ProDave

Another point often made is who is to blame iof the foundations don't match the timber frame? You get into an argument as to who got it wrong. I solved that by contracting the same building firm to build the foundations and supply and erect the timber frame, so if something did not fit it would be squarely (excuse the pun) their fault. As it happened the blocklayers measured and re measured to ensure they got it the right size, square and level. Then the joiners came and measured before making the frame just to be really sure. And it all fitted very well.

That's about 260 "points" (some guesswork as the number of kitchen points not specified) So at my labour rate of £25 per hour that would be £6625 labour. Rates in the south will be more than £25 per hour. So is there £6000 worth of parts there? quite likely if you have gone for all stainless steel. So in summary nothing there looks particularly alarming. I do agree that's a lot of lights. I hoe you have low energy or LED lamps in them.

So what rate has he quoted per socket? Like I tried to say, I estimate on that, but it's not a hard and fast rule, and by charging by the hour the reality is an extra socket costs very little if you are advised about it in time. The ones I hate are big building firms who include a set minimum number of sockets and then charge you £100 extra if you want any more. As long as you decide how many and where you want them at first fix stage it does not cost anything like £100 extra per point.

I am about to have a break from my new build. I have spent the last 12 months since the basic frame was up, working on my own to get it fully wind and water tight. Last winter came WAY to soon, the building and me were not ready for it. Only now are things in a state where I don't mind winter arriving. I'm having a break now from the new build, as our existing house has been neglected. the garden is a jungle all the windows and other woodwork need sanding and re varnishing, and there are lots of minor repairs like two rusted drain covers to be replaced, gutters to clean and unblock etc. So that's the priority now, get the existing house back in shape before I do much more on the new build.

your link to your blog does not work. It is asking me to sign in with "one account, All of Google." and I refuse to sign my life away to google. Having searched for your blog and found it, THIS link will take you there http://auchlossen.blogspot.co.uk/

I estimate (never quote) on the basis of 1 hour labour per "point" where a point is a socket, light switch, light fitting etc. I have not gone over an hour per point yet and usually it's under. Just to give an example I am wiring a house at the moment that has about 165 points, and it has taken 50 hours to first fix it so far. So if you work on an hour per point at whatever the hourly rate for labour is where you are, you won't be far wrong on the labour element of the job. Materials can vary a lot more depending on what you want (i.e you can spend anything between £1 and £10 on a humble 13A socket) As I said I avoid quotes. If I was forced to quote, I would have to price it higher to allow for unforeseen difficulties, and then every time the customer changed their mind, added another socket or light fitting I would have to formally vary the quote. Instead I am open and honest about my hourly rate and give an estimate of the length of the job. If the customer wants to change things (they always do) then it's just an informal chat how much it is likely to cost. Some people refuse estimates and an hourly rate, they think the tradesman will sit on his but while charging you the hourly rate. That comes down to trust and the reputation of the tradesman whether you think he will earn his hours paid, or skive just to drag the job out.

Yes that makes sense now. Look forward to seeing it take shape.

Okay, I have to ask. What makes that a "retaining wall? I would have expected at least block on flat, if not two layers filled with rebar and concrete. you appear to just have a single skin wall. I am sure there is more to it, it just doesn't make sense - yet.

No mortgage on the house. It's already insured on a guest house insurance policy, it has to be as it's been trading as a B&B for 12 years. I am pretty sure there will be no CGT liability. We only operate as a 2 room B&B, which is a bit of a loophole / exemption in the law. You don't need planning permission to let 2 rooms for B&B and are exempt from a lot of the red tape, e.g you don't need a commercial kitchen, you don't need fire doors on every room or a full fire alarm system etc.

Who was the Scottish company that would not deliver south of the border?

My understanding is while you live in the property, it is exempt from capital gain tax as your main residence. If I move out and rent it, and then later sell it, there would ge a capital gain liability from the value at the time you move out, to the value at the time you actually sell it. In the present market, I am not anticipating any such capital gain.

A lot of PIR sensors have a "time on" delay so it will only activate for say 6 hours after dusk. I feel certain you should be able to find the same in a light sensor.

The person wanting to buy it currently runs an on line marketing business which she is trying to grow. She also wants to run the B&B. We have never run the B&B as anything more than a hobby so it's never been particularly widely advertised and occupancy has been quite low, but that suited us for an easy business that helped earn the not very much we need to live on. She has been doing a trial run for 2 months now, living in, running the B&B and marketing it more aggressively and the results are already showing with much increased occupancy. We looked at selling the B&B as a business but there are several pitfalls there compared to just selling the house. One was the only agents interested in marketing it as a business wanted a hefty up front fee to engage them and much higher sale fees than a normal agent, then there is the possibility of capital gains tax if sold as a business asset. This is why you will see many houses clearly trading as a B&B advertised with a normal agent, and advertised as having "B&B potential" (nudge nudge wink wink) All I want from the house in total is what it's currently marketed for, which is presently 5% under the professional surveyors valuation. If in the intervening few years the buyer turns the B&B into a fantastic business and by some miracle property prices here rise, then that will be her gain and not my loss, I will still be happy to accept the same. If we do go ahead with this, we will take the property off the market and tell the agent it has gone to rental. There would not then be others looking at it to buy it. It's still in the early days of exploring this and it's unlikely we would move out and start formally renting it before the spring. Yes I think I will have to take the tax on the chin. As we are currently non tax payers, some of the rent would just use up the last bit of our tax allowances so it would not be taxed on the full rental income, just a bit of it. We are not planning to do B&B from the new house. That is our retirement house, and part of the reason is downsizing. We felt if we stayed where we are and just stopped doing the B&B then the house would be too big. So the new owner would be able to contine the B&B without any competition from us.

My thinking is as currently non tax payers, if we accepted £10K rent in a year, and that resulted in us paying £1K tax (purely guessed figures) then as far as I am concerned she will have only "paid" £9K towards the house.

Here is an interesting conundrum. As many of you know we are trying to sell our old house, without a great deal of luck We have someone interested but not in buying it just yet, but eventually. What this person has in mind, is renting the property for a few years, and in that time building up the B&B business with a view to buying it in 4 or 5 years time. But here is the rub, any rent they have paid, would then reduce the eventual purchase price. So say (arbitrary figures to make the maths simple) she pays £1000 per month rent, and buys the house in 5 years time, she would expect to pay £48K less than the valuation price because she would already have paid £48K in rent. Now in principle, I am fine with that arrangement. The house would not be sold until a proper legal offer was on the table when the time came, and if it all fell apart, then at least we have had rental income so won't have lost out, and the rental income should help us move the new house forwards. But here is the complicated bit. TAX. If we just sell the house, it is (and has been for 13 years) our family home so there is no tax to pay on the sale. At the moment we are both low earners and with todays high tax thresholds, neither of us pay any income tax. But if we accepted rent for the house that would push both of us into paying some tax on the rental income. So if we just informally treated rent payed as advance purchase and then accepted a lower sale price, we will in effect have paid tax on part of the sale price. That it ethically wrong. Is there any legal way to set up such a rent to buy agreement such that the monies paid count as being towards the eventual sale of the property and are therefore exempt from tax? Also bear in mind this is in Scotland so we are talking about the Scottish legal system here.

Re mvhr and operating at the lower levels acceptable for humans. The flow rates are dictated by building regs based on occupancy and size. Our new house, with 3 bedroms, is deemed by building control to accommodate 5 people. The reality is there will be 3 of us living there. So we will have a house with an air supply capable of supporting 5, with only 3 of us using it. I think that will do. I suspect very few self built detached houses come anywhere close to their maximum occupancy. Our present 5 bedroom house is sized for 8 people but rarely has more than 7 (when both b&b rooms are occupied) and very often just the 3 of us. Where this may be an issue is at the other end of the spectrum ins small 3 bed terrace houses in town where you will much more likely find all rooms filled to (and beyond) capacity.

To summarise (quick version) SEPA in Scotland start from a presumption against discharge to a watercourse. They initially refused me. I thought filter mound would work for me, but building regs changed and it would no longer fit the plot. After a couple of alternatives were rejected SEPA finally granted permission to discharge to the burn on the basis all other alternatives had been ruled out and it was the only option available. Now the silly thing in all this is they still demanded a "partial soakaway" i.e allocate that small area that building regs allow to a soakaway and anything that is is not dealt with by the small soakaway will go to the burn. But building regs demand the soakaway must remain 10 metres from the burn. But anything that comes out the other end will go into the burn. Would it not have made more sense therefore to say the soakaway could encompass the land right up to the edge of the burn and therefore more of it might go to soakaway and less to the burn?

The 50M refers to a water course used as a drinking water supply. Otherwise a soakaway has to only be 10 metres from a watercourse. It is a lot harder to get permission in Scotland from SEPA to discharge to a watercourse than it is to get the same permission from the EA in England.

A septic tank and a treatment plant are pretty much the same size. Both have to be used with an infiltration field or something similar to dispose of the liquid effluent. Because the effluent from a treatment plant is a LOT cleaner, it only requires a smaller infiltration field. I would not install a septic tank now (indeed in my new house I have a treatment plant) I was just giving the septic tank as an example as that's what we have in the present house. The self contained thing you are thinking of is a cess pit, but they are not allowed now and need very frequent emptying. Sometimes you can get permission to have an infiltration field in adjoining land, our present house has that under the field at the back of us, and if you have a watercourse you might get permission to discharge into that.

I presume you have to partly close the risers? I am sure the regs here are no gap that a 100mm diameter sphere can pass through.

^^ and you wonder why I am not sorry to no longer be a landlord. I had one tenant who complained of water running down the walls. the fans were off, the heating was off, so the place was cold, the windows and vents were all shut, and every room had wet washing hanging up everywhere. thankfully that one didn't stay long, and never had a problem like that again.

Re OFF switches, as a former landlord, I realised very early on that you had to physically remove and bypass any fan isolator switched so it was not possible to turn the bathroom fan off. Otherwise it was normal for a tenant to turn the fan off because it was too noisy and ran on for too long after using the bathroom. Then they would complain about the mould and expect the landlord to "fix it"

Up here in Scotland, water is still charged as a percentage of your council tax, I pay a little under £300 per year for water. It is not metered. We would pay a similar amount for mains sewage if it was available. Present house has a septic tank, and we get it de sludged every 2 or 3 years at a cost of £187 this year, so in theory that's cheaper than a mains connection but probably similar when you factor in paying for the capital cost of the system.

Excellent well worded response there Jamie. P.S on the subject of IQ, it is a fact that by definition, just about half the population are of below average intelligence.

July 2013 Douglas (Doug) came into my life. We hadn't even quite completed on the purchase of the plot then. So in the early days he sat on my drive waiting. Time for me to fettle him a bit, service his engine so he was ready for action. It wasn't long before we started working as a team. Sitting in his big comfy arm chair, pulling his levers, and his rams responding to my commands. We had some good times together. Clearing all the scrub from the plot and grubbing out some tree roots. First real test was preparing a pad for the static 'van. Then preparing the proper site entrance. Then the real fun started. Getting services on site, and digging the foundations, that was the biggest single job, shifting over 200 tons of soil in the process. Next was all the drainage, including putting the treatment plant in the ground. That had him reaching at almost full stretch down into a big hole in the ground. Then all the rainwater drainage. The last job was leveling the site and basic landscaping, Spreading all those heaps of soil about to make a flat and level(ish) garden. Then the work was done. There's nothing more to do. Our time together is finished. Time for Doug to move on to new challenges in a new location for a new owner. Today was the day he departed and I can honestly say not without a bit of sadness. I sat in that seat playing with those levers for a total of 164 hours in the time we were together. Here he is about to depart for adventures new. I had no trouble finding a buyer. I already had an interested party lined up, the man that bought some of my scaffold a few weeks ago said he might be interested. You may also recall I recently discovered a structural defect that needed some welding. I faced the choice of find someone to fix the fault, or be totally open an honest and see if the new owner would buy Doug knowing the fault and what needs doing to fix it, at a reduced price of course. And that is what happened, the new owner has bought Doug knowing he needs a bit more TLC before he is ready to embark on his next adventure, helping a self builder on a croft about 15 miles away realise his dreams. And to anyone reading, buying my own machine for this build was absolutely the right choice for me. It has been so handy to have the machine there for whenever I needed it, not to mention the cost saving compared to hiring a machine.