ProDave

Shall we have a sweepstake on who is going to be the first to shower in their new bathroom, @Onoff or me? hint: The only thing stopping ours being used now is lack of hot water tank.

I am planning to clad ours in aluminium painted the same RAL colour as the windows. There have been some previous recommendations of a local company that will bend and paint aluminium to your needs. I think @Stones might be the person, I believe he had custom aluminium cills made.

I believe they did, but they said I was "employing" them so had to have appropriate insurance, which I did as it came as standard with the self build insurance. Like I say nobody else has reported being asked for this. They muttered something about it was because I was the Project Manager.

^^ looking at those pictures, the woods in the background look more appealing.

Re site insurance. The builders we contracted to do the foundations, and to build and erect the frame, insisted on seeing my "employers liability insurance" which is a part of the self build insurance policy I have. I don't recall any other self builder being asked to show that.

Re shower flow. I just tried my newly plumbed in shower. It fills a 5L bucket in about 10 seconds, so something in the order of 30 litres per minute. I might need to restrict the flow on that!!! Granted it's at full mains pressure now, so when the HW tank is fitted with it's PRV that should go down a bit. Wish I had not bothered now with full bore isolating valves. We had 2 electric showers in the last house. I saw over 90A on the clamp meter with both running and other stuff on in the house. You really do NOT want more than 2 on a standard 100A single phase supply. If you want 5, then you must have 3 phase.

It is sealed 3 times in effect. Firstly the tanking menbrane and tape laps up the wall. Tiles laid, and any gap between tiles and wall filled with grout. So that is already waterproof. The tanking tape goes about 3" up the wall. When the panels are fitted I kept the panels a couple of mm above the tiles (with a temporary spacer) and filled the gap full with stixall making sure it was flush with the front of the panel not sticking out. This is probably the most important detail to get right. When that was dry a decorative bead of white silicone using "corner tape" to get clean straight edges finishes it off.

Are you saying this from experience?

The core of the panels I used is ply. I have an offcut, with raw untreated cut edges, currently immersed in a bucket of water to see how it behaves. In practice the core should not ever get wet. I too chose not to use their hideously designed bottom joint edges, having been bitten before by using a tile to bath trim that was a disaster.

That would not do.

Soft close lid. Start it on it's way downward, push the button and you have a couple of seconds to look. I did helpfully suggest that the flush plate did not have to go in the vanity unit, it could have gone on the wall above the vanity unit where it would not be obscured and would be so much easier to use. I got voted down 2:1

Yes as above. most of out external walls were specified with 2 layers of OSB to give the required racking strength and the 2 internal load bearing walls were also specified to have OSB cladding so they are racking walls as well as supporting walls. It's to stop the wind blowing the building over.

I would throw 4 out. They are trying to remove your permitted development rights. If they are going to enforce approval of your plans, that must be at zero cost to you.

I think the flush plate is grossly over sized, but I also think the devious women folk chose it because you have to shut the lid just to reach the buttons. No it's not in use yet. No hot water tank yet (next big purchase) so only a cold bath or shower available at the moment. The panels were £104 plus VAT (which we will get back later) from Jewsons. They have a stack of samples so you can see the colours as they really are before ordering.

An internal wall can also be a racking wall. The clue is if it is specified to be clad in something like OSB. Our 2 internal load bearing walls are also racking walls.

Ours are the Grant Westfield Multi Panel boards, but the ones with just a square edge and you join them with an extruded aluminium profile. There was only one straight in line joint, so it seemed pointless buying the more expensive click together version with a hidden joint. We got them from Jewsons.

It's a job to see how how he could fall off the first lift of that. It has the correct toe boards and double hand rails. It's also a mystery how the roofers tiled the roof or has the top lift been removed post tiling? We had a near accident on our first build. That time a main contractor had been contracted to build the house shell and they organised everything. One of the roofers lost his footing and slid down the roof and barely saved himself from going over the scaffold. After the incident (I don't think it was reported to HSE as no actual injury) the main contractor shut the site until the scaffold company had been to check the scaffold and put back the handrails that had aparantly gone missing.

I am re visiting this as I am getting close to ordering. The two local glazing companies both claim to supply bespoke toughened glass and cite shower screens as an example so I will be speaking to both of them. These look good for the hinges, just 2 holes in the glass needed per hinge, no complicated cuts. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Di-Vapor-R-180-Degree-Wall-Mounted-Shower-Door-Glass-Hinge-Chrome-Plated-Pin/122969345040?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649 The questions are what thickness glass? 6mm I think would look and feel flimsy. Thinking of perhaps 8mm but how much would that weigh? And how many hinges? 3 or 4?

1200mm is NOT deep for excavations. I stripped all the top soil off and levelled the house build area. That put my "platform" already a metre below ground level in places. Into that I then dug the strip foundations up to a metre deep in places.

The room is 2.4 metres to the flat ceiling. The wet wall panels come as 1.2 by 2.4 metre sheets. Of course with the tiles laid on the floor, the height is a shade under 2.4 metres now so it bit had to be trimmed from each panel. Roof is 45 degree pitch, the "standard" for these parts, but to be honest I like 45 degrees, everything is just so much easier to mark out. That cardboard template is a shade under 1.2 metres wide (to allow for the corner profile to join 2 sheets) and the height at it's left hand side is 1.8 metres

At £100 per sheet, I did not trust my ability to measure, mark and cut out a sheet and hope to get it right. So I cut cardboard templates first to get it right, then used that to mark the final sheet, remembering to cut from behind.

I only really started just after Christmas and today I finished it. A little quicker that another famous forum member. Strictly speaking it's not completely finished as I have not found the right glass screen to go between the shower and the bath. More pictures on my blog at http://www.willowburn.net/ look for the entry "main bathroom complete"

It's just been marketed as a house with "B&B potential" something you see quite a lot. If it were to be sold as a business, the value would be a percentage of turnover so would value the business a lot less than the house. In effect you buy the house and get the business for free. The other trouble with marketing it as commercial, is possible tax implications, and the fact the only commercial agent we have had a conversation with wanted a huge up front fee to market it, unlike a conventional estate agent that only charges a fee upon completion of a sale.

We only got barely 1 MB when our new line was connected. We were getting about 2 at the old house. I do remember one of the many "engineers" muttering about there was only 1 "good" pair left in the cable coming down our road (and one pair that tested as dud) Anyway after a few weeks, I complained about the speed. A much younger and much more clued up engineer attended and he traced the line through the 4 joint boxes just to get to the top of our road. Every joint box he opened was full of water, and by cleaning up and re making all the connections, he had got the speed up to about 3.5MB by the time he left. Your dialing tone and internet for a few minutes was probably someone elses line. During the 3 week saga of getting our connection made, one day they said the connection to the exchange was made, then they were back next day because what they thought was a spare pair was someone elses leased line and they of course complained when it stopped working.

I thought I would just drag up this old thread. It has been let now for 1 year. The tenants are generally looking after the house (but not so much the garden) The rental figure we got was more than my previous estimate. The tenants are running it as a B&B still and by advertising a lot more than we did and using a number of booking websites getting good occupancy. They stated at the start they want to buy the house in a couple of years. I yet remain to be convinced that will actually happen. It proved challenging sorting out a rental agreement. I spoke to our solicitor about doing it as a commercial let, but he said no, that's far too complicated and comes with a whole host of other issues. So it is let on a short assured tenancy, with a standard contract except the no business and no sub letting clauses removed. From an insurance point of view it was already insured on a guest house policy and checking with the insurer, as far as they are concerned we have just put a manager in to run the place so no changes to the insurance needed. Anyway what prompted me to drag up this old thread is there is a house at the top of our road that is very similar sized. Ours is a little larger, 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms and double garage, theirs is 4 bedrooms 3 bathrooms and no garage. This was in fact the house our surveyor used as a comparison to arrive at a valuation for ours as it was the most recent sale in the street. On the basis of the differences he valued ours £15K more than this house. Well today, a for sale board appeared at that house. On looking it up, the asking price is just slightly higher than it's last sale price, and only £10K less than our valuation. Indeed our asking price at the end was less than they are asking. I will be watching what happens, and will be mighty peeved if someone comes and buys the damned thing.