Ferdinand

I have the privilege of being wifeless. Though up until a couple of years ago I had a mother in the house, which is perhaps more challenging. At least with a wife you have the *illusion* of being an equal.

You need to plant twice as much Lleylandii as came out 😛.

Having been paged by @jack, my concise thoughts are these: - Your challenges are around costs, and that the value of houses in the SE are predicted to decline by 9% over 2 years at a time of 10% inflation, and you need to make the numbers work. So potential greater variability to manage / exploit. - The risk is around how much you can afford to lose, and whether you can commit to it as a 10 year or 20 year home to salami-slice that risk over time. - OTOH costs may work for you or against you by 10-30% depending on how focussed you are. It is always possible to spend time to save money by looking out stuff at 1/3 below market price. - And you can look at our 2 offers of the week and money saving (eg Wickes Trade Account) pinned threads in the other forum. As this is a huge project, you may get years of air travel by using a points credit card etc. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/48-general-self-build-diy-discussion/ What do I suggest: - You need to gear up around your benefit (house value) or cost (money you spend) being variable by perhaps +/- 20% on both ends. At the worst your balance could be -1/3 or best +1/3. - We already have house prices forecast to fall by 9% over 2 years before recovering. Could affect borrowing ability if you may need it. - Expect a shift to capital taxes. People like me are arguing in all the forums where I am active for Council Tax to be replaced by a 0.5% of capital value tax, and personally I'm arguing for CGT on main dwellings as a way to de-bonkers the housing market. Tories won't do the first of those; in 2024 we likely get a Lab govt and they *will* hit capital in some way, especially cash rich people like you. What does all that mean for your project? - Plan it so you can achieve the outcome you need (depends on how much you really are just in cash) and can ride out challenges around potential changing costs and values. - I'd say consider adopting the Royal Navy technique of "for but not with". An example would be to do your fabric work on Barn 2 as it may be more efficient to do both, but don't commit the 30k to fit out your gym until after the main project outcome is known. You can do the same with bathrooms. But bear in mind that some stuff can be done inside your VAT zero-rated self-build benefit - eg built in loo / bath for the gym, maybe wall-bars or exercise racks, but not portable rowing machines. - On a project this size I'd seriously consider a Project Manager, either part or full time. - Depending on your barns, can you sell Barn 2 as a separate plot with PP if you can get it? That will be worth loads. - Use higher contingency than usual, and have lots of bits of your project that you can do subsequently whilst still leaving a project that does not look half finished - just in case you need to bail. Summary My core point is that you need to design in the project flexibility that you may need. As ever, the old sore applies - the two things you have to manage throughout in addition to your project itself are RISK and MONEY, and the balance between the two that matches your circumstances. F

I think all of these can be decent ideas. I like Porcelain tiles (typically whatever is the Wickes half price if OK, or a trade supplier) or Quickstep laminate, which last time I used some had a 25 year warranty of sorts, and has lasted 5 years in a rental unspoilt. I used it in the hall / kitchen / bathroom alongside carpet in the living room and bedrooms. LVT seems fine. Think about it from the other end - do you want something soft to avoid crockery-smash, or what? F

No disrespect, but if you have to tidy up for them then they are not real family 😁. According to the ghost of my mum, the only person you *really* clean up before is the .. er .. cleaning lady.

I think this revolves around: 1 - Is the change a real problem in any respect? (important) 2 - Will they be able to see it? F

The post you linked contains revision note up to 2020, so I assume it is. F

On insulation, these are levels by house type etc from the 2022 English Housing Survey. Again there is still much opportunity, but we have a lot of the low hanging fruit already. This table really rewards detailed study - for houses with trad lofts we are down to 10-15% only having less than 100mm . The tough ones are the hard-to-insulates. Solid walls, no loft, flats etc.

I think those claims are somewhat overegging it, and perhaps overstating the potential. But I think it depends what you are talking about reducing - presumably the heating cost on a totally uninsulated house? You won't achieve that when the traditional model for a trad house (eg as used by Energy Saving Trust) has 25% of heat losses via air leakage, and some more (10%?) via doors and windows which can't be insulated. If working on overall society-wide numbers we also need to remember that the average EPC number is already up at around 68, so we already have a big chunk of the low hanging fruit. This is the shift from 2010 to 2020. It becomes more difficult and far less cost-effective once your trad house gets to a C, and we will need to rely more on decarbonised energy supplies there. F

The UK Govt has been targeting heat pump manufacture in the UK for a couple of years now. My impression is that there was a slow target - 600k per year by 2026 rather than by say 2023 - partly to let UK manufacture ramp up more. In the context of our economic pivot away from the EU single market that makes sense. There were announcements in the budget back in 2020 iirc. They have a carrot - £5k grants and eg the £1.8m of support funding indicated for Mitsubishi in that piece, and a stick - which is the new gas boiler ban. And security of policy I think. That latter gives manufacturers a point at which their new boiler business will turn into a pumpkin if they do not move forward. Plus stuff like zero VAT-rating on energy improvement products. I'd expect that to succeed to some quite significant extent. There's a way ahead and a kick up the Rs. Obvs the media will whine and whinge like a labrador denied sausages, but our media could not write a fair story about a government policy if Mack the Knife was holding a stiletto wrapped in barbed wire to their backside. And I think lobby and green political groups position themselves to say Mooaaaarrrr !!, not "here's a start; let's think about how far we can get". The one thing we know when any groups is interviewed about anything whatsoever is that the interview will contain a large element of "we demand that we get even more taxpayers' money than this for our cause and our organisation". That unfortunately is just the poisonous nature of our political culture. F

I don't think they will move that fast. Octopus are making a very big play imo to dominate the developing microgrid, so they will want to keep their offer very attractive for self-generators. There are only 1 million solar exporters at present, and whoever locks in that market will get a helluva leg up. I can also see them trying to get Ovo, for example, at some stage - but may attract regulatory attention. They have been happy making losses to date, and will be so for some time more. A key hinge point will be April (or rather the budget in March) when the current support is reviewed. And I'd see wholesale prices staying high for some time; the Govt will be quite desperate to keep their expenditure down, whilst balancing that with making inflation come down rapidly. The forecasts when the support packages were announced were 5% off inflation. FWIW I think that serious powercuts are very unlikely; we have spent this year propping up the European Grid and Gas Network, so I'd say we have plenty of capacity if necessary. The only real issue I see is if Putin starts sending subs and ships after interconnectors and offshore cables, and I suspect he has been told that if he does that then there will be a *serious* response. Ferdinand

Just had this month's bill in. My export rate over the last week has been 9.14p per unit. Previously it was closer to the 15p, but since it is now minimal export month, and I still have other things to optimise (takes beady look at dodgy horse chestnut tree that needs to be removed before it starts dropping things on my roof), I'll not play with a switch yet to Fixed Outgoing. Presumably if it stays low, Octopussy will reduce the 15p back down a bit. My other interesting point is that I have been running the gas manually for an hour or so in the morning before the sun is up to prime the house a little, and having forgotten to switch off on a couple of occasions, my gas bill has rocketed to .. er .. £47, of which about 50-60% was forgetting to turn it off. Guess which days 😁. Time to reprogram the wotsit. Low export season (but I do tend to run the heat pump a little if I am exporting - ideally for 2-3 hours in the morning to get some heat in). The are export vs consumption for the last month. Obvs the missing one is solar self-usage. Yesterday may have been thrown off because I had quite a nasty hypo for about half of it, and the middle of the day was just lost, so I would be less aware of what was going on; it took some time for instinct to kick in and OJ to be drunk. And there may have been some things left on overnight by mistake from Saturday. Plus it has also been dark during the days with the sun on holiday somewhere.

Should be interesting. I like bloggers autrement. One of the basic plot-hunt principles is "if it's openly advertised, it is overpriced". F

In the past I have done B using normal plastic waste water drainage (110mm?) pipe with umpteen holes drilled in, and weed membrance as the liner, folded over the top, with a bit more gravel and pavers over to make a path. I now wonder about the Wickes heavy duty membrane and lifting the pipe slightly off the bottom of the drain via a layer of the gravel.

Won't that be an overestimate as it is covered by solar when you have insolation? At 1250 hours per year sun that would be about 15%. Unless I have misunderstood your DIY solar. F

I conclude that this was a day with a "D" in it 🙂. Welcome. The statement in the 'Best Practice' doc seems strange: My standard approach is to pair a PIV with a continuous trickle ventilation fan or two downstairs (preferably an HR, though sometimes DMEV). That may be combined with an IWI reno, including a warm-side vapour barrier, and perhaps underfloor insulation too, plus the usual 250mm rockwool in the loft. That ensures that warm wet air is ventilated rather than "pushed into the structure". Is that not blatantly obvious that a PIV setup needs outlets, given their comments about sometimes incorporating a vapour membrane and sealing the place from draughts? I've been doing this for 10 years, and it has proved robust. F

Good stuff - KISS. I think you may have to prod planning again in a few weeks. For now I would suggest a quick one para email to your Local Councillor with a copy of what you submitted. It should make it easy for them to forward to the boss in planning, which will give it some priority. Then forward a copy of your prodmail, too.

What are the odds of your Council issuing wider bins just after you have built it ? 😛

I've always found the best way with water / sewerage companies is to start with a phone call, if you take that route. But I think that potentially you are overegging this, and having slightly too many unnecessary kittens. Grab the other end of the stick - by the time whatever process that you have to deal with your .. er .. output gets to the 'property' it is no longer agricultural, commercial or domestic waste. Your treatment system has turned it into stuff that is no longer waste, and therefore OK. In fact Clause 5 specifically (on one reading) allows what you need. The clause does not say you can't install apparatus, it says you can't install apparatus that puts out pollution. Treat the bolded phrase as a compound descripiion: ..Not to install or use on over or under any part of the Property soakaways septic tanks or 'any apparatus that allows agricultural commercial or domestic sewage or storm sewage overflows or Hazardous Substances to enter the ground surface watercourses or the Aquifer'.. Since your apparatus will not allow it, and will only put out manna smelling of roses, it is therefore permitted for you to install that apparatus, and it is not caught. With one bound you are free, or rather you were never constrained. *If* you can get that clear and obvious reading confirmed for your worries' sake. And Clause 7 merely bans the act of actually doing what the approved apparatus prevents, which is fair enough. I would suggest talking to a local specialist solicitor (ie one who has done this before) or perhaps an agricultural land agent or MRICS for 45 minutes to establish what the clause means (written down in English), and then to the EA to see how they want it implemented, if you need an exemption, and whether they will give you one. That should include the technical standards you are required to meet, and how it may be regulated. Don't take the EA as gospel at first hearing - they may give you the gold-plated version that you can do otherwise. In principle if someone gets arsy you could install your apparatus in a runoff proof concrete basin, or on a waterproof membrane, to hold back any unacceptable escapes should they ever happen. HTH F

There's a gremlin in the Maths somewhere - the plan say 826sqm. On mowers, we used to have a Brott, which was a fearsome flail mower thing that was quite capable of throwing half bricks and shredded squirrels out of the back.

Work needed on con-artist detection skills 😛.

If you are looking at floors as well, guess where you can put the old insulation you remove from the loft? (If you consider that, ask here again.)

1950s house should be OK. Becomes questionable before say 1925, as cavities were still somewhat experimental.

That's probably because the Council did not consider ventilation properly. Sealing in a house that was designed to "breathe" through the walls makes it damp.

You should perhaps have used a corner loo and a corner whb for that.