ProDave

I took issue with some of the procedures that BC employ. When we had our final inspection for sign off they found 2 faults. Both minor. One was just proving the clearance distances for the stove (I could have showed her the manual and loaned her a tape measure to check if she had only asked at the time) and the other was the step down from the house to the garage was too big for one step so I had to install a fixed step. I would have expected just an informal notification of these defects, but what I instead got was a formal "refusal to issue completion certificate" stating the reasons. Which meant I had to re apply for a completion certificate again when I had attended to the items. It certainly made more paperwork for me and must have also done for them. Or is is like an MOT test station where if you don't fail a certain percentage of tests, something must be wrong?

A number of people have joined our sailing club, just so that they can use the changing rooms when they go swimming in the sea.

Top hat capping is not to provide any protection against people drilling into it. It is just something to hold it in place to make it easier to plaster over. You must route the cable in safe zones, so in theory at least people know a cable might be there and avoid drilling into it. You talk of running it horizontally (along the wall) hints that you are not aware of safe zones. A much better route up to a loft is up through a cupboard or built in wardrobe where it can be run in conduit like @SteamyTea post above without being an eyesore.

Rule 1 of Grand designs, have a baby mid build. Congratulations. I am sure you will be back. Wanting to self build is an itch that won't go away until satisfied. It took me 20 years to be able to scratch that itch.

Take a deep breath, a glass of your favourite giggle water, and read your signature. Perhaps if you don't sing to his tune he will say well you should not be living in it until sign off? At least in Scotland we have a formal temporary habitation process that has a less stringent list of things that need to be in place than final completion.

No, never totally empty it and why would you want it jet wash cleaned? You want to leave behind some of "the good stuff" to make it work. After desludging full up with water, don't leave it nearly empty.

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.