ProDave

There are certainly a lot of conflicting signals doing the rounds at the moment. So we have a housing shortage? and (in some parts of the country) record breaking house prices and a booming market. But today we are told the construction sector shrunk 3.3% in the first quarter of this year. If that continues, that's a 12% decline in a year. So why is that? And that's not going to get all the houses the politicians promised built is it? I don't have the solution, other than why do so many crave to be in the SE of England? That's where the silly high house prices are and the "shortage" of housing. The rest of the UK does not really have a problem. Yet nobody seems to even talk about that let alone address it. Personally we were happy to leave the overcrowded SE 15 years ago and there is no way I would ever go back.

Definitely separate the stairs from the living room. It will only shrink the living room actual space by a tiny amount anyway. Then you can do a we have done, make the wall each side of the stairs a supporting wall. Joists then span end to end with intermediate support from the two stairwell walls. The supporting walls can then continue up to the ridge and you can support a ridge beam end to end and create a vaulted warm roof as we have. That means your loft space is warm and you can choose to have high ceilings or a conventional loft space. or even one bedroom having a mezanine floor above the adjacent room as we have done. In fact with those alterations that layout is not a million miles from what we have. If you are ever passing up this way (near Alness) feel free to drop in and see out part built house.

I take it your plot is not one of the same ones then, just close by? i.e you did not pay that much for it.

Could you approach the owner of the other plots and see if he would get the supply installed to each. I am willing to bet by collectively doing it, the cost would be about £5K per plot. Then the plots would be for sale partly serviced which would make them more attractive. I would also get your water connection quote, and if there are similar issues look at a collective agreement for that as well. It seems odd to sell 5 plots unserviced. Often around here such a development gets the services connected by the owner and are then sold as serviced plots.

The owner of out local car garage that does our MOT's had his house externally insulated for free. They did a good job and he is very pleased with the result.

The cheeky bit is they get you to pay for a 4 core cable, and use 2 cores. If someone then wants to build a house next door to you, then there would be "spare capacity" that you have paid for and they would get a cheap connection. Are there any other houses planned nearby? if so coordinate with them.

Anyone with a street works permit can do the trenching, but I found all the independent contractors were more expensive than the utilities. Depending on the road, even though they re only digging in the verge they may need traffic management as well. Before you go any further, where is your water and telecoms connections going to be? If they need the road or verge up, then don't be digging it up twice. In my case all 3 came from the other side of the road, so I had the road up only once, and Scottish Water were the cheapest of them all to make the road crossing.

Talk to them and see what they CAN supply from that pole. What KVA rating did you ask for? It's tempting to ask for 21KVA (100A) but you almost certainly do not need that. We were in a similar situation, adding an extra house to an existing 100KVA transformer. I just knew if I asked for 21KVA there would be a big cost for upgrading the transformer. So I sked for 12KVA and that could be accommodated from the existing transformer. Firstly 12KVA will be plenty for our house anyway, but the reality is we have the same cable and same 100A fuse as we would have if we had asked for 21KVA So go back and ask what capacity they could supply from the existing pole, and see if you can live with that.

We got the builders that built our timber frame to supply and install the windows. So once all the negotiating was done with Rationel,. I handed the quote to the builders. Because they were doing supply and fit, it meant the whole lot could be charged to us at 0% VAT so saved having to wait until the end for the VAT claim. We were told we would need a forklift to off load, so they had their telehandler on standby, but it wasn't needed as the lorry had a hiab and self unloaded them.

I already spoke to BC on a previous site visit and they are happy with air drawn up from under the floor, as they were in my last house.

There is always a BIG difference in the mix of customers visiting on a weekday. compared to those that go on a Saturday morning. Jewsons and Travis, the only 2 locally both know me, but have yet so see me in clean clothes.

I would definitely want the house further from the boundary. Down to 1M and I think you hit fire proof nonsense for the windows.

I presume you are buying from ADW? We easilly got 5% off the quote. Show them the other qoute and see what they come up with.

We have been living for a year om a static caravan that gives us 2 bedroom accommodation. It would not be possible to construct a 2 bedroom house or flat of that size because of building regulations on door and corridor widths, accessible bathrooms, and circulation space requirements. Even so living in such a small space has only been possible and tolerable because we also have the space of the unfinished house to use. Currently we are using the for the laundry, my office space, and storage. In many ways I find it somewhat insulting that someone thinks a particular section of society should make do with such a tiny space. Yes you can exist in a small space, but you can't "do" much, and to suggest an entire generation can live like that, suggests those people never want to do any practical things or have a hobby or anything that requires a little bit of space

That's about right then. Most treatment plants have an inlet level of about 700mm below ground and outlet a little lower. Then add in a sample chamber and your outlet is probably about 1 metre down which is about right for a soakaway.

I am not a fan of living / dining / kitchen all in one room. I don't want to spend my evening trying to watch tv, listen to music or just enjoy some quiet time competing with the noise of the fridge / freezer or worse the dishwasher. That's why I insisted we have a separate "snug" living room away from all the hustle and bustle, where the big tv and best hifi will go. I am convinced millenials are tone deaf, or even just deaf, as they seem oblivious to such noises, and are even prepared to listen to music played on the minute speakers in their phones, which frankly I find an affront to music. But SWMBO is a fan of that layout, and she is convinced that is a reason we failed to sell the old house, because it's separate kitchen did not appeal to "modern" buyers? On the subject of small living spaces, our local portable eco home builder is building some "pods" for the council for a homeless project. They provide a basic bedsit living space in a small area. They were featured on the local STV news a while ago.

So 2850 seconds to drop 1 metre? You are only supposed to fill a smaller 300mm deep hole and time that to go down. So 2850 seconds to drop 1000mm is 28 seconds per mm. Do the official 300mm test and the result may be different. You say it "could" accomodate 5 so lets assume it is 3 bedrooms and the occupancy for building regs is 5 people So Area = 28 *5 *0.2 =28 square metres This is for the soakaway for the treatment plant only. DO check the V figure by doing the percolation test properly with just a 300mm dole in the bottom so you are timing how long it takes to drain down 150mm I don't know how to calculate the rainwater soakaway, I have never had to do that but I would expect that o be based on the roof area and as you say not the number of people.

Prior to building our first self build, we owned a 1930's semi and extended it, almost doubling it's size. That was brick and block with a cavity and a token bit of fluffy insulation in said cavity. To me, then, that was just a "normal" build. When I look back now, having put in the attention to detail to make a well insulated air tight home, it is only now I realise just how appalling that 1930's house was, and the extension was not a lot better. If I had wanted any degree of sensible air tightness with that I would have had to do a LOT of things very different and put in a lot of work to get the details right. Sadly, I doubt the average brick builder has much idea how to get the details right. There are several on here building very good brick / block houses but I just doubt many bricklayers know how to do it properly.

I presume you (they) use a litter tray as in a flat they did not have access to outside? Now you have a house, fit a (passive?) cat flap and train them to go outside, starting with putting the litter tray just outside the cat flap (under a cover) then gradually moving it further from the house, then removing it. Cats are clean animals, unlike dogs, and will dig a hole and bury their waste, so leave them a patch of earth for that (which is where the litter tray will end up before you remove it totally)

Rainwater and sewage soakaways are calculated differently. Fior sewage soakaways the calculations are in the link I gave you on the last page, which I will repeat here https://www.wte-ltd.co.uk/percolation_test.html V is the percolation rate in seconds per mm P is the number of people the house can accommodate, based on the number of bedrooms. This is determined by BC e,g, my 3 bedroom house is deemed to have an occupancy of 5 people, irrespective of the fact there will only be 3 of us living there. And the formula is Area (A) = V X P X 0.20 for sewage treatment units This gives the AREA in square metres of land that is required of a soakaway. You cannot use crates for sewage disposal this is a layer of rocks or stone, a herringbone of perforated drain pipes, more stones then a membrane then soil put back You seem to have got confused and arrived at a cubic metre figure not a square metre figure. What was your V figure in seconds per mm and how many bedrooms?

The big difference for me was I found an AT that would do just the work I wanted (buildings regs and construction drawings) and no more, for a fair fee based on the actual amount of work he was doing. All I got from "architects" was an offer of standard package of work, with the cost being based on their (over inflated) estimate of the build costs, and they would not negotiate. I am not saying architects are "bad" just that their business model and the way they price their work, did not suit what I wanted.

Don't join all the neutrals. You will either have to use separate terminals, or if you have some spares of the plastic brackets used, cut the existing N terminals down into shorter ones. It helps being a sparky as I usually have some spare neutral bars and brackets, I often remove them from CU's I swap out just to have some spares. Just buy an empty CU of the same type as your main CU so it looks nice and put it all in there.

I dug my own foundations and did my own setting out. We had already established the ground conditions (I dug 3 deep test pits and the structural engineer looked at what came out and made a decision on the foundation type and depth.) I had set out my own trenches for the dig and the bricklayer who did the underbuild confirmed it was spot on.

This could not be further from the truth. My timber frame was built in sections by a gang of 4 local joiners, in a rented farm steading (barn) about 3 miles away. It was then brought to my site a few panels at a time on a trailer and erected by the same 4 joiners, using their own plant and machinery, with each returning to their homes, within a 10 mile radius each night.

Re cement board. I have been thinking about that. Would it but up to adjacent sheets of plasterboard, and when skimmed be "invisible" or would there be issues with differential expansion and cracking along the joint?. Would the plaster skim be liable to cracking and flaking off if exposed to heat? I know (from the stove we have in the caravan) just how hot the stone slabs behind and alongside the stove get, I really have concerns that plaster on a cement board would withstand that, thought it would appear to meet regs. That's why I am still thinking of a stone slab behind and to the side of the stove. And if I do that, then ordinary skimmed plasterboard should be fine with the very much lesser heat from the flue. A cheaper alternative might just be to tile behind and alongside the stove.