ProDave

Thank you. Every day is a learning day.

Okay, this is brobably a dumb question, but what is the significance of blue plasterboard? I know about green, pink, and ordinary grey, but what's the blue stuff?

THAT really annoyed me on my last build, and I am SURE I will have the same problem again. I used standard regularised studs, covered with standard thickness plasterboard, but do you think I could find door liners that were just the right thickness? no of course not. They were either a few mm too wide or too narrow. Thank goodness for the electric plane.

I have one rule in our new house. SWMBO is NOT going to plant any trees shrubs or "flower beds" in the middle of the LAWN. It needs to be one unobstructed area that you can push (or ride) a mower up and down, without having to go around "things"

Nice work. Looks like you wore out 2 wheelbarrows moving that lot

In case it's not obvious, the roof is a warm roof, hung from a big ridge beam. That too is clad with the same 100mm wood fibre board in place of the normal (in Scotland) sarking board. And the roof will be insulated in the same way as the walls but this time from the inside so we will have a vaulted warm roof.

You live on a croft. Shouldn't you have sheep?

Hi and welcome to the forum. Building next door is very convenient. I am building next door but one, just 50 metres up the road.

If that's the view from your site i would settle for living in the caravan.

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.