Ferdinand

I have recently been getting TopCashBack tracking through Ebay sometimes. Worth a whole 1% or so. Will buy a pint to soothe the nerves. F

Welcome. I would say model your whole house including energy requires fr the next 10-20 years, as you may find some investment in your existing structure will be a good idea.

On the Discounts thread and off-forum we are having a debate about how to recover VAT on purchases made with a Gift Card (eg from an Employee Rewards scheme). So, for example, if I put my £12k kitchen or £150 paint through a Wickes or B&Q Gift Card in order to save about £1200 or £15, what documentation do I have obtain and present at the end in order to get the VAT back from the HMRC under the DIY build scheme? I will be asking HMRC for advice via the Helpline, but has anyone successfully completed this cycle? What did you do, and eere there any difficulties? There are at least 2 different cases ... one is where VAT is charged on the purchase or top up of the Gift Card, and the other where it is charged at the time of Sale of Goods. Homebuilding Mag had *this* article about VAT Reclaim in 2016 by Accountant Andrew McDonald, which does not address this detailed point. Does anyone happen to know Andrew to invite him to comment on this thread? Any experience or resources will be welcome. I hope to produce a small FAQ at the end. Rgds Ferdinand

I would be inclined to ask them before I buy anything :-). If say you have put 20k through a gift card for an extra 2k saving, then claiming the 4k VAT back proves difficult, it is a big loss.

It might be useful to identify the REQUIRED elements of a VAT receipt for a self-build claim so we are clear. It would be useful background for me as I am serial renovating rather than self-building yet, so it is an issue I might easily miss. I will ask for one next time I buy from Wickes. I have spent quite a bit there recently so they should be helpful. Ferdinand

Absolutely, and it is good you have mentioned it. We need to bottom this in case there is a barrier. Certainly Wickes are quite happy with me combining this payment method with a trade account, so there can be no issue about payments for non-trade only.

@PeterW will be better for this one. The process should be exactly the same as normal, since the discount relates to the cash loaded onto the card, not the product purchased. I will comment more a little later, but I expect you just ask for one. Ferdinand

What is a roof horn? Google says it is something to do with sex on the pantiles near the Pamplona bull run. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/randy-tourists-horn-sex-house-10779803

You do not say roughly where you are - county? You should probably have taken advice before getting PP, but taking advice from a property-knowledgeable accountant would be wise now. There are many things that the system seeks to encourage you to do, which could involve pensions (or back contributions) or keeping money in the company, or potentially use your Entrepreneur's Allowance. I think holding actual property in a pension fund can be complex involving much buggeration ... not allowed in a SiP, for example. Potentially 2 of you can take the max annual employer pension contribution of is it 40k x several years of current and back payments minus your existing contributions into say a SiP. That could be significant before you even start. then depending on age you could draw down as allowed and park the rest somewhere conservative for your pension. Plus the value of what you put in can come out again. It is also worth considering a separate Ltd for the company built house to walk away clean.That may help with your isolating payments etc. The cardinal rule is talk to somebody who knows where the regulatory kaleidoscope has stopped for now, KISS, and follow the rules. Being too clever is not worth the candle afaik, because the admin overheads will be ££££££, and you are builders not bankers. Obviously, this is just personal opinion not advice and I am a layman who is not up to date. F

Make sure that the surveys are 'assigned' to you as part of the sale .. i.e. You become the client and get the benefit of the consultant's PII etc, and are able to use the reports without an extra fee. Ferdinand

Quite like Halfords. Our local has v. pleasant staff. You can always stack all of their different offers until the central computer moans. Hardly ever need to pay more than about 55-60% of the price for the things I buy :-).

I am referring to the Energy Performance process where you are required to model the theoretical energy efficiency of your house design, then have the results submitted by a Suitably Qualified Individual. I think @JSHarris has an article about it somewhere as he did the calculations himself and had to pay an SQI to put the numbers in a template and the doc in an electronic postbox. Another bit of revenue your customer would pay anyway that you can capture and save them sending elsewhere. Arguably a saving for your customer. There was also some input from an EPC assessor about the pros and cons. F

@nr projects Pretty much any report by a consultant who needs to visit the site and study something, then write it down, will start at about that £500 level. The only cheaper processes will be regulated or mechanistic or mate's rates. But as a bundle you will be able to save your customer money by not having to do a special visit etc. There may be further potential for other qualifications for different reports, but that depends on your market and ho so might be one to consider later. Surveys are universal and if you have done your own are a good risk reduction if you trust your own abilities. IMO the second most common one that may be trainable for relatively easily and useful in most builds as a bundled service may be traffic surveys and modelling, assuming that you have a numerate degree, but since many of us need a veritable parade of ologists there is quite a lot of scope to choose one. If you did not know what surveys cost then you have some serious homework to do to develop the gut feel you will need. A lot of people, including me, have shared aspects of costs on here, and some have shared full costs for all aspects of their build. Read this from me and scan all the blogs from cover to cover, especially @recoveringacademic and @JSHarris. A good exercise and a serious suggestion to understand the complications you need to help people through may be to build your own house. F

I think if you want it to be really impressive you need one that comes up out of the floor to avoid the labour of going down the staircase. There is perhaps a lot to be said for installing it in a structure dug into a small hill outside. Who was it who said they had lots of spoil to dispose of?

Secondhand? Post a want in Marketplace. Or can you set yourself up to fit in the trial period?

Remember your broker is working for *you*, so will know that different lenders will want different amounts of information. There should be no worries about being completely candid with the broker.

Welcom @nr projects I think there is, but it is very diverse and fragmented. You will need to specialise in some way (eg in TF), and comms to the market is difficult until you get say 6-7 years under your belt. The services you sell and the services that deliver the lion's share of value to the customer may be different, because almost by definition you will be selling to inexperienced builders and will sell only one package to each customer. One answer to this will be networking and being on the preferred recommendation list for architects and others, and so your customer becomes the architect.Suspect that is how many find their PM, though mine was a Planning-Consultant PM who's recommendation was success in a controversial application on the front page of the local paper and a personal interview. Perhaps you need to investigate whether TF companies are asked to recommend PMs by people buying kits - does your employer have such a list? The only self-build PM that comes to mind was the Grand Designs chappie who made a career after rebuilding his burnt down thatched cottage; many of the others combine it with other roles. There are people who want a PM to do everything and just make it happen, and others who will be more hands-on. You could specialise or be flexible, I think benefits to the customer you can offer may include taking out the cost of other professionals, or offering services dealing with difficult bits. Another is to help the customer be more the equal of the experienced architect to get what the customer actually wants. eg benefits you can sell Get a TotalStation and include the survey in your package - immediate saving £500-1000. Ditto an ability to handle the EPC modelling. Worth £500 or so. Ability to draw and optimise plans, or do planning applications well. Ability to get project done more quickly. eg huge benefits you could not sell up front Come with established subscription to SPONS. eg Specialisms Offer a plotchecking due-diligence service. You are the bloke who tells them it was a tannery in 1926, or how to deal with problem x. If you come with a bundle of Trade Accounts and knowledge as to who is the best / most reliable / most flexible supplier of "x" (eg staircases), then you may well pay for yourself twice over - whcih the customer would see as "under budget" (hopefully). Best of luck. Ferdinand

Correct .. it is what the bank will simulate.

Media misreporting? Not possible!

110mm soil pipes can be very useful things if applied first. If we had 80mm ducts and a really good detector in my dreams we could core between the rebar squares.

>comments regarding architects images only including white people, and all the unnecessary stuff about social problems in adjacent areas, have no place in an analysis of the cause of this fire, or the reason for its rapid spread. I am inclined to have some sympathy with this point though not as the mainspring of a political argument. Though personally I would go for outline figures and sidestep the whole thing. When in Sydney I had a little go at one of the big national museums because their soopah dooopah development proposal rendering in large size in the entrance hall only showed 2 or 3 men out of 15-20 members of the public. Ferdinand

I think it depends on you and your workers both treating each other fairly. Either side can poleaxe the arrangement. F

The BMW i3 is a hoot, and secondhand prices are becoming more acceptable. Ferdinand

USA people often bed their posts in packed gravel. There was a conversation on GBF some time ago about this including this about rammed stone and gateposts from a Mr DeClock: http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=12885 (!) THat looks truly excellent but does rather remind me of how they probably built Macchu Picchu.

I wonder how that will change when you switch from 'voluntary day job' to 'properly retired', should that ever happen, and start 'living at home'? Not that I expect that to happen in the JSH case ;-). Ferdinand