ProDave

If you are on clay with a high water table you MUST concrete it in. Don't let anyone say pea shingle is adequate. I have heard most discussion this sat they prop it upright with temporary wood, and don't forget to fill it as you pour so it does not float out.

Don't use a crowbar, get a pair of drain cover handles. e.g. https://www.screwfix.com/p/monument-tools-115mm-manhole-keys/14087

Buy a shorter car (i'll get my coat)

Definitely. Our past house had a pump out of necessity as the drainage field was higher than the treatment plant. The pump would last somewhere between 5 and 7 years before it burned out and needed replacing. I was SO glad when our present house was given permission to discharge to the burn, no pump, no drainage field.

I don't drive mine daily but it is my summer runabout when the truck is being a motorhome. It never goes out on salted winter roads.

Won't be doing that with my GT I care for it too much.

I regularly carried 4.8M planks and 4.5M ladders on the roof of my Subaru Forrester, just with the 2 standard roof bars. The geometry of the car dictates the front overhang (in front of the bar / rack) will be greater than the rear, to prevent an illegal overhang at the back of the vehicle. Anything heavy, place at one side of the rack not in the middle to avoid bending the bars. Small things like battens, strap them together at front and back to make them more rigid and more like one item. Sometimes with things like that I would also tie down the front to the front towing eye and the towbar at the rear. Now carrying a bundle of 6M long unistrut was entertaining and possibly not entirely legal.

Plenty of estates have covenants preventing you parking a van or caravan on the property. Whether they are enforced or not is another matter. but if the objective is to present to the world how green this development is, they really don't want people like me with a big diesel powered truck living there do they?

I would be dead against my own battery (whether house battery or car battery) being drained at will by others. If the communal solar farm and grid scale battery wants to do that then fine. This will be a useful test of whether this grand scheme is actually viable and works, and what it actually costs the residents for their electricity overall. The cynic in me says there will be a covenant saying no ICE cars allowed and you must have an EV to live there.

In daylight yes. But they still run at night.

Just back from 2 weeks away. In that time everything was turned off, except mvhr, Treatment plant air blower, Fridge freezer, a sky box to record some stuff while away, Music player (Raspbery pi) and ASHP controller on standby but turned off. That standby load consumed 4kWh per day which averages at 166W. Not bad I think. It shows that almost all of what is metered (that I complain seems high) is actually stuff doing something. P.S. the biggest energy saving we have made is my daughter chose to move out.

I commisioned mine to English regs that clearly state requirements for each room. Scottish BC never showed an interest in or asked for any documentation. I now run at a lower rate and it all works fine.

Post whatever drawings of the roof that you have, that they should be working from.

Yes but I still have some unresolved issues with the render so I cannot recommend it at the moment and certainly not if you intend using Baumit render.

Done 2 self builds and not a single objection to either.

MCB or RCD tripping. If RCD you need some test gear like an insulation tester.

Run joists end to end of the house, supported on sleeper walls aligning with each of the internal walls. Repeat for upstairs (so internal walls made structural) with stair hole. Your widest span will be the kitchen / diner, the joist supplier will size them for that span. I am surprised at the posi joist sizes you quoted. My longest span id 5M and my joists are 300mm deep. The narrow joists you quote won't leave much room for 110mm waste pipes for instance.

Looking again at your plans, is there any scope for getting access to your plot from Priory Lane? If you could then the SW bit of your garden currently where you drive to get into the plot, could be a nice bit of an evening sun trap garden. Is the "existing outbuilding" in the top left by any chance a single garage? If so it will have vehicle access rights to Priory lane. That certainly looks like a driveway entrance in front of it.

Most of our external doors are inward opening, except the one to the balcony which opens out. I can't recall the logic of why we chose that. As others have said, outward opening needs care in wind but we are unlikely to use the balcony when it is windy. But outward is way better in terms of keeping the weather out. Our balcony door is very exposed and not a drop of wind driven rain has got in. The other "normal" back door downstairs opens in and is exposed to wind driven rain from the west. It does not leak when shut, the seals do a pretty good job of keeping the rain out. But it is inevitable with the geometry of an outward opening door that it relies 100% on the seals to keep wind driven rain out. The weakness is the small amount of wind driven rain that gets past the drip bead and then sits between the door and the frame, held back by the seal, and when you open the door that small amount comes in.

My even more tight economical solution was install lots of cat5 cables but only terminate the ones actually in use, which is about 4 at the moment. The rest are there for future use and in the rooms are coiled up in the service void behind or next to socket boxes, and at the cabinet end, coiled up and labelled where they go ready to be terminated when required.

The main thing here is you have cooperation from the neighbour who is allowing a footing straddling the boundary and a second wall on his side. i.e. it has every potential to be a proper job done well to last into the future. It is when a neighbour refuses to take part or take an interest that you are forced to do the best from your side which might well be a poor solution. If only all neighbours would share a problem like this then the solutions would be a lot better.

Doing a self build, it is hard to predict the financial position, until it's all done ant the dust has settled. And often, timing is everything. Those that followed our build will recall the original plan had been sell our rental properties which would give us a start, then sell the old house to finance completing the new one. But the timing was wrong. When we put the old house on the market the housing market here was moribund, still not recovered from the financial crash. It sat on the market for 3 years with little interest along with many similar properties around here. It became clear the only way to sell it would have been sell for give away / distress prices, which would almost certainly mean the old house sold for less than the cost of building the new one. There was no way I was going to "pay" to downsize, which is what we were doing. The saviour was an offer to rent it from someone ultimately wanting to buy it. We agreed. The rent income funded a slow build as you earn, and we completed the new one before the old one ultimately sold, which was an unexpected result. The honest advice is don't start a self build until the finance is 100% secure, and it is not so if it relies on a property sale. And if you don't do that, then you must be flexible.

Then use that for the Tony Tray.

It is hard to tell from the physical size. We are served from a 100KVA transformer. A few years ago it failed. They replaced it with another one half the size. I asked the guys why are they fitting a smaller one and they said it is the same rating.

Honestly, I just used Screwfix or toolstation for their honest visible pricing. I gave up with electrical wholesalers for their random pricing and often lack of stock.