ProDave

Continue the earth through the isolator so the earth to the fan is connected. Then at the fan just terminate it unused somewhere safe.

You can make a "portable building" over 30M2 that legally qualifies as a "caravan" so is exempt from building control. It does not even have to be on wheels for that.

I am going to stand up in defence of mechanical room stats. There is nothing wrong with them IF they are wired properly, which means a 3 core cable with a neutral connection. They are designed with an internal "accelerator heater" (just a small resistor). this very slightly warms the internal space of the thermostat when the heating is on, and overcomes the inherent hysteresis of a mechanical thermostat. Ours work very well indeed keeping the rooms at a constant temperature with no overshoot.

I have been working with a joiner like that. Embarasing. His work is rubbish. I would not recommend him to anyone. But he keeps giving me work so I do it, even though it is embarasing to be associated with him. Definitely involve the council, they are oaying for it, they deserve to get better.

@Onoff will be doing the makeover of that bathroom When his own is finally finished.

Ours is a small one, just 10ft wide and 28ft long. We bought it because of the unusual layout with a bedroom at each end and the living room / kitchen in the middle. we would have struggled to get a 12ft wide one to our site.

This family of 3 survived a Highland winder in a 280 square foot static caravan.

I know my house is half the size of yours, but my 5KW ASHP is heating the house and the hot water just fine. No reason why yours can't be done with say a 10Kw ASHP.

Why not make it easy and just use the pre cast concrete steps you can get in any builders merchant? For example https://www.mcnairs.co.uk/item/76952/BuildingMaterials/Robeslee-Pre-cast-Concrete-Steps-300mm-x-150mm.html

Is the "Gym" covered under permitted development? If so build it now before you start the work on the house. Then when you apply for planning for the extension, include in that, temporary habitational use of the "gym" for the duration of the building work. As discussed on another thread, if all the occupants of the gym are working on the build then you don't even need planning permission to use that, as temporary workers accommodation is permitted development anyway. We had a slightly related unusual situation that we want to keep the static caravan as a studio, workshop and store room, i.e as a garden outbuilding. I deliberately placed it where it would fall under the permitted development rules as a garden building, but of course PD does not come into effect until the house is complete. So when I did the planning application for the house, I asked for permanent permission for the caravan. Initially the planners said no, but when I pointed out to them that on the day of completion, I could remove the caravan, and them immediately replace it with an identical caravan in an identical location as a permitted development garden building, they agreed and changed it to "habitational use of the caravan shall cease upon occupation of the house"

Hi @Donnaidh and welcome to the forum. I too am in Easter Ross so you can't be far away. You have what I think is known as a Butt & Ben, the lower half would have been used for animals, mosty. Most people refurbish these by putting a new roof of box profile steel sheeting which is not that expensive and easy to fit DIY. A lot of these old buildings don't have much in the way of foundations. If you are thinking of under floor heating you will be needing to raise the floor level to add insulation underneath. I would be very careful of trying to dig out and lower the floor to do that as I know someone who did and found there was nothing under the walls.

I am working on an old cabin that is being refurnished. They have used 95 by 45 floor joists, BUT they are supported to the concrete floor about every metre with packers. So you can do that if there is a reason you must limit the thickness of the floor make up but you must support them at several places not just the ends.

Our planners started on the "must be slate roof" tack, but I argued. Eventually they accepted Marley Edgemere Riven finish as a concrete tile that looks close enough to slate to be acceptable.

I think the point we are all making is you won't build that house for your budget and sadly it looks like your architect has designed a house that cannot be built for the budget you set him. In any other business if you ask someone to design something that meets certain parameters and they designed something different you would have reasonable expectation to get redress somehow. I would be going back to the architect and saying "this was your brief, you failed" In our case I knew we had a small budget, so I designed a house that was just a rectangular box with few frills, and this will come in at about £1000 per square metre with me doing a LOT of the work myself. We don't have lots of different bits to the house, we don't have flat roofs with walk on balconies, we don't have acres of glass etc etc. I still think your way forward is simplify the house so you can afford to build it now, perhaps smaller than you really want, but designed such that you can extend it later to eventually get what you want.

CPC Circuit Protective Conductor. Earth wire to most people EICR Electrical Instalation Condition Report

Do you have full planning or outline planning? It is common to get outline planning on multiple plots in one application. This is how it was with our previous house. It all gets sorted out and separated as whoever buys each plot will then submit a full planning application for their own plot. The one multiple OPP permission just establishes the principle that you can build.

Your second picture shows a junction box were none of the cables have a CPC. These are old cables before it was normal practice to fit an earth to lighting circuits. You might want to consider getting the lighting circuit rewired or at least a thorough EICR so you know what state it is in. With so much of the lighting circuit having no CPC I would not trust that any earth conductors you do find really are properly connected anywhere, and I would want to be damned certain you have a proper earth connection if you have any class 1 light switches or light fittings.

I am an old stick in the mud. I like my sound quality too much so not sure I would trust ceiling speakers (can you get 3 way bass reflex ceiling speakers?) and there is something about a pair of stereo speakers need to be defined properly as left and right. So the 3 main rooms downstairs each have a pair or "proper" hi fi speakers, floor standing ones in the living room, wall mounted in the kitchen / diner and sun room. This is in addition to surround sound for the 2 main tv's. And I would not be wanting the likes of blue tooth to be interfering with my sound quality. I think this is a case of where I don't want convenience and discrete triumnphing over quality. P.S I uses 2.5mm speaker cable from CPC

I would be inclined to leave off the flat roofed dining room. That will save a lot off the budget, but could be built as an extension later on when your budget has recovered from the main build.

That's the point we are making. The house won't cool that quick. It's been pretty cool for a couple of weeks here and the house is still keeping at 21 degrees with an outside temperature in the order of 11 degrees and no heating on. We only light the stove last night for effect, not because it was really cold.

It could get tricky if it is a listed building and planning don't want you to change the windows.

An extension I am wiring has ground to a halt as the owner (who is doing most of the work himself inside) says he cannot get any plasterboard. Somebody will be along shortly to blame the B word.

I have had a look at your plans. My overriding first impression is a complicated house to build. That is not what you want when you are trying to build it cheap. Does the plot size and shape dictate the shape? or do you have scope to simplify it?

It is amazing how a well insulated house keeps it's heat. The overriding thing I find with our house it it takes a long time to cool down. It also takes a long tiome to heat up as the UFH runs at a low level, but that is not a problem. Interesting how much the climate varies across the UK. yesterday was 11 degrees, grey and drizzling. The house was at 21 degrees but there is something about when it is grey and damp it "feels" cold so we light the stove last night. Today is only 9 degrees and still grey and wet, I think the stove will be used later, again the thermometer says it is not cold, but......

I mean check with building control what they want. 900mm is the normal for a banister but I have a feeling this comes under "other" so they might require it to be 1100mm high, The other issue is the window opening would have to meet "means of escape" dimensions. With the handrail there I suspect you would be changing the windows to achieve that.