Thedreamer

@CC45 and @newhome - I was chatting with the brickie whilst we waited for the second concrete pour and he is involved with the mountain rescue and helps folk stuck on the Cullins like where Danny is on his bike. Can you imagine going onto the ridge in the dark and cold conditions?

You can't beat a nice long walk. I did wild camping on the Storr last year, completely clear sky at night and a glorious sun rise. Woke up at 5-6ish, packed up the tent and was back home at 8.

It depends which mountains, one gable side of the house has views of the Torridon mountains (across the sea to the mainland - photo 4) some are munros. The other side has views to the Trotternish ridge (Photo 1) these are not munros but the last one is the old man of Storr, which is popular here on Skye. Depending on the built hope to walk on the ridge on Monday!

Yesterday we completed the excavation of the trenches. I had a half day at work and came back to the site after lunch to get started on the pour. I was slightly worried about the heavy concrete wagon coming down our access and over the culvert, but the driver did a great job reversing and the road passed the test with flying colours. Our digger driver than used the bucket to spread the concrete as required. Half way through. All done. We now move onto the blockwork next week. It was a good day and I'm pleased to get this over and done with. Half a day for excavations and half a day for pouring.

Due to be pouring around mid day so should avoid the frost. Looks good tomorrow, with a bit of rain due for Friday. If all goes to plan, I'll post some more photos tomorrow evening. Going for the volumetric, our bricke is managing the pour.

Yes should be good in the summer, hopefully we will have enough of a breeze for the midges.

Today we started on our foundations. It was snowing this morning on Skye and I took this one just before the digger arrived. Our brickie had pegged out the site a few days previously. The digger then arrived on site and the snow stopped and sun came out. I helped to mark out the foundation tracks and then wandered up the access to do a few hours at work. n I came back in the evening and the trenches were just about finished. After walking down to the site for the last million years, it took a bit of time to sink in, we are now building our home. Tomorrow the concrete wagon is booked and all being well we will have the trenches filled and can move onto blockwork next week.

Where it all began in 2009 on our family croft in Skye. Once we selected the site we put in outline planning for a three bedroom 1 1/2 storey house. We then undertook the legal process of decrofting the house site to enable a future self build mortgage. For the next few years very little happened as we needed to save money towards the project. In 2013 we submitted a detailed planning application for a traditional 1 1/2 storey property which was in keeping with the local vernacular. As with outline planning this was easily achieved and we could now concentrate on creating an access and making the site a serviced plot. The access road was to run through an area of woodland so the first job was cutting down a number of trees. With the trees now cleared and stacked as future fire wood, we arranged for an excavator to form the access, clear the site and put in the services. This work commenced in 2015. The first job was to scrape off the top soil. One of the unexpected costs of self building can be how much an access can be to install. Our access is fairly long and we also need over 100 tree stumps cleared, soil/clay excavated and some form of hardcore put down. Although we are building on clay we also had access to hardcore about 100 meters away. A borrow pit and track was created with enable the hardcore to be quarried with the clay used to fill in the hole and eventually the turfs put back on top. This results in the ground being reinstated to the same condition. With the necessary rock extracted we could now complete the access. Organising services can take a while if these are coming long distances, crossing third party land and road crossings. Unfortunately we had all of these to contend with. Electricity was the hardest to achieve but this task was eventually overcome and a temporary supply was on site. Our water connection/telephone cable were far more straight forward. With the site levelled off and services ready for contractors our initial works were completed in 2015. For the next few years we continued to save money and completed a few small jobs such as installing a gate at the access. In 2017 we decided to rethink our design we were able to achieve a non material variation. In early 2018 we submitted our building warrant and arranged a self build mortgage. After nearly a decade we were now ready to start building!

Hopefully the weather will be okay. All being well we will have the concrete inthe trenches by Thursday/Friday.

Digger and dumper on site, ready to start : ) It feels like Christmas Eve.

Ask him to amend the invoice. You won't get the VAT back at the end. Generally if you hire plant without a labour/operator it's standard rated (and no claim at the end) If you hire plant with labour/operator should be zero rated for a new build.

Has anybody purchased a storage container for a build and then clad it in wood such as larch to make a more attractive permanent feature for storage?

Yes that is what I was expecting! I had a look on a few blogs and couldn't see the straps to the number I was expecting per my SE plans. Perhaps sometimes these are attached by heavy duty masonry screws rather than being under the blocks like the diagram above?

Thanks for the comments guys, that's very useful. We have two load bearing walls in the middle of our timber frame. These straps are shown as being under the block work which will then be attached to the studs. I also see from reviewing the plans again that we have the same anchor straps on the external layer of block work. So when the initial block work is completed I should be left with a load of anchor straps in the air waiting to be nailed to the studs?

Our structural engineer's plan show that we are to have anchor straps @ 1200 cts, at the internal loadbearing wall or racking wall. Might sound a bit daft but is a racking wall the same as the perimeter wall?

Looks good

I had a colleague who sold his house on Skye last year, it was a B&B with around 4-5 bedrooms, but it was on the market for years. Are you marketing it as a B&B/commercial business as well as a potential family residential property?

Site now pegged out, trenches to be excavated next week.

Hi, Looking at a bit of site storage, anybody used these? Yardmaster Extra Tall Metal Shiplap Shed - 10 x 12ft http://www.argos.co.uk/product/6184542

He does demolition work as well!

What a guy! Cigarette in one hand and climbing down the ladder.

We had to go 220 meters back to the transformer, it wasn't as much as your quote but the amounts quoted did fluctuate one day to the next. We were fortunate enough to obtain a grant to help with the connection and were able to do some of the work ourselves. I take it your property will probably be the only one to use the potential new transformer as I can't remember whether you get some kind of pay back if other connections come from it in the future. If you know your definitely going ahead I would get a temporary electricity supply set-up and then it's just one less area to get stressed over. What about water, will you take a private supply from somewhere on the woodlands? We also have a proportion of woodland on our croft and plan to utilise this for our stove.

Nice one

Nice work

I sent back my offer with the Scottish Building Society last week and have just opened today's mail which is a letter from my solicitor to arrange the security over the land. Please feel free to ask any questions @soapstar