ProDave

Reading that report, shows that you only got PP for yours Ian due to a lucky narrow window where the council did not have a 5 year plan so could not refuse it. It's no wonder when just a very short time later they do have a plan in place and your neighbour is excluded, he feels the system has let him down. So I take it the "house within a caravan" can remain to be an eyesore, it's just that nobody can live in it?

I would be cr@ping myself that next doors garden and house was about to end up in your 'ole.

8 years ago.

Looking at that pipe, my guess is initially a drainage field was installed, which proved inadequate and the land became a swamp, so some enterprising chap extended it to run out onto a bit of rough ground nobody ever goes near and it would be alraight. but your drain surveyor has found him out. Can you re do the sketch in more detail showing the in and out connections to each treatment plant or septic tank please? Who owns the land immediately behind your houses? Is is the same land owner? Or someone else who might be more reasonable?

Well since it is dripping and the LL has done nothing yet (other than send someone who for whatever reason failed to fix it) I would inform the LL in writing that you will not be responsible for collecting the dripping water, and you will not be responsible for any damage done to the property by the dripping water. See if that stirs him into sending someone willing and able to fix it.

Can you explain this. Surely you reported the fault to the landlord or the letting agent and they sent this man to fix it, so what is this "newly tendered essential maintenance company"?

Post some pictures close up of where the leak is, and then more general views of the pipework connecting to the boiler.

Clearly you bought in good faith. Whoever installed either initially or later, that extension to the pipe is surely the one comitting an offence? If the EA got involved, I doubt you would be in trouble, you have a ST which you were told, in writing, discharged to a land drainage field. Any offence comitted would be by the person that made the alteration to make it discharge to surface. I would have another chat with the land owner and give him one more chance to cooperate and agree to a communal upgrade, or you WILL report the illegal discharge on his land to the EA.

One option to explore to see if the buyer will accept. Offer a reduction in sale price equal to your share of the upgrade work, and see if they will proceed with an indemnity policy put in place. Though non compliant, it "works" and with the reduction in price they might just proceed.

I doubt the staircase company will care. It is your building control inspector that will care at completion. If not 2M headroom it will not pass, so make the ceiling stepped or whatever is needed to achieve 2M headroom.

At least you only have to keep renewing your insurance. I had to bung building control another £100 each year to extend the building warrant.

This is one of the disadvantages of applying for PIP. Because usually you are not specifying details of the house, it allows the council to impose a set of standard requirements. We had this, but the ones I objected to we succeeded in over ruling. You could always offer to buy the plot subject to getting the house style you want approved, and then submit a planning application quickly. There are several houses near here of various timber designs, just look around your area for something similar to what you want as examples.

You can have a stair type handrail supported from the stairs not attached to a wall. It could (cough) disappear after sign off.

It will be nice when it is finished. I thought it was part of a fire station.

Unless the water jacket of an oil boiler rusts through (I did have 1 replaced at less than 1 year old due to a manufacturing defect) they will go on forever. The burner is a completely separate unit, very serviceable and replaceable if it really can't be serviced. We had a rental house with a Grant outdoor combi boiler that was still working at 30 years old when we sold the house. It might have been on the verge of needing a new complete burner. If it really looks like spares are going to get hard to obtain, just buy a spare complete burner and put it into storage.

Which is why I keep saying a cold roof is a really poor design and something like this if far far better designed from the outset as a warm roof and very little difference in cost. I hope one day people designing such buildings just might start to take notice and use a warm roof design by default.

Sorry I would say airtight membrane on all the walls with all joints taped BEFORE the battens go on. then all your services are inside the sealed envelope. You need a lot of detailing at those joist ends going into the wall, and a set of basic rules to ALL trades along the lines of DO NOT drill or otherwise penetrate the airtight layer without first discussing it with you and agreeing it is necessary and there is a plan for how to seal up whatever is passing through the airtight layer.

Hi and welcome. You are in good company, lots of self builders not far from you (I am 20 miles north of Inverness) We moved up here from England 20 years ago, into a static caravan to start our first self build. Then did it all again completing our second self build just over a year ago.

And don't assume an existing agricultural access to a field will meet the requirements for access to a domestic dwelling. Have a good look at what actual visibility you get in both directions from the existing access.

Our main bathroom and en-suite are the only upstairs rooms with any heating, wet UFH, more so the tiles don't feel cold than because the rooms actually need much heat. But the main bathroom has an electrically heated towel rail. Mainly because daughter wants to be able to pick up nice warm towels off the rail at the end of the shower. Me personally I file that away as "gross waste of energy" but I am outvoted.

I did not know "sample inspection" was allowed in Scotland? I know in England typically only 1 in 10 of developer new builds are. The regs in Scotland do demand proper sound proofing levels things like sound insulation in the inter floor space, other measures like resilant bars for mounting ceiling plasterboard on etc. Is there anything downstairs like flush mounting downlights that you can pop one down from the ceiling and have a look up through the hole to see the construction and see if there is any soundproofing insulation. We know our self built house was built properly, to regs, with proper BC inspections and it does not suffer any of the noise problems you mention. Normally if inspected an air test would need to be done. Is that something they are also only sampling a few not every house? What does your EPC say about the house? Have you just got a basic EPC or the full SAP calculations. Again for a self build a full SAP assesment based on actual air test etc is required.

The field does not appear to have any restrictions, but likewise has no right of light etc. The access strip is subject to covenants that may have been imposed earlier but are not specified.

To be honest, I would just do it. If you do sell in X years, unless it's an obvious bodge of a job, any buyer will probably assume the door has always been there and not question it, it is after all what you expect a door from a utility to a garage. Assuming by the time you sell the time limit for BC enforcement has passed, then in the unlikely event of someone noticing the door was recent, a simple indemnity policy should satisfy any buyer. Just make sure you do get proper trades to make the opening and properly support it with the right lintel.

Here you go, have a read of this thread. It explains why a tradesman charging £200 per day is not a rich man, and other thoughts on the matter.

Get the UFH connected in your other bathroom then you can use that, while you go for a record post count gutting and re modelling this one.