Kelvin

We will have 8 internal doors in our entire house.

As the wife pointed out to me. It’s likely I’ll peg it first so who deals with all this complexity after I’ve gone 😂

I’m surprised your architect submitted a 2 storey design. It’s not common to get that approved in rural Scotland. The adapted design is still too suburban. Contemporary designs can get approved but they are still designed to meet the local vernacular. For example this was built just down the road from us. It’s within a farm setting.

How expensive is expensive?

I suggest you look at the P&K planning portal. Search for houses in your rough area and see what has achieved planning. I spent hours looking at the planning portal which proved worthwhile for solving a few issues that came up with ours. I also drove around the area taking pictures of new builds. There’s a wide variety styles that get built. P&K is quite pragmatic though.

That’s about what people have paid per m2 doing it much of it themselves.

All that matters is that you like it and that the planners accept it. As above though it doesn’t look much like a rural house nor does it look like a farm house. If they are trying to design a traditional Scottish Whitehouse cottage look then do that. The arches aren’t adding anything to the look other than complexity and cost.

By questioning everything SSEN sent to me and understanding what it was they were proposing. Their supply map was wrong with two poles in different places. Consequently they proposed bringing the supply from a pole half way down the field next door instead of the one on my neighbours land 6m from my boundary. I spent several weeks be-friending my neighbour so that the wayleave process was easy. I also elected to keep the supply in the kiosk I’d built and SWA to the house rather than move the supply after the house was built. I also dug all the trenching myself. The final cost was just over £400 plus £100 for the electrician to connect it up at the kiosk, and another £400 for all the materials I needed (kiosk, ducting, tape, cement, bolts.

Ignore the cost on their website just look at their designs to get ideas about layout and what’s possible. Timber kits are dear especially HH. There other cheaper build methods.

I wouldn’t make any decisions on renewables based on SEG or any other scheme the Government sees fit to come up with. My plan is still to consume as much as we can generate/store. Any payments for excess will just be a variable benefit.

We’re looking at the Pure Energy Puredrive II AC coupled system which will failover in the event of a power cut.

You built a 216m2 turnkey house including all fees and costs for £215k?

Nope. The garage is £35k including the foundation and associated works. This is for an insulated 10.5mx6m garage. We are on a slope so the groundworks are dearer and we need a 25m retaining wall albeit it’s not very high. All the Windows including the rooflights are 3G. Water is via a borehole and sewerage via treatment plant and soakaway. Plus inflation. I reckon it’s added 20% since we first looked at it 3 years ago. The timber kit itself is £25k dearer than it was 4 years ago. We’re also spending more than planned on the kitchen. I looked at DiY kitchens but they didn’t have the look we wanted. We are using them for the utility room though. That cost also includes all the professional fees and planning & warrant application.

Definitely have a look at the Heb Homes website though for ideas on what's doable layout wise. They do lots of different Longhouse designs and have a few smaller 4 bedroom houses of circa 130m2.

Kit houses aren’t cheap. When you say all in do you mean everything including all fees, professional costs, planning and warrant costs? Do you have budget quotes for services yet? They can be high. Our first leccy quote was £26500. I’d budgeted £5k. It ended up £1016 and I then got a £545 refund but required me doing everything myself other than run the cable from the pole to my kiosk. You want a 4 bed house so let’s say 200m2 which means £1350/m2. That’s maybe doable if you do most of it yourself.

The bottom one looks just like a Heb Home Longhouse. Could easily accommodate a 1.5 storey design. The ridge height is 6.1m

Farmers often have piles of stone they might sell you. However, the type of stone really depends on where you are. Stone dykes in much of Perthshire tend to be made from sizeable boulders whereas in Angus they are made from flat sandstone that’s easy to face. Having built dry stone walls in both counties I know which I prefer handling.

They have a price calculator that includes turnkey on their website. e.g. the LH302PD comes in at £457k for a SIP build but makes big assumptions about services and groundswork, is a basic standard build, and doesn’t include any of the fees. The reality is likely to be £50k-£100k dearer for turnkey. I am hoping to come in around £450k including the garage managing the trades myself etc for 202m2 Their prices have increased significantly since we first started looking. Their SFS kit (previously called CPS) was significantly cheaper than their SIPs kits with their CLT kits being the dearest. For a while both the SFS and SIP kits were similarly priced to the CLT kit (which is imported from Austria) Since the start of the year they’ve now removed the CLT kit citing timber and inflation costs so you need to call them to discuss.

My expectations are clearly different from yours as I wouldn’t consider a failure within 7 years to be fair. It’s a big upheaval to fix it.

Failure of electric UFH seems inevitable at some point consequently I ruled it out of our build.

The problem with that is you can’t have the fire burning and TV down. If you don’t use the fire much then it’ll be fine I guess. However, the big black square dominates an already busy wall especially so high up.

The Panasonic plasma TVs were awesome. Anyone that sees ours on can’t quite believe the picture quality from a 12 year old telly. It’s a bit power hungry though.

Yes sound bars work well on a TV/coffee table. Some are pretty good at giving you a pseudo surround sound

TVs above fireplaces don’t work in my opinion as they tend to be too high. Fit a large picture above your fireplace to mimic a TV and then sit where the sofa will be. It’ll give you a better idea what viewing a TV will be like. If you have the space on the left of the fireplace put it there on a nice TV table. The house we’re renting has a large fireplace and a TV above it would ruin the look of it and be too high on the wall so we have our TV to the left of it and it looks fine. Our TV is a 12 year old Panasonic 42” Plasma TV which has a wide surround so it’s about the size of a modern 48” TV I guess. I think it’s about as big a TV we could get away with in the corner so placing it here will limit the size.

I’ve had the same with a battery storage supplier