Thedreamer

Nice photos and welcome to the forum. Looking forward to seeing how this project progresses, please keep a blog!

Great progress. Interestingly our inspection chambers, drainage surface and soil pipes were put in at foundation stage. I was quite surprised at the cost of the materials! Where is your surface water going to?

Thanks for your comments. Currently we have a north wind which is colder but usually means no rain for us. @Mr Punter Looked into the clear polythene tube but it won't stay up long here! I had some temporary downpipes delivered from Brett Martin same colour but not cast iron effect, cost about £40. I'll keep as spares or use for a shed/or wood store. I think our brickie will hold down the temporary pipes with some blocks. If we have good weather might be late in November when we have block work completed. Then we can get the remaining larch cladding on.

In our last blog entry we completed the roof. Guttering was one of those areas in the build that I had never really given much thought to. After doing some research, and asking on here, we came across cast iron effect guttering from Brett Martin. Unfortunately the lead time to get the guttering to Skye was quite long (3-4 weeks). When the outlets and fascias finally arrived, the actual guttering was missing having been lost in transit. We had to order it again, waiting another three weeks for it to get here. Having placed the original order at the end of August the guttering finally arrived last week! Its now up and looks great. Whilst waiting for the guttering we decided to paint the soffits and fascias, putting on a primer first following by a couple of top coats. This took a few weeks, waiting for dry weather windows and painting whenever we got an opportunity. Our joiner fitted some fire stops today and he gave the okay for me to take down the majority of the scaffolding leaving just the gable ends. I was also able to take down the internal bracing. Weather depending the blockwork should be starting week commencing 5th November. Here are some photos of the house.

Honesty, did'nt enjoy walking on joists so holding on to the rafters! That fear soon disappeared when painting the apex of the sofits and fascias.

We have prefabricated attic trusses for the two gable rooms upstairs. In the middle we have two structural timber walls with a Kerto ridge beam in the ceiling and a steel beam below which allows for a partly vaulted living room ceiling. With the use of a telehandler both the timber beam and steel beam were fitted very quickly perhaps a day or two. As mentioned by others above, the span dimension seems a bit to long? Here is a photo which shows the structural bones of the house.

Our soleplate was just put on a strip of DPC. I had some material for forming a mortar bed if required but our brickie's attention to detail was great.

Above our triangle is framtherm followed by 25mm Kingspan taped and seam.

I agreed my mortgage in February started the build in April and paid my self build arrangement fee yesterday! 1st drawn down is due to be in the bank on Friday. If your using the bank's money first then your going to incur interest if the build is over a long period, it might also be tricky to get a drawn down of £5,000. I guess it all come down to the old self build triangle of time, cost and quality not being able to have all three. I would always choose cost and quality.

You could do what we did and get the services on site with the access put in. Dig a few trial holes with a structural engineer to know what your foundations are going to be. Your only going to add value, it also removes uncertainty (connection costs) allows you to start digging trenches for foundations on day one and it's handy to have a temporary supply on site for brickie, joiner etc. Doing both of these might allow you to go back to your lender and argue that some of risk has been removed therefore lowing your contingency slightly. I wouldn't do the foundation before your mortgage is in place. If you definitely want to do this I would at least get some form of certificate from an architect or Quantity Surveyor that these have been checked for any future lender. You might also run into problems with self build insurance and warranties if you choose this route.

My plans just show 2 x 80mm kingspan after the sarking board. My blog has couple of entries for our roofing which might be of interest. We are having a small flat ceiling just below the ridge beam which will be a cold space, but other have a warm space throughout.

Thanks very much for the comments.

I watched an old grand designs last night, the one built with dolphins near a river (Thames?) .To me that is the sort of standard I would expect for an impossible build, they had to have there own ferry on site to haul everything across. They should have one on a small island in the Hebrides or Northern Isles. My own experience of building in a remote location is that the only aspect that has been difficult for me is typically having to deal with multiple parties when ordering materials. I.e. two set of hauliers. You have no control over where the materials are and when they will arrive on site. E.g. I ordered cast iron affect guttering in August and have received brackets, outlets etc but the actual guttering went missing when leaving the factory.

Hi, 1st batch of insulation now ordered. I need to get some expanding foam for those difficult places and most sources seem to suggest that getting a gun is worth the extra money. Are these are all the same or can anybody recommend a particular model? Thanks

Hi @ClaireP and welcome to the forum. I'm a first time self builder on the Isle of Skye.

What's the make up of a standard MBC panel?

I also spent last Saturday tidying up bits of timber and slates. I have been meaning to do this for a while, but last Friday night a spare lenght of sarking board got lifted halfway been the pile where it had been lying and the house.

I've spent my last weekends painting the soffits and fascias. This would be sort of job I would hate to pay people to do.

I can see similarities between your design and our first rented house. Was your design based on a traditional highland croft house? This house had walls like a castle just two layers of solid stone with in fill. We had to pay an eye watering £90-£100 a month in oil and it never felt warm.

I went from this: To this via a non material varation. Luckly enough they started charging for NMVs a few weeks later, so cost me nil in planning fees.

For the Harris build, I would imagine a lot of the rock pecked on site would have been used for the access and any quarry material would come from Lewis rather than coming on the ferry. Upwards of £80k for groundwork ouch! Have seen it time and time again both on the TV and with my own eyes, people who have money to burn on sites that are not really fit for building in the west coast and the Hebrides.

Good to hear that this is moving in the right direction.

We once had helicopters land very close to our house site. Not sure what type, but you can imagine what it would be like if this landed with no warning 20 meters from your living room.

The blockwork and foundations are the only part of the build that I'm not involved in for ordering materials. But I believe the six inch dense concrete blocks are around 26kgs.

Ouch that does not sound good. When I was 'helping' the brickie I pulled a muscle, it got worse during the morning and after lunch I came back to the site with a walking stick. We all laughed and I hobbled back up the access road with my pride in tatters, thankfully I was a bit more useful with the joiners! Later found out that the dense concrete blocks I was shifting around are actually supposed to be a two man lift. Take it easy and rest up if that's possible.