ProDave

How much did that cost?

Let me give you some examples of what I mean by "out of touch" My first house was a horrible little 1 bedroom "starter home". Fair enough I bought it because it was all I could afford, literally the cheapest house on the market in the county at the time. Fair enough it served it's purpose. But even that I had to choose carefully. they took 1 design and replicated it across the whole development. That meant some houses had a living room facing north. Absolute madness. Parking for that development was a communal car park at the end of the row of houses. I hated that for security and difficulty if you want to work on your car. So next house I wanted better. But all I could find with new houses was more of the same, just slightly bigger houses. It would have been so easy to do away with the communal parking, make each plot just a little bigger and give each plot it's on site parking space and still have the same number of houses but they just didn't so that. And then throw into the mix you want a garage, well if you do find one it would be tiny, and the only other parking would be in front of the garage. Don't even get me started on wanting to park a caravan, and a trailer....... I solved that issue by buying a 1930's semi on a corner plot with it's own drive and plenty of space to park whatever I wanted, space for a decent sized garage and space to in fact extend the house and double it's size, all for the same money of a mass builders shoe box site. I guess we have been lucky with our self build plots that they have both been very wide, though not particularly deep plots so have the flexibility for all that we want.

Can you post a plot layout with adjacent bits of land and what they are used for? Even something hand drawn would give an idea. Does the vendor of the plot own any other land, particularly any adjoining land, if so what is the present use of that adjoining land. It is building control you need to be speaking to. See if you can arrange an on site meeting with them to discuss options. you say an on site drainage system was refused due to ground conditions. Has a proper percolation test been done, if so post it's findings. I am surprised planning have refused a particular drainage scheme, it's usually the other way around that planning will pass something and you later find building control refuse it. This happened to me and for an anxious few weeks had no drainage solution (= no house) until a solution was found that building control agreed to. that's why it's building control you need to be talking to now. If building control agree to it, then when you submit your final plans you just describe the drainage scheme and make it clear building control have greed to it. All the schemed you have described would work, but that does not mean they would be allowed. I did one scheme where they pumped raw sewage up to a public drain at a higher level, and trust me, it's bad news if the pump ever fails, and a very unpleasant job to replace it. If you want to proceed without risk at the moment, make an offer to buy subject to obtaining full planning permission for the house you want AND building control approval to build it.

I agree, and for some time I have always thought major house builders are out of touch with what most people want (either that or what I want is so different to the average buyer?) That is one reason why I self built the last house and am self building the new one as so much of what I see the mass house builders churn out just does not appeal to me. Up here most houses are at least partly room in roof, so part of your sloping roof has to be insulated as a warm roof so to me it just seems daft to make the little triangle at the top a cold roof and not just make the whole thing a warm roof, but that little triangle of cold roof is what most builders still do.

Interesting topic My previous 1930's 9" solid brick house had condensation issues on the cold walls, most notably in a built in wardrobe on an outside wall, only "solved" by leaving the wardrobe door permanently open in the winter so it didn't get so cold in there (sliding doors can be left open without getting in the way) but I never had issues in the loft. Present house is 2003 built timber frame to standard (at the time) methods, 6" insulated frame, 300mm loft insulation. I have never seen any condensation or other issues in the loft. which is perhaps surprising as I know the loft hatch is not well sealed. In fact this house is a very dry house in all respects, no condensation problems anywhere not even on windows or mirrors in bathrooms. My new house will have even more insulation, and the thing missing from the present one, attention to detail to get the air tightness better and mvhr. The new house is also built with a warm roof so any loft space will be warm and inside the sealed envelope of the house. Perhaps warm roofs are the answer, and from my own experience I can't see them as being vastly more expensive. Yes it will use more insulation as you have to insulate a larger area, but it makes air tightness detail a LOT easier. In fact having embarked on this warm roof detail, I now find myself when looking at the cold rof in a new build I am currently wiring thinking "gosh the detail of this roof and it's insulation is absolute rubbish"

The last I heard was they were working on a unit with electric and water inputs. That would be very interesting as it would then be a true replacement for an UVC. If this unit is now in production, I am sure we would all be glad to hear the details.

I heard a novel way of dealing witb bats today. In a village not far from here has been an empty building. It used to be a pub and restaurant but has been empty for probably 20 years. In that time ne peril has befallen the empty building. Last week I drove by and saw demolition had started. Today I was there working across the road, and noticed demolition had stopped. That's because asbestos has been found and they are awaiting its removal. Then I noticed the exposed roof structure looked like there had been a fire recently. Ah yes says the man I was working for, they discovered bats in the roof. A week later the building caught fire. Some coincidence.

I have it on good authority the only reason Steptoe is thinking of moving, is his patio is "full"

I think I might need to start moderating this thread

... and lets hope your plasterer had got the wall behind the socket REALLY flat, otherwise you will have issues and they can end up looking rubbish.

Whether it's ring or radial, makes no difference to the question of single or double pole. It makes no difference how the electricity gets there. Some sparky's regard a ring circuit as old fashioned and prefer radial circuits. It all depends on the building and it's use. Neither is right or wrong. You can have a 32A radial circuit if you use the right cable.

The important thing is the horizontals must all be level with each other. The bricklayers will run strings between them at the outer edge of the blockwork, and drop down from that to check their position and height.

I keep telling you Steptoe, take the easy way out and buy my house up here in the Highlands. If you haven't already noticed, @OnOff is also here, pulling his house to bits and rebuilding it. slowly.

The two vertical sticks and horizontal stick are known as profiles. Make them as wide as the trench you are digging for the footings. The bricklayers will use them for setting out the blockwork. the horizontals should all be level with each other. For my footings I just marked on the ground with spray paint the centre of each trench to be dug as it's easy to dig to just a centreline.

Welcome to the forum Steptoe

So normal common law allows you to prune overhanging trees from a neighbour as long as you offer the cuttings back to them. So what if you didn't know they were protected by a TPO, why would you know? they are not your trees and not on your land? If you had a goat, and you parked say a vehicle on your land under the tree, the goat go on the roof and ate all it could reach, would the goat go to prison? All devils advocate of course

We had one round (wife let him make an appointment after a cold call) What he was selling was a "device" that would increase the yield of my existing solar PV system with claims of up to double the yield. He wanted about £3K for this device. There was no technical sales pitch, just "this is what it will do" After he had been swept out of the door I looked it up on their very long website name (part of the Everest group) what they were actually selling was a "voltage optimiser" and all it would do is prevent your inverter tripping out on over voltage at full production. Now I know for a fact mine never does that, so the sum total of what this device would do for me is zero. How are these people allowed to miss sell stuff like this that will only benefit a tiny minority who have such over voltage issues (and there are usually better ways to solve that over voltage issue anyway)

Interesting statement. We have several willow trees on our plot and we are building less than 10 metres from some of them. Contrary to popular belief we are building with just normal strip foundations. The Structural Engieer who made two site visits and witnessed me dig test holes to determine the soil conditions was not the least concerned about the closeness of the willow trees or the fact they might suck the site dry. We just have normal depth strip foundations. Perhaps there is a slight bit of "design" there in that he called for a strong concrete mix for the strip founds and reinforcing mesh in the concrete. Another factor may of course be the trees are right next to the burn so they are not exactly short of a water supply. Our site never dries completely and in winter can be quite wet with a very high water table. Also when digging the foundations we didn't encounter any significant tree roots.

4KW (or actually 16A) is the maximum they have to accept. Any more than that and they can refuse connection if their network cannot handle it.

In Scotland you need an EPC to let a property. There is a limit that it has to be better than, but I don't recall what it is. You also need an EICR for the electrical install, PA testing for all appliances, smoke heat and CO alarms, mains powered and interlinked. There is talk of introducing a legionairs test on the water system. Oh and you have to register as a landlord.

I was just giving the landlords perspective. I think storage heaters are an abysmal form of heating, but you have to admit from a landlords perspective what is not to like? they are relable, need no routine maintenance and rarely go wrong. An oil boiler is fine but needs an annual service. And lets hope your tenant fills the oil tank before it runs out. Mine never did. He always waited until the boiler stopped working. Got the bone dry tank filled. Then called me to come and bleed the air out of the oil line to get it running again. Every year, without fail. If the radiators were there and in god order that might be enough to sway it cost wise in favour of an oil boiler. Another off the peg idea is an electric boiler. Combined with an E10 tariff and a reasonably insulated house you can get most of your direct heating at the cheap rate. I forget the exact times but it's something like 4AM to 7AM so that's your morning warm up at cheap rate. Then 1PM to 4PM so a late afternoon warm up at cheap rate. Then again 8PM to midnight at cheap rate. So for most people, about the only time you might need to use peak rate to heat the boiler might be in the evening if it has cooled down too much after the late afternoon warm up. Electric boilers have the advantage of no regular servicing and pretty reliable. Combine that with a direct unvented water tank and that to gets topped up regularly at the cheap rate so plenty of cheap rate hot water.

How old is it? how well insulated? For simplicity for rental E10 and storage heaters (though I would not have them for my own house) virtually nothing to go wrong and no servicing or safety certificates needed. A tenant won't understand a heat pump. They struggle to understand things like why a bathroom fan operates (and then complain about the mould when they have disabled the fan) I would not personally let a tenant play with real fire in a house I owned.

My policy is via buildstore and it transfers to the remaining period of ordinary insurance upon completion. I would be inclined to renew the self build insurance a bit longer until you get completion. Whatever you do, renew or put a new policy in place before the old one expires. One member had difficulty when he let his self build insurance lapse and they then tried to treat it as a new policy with existing buildings and things got complicated.

And in inside stop valve to turn off the outside tap.

If there's any chance you have to undo it to make alterations I would go compression.