Thedreamer

Thanks for the responses. I believe building control will come back to us before it's all finalised so will have made a decision on the windows by then.

This might be a bit of a daft question, but once you have submitted your building warrant, what constitutes a change to your application? Would stating double glazing timber window, but then installing triple glaze alum clad windows be considered or are changes items that affect the building structure?

Thanks @PeterW my only concern is how much the estimate can be tweaked before submission. Our joiner will be stick building our kit, I wonder if this sort of thing can be taken into account.

Thank you all for your helpful replies, much appreciated. Has anybody used this firm before Estimators Limited? I also note that Jewson offer an estimating but perhaps this incurs a charge? I have the Housebuilders bible it's a very interesting read. Gave me a good understanding of the various elements of the build.

Anybody got any good tips/advice for drawing up a bill of quantities?

Yes @jamiehamy it was timber window with alum clad I was considering. Wasn't aware of ALU clad UPVC windows thanks @le-cerveau I'll look into this further. I'm building in the Hebrides so was thinking that the alum clad windows might provide a bit more protection from the wind and rain. Thanks for the comments.

Hello, I'm weighing up our options when it compares to windows: 1) Double glazing, timber frame £7.6k - average U Value 1.2W 2) Triple glazing, timber frame £8.2k -average U Value 1.0W 3) Double glazing, alum clad £8.8k - average U Value 1.2W 4) Triple glazing, alum clad £9.4k, - average U Value 1.0W Is it worth paying the additional £1.8k for triple glazing and alum clad? The triple glazing seems sensible for the cost difference, but is alum clad really a lot more durable than timber? Any opinions would be appreciated.

We submitted our building warrant (BW) in early December, hopefully we don't get too many points back. I don't believe our building warrant is required to secure our self build mortgage, but we need our QS to sign off that the project is feasible within our price range. We used a local designer and structural engineer to provide structural drawings for the certificate of design. Most of the points discussed in the 36 above are included within our building warrant drawings so it would seem that either your SE or architect hasn't provided all of the necessary drawings and enough detail in the written specification.

Based on our plans our house will be 78. I wanted some think that was slightly above building regulations. If I have more money during the build I'll invest further in better windows, insulation etc. My total energy costs are projected to be in the region of £50 per month. I was surprised at how little lenders are willing to lend for self build mortgages, if I had been offered the same amount for an existing residential product I would have invested more to improve this rating to perhaps the mid 80s. Just out interest for those currently building what are your projected figures?

Quite an interesting topic. I used to live in an old Croft house with walls like a castle and cost us about £90 per month in oil. I will be starting a build in the spring which will exceed building regulations but not passive. In our house, I plan to have an stove right in the center of the house. We live on a croft with quite a bit of woodland, so plenty of logs and room to season. I am 31 so hopefully got 40 years of good wood chopping years ahead of me. 90% of the year I am not expecting to have any heating on and if we do need it will just be some little portable oil heaters that we wheel out and keep in a cupboard for the rest of the year. Not really fussed about paying £x month for heating in winter. I would quite like one today to invest in some renewable when I have the money like a turbine and perhaps this would then offset minor electricity usage. As a first time builder and first time property owner the aim here is to provide a fairly comfortable warm home, a room for my two kids and a mortgage that's manageable. If I could buy a house on the open market I would consider it but property prices are over inflated from holiday cottages etc in my area.

Well done, looks great.

Just gone through the blog, very interesting and the house looks great!

Your approach seems similar to the one we have adopted. Our plans have been designed by an independent consultant with a structural engineer involved to sign off for the building warrant. An open panel built offsite/onsite by a joiner was what I had pictured, but now considering whether a timber frame manufacturer providing a open panel structural kit might be a better option. I can see a number of benefits from using a closed panel system (insulation, air tightness, speed) but I guess all of this comes at a cost. I don't know if I am relatively young (31) as a self builder, but my budget is relatively modest and my principal aim is to build a fairly simple property that will be slightly above scottish building standards.

I forgot to ask in my previous post, the point regarding the specialist for the trusses. Are attic trusses for 1.5 storey cut by the likes of a Scot Frame or would these come separately from the likes of Pasquill?

Yes, going to make some calls next week and start the ball rolling. Not considered MacQueens they must make closed panels for R-house in Crossal. I checked these out when we first considered self building, but r-houses seem expensive and have jumped in price over the last few years. I always wondered how much more you pay for the speed are having a timberframe put together in one day.

Standard insulation to meet building regulations. How did the costs compare to ordering from one of the large timber frame suppliers? Did you provide the timber to the builders? I used this calculator and it suggested the structural elements of the timber frame for 140sqm house to be £21,000 and £5,600 to erect. Does this seem reasonable? https://www.fleminghomes.co.uk/self-build-resources/cost-calculator/

Timberframe options: Trying to decide between the following: 1) - Order a timberframe kit which has closed panels with insulation/windows already incorporated within the kit. 2) - Order a structural timberframe kit with open panels and fit insulation and windows on site. 3) - Stick build with timber sourced from Jewsons etc with a joiner cutting and erecting on site and specialist trusses ordered in. I'm leaning towards option two. I'm going to need attic trusses and these are going to come from a factory, so I'm wondering if we should just order the whole structural kit in one go. How did others decide this?

Not really sure at this stage, need to do some more research.

A proportion of our house will be clad in timber. Has any body clad their property in oak? Is this significantly more expensive than Larch?

This is an old thread. But I was interested reading users discussions of the ecocent and just wondered where people put their heat extraction ducting. The principal place the system is designed for is the bathroom and ensuite to get the recover the heat in the air. But what I am more interested in is where else you could extract heat? I was planning to have a duct running in the roof space and also putting one in our upstairs storage cupboard where our stove pipe will run? The idea being that in the summer the roof space should heat up from the sun on slates and also from our veluxes and in the winter when we light the stove this would get heat coming off the pipe?

Thanks Crofter. I don't really see the Leiths one in Staffin that much. But see the wagon that looks like this http://www.accumix.co.uk/ I actually looked up Eyre details and couldn't see a website. Hopefully I will start the foundations in April/May next year and although this is over 6 months away when you put outline planning in 2009 it's seems quite close. I've been trying to gather info on prices to work out costings, so that very helpful. This might sound daft, but do you know if do they do difference strengths? Will the concrete in the foundations be a different grade to the slab? My previous experience with concrete has been mixing in a old wheelbarrow for posts.

Not really sure to be honest, as I've never ordered concrete before on Skye. I believe Letiths have a base in the south of Island, which would be 80-90 minutes and another plant hire business has a wagon perhaps 45-50 minutes away. I believe the plant hire wagon can be mixed to the quantity desired on site.

Thanks for that. Can't remember the exact figure, but it was less than 1.2m. Our site is on a slight slope and we already knew that we had clay underneath. When the top soil/softer clay was extracted it was replaced with rotten rock from our site, this was compacted at layers. This has settled really well and although the concrete will sit within the firm clay, the top of the trench made up of the rotten rock looks solid and unlikely to collapse.

Had our structural engineer on site today. Dug four trial holes and he agreed that our clay was suitable for standard strip foundations. This was a big relief as I guess you never really know what the engineer is going to say. Does everybody feel tense before this visit? Getting this done today was covering the last area that was specific to our site as we got our access and services installed a couple of year's ago. Just out interested what have users paid for a m3 cube of concrete, figure discussed was £150, little higher than I was expecting. I'm building in Highlands where I would imagine we will would end up paying a premium for haulage of materials etc. Hopefully now I will be able to work out a fairly good estimate of the costings for our foundations. The dream got a little closer today!

Thanks