ProDave

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.

Scotframe were the ones that refused to quote me, when I started talking of taking one of their standard offerings and adding extra insulation to it. Don't let a frame supplier bully you into a particular make of window. Contact ADW and get a quote for Rationel windows, you may, like some others here find they are the cheapest and almost the best of the quality triple glazed windows. Of the 6 quotes I had they were the cheapest, and only Internorm offered me a slightly better window but at twice the price.

Agree those U values can be improved. What type and thickness of insulation are they proposing? i.e what it the wall roof and floor make up? 4KW of solar panels can be had for £2K that's what I will be starting with and ground mounted as too many trees shading the roof. Triple glazed windows will be comfortably under 1, some of mine as as low as 0.8 From your plans you propose a biodisc treatment plant. I caution you abour using a treatment plant with moving mechanical parts down in the smelly stuff. Trust me you do not want to be the one repairing it WHEN it goes wrong. Instead consider one of the treatment plants that works with an air blower such as the Bio Pure, Conder, Vortex, Graff and probably many others. If you can't go for a pure oil boiler, have a look at the hybrid that Grant make, a combination of oil boiler and ASHP

Obvious thing, is the fan isolator turned on? Tenants are notorious for turning them off, then complaining about the condensation and mould. My rental properties had the fan isolator removed. That's a posh fan that probably runs 24/7 on trickle speed with a humidistat to tell it to boost. It should not really be your problem, just phone the landlord.

What sort of U values are the walls and roof coming in at? It sounds like the basic structure is barely good enough and the computer has spat out that by adding 0.5KW of solar PV you would scrape a pass. ASHP would be my choice, actually got my new house it IS my choice.

Pipes that pass through an un heated part of the house should be insulated. Also the big pipes between the inlet and outlet and the mvhr unit should be insulated even if in a warm space (as they will contain cold air) Some forms of insulation for this have a foil wrap, but not all (mine don't)

On a project like this, I would not go for outline (PIP) planning. I think you would be hit with lots of conditions you may not want. Instead fully detail what you want and go straight for full planning.