Thedreamer

Look for a second(third/forth) hand container from private unregistered individual? At some point a previous owners might have taken the hit on the VAT and you could negotiate a favourable price?

One superb looking build.

@gwebstech is your brickie vat registered?

Maybe timber was not best example, prehaps a different light weight flammable material. When you say limit the temperature, do you mean the temperature of the element producing the heat? I.e. the three would have different temperatures?

@SteamyTea - this thread is a bit too scientific for me. But I'm interested in the topic. What is the principle with storage heaters, if you had two heaters one with timber inside and one with concrete, both heated with the same energy. What happens next. I take it the heat that entered the surrounding environment would be the same over a period of time, but would the one with concrete hold the heat and release it more evenly?

I'm at stage where I've had just one drawndown, but it felt like part of my soul was going away. Hope to overpay as much as possible and be mortgage free by the time I'm in my late forties.

Yes, it will be worth it. We actually invested all of our savings into converting a loft into a apartment six years ago, we went back to zero but have been rent free since 2013. The hardest bit has been seeing other people my age buy development homes on shared equity scheme etc whilst we have been playing the long game in saving and building.

That's an impressive return. I think I'm looking at around £80,000 - £85,000 mortgage with the value at £230,000, must be great to be mortgage free. I've never owned a house before and been living with my wife's family for five years.

That's good you enjoyed the build. I've enjoyed our build to date and I do feel proud in the jobs that I have done. But I have worked a lot of overtime to keep the final mortgage for the self build to a minimum. Being 33, I'm less interested in £m2 and more in the level of debt to the value of house at the end. We will be celebrating in November a decade since outline planning went in.

True in our case the land was rough family agricultural land so was obtained for a small fee, but work and money was required to make it into a plot. If buy a a nice straight serviced plot should these costs be factored in?

How many hours would you have been able to work on your normal day job, evening/weekends rather than doing the self build? My thinking being that if I work overtime or weekends and paying somebody to do the work is £M2 accurate figure? £812m2 is very impressive, especially with that spec listed. Well done @nod I'm building 138m2 and with all costs including land expecting to come in at around £1,200-£1,300.

Others have already commented on many of the points I would make. My only point would be timber framing can cover a broad range of building techniques. As example our timber frame was cut and erected on site by two experienced joiners.

Extended period .... Months? Years??, Decades ??? We used cuplock partly because it was what we could beg, borrow and what our contractor had. Only used the above but seems to be more resilient than Kwikstage to rust, but not really an issue if building in the short term In terms of using the scaffolding DIY, it was pretty straightforward to put up, adjust and take down. If you are off the beaten track in a rural location, then potentials savings can be made in your self build 'overheads' scaffolding, portaloo, fencing and skips.

@ProDave @Onoff Thanks. I was thinking if I was taking a cable through the wall is it worth just putting an external double socket and having one cable going off to the treatment tank. What did you do for your treatment tank @ProDave and have others on here had a wire through the wall or should I have been clever and put in a duct when we were doing the foundations?

Not to update on the English rules. If @StuPen is in the process of purchasing are the sellers not obligated to put this in place now? Under new guidelines, this upgrade to your sewage treatment system must be in place by January 1, 2020, or when you sell the property (if selling before this date), is there some leverage to reduce the asking price of the plot? Of course only applicable if discharging to the watercourse.

Going to be purchasing my treatment tank in the next few days and will need to have a cable coming through the wall. What is the best method for protecting the cable which will run down a bit of the wall?

We have a RICS Quanity Surveyor as the project manager, he reviewed costings I prepared before the application was finalised. He has done three or four inspections/certificates and I'm nearly at finished first fix. We agreed an hourly rate for any further involvement but to date this has not been necessary. Using a house designer, structural engineer and quantity surveyor. I will pay around £3,800 for professional fees. This includes drawings for planning and building warrant. Structural drawings Inspections during build and review of costs and ticking the box as project manager The only other indirect cost is when a valuation surveyor reports to the bank, but it is not much and I have only had one to date. As I had bespoke drawings I was able to stick build our timber frame and this was done by two experienced joiners. Having the ability to review the timber and choose the fixings provided enough quality control whilst saving money. If you are at an early stage my best advice is to become a sponge. Soak up information everywhere, look at as many blogs as possible, historic threads, magazines, other local self build etc. Everybody on here as different reasons for self building and all the projects are bespoke. E.g. I'm 33 and can't afford a reasonable property locally so had to build out of necessity. The journey to date is documented here. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/blogs/blog/28-self-build-on-skye/

When I had a chat with buildstore I needed to get a piece of paper to records all the fees. Not many lenders in Scotland. We got ours from the Scottish Self Building Society, took a while but it was the best one for us.

Wasn't right for us. https://www.hscht.co.uk/scotland-self-build-loan-fund.html Have a look at FAQ first.

@Ferdinand & @Tennentslager Thanks for the comments chaps. Not sure how often I will be re-painting. I put two coats on and used a locally based paint which includes some seaweed in it! One thing I did notice is that the rough casting surface area is so much greater than smooth render so used a lot more paint then I expected. The kid's brushes were used when I got close to the soffit. It was nice to do a job completely myself as the majority have consisted of me providing labour, tidying or ordering materials/project managing.

The sparkie had done his bit and we were now waiting on the plumber. Not much to see here just your standard first fix plumbing. We had a couple of dust sheets removed before the scaffold went down. It was great to have our kitchen view back it had been almost a year. Moving onto the ducting I had previously ordered. A 45 degree bend was deemed easier to fit so now I got to get that ordered. We also had our brickie complete the stove blockwork. We were keen to incorporate some meaty concrete blocks around the stove. Next up is plasterboarding and the end of first fix.

With the rough casting having completed its two month cleansing period, I was keen to get painting. I started with a roller but found it to be ineffective in getting into all the nooks and crannies, therefore this was going to be a brush job. Most of the time was spend dealing with the edges near windows, cladding and soffits. The use of insulation sheets provided a good screen to any paint gone in the wind. I concentrated on the gables first and was able to use trestles to paint the rest. A good few weekends, evenings and days off later we were able to take down the remaining scaffolding. I have a bit more to do but will have the levels brought up around the house first. Tiring but satisfying work and it was good to see how the white contrasts with the cladding and windows. The next external job will be fitting the treatment plant and bringing up the levels. A separate entry will deal with our progress inside.

Maybe somebody else with roofing experience can help. Just out of interest, are you able to go in whether you want and see what is happening inside? Or to track progress do you just rock up on the street and take external photos? I've taken photos every time any works been done on our self build, partly to track progress but also to have records where approximately stuff is. @Oz07 not sure how this works on a development, presumably you have to go to a showroom/sales team and discuss?

Looks untidy to me, but may be a reason for this. Do you have any earlier photos of the battens? Is this a self build or a house you have purchased in a development?

Your VAT registered business to business customers if supplied on a cost basis (and HMRC) won't be out of pocket. Non registered customers for new builds and would be. We can't decide how we apply VAT legislation ourselves, we must all be compliant with the same rules otherwise the system fails and somebody loses out. This may be of some interest to you, might be worth sitting down with your accountant to discuss. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-domestic-reverse-charge-for-building-and-construction-services