Ferdinand

Sorry ... thought you said "An Amazon". I will get my goat sorry coat. Most of my Amazon spending is via Gift Cards, since on occasions they can give a noticeable discount. I used to get £100 of free petrol for £1000 spent on Amazon cards at Morrisons. A good way of timeshifting spending, however. The offer is still there but is only worth a fraction of the former value. Ferdinand

Your poor broker God rest his soul I would think that the way to finance may be to take a 3 or 5 year smallish say 60% remortgage on the other rental you were talking about and pay for the build from that cash. The Osborne tax is coming in over the next few years so you squeak in before too much damage is done. Perhaps do it via a lower rate taxpayer if one is available to avoid that. Ferdinand

I was wondering about reporting on this. I received my first 95% of a year report recently, and we did a total of 4068.5 kWh, on a 9.98 kWp 80% east / 20% west system installed Jan 2016, with a total payment of £541 pus whatever we have saved by using self-generated electricity, which I estimate at another £150. The meter reading this AM came out at 4093.3 kWh. All that says is that it will pay for itself eventually, and the results are seriously mucked up because more than half of it was behind trees for months, and some of it is still behind trees :-). The contingencies of meeting dates for subsidy ! Previously I predicted about 5500kWh, but there is considerable environmental finessing still to be done, which may involve our other neighbour's TPO trees which are looking a little dodgy and may be towards DDD (Dead, Decaying, Dangerous) condition. For a substantially better result will need to finesse some (perhaps 10-12 for a 16 / 12 / 8 ESW mix) of the panels onto a south-facing carport roof which only exists in my head at present. But that will need care to keep an attractive 'face' on the house. Ferdinand

The one I am looking at (260 sqm) had Outline PP in 2012, then in 2015, and the later one introduced a full set of ground conditions investigations Planning Conditions which were not there in the 2012 version. Ferdinand

That is all true, and you can be tax efficient when building in your own garden. However, I would still put a question mark over building your dream home as it would have been a decade ago. I hope you don't mind trenchant arguments - most people welcome strong opinions as "iron striking iron" even if they reject them. If you plan to stay then don't you need to be building the dream home you want to live in in 2025 not 2005 or you could end up with lots of cleaners and 2 or 3 permanently empty bedrooms? Is it better to reconsider? I currently live in somebody else's dream home which didn't suit them after their kids left, and then stopped coming back as much since they developed families and responsible jobs away. Unfortunately for them they never completely finished while they still needed it and then the market tanked and the cost won over the benefit. However it suits me perfectly and they had to drop their price by 20% as it was 2013. All I did was build the conservatory and gravel the drive, and have fixed some corners they seem to have cut, and I have a lovely home. To be fair I had previously had to drop *mine* by significantly more than that to shift what was my parents' house of 35 years. Options could be to have a design which is smaller but suitable for extension but not build the extension (or do a further PP afterwards for an extra wing and just lock in the PP by building foundations), or build something that could be split later, or build two, or do something extravagant for real fun such as a gym or 4 car garage for the classic cars you are about to collect, which could be converted later, or a ballroom. Or think of something to do with the other half of it you may not use. In Cambridge, however, you probably won't have selling problems for a large family house unless all the Sky Is Falling In predictions about Brexit coming from the various Professors Henny Penny in academe turn out to be even worse than feared, as you are in the London penumbra. Ferdinand

Welcome. The one point that I would make is that making money from self-building is far less likely these days if experience of our members is anything to go by, if that were your aim. But I am sure you will be running your numbers carefully. Ferdinand

I am trying really hard to restrain myself from posting the original Hampsterdance animated GIF file. Like Psmith, the P is silent.

Assumption: we are not listed, and not in a conservation area for this thread. I am beginning to muse on building a studio bungalow, and I was thinking about what I should actually tell Planners at the Detailed Application stage - I think my preference is a conversation with the Duty Planner then straight to a full application. I hvae chatted about this before, but this is an example of the concept. Now, the previous thread pointed out that Planners are concerned with (my summary) Public Realm / Environment and mainly appearance / context, while Building Standards are concerned with "Will it work technically and meet performance standards?". Bearing in mind that somebody on here had an issue when he had to change his front door to a new model and the planners started flapping, my question is how much do we actually need to tell them? Consider, for example, a window in a wall of my theoretical new bungalow. If I choose a wall finish that is a light coloured render, I do not see why the planners need to know what sort of render it is or whether it is white, off white or light grey, pale yellow, periwinkle or coral. In theory istm that they should just need to know the tint not the hue. If my window is going to be a dark finish (say dark grey aluclad timber) I do not see why the Planner needs to know the particular manufacturer, or model, or precise material. Is it any skin off a planners nose whether the dark grey is aluminium, dark paint or plastic? Nor do I see that they need to know the u value, or whether it is 2G or 3G. What is it reasonable not to tell them, and what can we get away with leaving out of a Detailed Application? Very general questions, but fellow cud-chewers are welcome. Ferdinand

Can you pay a delivery company an extra hour to hire it e.g. If you have gravel delivered? Or get a hire company to fit you in when someone returns a big digger early? Or it is 2mx2mx2m of water in a tank which you subsequently send back under the Distance Selling Regs. Or borrow 2 elephants. Or about 50 strapping friends - BuildHub AGM.

Were I to want a box of that sort, I would go for something large e.g. lid on top, size of a tea chest to full size door, size of a closet, and with an auto lock door or lid. I think that a porch with an outer door that can be left open is a good idea, and something to hide it behind. An autolock or latch on a porch is a neverrrrr !!!, unless you solve the 'granny stuck between locked doors' issue. Difficult one to balance. F

IN this area .. Mansfield .. Jewsons specialise. I have about 4 within a few miles, but only one of them has an extensive roofing selection. Not sure what difference that makes to price.

I am not convinced it needs a lock unless you are in a city and the thing can be reached from the roadside. Once the parcel is inside it is invisible, so the thief has to be present on delivery or following the van. Unless there is something in there every day.

Sign for your bathroom door at the end:

When you are finished you will lie back and think of Italy, and go "Bugger ! I forgot the frescoes !"

Which requires an extra drill swap, and goes some way to explain why @Onoff is using his bathroom build as an opportunity to compete with Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling for DIY Project Duration .

I think we need about more information about how the water is getting in. How high is your water table? Other options might include tanking the inside of the chamber, or covering the whole thing with a gazebo or garden locker type structure, or even a cover plus a circular French drain to prevent the water reaching the leaky seal. Suspect that Plan A should be the seal around the drain as that sounds easiest. Ferdinand

I have electric ufh in the conservatory. That is on 100mm celotex in a screed then porcelain tiles. Works fine on the few occasions it has been on. Ferdinand

In your circs I think you are correct. My only ideas in that case would be: 1 - Minimise your holes. 2 - Install header and footer battens screwed firmly into the joists in the ceiling and floor not the wall, then fix verticals using angled screws at top and bottom through verticals into the header and footer batten. You could use narrow right angle brackets but that would perhaps be excessive. You could play games such as putting a gloop of silicon into the drilled hole before inserting the concrete screw but that would not be so good imo. By the time you have a monocoque via the plasterboard it will be solid. Ferdinand

@Dudda THe membrane surely needs to be on the warm side of your insulation, otherwise you will have a risk of condensation when your humid inside air meets the cold watertight- I assume - barrier. SO fixing screws breaching the membrane should not be an issue ... it goes on afterwards. Unless I have misunderstood something. For fixing studs I use these in the relevant size: http://www.screwfix.com/p/easydrive-countersunk-concrete-screws-7-5-x-50mm-100-pack/1066H?kpid=1066H&cm_mmc=Google-_-Product Listing Ads-_-Sales Tracking-_-sales tracking url&gclid=CPj-wdLJvNECFQeNGwodJusA9 Typically they need 30-40mm in the wall. The method is 1 Use a multi material drill but such as a Bosch Multi construction ones from Screwfix. Very good in the small set but check it is long enough for your screws (as the actress said to the bishop). 2 Pre drill stud if desired. 3 Hold stud against wall, and drill hole in wall through hole in stud using same drill. 4 Switch to impact driver and screw Concrete Screw into wall. Ferdinand

PS The google earth gradient feature is a fantastic tip.

If you have school children to hand the fun and educational way is to peg it out on the ground and estimate it by using known size cardboard boxes e.g. MOrrissons banana boxes, compare with a calculation in class. You can just have a small number and lay them next to each other in sequence. For the other. I reckon a number to 2-3% i.e. less than one lorryload is adequate, but a better estimate should be straightforward. Obv. the area is easy ... just draw a diagonal and use Pythagoras twice for the length or measure off on your software, then the formula for the area of a scalene triangle on each of the two parts. I would deal with the dual aspect slope by approximating the sw ne 18cm fall to zero as the other way is 10x larger, and averaging the se nw slope at height 26.9 which is exactly half. I would allow a bit extra by making that 26.9 into perhaps 26.8 or rounding up by x lorryloads (= say 10cm / approx depth * no of lorryloads estimated) to make sure I was slightly over in my budget calcs. Then I would want somewhere to use any excess close by and an option to vary my order by plus or minus 5%. I would also do a couple of sanity checks on the ground if I felt it necessary. If you have a pro ground survey, I would expect your surveyor can draw a box and press a button on his software. Or you can set up some posts and a tarpaulin and measure the amount of water it take to fill to the new level . Ferdinand

@Bitpipe One of my Ts is going into rental caravans as a semi-retirement job, and picked up her first caravan when she was down on a site chatting with a friend already doing it and a 7x couple were selling their holiday van. The site owners really make some of their money at entry and exit from the scene. @Appleco But at present many are mothballed for the winter :-), so an ad somewhere may be the best way to find someone planning to sell. Ferdinand

This is the time of year when people on holiday caravan sites sell off their caravans when they upgrade or when the site operator declare their holiday rental static vans to be too old. So talk to the people on your nearest holiday rental static van sites. Also bear in mind that the operators pay very poor prices when they tenants sell to them, so talk direct if you can. Look for people advertising new static vans for next year and ask them what about the old one or put an ad in the local shop. Ferdinand

Quite tempted to use the worktop as a place to store a couple of my spare porcelain floor tiles, as it will match and keep the worktop safe. Ferdinand

Wickes are offering discount cards at the counter which offer 15% off all purchases over £10 in Jan, Feb and Mar. It does not stack with trade discount, but it should stack with eg 5 for 4s and so on. My purchase today: £9.98. Gah ! (Note: just my local branch during refurbishmemt See below.). F