Kelvin

Yes sorry I misread his post.

Sorry no ignore me. I misread your earlier message and thought you’d posted your internal air volume. You need to work that out. Then it’s 1.4 x 200 divided by the volume.

From 1.62 to 0.58 so a great result.

I moved to Scotland. 😂 One lives in St Neots and the other in Wimbledon.

My kids are in their 20s now so will never (unlikely anyway) to live on the house we built. I’d have liked to have done it when they were little. But life wasn’t aligned quite so well then. Regards timing, there’s rarely a right time especially if you consider everything that’s happened over the last 5 years. 4 years ago I quit my job, we sold our house and moved to Scotland all at the same time so I forced the situation to make it as right a time as it was ever going to be. And don’t build a significantly bigger house than you need. If you plan it well a smaller house can feel bigger than it is. The house we built is 210m2 and the previous house we owned was 350m2. We use 100% of the house we built compared to about 50% of the previous house.

We looked at two plots before buying this one. The first plot was in England and we took that quite far before pulling out and our reason was simply a gut feeling that it wasn’t the right plot for us. It was hard to put our finger on why other than it didn’t feel right. We then looked at another plot this time in Scotland. Had an acre of land, planning permission for a modern steading style house and it came with an enormous old mill, cottage, and workshop all as a single large barn. I loved it other half hated it so that was also a no. The same day, and quite by accident, we happened across another plot just going onto the market (they were literally putting the sign up) We stepped over the burn and onto the plot (which was a very sloped field covered in gorse) and we both instantly said this is it. Offer in the same day. My general approach is if there’s some doubt about something then you don’t do it until you can address that.

Utility costs can vary so widely. Our first estimate for an electricity supply was £26,500 and the final cost was £450. You need to include that in your final cost/m2 as otherwise you’re doing a bit of man maths. I did set separate budgets for each element including utilities. Had we not been able to get the electricity supply estimate down from £26500 we might not have gone ahead for example. The second estimate after I challenged it was £5000.

I’m in two minds about having a borehole. Our water is great and tastes better than mains water and, as mentioned by JohnMo, you don’t have anything being added to it. I also test our water every month just to keep an eye on it. Having watched one of our neighbours lose her private water supply (from a well fed from a spring) for 7 months (iron oxide bacteria) and the huge expense at trying to fix it (and it might still not be fixed) it does put you off a bit. However, no borehole no water no house.

Our all in cost was £8000 but that doesn’t include the cost of the borehole drilling and lining etc. The farmer we bought the land from paid for that and it was £18,000. Our hole is 147m deep. Finding water was a condition of the sale. Also keep in mind there’s no guarantee they’ll strike water or at least a plentiful supply. I know of one self-builder near us who left the borehole drilling to near the end of his build (mental). It took several attempts to find a suitable supply and 5 different companies tried. It cost him tens of thousands and took almost 8 months. He assumed you could drill a hole anywhere and find water because there were a few boreholes near him.

If the car can schedule a charge itself just plug it in and set up a schedule. You’ll have to disable smart charging in the Octopus app though I expect. It’s under settings.

Inexpensive? Some of them cost a fortune. The Wallbox Quasar 2 costs over 6000 Euro last time I looked. It supports V2H so it’s more than just a charger as it has to safely island the car from the grid etc I’m unconvinced by V2H as a thing anyway. While batteries are still dear they have reduced in price a fair bit so you can put in a fair amount of battery storage for an almost affordable amount of money without the complication of trying to do that with your car.

It’s not so dissimilar to the document I got and all we had was a field at the time of the quote. You can make a reasonable stab at estimating it as you should have some idea what stuff you’re putting in. They give you some numbers for typical things.

I assumed that’s a mistake as the Pro is the commercial version. We had them in our work car park. The only one that mentions V2G on their website is the Go 2. Octopus only mention two compatible chargers one from Zaptec and the other from Wallbox

This suggests it’s a new charger https://www.zaptec.com/en-uk/info-hub/inside-zaptec/zaptec-go-2

They do unfinished too. https://lpddoors.co.uk/doors/internal-doors/oak/?_finish_type=unfinished-oak

We have these doors from LPD. Arguably still at the mass market end I guess but we liked the quality of these doors and they feel nice and weighty and solid. https://lpddoors.co.uk/products/oak-melbourne-pre-finished/ And these handles. The handles are especially nice. https://lpddoors.co.uk/products/ironmongery-saturn-handle-hardware-pack/

It has to be a V2G enabled charger too. They specify the Zaptec Go Pro for CCS chargers. It’s all in the link I posted. The way it’s worded it doesn’t cover the house load. If you’re on Intelligent go it will likely save you less than £200 per year doing this compared.

According to this it’s V2G. https://octopus.energy/power-pack/ SigEnergy have a module for their system that is a V2X bi-directional DC charger. They have a 12kW and 25kW version of it. Yet to be approved for UK use but it’s coming soon apparently. My interest would be more to back the house up. It’s CCS only so no buying a cheap Leaf and leaving it permanently plugged in. I know you can get adapters but they seem to be very expensive and I’m not sure I’d trust them.

Wrong thread however I have the 820mm in the upstairs bathroom (window above the loo ) and the 1120mm in the downstairs loo. It is somewhat annoying that the lid hits the flush plate but it does make sure you keep the lid down all the time.

I ran two but mostly because I could run the basin waste in the wall and into the roof void then the stack and the shower waste through the ceiling into the stack as if comes down into the downstairs toilet. We have posi joists though.

It’s what we have. RAL7016 (obvz) It scratches easily when handled though. Relatively inexpensive. I also fitted the self-cleaning accessory which are plastic and the shoe thing which is metal as we discharge into an attenuation trench although we have a sand trap chamber that would catch most stuff that gets through. They look ok though.

Scottish regs. I have to submit a variation due to the window in the utility room being moved 1000mm. I also happen to have built the garage as a metal SIP kit rather than stick built (same dims) which they approved via email but I need to add that to the variation too.

The pumped lorry for 164m2 was the quickest £4000 I spent on our house build. My other half wanted to see it go in for some reason but by the time she got here from the rental they were more or less finished. We were walking on it the following day and started work again the day after. The time and effort saved is worth the cost. Great level surface finish and no cracks but we did have plenty crack inducers.

There’s some funky wall paper nowadays. We don’t have any on this house but did on the last house. I secretly quite liked it. I eventually went tile blind and refused to look at another tile mood board. It was the only falling out moment we had.

Pretty much. It is a pia as there are a lot more exits to think about and plug up. Took me ages going around ours on a set of walkie talkies with the other half shouting no until I eventually got everything sealed up. Took a note of it all and when I got BC out I couldn’t get it to hold pressure! We eventually tracked it down to the air test kit.