ProDave

We are to some extent using the pocket idea. We want the new house less cluttered. So the under stairs space is the AV / data hub. All the electrical gadgets will be in there, hi fi system, Satellite tv boxes, router and network gear, printer etc. This will allow a tv on the wall with no set top boxes to accommodate, they will all be in the "pocket". Infra red wireless remote control extenders will ensure all the gadgets can be operated by their own remote controls in the main living rooms. One item that won't fit there, that also needs hiding is the filing cabinet. That will be hidden in the cupboard in the hallway that's essentially for coats and shoes. I have to be a bit creative, and by removing one dwang (noggin) and replacing it higher up, the filing cabinet can sit into the thickness of the wall as well, so another "pocket" inside the cupboard.

£1000 per square metre is also our target and so far we are on track to achieve that. But I am doing most of the work on the build.

Oh if I could have my time again. The Lab where I used to work was "modernising" I lost count of how many of the 8ft long, 3ft deep solid oak workbenches I took home for just about everybody I knew. They were free to employees on a firewood chit. I left one behind in our house in Oxfordshire so I am down to my last one, that will be moving from our old house up to the new once a soon as I get a door on the garage.

One of the first items on that list, underground drainage £10K says all I need to know. That is a work of fiction and guesswork. I installed all our drainage including a treatment plant (and I assume you have mains drainage so don't need that) for probably half that. I would not trust those figures. It reminds me of our previous house where we tried to employ an architect but they quoted a fee based on a percentage of the build cost then proceeded to estimate the build cost at a silly high figure (so of course that made their fee higher) We ended up not using an architect and building it for a little over half that cost estimate. A lot of your costs should be fixed? If I understand it from previous discussions, the site sells you a "golden brick" which is your foundations and mains connections. If that is so, forget estimating, you will have that costed. Now your foundations are costed your chosen frame company can give you a pretty good estimate of the costs. One cost I would avoid, is employing a quantity surveyor. Some people have already given some examples. We paid £8500 for our Rationel tripple glazed windows. You probably have more windows than us, but not 3 times as many? The price for electrical is absurd. My labour cost to wire a new house is typically £3k. Materials will cost a bit more perhaps but in any event £10K should see it, so again twice the cost is should be. There is a theme here. Take his quoted figures, divide by 2 and you are somewhere close.

I have ordered the one that @Onoff linked to above. The issue is it must fit the fixed part that is there, otherwise I have a very awkward crawl through a very small gap to reach the pipe fitting to change the inlet piece. (the top access I left for this cistern was not as generous as it really should have been)

Yes that looks to be the one. the Cistern originally came from BES but while they still list the cistern, they don't sell a spare fill valve. That one looks close enough to take a punt and buy one.

I need to replace this toilet cistern fill valve with an IDENTICAL one. It's from a Macdee concealed cistern. The only markings on the fill valve itself as a very poorly stamped name that I think might be Kiwa or similar It's leaking from a split in the plastic. I need to replace it with an identical one so it will screw onto the bit still attached to the cistern. It would be an extremely difficult job to replace that bit. This part has a male thread about 43mm diameter that screws onto the bit still attached to the cisterm.

Wow those costs seem high. I guess labour is the big cost? I know my house is smaller at about 150 square metres, but in total my insulation for floor, walls and roof cost under £3K. You will probably want more than me (even allowing for the larger size of house) as part of my insulation is the wood fibre outer layer. I would be very very surprised if your total insulation materials cost exceeded about £7K DIY labour is the biggest input you can have to keep costs down. I estimate I will have saved anything up to £50K by doing so much of the work myself. But the build is a LOT slower as a result.

Before I repainted my old 1930's house I used to own, I cleaned it all off with a pressure washer. That did a very very good job of removing all loose and flaking paint, as well as moss growth. The new paint stuck well to what remained and covered well. TIP: if doing this from a ladder, make sure you know the recoil force on the lance when you press the trigger, and hold on tight.

The pump in our old house packed up. It was some while before we actually noticed as the manifold pumps were doing a good job of circulating water from the boiler to the manifolds. It was mainly the hot water heat up that suffered as gravity flow was limited. So I would say no extra pump needed. What does @Nickfromwales say?

What about SWMBO? what is her tax situation? Could she "run" the business if she pays no tax? or could it be jointly run?

Tell everyone it was a deliberate contrasting feature.

Try calling it Birds Beak. That's what I hear joiner refer to it as. They are probably too dim to realise you are talking about the same thing.

And the figure for Scotland is in invisible ink.

There is a growing north south divide in the UK. In London and parts of the SE house prices have risen much, in places doubled since 2007. In the rest of the UK which is probably more than 50% of it, prices are at or below 2007 levels. But building materials and labour costs have not gone down, certainly material costs have gone up. I have mentioned my own example. If I continue as I am doing all the labour I think we will get our new build 3 bedroom house done for about £210K in total. It is only that low because I am doing so much of the work myself. I reckon if I had paid tradesmen to do everything, that cost would have easily been £250K if not a bit more. Now to put that figure into context. We tried for 2 years to sell our old 5 bedroom house. We only had one person who even came close to making an offer and he was mumbling about sub £250K for it which we would have rejected (it was valued at £300K and we would have accepted £280K) The point being, there was a real possibility, if we were desperate, of selling the old 5 bedroom house for less than the cost of building the 3 bedroom replacement. A situation that would have been harder to avoid had I not done so much of the work to keep the costs down. We still don't know what it will sell for. It's currently let to tenants who say they want to buy it in 2 years. I will believe that when / if it happens. If not it will go on the market again, but I see nothing to make me think the market will be any better in 2 years time than it is now, in fact plenty of things that make me think it will be worse. At least by that time I should know with more certainty what our final build cost is, and we will have had a couple of years rental income from the old house that may help to sweeten the bitter pill if it has to sell for less. The plasterer that rendered my house and has just plastered the upstairs is just in the process of buying a plot. I was talking to him about what he is building (I will be wiring it) and it turns out this is not his forever home, he hopes to build it and sell it at a profit. I have warned him that may be hard to achieve. I think he's in for a disapointment. I think mass builders can just about make a profit, because by building lots of small house on a densly packed estate they can build cheaper than a self builder can on an individual plot. Plus new house qualify for the help to buy scheme, something that massively skews the market in favour of new houses at the expense of limiting sales of used houses.

It sounds like you have what I call an "egshell" wall. Basically 2 sheets of plasterboard about 50mm apart, with a lattice of cardboard between them. the timber battens will be at the joint every 1200mm Your bathroom counter should be self supporting from the floor. If necessary fit additional feet or a more solid support for the base (assuming it is hidden by a plinth) so all the fixing to the wall does is stops someone pulling it over. If you can get one fixing into a timber upright I would have thought that was adequate.

I was told tile battens are given such a vivid coloured treatment so the BCO may determine from ground level that they are the correct treated battens.

I am sure we discussed this before but I can't find the thread. My neighbour has Rarionel windows and timber cladding. The cladding just turns round the reveal and comes to rest on the front face of the aluminium cladding. I did the same thing with my own, but mine are rendered. The render turns the corner and stops, with a stop bead against the front of the window. The important thing in both cases is nothing fills the gap between the edge of the alu classing and the window reveal. (i.e rendering without a stop bed would likely fill the gap with render) Mine are sealed to the reveal with compriband, but that is far enough back that it is between the wooden part of the rationel frame and the window reveal so again that is not bridging the gap between the wooden frame and the alu cladding.

I installed a pit. Only shallow at about 1 metre deep, so that when sitting (on a duck board) my eyes are about level with the floor. Makes simple things like an oil change a whole lot easier.

Mine's an old Landrover, but you knew that.

We planted a Laurel hedge at the previous house, thinking it would be more manageable than Leylandii. Well after 10 years, it has not reached 3 ft tall. As a hedge for privacy it is useless. It has only had a very minor trim to even it out, not because it is too big. It either does not like our soil or our climate up here, so I could not recommend it. It does tick the low maintenance box.

I will have to confirm with a tape measure, but I am 99.9999% certain the OSB we get here (made by Norboard next to Inverness airport) is 2400 by 1200 metric size. It certainly fits 600mm centre studs, and then when battened metric plasterboard fits perfectly. Reading between the lines, some of you are only able to buy 1220 by 2440 imperial OSB?

Interesting. Almost without exception every TF house I see (usually the ones I wire) are 600mm spacing, my own included. Though (don't ask me why) I have very awkward 450mm spaced rafters. I have built all my internal stud walls to 400 spacing. 400mm spaced JJI joists downstairs. 600mm spaced posi joists upstairs

Are you taping and filling, or plastering? Completely different answers depending what you are doing.

I'm in the "it looks just fine as it is" camp. If you fill it with anything it risks looking poor in the future. Grout may crack. Sealant may discolour or become dirty and grotty looking. If anyone asks, you have left a carefully engineered "shadow gap" instead.