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ProDave

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  1. ProDave
    My actual build cost for a bare shell is currently under £100K I am confident however it will go over £100K, there are a lot of big ticket items still do be bought and having to wait until we can afford them. To build it for absolute minimum, then it would have needed cheaper much less good windows and doors, no luxuries like mvhr just basic trickle vents on windows, no en-suite, just one bathroom with a very basic bathroom suite. A very basic cheap kitchen, no nice wooden floors just chipboard and cheap carpets everywhere, no UFH just ugly radiators, no attempt at being green and using an ASHP, just a cheap basic oil boiler. It would not end up as the house we want. There are a lot of costs associated with building a house these days, like detailed drawings, SAP reports, structural engineers reports, drainage reports. A mass builder will win here because one set of design costs gets spread over perhaps hundreds of identical houses. I still don't know why more people are not using the "portable house" model to avoid building control and a lot of these costs. you can build a single storey "portable" building up to 100 square metres without a building warrant, that is plenty big enough for a 2 bedroom bungalow.
  2. ProDave
    You might not mind if you were just living in a completed house, and if you ever sold it you know the replacement house would also be 30% lower. BUT if you were living in a house and trying to sell it, while at the same time part way through building the replacement, and a 30% drop in value of the old (5 bedroom) house would mean the sale value of that would no longer cover the costs of building the replacement 3 bedroom house, then you WOULD mind VERY MUCH.
  3. ProDave
    Did they say WHEN it was going up? I need to order some 6*2 and 4*2, sounds like I had better do it sooner rather than later.
  4. ProDave
    This still brings me back to my pet gripe. houses are NOT overpriced HERE. If you build a new bespoke house now, I think you would be really lucky to sell it for enough just to get your money back. That's if you CAN sell it. Yet again though they tell me house prices here has risen 4% in the last year . I DO NOT SEE THAT AT ALL. So please don't talk to me about house prices need to . Not here they don't.
  5. ProDave
    A lot of the new builds I see, I see money being "wasted" by inefficient layouts and a lot of wasted corridor space or over larger entrance halls etc. That was a "failing" in our current house. I always said the large entrance hall and galleried staircase was a waste of space. I was told it gives the house a "wow factor" Shame none of the few people that have viewed the house have been wowed by it. The new one is a lot more eficcient on floor space with the hall and landing being much more modest, and my rather quirky combining of the utility room with the downstairs toilet. Having just built a house with a vaulted warm roof and now see how something as simple as moving the insulation from the upstairs ceiling, to the roof line can so dramatically improve a building, I would not advocate deliberately making "cold" parts of the house. I am actually staggered how little I have spent on insulation for my whole house, so the savings would be quite small to make one bit a less well insulated space.
  6. ProDave
    "Build in a factory transport to site and erect" There is a local firm here who builds modular, portable homes to good standards of insulation. I have seen how they are built. Basically they are built exactly the same way as a stick built timber framed house. The only "benefit" of building in a factory is the weather does not bother you. I don't see a great saving there being possible. Then you have to add the transport and craneage cost to get them onto site. I will add at this point, what they build is mostly bespoke houses, so each one is of course individual. Now I could see big savings being made, if we were talking about hundreds, perhaps thousands of identical houses. Then I see scope for automation of at least part of the process Speaking as a self builder doing most of the work myself (now that the heavy work is done) materials cost is still a big issue. Even with zero labour cost, you can't get the price of a house down that much So to build a house for £50K including paying labour I see as nigh on impossible. Perhaps Crofter will confirm, but I think his materials cost will be in that region? so now it only becomes possible if you can build for free (hence large scale production of the same design automated)
  7. ProDave
    I didn't have to pay a fee and don't know anyone else that did. In my case the OR engineer showed me where the phone trunk cable was and gave me a coil of underground phone cable and basically left it to me go get the cable there (which was actually easy)
  8. ProDave
    Terry It's not necessarily the case that all mvhr pipework is "within the warm environment" I have recently wired a new house, where the mvhr unit, and a lot of the distribution. pipework is up in the cold, ventilated loft space. Without lagging that would be a condensation nightmare (it might still be so) If I could give just ONE recommendation on modern house design, it would be DO NOT have an old fashioned, ventilated cold roof space where you rely on insulation at ceiling level. Even if you are not doing "room in roof" it is SO much better to have a warm roof design where the insulation is at eaves level. SO much easier to detail to get an air tight house etc etc. This new house I just wired, the builder was so smug about how well insulated and sealed (he thought) the house is, but i still noticed if you remove a light switch on a windy day, you could feel the cold air coming out of the hole, no doubt leaking somehow from that cold loft space into the service void behind the plasterboard.
  9. ProDave

    Part 8

    ProDave commented on sussexlogs's blog entry in sussexlogs

    Not so much the boards, but the pile of blocks. I love the two "cranes" I won't mention the lack of toe boards or handrails (oops I just did) Nothing I didn't wouldn't do. It's all looking very good, and I agree a wonderful location.
  10. ProDave

    Stairs...

    ProDave replied to Bitpipe's topic in General Joinery

    Lets keep this thread on topic about stairs and related joinery please and not veer off into a political discussion.
  11. ProDave
    On our previous build, I sold the static 'van on Gumtree. A private seller is at a disadvantage, because of transport. Up here there are only 2 people capable of moving them, and they are the two local caravan dealers. One flatly refuses to move vans not sold by them. In fact when I sold ours, the buyer had to get someone from much further away to move it, as the local guys would not play ball. On the other hand, buy one from (or sell one to) a dealer and they transport it for free. So find out what the local dealers will offer you and make that your starting price on ebay, or ask a bit more on gumtree. There are two dealers near here that both have a yard full of them, anything from quite decent ones recently off a holiday park, to old wrecks that they sell for £500 as site offices or storage. The one we have on our new build was actually offered for sale ON a site. I wanted it because it was such an unusual layout (centre lounge, bedroom at each end) and they agreed to take it off the site and deliver it to us.
  12. ProDave
    I did the wiring for a kitchen designed by Howdens recently. When put together as designed, a drawer unit in the corner, the drawers would only open half way, because the handle on the oven stuck out too far.
  13. ProDave
    And YOU will still be blamed when it does not all fit.
  14. ProDave
    And don't bring the pipe out of the wall BEHIND the FF. Most need every mm of depth available. Bring the pipe out e,g under an adjacent unit where you can access it by removing a kick board, to allow the entire depth to be used for the FF.
  15. ProDave
    What type of insulation do you have? This is the prediction for my house which has a high decriment delay type of insulation u-wert-berechnung (10).pdf It shows a time lag of 13 hours, which oddly means peak internal temperature will be in the middle of the night, when it's coldest outside. Yours seems to turn the corner a lot quicker as it starts to warm up outside. I presume that's more to do with solar gain?
  16. ProDave
    4" is a lot easier.
  17. ProDave
    This looks very similar except it does not have the on / off / timed switch http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GRASSLIN-ELECTRO-MECHANICAL-24-HR-TIME-SWITCH-02-76-0022-1-FM-1-QRTU-/322168095923?hash=item4b02b704b3:g:h78AAOSwnipWUYef
  18. ProDave
    Then it's almost certainly generic, but you will need to know if it has switched L output, or a volt free contact.
  19. ProDave
    Then for a single domestic dwelling, 100mm is fine.
  20. ProDave
    So on units like the Misubishi with no condensate drain, does is just pool in the bottom of the unit? did you have to put a slight fall on all the ducts to lead to the mvhr unit and hence the drain? I was intending to make the runs from the mvhr to the inlet and outlet vent run downhill, i.e any condensation would run out of the vents.
  21. ProDave
    Is it connecting to a main sewer or a treatment plant?
  22. ProDave
    That's not an unusual requirement. In some ways mine is the same, except my SE specified two layers of OSB on the inside of the frame to give sufficient racking strength. But being the "belt & Braces" sort I am, I also have a lot of 6 by 1 planks left over that were temporary bracing. I am going to use these to put diagonal bracing straps on the inside over the top of the OSB and these will end up inside the service void.
  23. ProDave
    I can only guess, this is to locate any water pipes before your piling rig finds them first? Me, I would carry on, and IF you get a fountain, at least you TRIED to follow the procedure. Keep a record of the date and time of your futile attempts to do it properly. Or get the dowsing rods out.
  24. ProDave
    That's 2018 sorted then.
  25. ProDave
    Surely condensation will only be an issue if it has a cooling function, OR if you have duct runs in a cold unheated loft space?
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