ProDave

Well TK stairs are at least £100 more than stair box for me, and I can't get their on line design tool not to put a stair on our 180 degree half landing.

@Onoff will make you one. You should have it by next year.

I still think if he had started the shouty match with me he would have been off the site. Thankfully I have never had that with anyone on our site. I did have a "heated discussion" with the joiner on a house I wired last year. That was very unpleasant. I nearly walked off the job as I found it almost impossible to work with him, it was only the fact I personally new the owner of the house that I stuck it out and carried on, trying to find out what days the joiner would not be there so I could work without having to interact with him.

It sounds like you do NOT want the extra subscription channels that a pay tv package gives you. So remove that from your list and install a satellite dish and use Freesat. Then concentrate on the best phone / internet service for your needs and don't forget to look at mobile offerings as well as wired offerings. We only get slow BB and only via a BT line. But in the near future the community council is launching a community broadband offering delivered to each home by wifi. Also EE are planning a 4g mast very close to us. So I will be looking at both those as a possible way to dump the landline.

LED battery powered light?

Can't help other than to say I hate "built in" microwaves because they are all just a bodge fitting of a free standing MW and a surround trim. Why does nobody make a proper built in microwave, built to standard built in oven dimensions to be built in properly?

A lot of phones, including I think most Android phones will give you a reading of the signal strength if you drill down deep enough in the settings.

We had a light tube (I believe the brand was Solar Tube) in our last house. It worked very well and never had any condensation issues. No doubt it leaked some heat, and was probably not that good for air tightness. The bit in the ceiling was very much like a low profile flush light fitting with diffused plastic, and confused a lot of B&B guests who said they could not find the light switch to "turn the light off"

How much have you looked at the plot? Do you know its history? For our first build, we looked at a plot like that, with a higher level close to the road, then dropping off to a lower level, and the PP said the house must be built on the upper level (lower level was a flood plain). But when looking around the site, it became very apparent that a lot of soil had been tipped over the edge of the slope, to try and make the upper building level look much larger than it was. That loose soil would have been no good to build from.

No issues with the slab being exposed. I see it a lot here on small developments (probably building the slab so the development is "started" to lock in the PP then leave building the actual house until some time later) Another point though, as you are having one contractor do the slab and another build and erect the frame. Get the frame contractor to come and measure the site, check it for level and squareness, then build the frame to the actual on site measurements, NOT the measurements on a drawing.

It may be obvious but start at the ceilings and work down. As above we put up a temporary platform over the stair well and moved it lower as we worked down. This is where every self builder needs his own scaffold of a scaffold platform. You also need a pair of dead men, or a plasterboard hoist to make life easier (we are just using the dead men)

@Crofter is your man to advise where to get what on Skye

I am surprised you think the wood fibre is the problem. Our last house had poor reception inside which I have no doubt was the result of the foil backed plasterboard. but our new house the signal inside is no worse than outside (still not good, but it works) I might still install a repeater to boost it though.

We were the same. Our subsoil is "sandy clay" and was declared okay for standard strip foundations but with a strong concrete mix with reinforcing mesh. I pretty much knew that as we had previously built 100 metres away. How far has the concrete lorry got to come? the hourly rate might start to push the price up.

I see the good, the bad, and the ugly in my line of work (electrician) but I can honestly say I have not seen that bad. It pains me to see poor workmanship, the usual being the boarders burst a board because it is too big to fit and shrug their shoulders and say "the taper will fix that" Best of luck getting it resolved.

Sorry but that is as rough as can be. I would be marching them off the job if they are not going to re do the rubbish bits. If they just skim that, round the sockets the plaster spanning mid air will just break off when the sparky screws a socket home.

Very true. In fact my own (metal) CU is mounted on the actual inner wall, so when the service void is boxed in, the plasterboard will in effect flush mount the CU leaving just the front showing. I will be sealing any holes with intumescent sealant.

In effect you re making your own bit of trunking, so your electrician just designs it for trunking.

A void in a wall is just like any other wall, cables must run in a safe zone. A void in a ceiling is just like any other ceiling, the whole ceiling is a safe zone. and a sloping ceiling is still a ceiling.

A sloping ceiling, is still a ceiling, so cables can run anywhere.

Service void is the neatest way unless headroom is tight (I avoided a service void in the en-suite to gain every mm of available headroom) If they must go on the surface, trunking is much preferable. Apart from anything else, clipping to plasterboard rarely gives a secure fixing, the nails of most clips are simply too short. Think how it will transition from the sloping ceiling to the upright wall, I assume that has a service void?

It's a typical socialist "tax the rich" knee jerk. You can debate it all you like, but if ever implemented, the devil will be in the detail, and that will determine if it's fair, or punative. Sice we won't know the detail until it is (if ever) actually implemented we won't know. I am afraid of "tax changes" because they always seem to leave me worse off. When I bought my first house I paid "rates" there was no single occupancy discounts, you got a bill and paid it. So when the poll tax was being introduced, it seemed a good principle that everyone would pay so the amount I should pay would be less. WRONG my poll tax cost me more than the rates did, if there had been multiple people in my house at the time they would ave been raking it in. Then when the poll tax was abolished and replaced with council tax, I thought my bill might go back down. WRONG again. My council tax, even with single occupancy discount was more than I paid for my poll tax. So forgive me for being nervous of ANY tax change relating to property as I pretty well know it will cost me more.

On the subject of pencils. There was a time when the correct place to keep a pencil was behind ones ear. Sadly the onset of middle age, and the requirement to wear spectacles means the ear no longer works as a pencil storage location.

Without seeing the plot layout I can't comment but my initial thought would be the garage om the east side of the house, or offset so at least some more of the south wall of the house gets some sun. Our last house was like that, best view to north but wanted the sun, so made the main living space double aspect with windows to north and south. That is what you want to be aiming for. A compromise might be windows to north and west so at least it gets afternoon sun. Just combining the lounge and the downstairs bedroom / study would achieve a living room that gets the view and afternoon sun (bigger window to the south?) and would adding the extra upstairs bedroom mean you could dispense with a downstairs bedroom?

Yes. you would not believe the number of pencils I have lost carefully distributed around the house for use later. I suffer just as much as anyone else with forgetting where I put a tool. Often I will walk off to get something, not realising something is already in my hand, and that something gets put down where I collect the item I have gone for, but of course I forget that. What I find does help is to actually say to yourself (out loud if needed) "I am putting the tape measure on the window cill" etc. Then you have a slightly better chance of remembering where it is.