ProDave

Yes. Instead, make a free standing base say of 6 by 2 timbers that just sits on the slab, and fix the SIPS panels to that, making a rigid self contained building that is demonstrably portable by picking the whole thing up as one lump. You can insulate between the joists of that base so it is instantly better than just sitting on a cold uninsulated concrete slab as your floor.

In England and Wales, the electrics will be notifiable under Part P. Just use an electrician signed up with one of the self certification schemes and they will notify it for you. No need to contact building control. I would have thought a simple foundation slav is all you need with this building sitting (not fixed) on top of that.

Our stairs also came from Stairbox. They did get 2 of the newel posts wrong so they re made them. Of the replacements only one was correct, so they re made one of them a second time before it was finally all correct. But they never quibbled and sent the replacements promptly.

This is Highland Council's definition of a "caravan" https://www.highland.gov.uk/downloads/file/1346/bst_018_caravans_and_mobile_homes Note that in England and Wales a "caravan" can be larger than we are allowed in Scotland because at some pint the Caravans act was updated there, but not in Scotland. As long as the building is capable of being moved in 1 or 2 pieces it can be classed as a "caravan" it does not have to be on wheels. @Crofter is building his holiday home under this ruling and the Highland Council confirmed that being able to be picked up by a crane and put onto a low loader is sufficient to make it qualify as a "caravan" as far as BC are concerned. The only practical difference in your case would be make the frame it sits on strong enough that it won't disintegrate if you put a couple of scaffold tubes under it an picked it up with a crane. It would typically sit on pads or on a slab. There was a Grand Designs house a few years ago that built a 100 square metre portable house building right to the limits of the definition of a caravan. If you have a drainage connection, that will be subject to building control but nothing else will be.

Exactly what size of office are you building? Why are building control even involved? You can build a building up to about 100 square metres and my making it "portable" it becomes exempt from building regulations (it is treated for BC as a "caravan" and does not need to be on wheels for that) I have wired many such portable buildings, real sturdy well insulated houses but built with a few rules in mind that makes them "portable" even though they are intended as a permanent home. I certainly would not be involving building control for a garden office.

The plant has to be 10 metres from a watercourse (In Scotland) Though a neighbour has installed one a lot closer, waiting to see if BC sign it off or not.

Yes you have to peel just enough of the backing to stick the start of the strip down, then peel the backing as you smooth it out. I've started the tiling today, just done the tricky bit the actual shower former which went okay.

You can pay a LOT for a heat pump. My plumber friend paid in the order of £10K to have a system installed. He was swayed by the rhi payment and the need for installation by an MCS company to claim that. Given that he is a plumber I am willing to bet he would have done better to just buy one and install it and forget the rhi. I get the feeling the only people that actually benefit from that scheme are the installers.....

I bought mine from ebay. I started looking long before I really needed it, but was mindful of needing to find one reasonably close so transport cost was not too high. One came up on auction on ebay about 50 mles away. I was going out that day, so I put in a cheeky bid of £2500 and went out. When I got home I found I had won it. It cost just under £300 to get it transported to my site. I then spent about £100 servicing the engine. There was no service history and I didn't want the timing belt snapping and trashing the engine etc. When I had finished I sold it on Gumtree and got back my £2500. Buying an old machine like this is obviously a gamble and things could break that render it as an unrepairable heap of scrap, but it did what I wanted, even if it was old and basic.

I chose air source. I just about had enough room for ground loops, and had my own digger at the time so installation costs would have just been time and some diesel, but then I found the pipe for the gtound loops and the antifreeze to go in them would have cost way more than the actual GSHP. Then there is the cost of changing (and disposing of the old) antifreeze every 10 years. So I decided for the much cheaper and easier install I would go air source. It is arguably slightly less eficcient, but that is more than offset by the simplicity and lower cost.

Who's bathroom furniture did you use? and who's toilet and basin?

The devil will be in the detail of the exact wording of the right of access. Is there no other access possible?

I think this thread highlights the advantages of buying your own plant. I bought my own digger, I bought a very old very cheap 3 ton steel tracked machine for £2500 and after 2 years use sold it for £2500 I would call that a bargain. It was SO handy just having it there for even a small job. I also bought a whacker plate for about £150, not as good as a roller, but damned handy. I still have that. This would be a perfect first job to get used to your new toy piece of specialist machinery.

I installed mine myself with the help of SWMBO It was only a couple of hours to dig the hole (I had my own digger at the time) and put the tank in the hole. We then spent the rest of that day and all the next day mixing barrowing and pouring concrete. Another day in the digger saw the rest of the drains laid. We are discharging to a burn so no leach field. In our last house we hired a digger and driver and he did the whole lot in 3 days including an 85 square metre leach field.

There's also honour among hill walkers. You can drop your overnight gear in the bothy on the way up the hill and just take your day pack to the top, in the near certainty all your gear will still be there when you get back.

Thanks I will price up their offering when I do the UFH but it was the very cheap, if very limited range bathroom stuff that caught my eye. P.S I assume you are another radio ham?

A catalogue dropped through my door for http://www.theunderfloorheatingstore.com/ They appear to be part of the Travis perkins group. Anyone used them? They also do bit of bathroom and wet room stuff. This cheap back to wall toilet has got my interest http://www.theunderfloorheatingstore.com/bathrooms/basins-toilets/essential-bathroom-back-to-wall-toilet P.S according to the catalogue if you enter the code TRADE20 at checkout you get a cheaper price and that BTW toilet goes down to £51.37

A Bothie in what I believe to be it's true sense is a mountain hut or shelter, free for anyone to use and usually in remote places https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/ I have visited many, though never stayed overnight in one.

And as I said, our house name in now on the council's list but they won't pass it to Royal Mail unless I pay the ransom.

It all seems a bit petty to me. So the issue was not that they used the garage for accommodation, but that they created a new access to a road without permission. The neighbour appears to have a similar entrance to that road, so they probably thought it was safe. Could they not have taken the access to their front garden parking area from the side road that feeds the garage? I suspect the additional front parking and garage being converted are separate issues and they would probably have created the front parking even if they had not converted the garage. It seems totally ludicrous that a house of that size was built in the first place with just a garage space and space to park 1 car in front of the garage. I personally would never buy a house like that because of the totally inadequate parking arrangements. I suspect there is more of a back story to this that we don't know.

Google "Slough" and "beds in sheds"

Check the condition of the battens (boards) They need to be sound and free of rot. When I bought mine, I stored it for well over a year before I was ready to use it, just with the boards stacked on top of each other. Nearly half were rotten with some kind of white fungus when I came to use them. I luckily managed to find some more to buy locally. So check their condition, and if storing them, stack them upright with gaps between them so air can circulate. Better still of you can find any at a sensible price, get steelstage "boards" I used a hired 7.5t flatbed lorry to transport mine.

I'll just mention we had a bath tap fail and turn itself on full flow in the middle of the night. How would that have ended if the plug was in, there was no overflow, and you were not there?

I renewed mine last May abut £450 for the year, I will no doubt be buying another year in May. Do England do the equivalent of a "certificate of temporary habitation"? If so that will enable you to move to standard buildings and content insurance.

I'm in the process or rewiring an old croft house. Now it is stripped bare, it has revealed that originally the bedroom walls were only paneled on one side of the framing. On the inside it was wallpapered, with the paper going over the wall framing.