ProDave

Didn't we discuss this when it was first mooted. Unless you blitz the site pre development with roundup, and fill all ponds with cow slurry, I cannot possibly see how taking a bare plot of land like ours was (left untended for 30 years, turning to scrub) and building a house on it, could possibly ever increase the boidiversity. A whole new industry for creative surveyors has opened up it would seem.

At the moment, I have agreed to meeting a surveyor on site. This is my opportunity to find out exactly what they want and where they want to put it, and also to point out all the things on the plot that might make it impossible, like the treatment plant. If at that point they decide our route is not viable and they go away to pester another home owner I will be happy. I think if it gets beyond that, and they really want our route, I will be seeking professional help to make sure what i agree to is correct and what they pay me is also reasonable.

Yes been there, done that got the tee shirt. I have even hears rumours of some builders who enlarge the building having seen it is "too small" then it becomes massive when built.

Our previous house I did as 2 building warrants as we could not build the garage straight away. For sign off of the house, without the garage, BC insisted that wall had at least the render scratch coat applied. Then a couple of years later we built the garage under a separate building warrant. The garage was on the original planning application so no need to re apply for planning.

Yep tried that. Gas meter on the outside of the house. The gas pipe ran up the wall and entered into the loft. I bonded right at the eaves inside the loft as close as I could reach to the "point of entry". Gas man said NO. I had to run the earth cable down the gas pipe (cable tied to it) to the meter box before he would accept it and sign off the gas.

Okay the plot thickens on this. Today I have received some communication including a plan of where the proposed cable would go. They have messed up their addresses, as although it is addressed to us at our old address (that we still own and is tenanted) the property they have outlined on their plan is in fact our new house. I have written to them to clarify this address mix up. In one way that is better news because I feared having a cable underground in the old property might make it harder to sell when the time comes. On the other hand I am not entirely sure I want this cable under the garden of our new house. It poses limitations on what you can do with the land, e.g you can't build anything within a certain distance of the cable, and if we ever decide to sell it could still put off prospective buyers.

This is a constant frustration with electricians. You would think the gas people work to different regs re earth bonding as they don't always accept the earth bond where the sparky has put it. OUR regs say it must be bonded a certain distance either side of where the pipe enters the building, but I have lost count of how many times I have had to move it, because the gas man says it must be bonded in the meter box, even if that is many metres away from where the pipe enters the house. But the gas safe man should not sign off the gas install until he is happy with the bonding. So best if sparky can talk to gas man early on the project. then argue amongst themselves where to bond it. In the case of my own LPG install there is no meter so the gas man asked for the bond to be where the gas pipe exits the changeover regulator.

That's putting the cart before the horse. Establish the principle of being allowed to build a house first with PIP then sort out the details with the approval of reserved matters application.

Perhaps you should put your efforts just now into getting Permission in Principle on the site which does not need a final house design, just a rough idea which you can draw yourself. Only once you have that, go for full planning and see exactly what house design the planners will accept.

Ha Ha. The flush plate in our en-suite is low as the unit is low, so I set it to one side of the seat so it CAN be used with the lid up. I want to check "everything has cleared and it does not need a second flush" before I put the lid down. It would irritate me if I had to put the lid down, flush, then lift the lid to check.

Indeed and because we only have one kid, we designed the house with 2 big bedrooms one for the adults and one for the kid, with the third smaller room as a guest bedroom for visitors. What I dislike about many of these off the shelf "Scottish" designs is they put at least one bedroom downstairs. I would prefer not to have the vaulted living room in that design if it meant I could get all the bedrooms upstairs. but that is a personal thing. Re planning. If it is anything like here, there is a general presumption against building in the open countryside. The exceptions are in an existing settlement, infill between existing buildings and if the plot is existing garden ground. I have known applications refused by being just a few metres outside the existing settlement. Ours passed on both the infill between existing buildings and inside the existing settlement. And once they have accepted you can build something, they generally will not allow full 2 story, it must have some element of room in roof.

Your location would help, building regs are different in different parts of the UK

Okay a bit of a development on this. I have spoken to neighbours in the road, nobody else has been approached. I had a phone call today. I tried to ask if they were considering other routes, they were very evasive only saying "your property is the direct route" So it looks like they have their eye on my garden. Next step is they are going to make an appointment for a "non invasive survey" I am going to use that as an opportunity to point out all the difficulties they would face trying to route an underground HV cable this way, like the septic tank various drainage pipes and the holding tank and pumping station in that bit of garden, and then once they pass through the garden to the field, they then meet the drainage soakaway under the field behind us (with a deed of servitude from the land owner to allow it to be there) Hopefully that will put them off enough to go looking for a different route and I will question why they are not taking the route of the previous underground HV cable through a different and very much easier garden. Because this house is tenanted I have informed the tenant they are sniffing about and she will be involved when the surveyors come. I will keep you updated.

I wired a previous house for the same customer (he is a serial builder / renovator, this is the second new build of his I have wired and 2 renovations as well) His previous new build had appalling bad workmanship installing the insulation, and I pointed it out to him but he did not care. I bet this new build of his will be sold within a year and he will be onto his next project. Building to live in then selling shortly afterwards seems to be his modus operandi to avoid being a "developer" and avoid paying tax.

I have not read the article, but I heard the speech live and it mentioned "installed heat pumps" and same for solar panels, so does this only men the 0% is supply and fit, or will you be able to buy one to DIY install at 0% VAT?

I called into a new build I am wiring yesterday. The walls are insulated and they were about to start plasterboarding the walls, but the detail was appalling with clearly visible gaps from the top if the service void into the loft, so creating the classic plasterboard tent. I would have taken photo's if the builder had not been present. I mentioned it to the client and he did not seem bothered.

What heated your previous house? If it was not electricity then you would have paid your electricity bill plus a gas or oil bill? what was the total. ALL fuels has gone up a LOT, it rose sharply last October will rise another average of 54% at the end of this month and again in October probably. We use about 1400kWh of electricity to heat the house with a heat pump each year. BUT our total consumption of electricity is more like 6000kWh per year. Heating cost is probably less than 1/4 of our usage. I am trying to chip away and reduce the non heating usage but unless you never watch tv, never do any washing, don't use a fridge etc there is no solution. And our bill would be bigger if it were not for the solar PV which we self use most of it. I am experimenting with better ways to optimise that at the moment like only running the ASHP for the heating in the middle of the day.

Can you update your drawing? As I see it you essentially have batteries in series each with a DIFFERENT charging regime. So each battery will receive a different level of charge. BUT they are discharged in series. The big flaw in that is nothing to equalise the charge so a real possibility when discharging one battery will be discharged long before the other (because it has not received as much charge)

When the wind blows, our trees drop a lot of small branches little more than twigs. they would normally be a nuisance to get rid of. But I collect them, dry them, and use them as kindling to start the fire. That saves splitting larger logs to make kindling.

I am not sure there is one? Vaulted to me, means the ceiling follows the line of the roof (so no loft space) I guess our bedroom might be described as semi vaulted as it follows the line of the roof a long way up and then is cut off flat just to give us a small loft space?

I burn wood here in a WBS. In a property with trees, I would say it is pretty essential. All the wood from maintaining and trimming the trees including dead wood goes on the stove. That plus other wood collected locally meets our needs. If I didn't have the stove, then all the tree maintenance would provide a lot of "waste" wood which I would probably be giving away to somebody else to burn on a stove. I have also in the last week or so been re thinking how our heating runs and trying to reduce (it's already low) cost. That is reduce cost, not necessarily reduce the amount of energy used. Up to now, the ASHP has just been on a timer to come on at 6AM and then under the control of room thermostats. That works well in the winter when the house needs several hours of low level heat to meet the heat losses. But now, in the shoulder seasons, stating at 6AM means the house has had all the heat it needs for the day early in the morning. So for the last week, the timer has been off, and I have manually been turning the heating on at 10AM once the sun is up and the PV is generating well and by 10AM on a sunny day, the PV generates enough to power the ASHP so although I am still using the same amount of energy to heat the house, I am getting it all from the PV on a sunny day. That is a future project to automate that, probably along the lines of @TerryE system to predict the daily heat input needed and then determine the operating time of the ASHP to best use solar PV generation.

If choosing a stock design, make sure it works with the site and house orientation. e.g you want to enjoy the best view from the living room and/ or catch the sun. I have seen stock houses put on a site backwards to try and achieve that with rather odd results.

No difference in foundations between 1.5 and 2 storey. If you want cheap foundations, you want a square / rectangle design not that more complex T shaped house. The extra costs of the T shaped house extend to the roof, tiling etc. Isn't this a new thread just continuing the discussion of the previous thread? If this is a house in the countryside in Scotland you won't get permission for a full blown 2 storey house, there has to be some element of room in roof.

My ASHP was sized to give enough heat to heat the house in the worst case here of +20 inside and -10 outside. That was calculated with Jeremy's spreadsheet that turned out to give a much more accurate result than the SAP calculations. I am in the "An ASHP works well when properly specified" camp. But at the same time, I also recognise if you have mains gas available then an ASHP is very unlikely to be cheaper to run than a gas boiler.

When I did our first build 19 years ago, I specifically checked with BC could the duct just come from under the ventilated timber floor and they said yes. that one just came to a floor vent behind the stove cast into the hearth. This time I didn't bother asking the question, I just did it. BC noted the ducted air into the stove bud did not ask where exactly it connected to.