to spend a bit of money to get the SAP, I would go for PV. I looked at these before, but just seem to very little gain. In my set-up having a bath is actually more efficient in extracting waste water heat.

One assumption that should not be made at this stage is that you can obtain electricity from the last pole. For our build we had to go back to the transformer 220 meters away, through some trees, bedrock and a road. The other pole was on our land. Electricity connections are horrible, best to get it done at the earliest possible stage.

Yes, it's a lot smaller than the external ones but it only does the hot water for a 260 litre tank. Because our floor is insulated suspended timber floor, I didn't feel underflooring heating was necessary.

I looked at these but are you not paying for points? I might be tempted if my layout was that my showers were close to my to the hotwater tank.

PV panels would bump up the score. If I am being honest I don't like when they plonked onto a roof, would consider putting them on a shed or similar structure.

If you looking at that approach you can check out my blog here of what we did. If buying materials direct, Caley Timber usually offered the best prices. Just for record, I'm not a trade and we had no building experience before doing this.

Just did a meter reading slightly higher than I said before actually 16 units a day used in the last month.

Your going to have a heck of a lot of work to do whilst working in a highly paid/stressful job. If I was you I would do a series of self builds (looking for bargain plots and keeping the build on budget and marketable), hopefully obtaining equity and learning about what would work as you go along. A more tax efficient way of doing it as well. Good luck to you.

Also not a massive point, but although your materials might have come from a large company, at least your labour costs went into the local guy's pocket, rather than the Saint-Gobain, shareholders.

I would think you would be offer a mortgage it might just be less than you expect. The three areas that me and the lender had countless emails about. 1 - Stressed borrowing interest rates on the self build product rather than at a residential product. 2 - The lender made up figures for monthly expenditure, night outs meals etc. But there are no night clubs where I live!! 3 - Would not take into consideration that we had very little outgoing costs during the build as we were living with family. The net result after months of email was that we got what we needed, but it was the worst bit of the build. In the end the house was valued £50k more than expected, £20,000 was not drawn on the self build mortgage and I am now going to be clear of the mortgage in 13 years when I am 47.

Might be difficult to borrow £120k on the earnings suggested. Self build mortgage are more risky for lenders, so until you start asking question \s with the lender you might not know. Can you not lower the build costs and then upgrade as you go along? On your wife's job, I don't think it really matters as you could be 50% part time on a £50,000 salary or full time on £25,000. Our application was really tough and was offered stupid amounts at the start. This was despite having a serviced site, £38k grant offer and around £40k in cash.

The most affordable option is to stick build with a local joiner or use a local building firm. If you are in Scotland easier to do. I saved loads that way and the cashflow was to my advantage. If you want speed and less hassle than a Scotframe kit could work well for you, but that comes at a cost. On a personal note I was not impressed by Scotframe they didn't even come back to me when I was in touch.

Thanks Trigger. ?

I know you are in the stove club. Was for an early post ?

Come to the dark side on here. ? If the circumstances are right, then it's worth considering.

That would be £384,000 but it might be less as you are building 3 storey. I would recommend you buy the home builder bible off Amazon, it is worth investing £10 or 15 quid on this, as it will give you a good grounding on the build process. Your age is quite young, I started to dream when I was 22 with the build and finished last summer when I was 34. I could have built earlier but I decided during that process that I wanted to build a house with a low mortgage that will hopefully be gone by the time I'm in my late forties. Use this time to be a sponge and soak up as much information as possible. Some on here are around on the forum for a good while before they start. I would check out the blogs section, range of projects, building styles, sizes.