ProDave

Will building control allow a shared system for multiple properties? I thought they discouraged that? The people that make mine Conder do large systems http://www.premiertechaqua.co.uk/products/wastewater/conder-saf-sewage-treatment-plant.aspx# In fact quite a few different systems are available http://www.drainstore.com/sewage-treatment-plants/26-50-sewage-treatment-plant.html

Sadly (hindsight is a wonderful thing) whoever got PP and divided up the plots did a POOR job. They did not take into account the access issue properly. What should have been done is preserve the access, create "agreed" parking for use in association with the access, and then made access to both houses that did not conflict with that. i.e your garage would be in a different place, not taking access from the shared access, and your front garden should have been a bit smaller to allow parking at point A AND access to the other house. The best you can do now would be to find somewhere they CAN park other than "A" and agree that in writing with them. That will almost certainly mean making an agreed parking area in your front garden for them. That need not be too bad as you could use grass paviers for example that would give a hard parking area, but when not in use would look like grass.

We discussed this a while back and the consensus was none of them were any good as almost without exception they bock bad reviews. As an electrician all my work comes from recommendations form satisfied customers, and many tell me they just ask n the likes of Facebook etc for a recommendation and my name often comes up. So if you "do" social media, try asking there.

Porcelain tiles 600 by 300mm No room for error. They were end of line sold off cheap at Topps. No spare black ones and only 1 spare white one. Yes I know I must have been mad. It was daughters idea to use black tiles in the shower area. These tiles were chosen partly by their size meant an integer number of tiles filled the shower area. Cut with a wet diamond wheel tile cutter. Marked out by laying the tile in place and drawing a line from the corner of the waste, to the corner of the shower former. Drawings lines you can see on a black tile was another challenge. Oh and this is the first time I have tiled a wet room shower. The tiles used for the "skirting" were the same tiles but a different batch code so not an exact match though they looked pretty damned close to me. I predict this bathroom will be finished before @Onoff finished his.

Wet room floor for main bathroom finished. Some pictures: A bit more (not a lot more!!) on my blog at the usual address

Perhaps some LARGE notices, "Do NOT Park here" and "Please park HERE" might be all you need.

Standard scaffold tower wheels will probably fit the poles of Kwikstage. I know our builders used their own Cuplock scaffold and had wheels for that. These look cheap but I would want to ask the weight loading they can take https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-x-scaffolding-castor-wheels-60mm-or-47mm/253455861342?hash=item3b0325865e:g:dkYAAOSwLdBaBIxO These look a lot better for not much more money https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Alloy-8-x-2-Polyurethane-Castors-Scaffold-Wheels-Set-of-4-Casters-HQ/142278606743?hash=item2120773f97:g:40kAAOSw32lYouwZ

So this is Railtrack, or their appointed contractor accessing a railway line for maintenance work or similar. So of course they will be doing it at night when the trains are not running,. quite probably with a load of spotlights rigged up. If so hopefully this will be a relatively short lived thing. (unless this bit of track is being upgraded to form part of HS2 ) Have a POLITE word with the contractors and try to agree a place they can park that is not in the way of either house.

If you have the distrust then who is going to organise and pay for desludging? Where is the plant, in one of the gardens or elsewhere? Any scope for 2 smaller plants, one for each house? As it is a know constant load, can you approach the DNO for a separate supply on the model of a "landlord supply" that you often see in flats for the stairwell lighting. These are often unmetered presumably because it is a know predictable usage. That still leaves the distrust issue as who would pay the bill.

Reversing the stairs would open up a lot of possibilities but would create one of my pet hates, stairs going up from the living room. I have known too many houses (my first 1980's house) that had stairs up from the living room and it made that side of the room unusable in winter because of the constant stream of cold air coming down the stairs, and made the living room very hard to keep warm (in contrast the landing was always toasty warm because it had all the heat meant for the living room). But this was in a very poorly insulated, draughty 1980's house. It might not be so bad if the whole house is well insulted and reasonably draught free.

So you can enter via the gate, and drive STRAIGHT ON into the white bit? That is how I would arrange it, so you have easy and clear access to your own land. I might even go as far as fencing off the orange bit, effectively not using it, just leaving it as their access. Then as long as they don't block your access to the white bit I don't see a problem.

A plan of your plot and the access they are using might help make sense of it.

I would go half way house, not open plan but join the kitchen and corridor together so whole of front is kitchen and whole of rear is living room. Try and move the stairs forwards and WC under the stairs.

My only comment is that makes the living room window face north west, so will only get late evening sun. Is there anything stopping you putting windows in the south west facing gable end? I guess there must be as it would be so obvious if you could? Site layout might help make things clearer.

Which way is north? or more importantly which way is south?

That's why I asked the question about discharge to surface water. If it is surface discharge it will need replacing.

I assume your tank discharges to surface water, i.e. a stream or ditch? If the question is "who pays" for the electricity for a shared system, then it is a wholey predictable amount of usage (for my own treatment plant 2KWh per day) so you would feed it from one property and the other would be obliged to pay half that cost to the other. Same as you would share desludging cost.

No I didn't. As theunderfloorheatingstore.com gave free delivery there didn't seem to be much point.

I really struggled to find anyone to build what I wanted. In the end, a local architectural technician detailed it all and a local firm of builders made and erected the frame. I am dong all the rest myself.

I was going to ask the same. Have you made enough profit to make it worthwhile.? The results look fantastic.

Our previous house was built to "wind and watertight" on a fixed price by an Inverness builder. They generally did a good job. But being on a fixed price contract, as soon as you changed ANYTHING the "notice of variation" would land on the doormat in a day or 2 outlining the additional cost of that change. We tried to strike a similar deal this time, only to find they were completely disinterested. All they wanted to do was sell you one of their standard house designs, on one of their own plots, as a complete build ready to move into. They went bust 2 years later.

They were one of the companies we considered, but didn't proceed with.

Care to mention which BM is giving away free insulation?

Hi @Ralph What is your actual build budget? We are building a 3 bedroom detached house and expecting the the total cost to be about £220K We are only achieving that because land is cheaper here, and we are doing a LOT of the work ourselves. I am sure we will have saved at least £30K in labour costs by the time we have finished. The "problem" for us if we don't nail costs down in every way we can, is the house might end up costing more to build than it is worth. I suspect that may be an issue with you as well?

I could not find an off the peg frame company that would do what I wanted and was affordable (Beatie passive and Touchwood came close) so in the end it was all detailed by an architectural technician, and then built by a small local firm of builders. They built the frame in their workshop and bought it to site and erected it just like any other timber frame. The thing that makes my build different to standard, is I did not want a blockwork outer skin. That is just an expensive rain shield and adds almost nothing to the insulation. So mine is clad with 100mm thick wood fibre board that screws to the frame, and a thin coat render system applied to that.