ProDave

The whole window pricing thing seems to be a lottery. As Jeremy, our Internorm quote was way more than the others at over £20K, then there were a batch around 12-15K, but Rationel were by far the cheapest here and by the time the negotiating was done it was just over £8K I'm pleased with that outcome as they were the second best in terms of U values, only marginally worse than Internorm, yet the cheapest. But then others find Rationel to be expensive and at least one reported Internorm as being their cheapest quote so it makes no sense at all. P.S my Rationel windows came via an agent and that was supply only for my builder to fit.

We need to copy across that abreviations thread.

I would worry about wind as well. There wouldn't be many days I could open it without some really secure way to hold it in position when open. And weight would be my concern as we are all triple glazed, 4,20,4,20,4 Also the amount of space you need to keep clear to allow it to open. I have a 3.3M opening in my sun room, door yet to be decided but will probably just go for a pair of sliders.

I have a wet tile cutter, the thing that looks like a saw bench but has as diamond cutting disk that runs in a water bath. I bought it VERY cheap from one of the DIY sheds years ago. It gives a very clean very straight cut to tiles, and I have even been using it to cut the valley tiles on my roof. If you can find one, then it will do what you want. It was so cheap to buy I wouldn't mess about hiring one. Best to use it outdoors though as it'a a messy thing to use.

Fridges and freezers are awkward things. Although the running current is low, they have a very high start up surge that can stall a small generator. Inverter generators may fair better. But do you really need to keep a freezer running? certainly not during a 1 hour power cut. 2 winters ago after a storm our power was off for 2 days. Thank goodness for the wood burner. Yes the freezer thawed, but was all the food wasted? No. Once thawed it's still good to keep in a fridge for a few days, so that was the next few days food sorted, and what we couldn't eat in that time was cooked, and then re frozen as ready meals. Anyone who just bins the contents of the freezer if it thaws is simply not trying hard enough. We will have a gas LPG hob again and the only inconvenience is having to use a match to light the gas when the power is off, and the kettle on the stove takes longer to boil than an electrtic kettle. So it comes back to lighting, and we have two gas camping lights that do the job.

Welcome back Yes I too am behind schedule and nearly out of money, seems quite a common thing for self builders. But I am still plodding along making slow progress with just me working on the build. I hear you have been asking for a certain Welsh plumber?

Thank you for your kind words. Hope your build goes okay, and ask questions if not (and pictures if all is well)

MBC would not quote for me as I was too far north (north of Inverness)

Hi and welcome to the new forum. Sorry for the interlude, but we are back.

It's been very wet these last 2 days. The adjacent houses with traditional cement based render clearly absorb water to a certain extend and go darker and "wet" looking in places. Mine, the water just runs off and no change of colour. I just want 2 more dry days in succession to finish cladding the next wall, the west facing gable end. One of my design requirements was no external woodwork to keep painting or otherwise treating. You will see I have timber fascias behind the guttering, but eventually they will be over clad with aluminium painted the same colour as the windows.

I thought it was the other way around and it was PUR that soaked up water?

Someone raised an interesting conundrum recently. If you are lining a wall with OSB for racking strength of a timber frame, you are supposed to leave a 3mm gap. So shouldn't sheets of OSB be 1197mm wide not 1200. Otherwise at the end of a long run your joints are falling off the 600mm spaced studs.

Hi and welcome to the new forum. P.S my builders used a "Tony tray" but I'll bet they didn't know that name for it.

Welcome back. Keep the questions coming and together we can rebuild what has been lost.

How's Graven hill going? We look forward to seeing how it unfolds.

There is also the untested issue of getting a VAT refund. No building warrant = no building control completion certificate. You do still need planning permission so would a letter from the council saying it is completed according to the planning permission satisfy hmrc to issue a VAT refund? I look forward to Crofter testing this in due course.

There is at least one member here building his own "portable building" And there is a company local to me that builds low energy portable buildings built in their factory and transported as modules that get fitted together on site. I did look at that as an option for our build but currently they can't do 1 1/2 storey buildings. For single storey modular buildings up to a certain size, you can be exempt from building regulatiions as they are classed as "caravans" even if they don't have wheels. The Highland council have produced a simple fact sheet that you can download here http://www.highland.gov.uk/downloads/file/1346/bst_018_caravans_and_mobile_homes If your building fits within those limits then it can be exempt from building control. The same rules should apply to all parts of Scotland. England and Wales are allowed to have a larger sized "caravan" than we are, something to do with the caravan act in England and Wales being updated at some point but Scotland never had the same update, but I have yet to find any English definition of what qualifies as a "caravan" for building regulations purposes. And yes I have memories of freezing in a "Terapin" portable clsssroom at school.

I have installed these mains / generator switches, they do exactly what you expect them to do. Watch your earthing, you cannot rely on the DNO PME earth during a power cut, the lines may be down, so drive in an earth rod as well. Perhaps just use a normal split load dual rcd board and put essential stuff on one side and less essential on the other, but watch the rcd current ratings. I am not sure how solar pv would work with a generator. If it thinks the frequency is right then the inverter ought to start up, but it could get "interesting" if the solar pv generation was more than you were using and it started "exporting" power to the generator. The alternative is get your supply onto the site now, and do as many of us have done and have your meter installed in a permanent meter box in a fence or wall on the site boundary. No need to pay to have it moved later. Then sign up to a no standing charge tariff like the one ebico offers so with the tiny usage during build, you will get tiny electricity bills. In fact I have not actually paid anything in nearly 2 years.

We have ceramic tiles on our kitchen floor with UFH. Been there 12 years now with no problem. And slate tiles in the hallway again with no problem. The UFH is under a suspended timber floor using 18mm chipbooard on 400mm joist spacing and the tiles fixed directly to the chipboard.

If you can't get a container, a static caravan is just as good.

I think more and more will be going down this route, indeed by thr time I get to fit my solar PV I expect the FIT will have gone altogether. I would add two things to consider: Firstly, you are no longer interested in aligning all the panels for optimum yield. Getting a useable output for more of the day will be my priority, so I plan to start with one string of panels facing just a few degrees south of East, to start generating as early as posible, with a second string facing due south. I might try and later add a third string facing west as well. This will give a lower total generation, but should give a more even and useful generation throughout the day and more chance of self usage. Secondly I think some form of battery storage will be essential as well. I am watching more and more offerings coming to the market and it will be interesting to see what is available in a couple of years time.

There are a number of self builders on this forum from Scotland so let's introduce ourselves here. I am part way through my own new build some 20 miles north of Inverness in the Highlands. It's a timber framed house with wood fibre external wall insulation and then render. Aimng for a good standard of insulation and air tightness and low running costs.

A lot of people ask me about the detail of how my house is built so I thought it worth a thread to explain things. First off, I didn't want an "ordinary" timber framed house with a cavity then a brick or block outer skin. That outer skin just costs a lot of money and adds nothing to the insulation of the house, it's just an expensive rain shield. I still wanted the traditional Scottish look of a white rendered finish but I want all elements of the wall make up to add to the insulation and air tightness of the property. The solution is a timber frame, clad with 100mm thick wood fibre external wall insulation boards (I used Pavatex, but other makes are available), and the render goes straight onto the wood fibre board. Here's a picture to make it clear: In that picture I only have a few of the fixing screws in place. A lot more were added and then driven fully home. The board is fixed to the frame with long screws with big plastic spreaders to stop the screws pulling through the board. There are a few twists to the frame however. First thing you will notice is that it is not an "ordinary" timber frame. For a start it's built with much thicker timbers than normal to allow more insulation in the walls. But secondly people keep telling me i have put the frame up "inside out" The OSB racking layer is on the inside of the frame. That's done for vapour permeability reasons with the least vapour permeable layer on the inside. With this build method you can either fill the frame with blown in insulation from the inside once the wood fibre cladding is fitted, or in my case I have chosen to use Frametherm 35 as it's less than half the cost of blown in insulation but gives the same U value. So I am fitting the insulation from the outside as I fit the wood fibre cladding. Insulating only that bit of frame I expect to get clad in that day as I don't want the insulation left exposed to get wet if it rains. The render is a lime based system from baumit.com. It has 3 layers, a base coat that is mixed from dry powder, then a primer that is painted on, then the top coat comes pre mixed in tubs. A fibreglass mesh gets pressed in to the base coat before it is dry. Overall benefits of this approach Vs an ordinary timber frame with blockwork outer skin: Simpler foundations (no need for provision to support the outer brick or block wall) More insulation for a given wall thickness More of the job can be DIY done, perfect for self builders. And an unexpected one, because there is no cavity, there is no need to pepper the wall with weep ventilators, so you get a clean render finish with no "warts" And here is what the finished and rendered front of the house looks like.

My name is Dave and I live in the Highlands 20 miles from Inverness with my wife and daughter. We are currently building our retirement house, a modest 3 bedroom detached house being built to a good standard of insulation and air tighness to be a low energy comfortable house with low running costs. This is our second new build. We built the house that we presently live in starting in 2003 when we moved to the Highlands. The new build is only 50 metres up the road from the old one. As soon as we manage to sell the present house we will be moving onto the new site and living in a static caravan until the house is complete. I have a blog about the new build here http://www.willowburn.net My day job is a self employed electrician, which gives me the flexibility to split my time between work and building the new house, but I hope when it's all finished I will be able to retire, or at least scale back the amount of actual work that I do.