Kelvin

😂 I play the guitar and drums so I crank up the distortion and thrash out power chords or beat the crap out of my drum set.

My invoices so far have my current address and the name of the plot as a reference.

That sounds like they want you to run some kind of credit account where you pay them money then call it off as you buy materials? Don’t do that if so. Buy on your credit card as you need the materials.

It’s a 1.5 storey Longhouse we’re building. How we added extra space was extend the flat roofed porch to the full length of the main house and increase the depth by 1m. This created a 16m x 4m single storey extension to the main house giving us a study, family room, utility room, plant room and entrance hallway. The study and family room could easily be two bedrooms for a different family setup. The family room is big so plenty of scope to have an en-suite in here or change the whole layout.

That said the pound is slowly rising again so we might see the second hand export market slow down a bit

Sure but did you often have the rads turned on in the bedrooms and if you did how high. The ideal temp for a bedroom is between 16oC-19oC according to research. A well insulated well built house will achieve that in the bedrooms with little heat input which you can gain from heating in the living areas. Like others we’ve planned no rads upstairs. Like ProDave I’ll put in electric points for panel heaters just in case.

The other thing to keep in mind is PMing yourself with individual trades coming to site and you organising all the materials will likely add time to the overall build length so you have to manage time vs budget. Also you buying all the materials yourself and claiming the VAT back vs trades supplying materials (zero rated for VAT) will impact cash flow. Could be crucial if you need a big VAT reclaim at the end to finish off given the stories of 6 months plus for it to be processed.

We got a quote early on for a QS full service so effectively also PMing along with me doing the day to day mgt. £12k all in which I thought a bit ridiculous given it’s a timber kit so all the work up to weather tight is being done by the timber kit company. I think given a choice between a PM and a full QS service I’d go QS.

Ours is a timber kit. I am taking responsibility for the groundworks with a very good groundworks company and they are doing the timber kit to weathertight then handing back to me for the rest of it. I feel more comfortable PMing it that way. But don’t underestimate the time it takes. It consumes a few hours a day for me and we’ve yet to start.

The main thing is to get people to think about it. Nudge economics.

The planning ‘rules’ here are also 8 weeks, still took 13! Two things you need with self-building is patience and a sense of humour. I have neither it turns out 😂

Sure. The more houses they can cram on the site the better commercially. Without seeing the overall scheme layout it’ll be hard for any of the experts on here to offer much more advice.

So the previous scheme had an entrance that had the required visibility that didn’t involve your land and they’ve subsequently revised it so that some of properties have entrances that do rely on your land for visibility?

Looks good. Well done and well bungled.

If you’re absolutely certain they can’t achieve the visibility necessary in another way then fight the fight. I might consider some legal advice to cover all bases.

Research US sites. The US has a lot of experience in dealing with wells etc. For example https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/water/wells/waterquality/hydrosulfide.html I’d say the first thing to do is get the water analysed as that will guide you on the best approach to dealing with it.

Yep. The verge from the road edge to out boundary is 3m. We’d need to see pictures if the area in question to help answer some of the questions

Most pumps are generally very quiet. I had a Grundfos pump start to whine which was a pre-cursor to it eventually failing. Most of the noise from our previous system was water flowing through the valves.

Can they achieve the required visibility by other means? Are you against the build generally? Even if they illegally damaged the existing trees/hedges it wouldn’t change the requirement that the visibility needs to be maintained and they wouldn’t have control over it. However, if they can achieve the visibility by other means and you are against the build you lose out on a potential lucrative pay day. I’d spend a bit of time satisfying yourself they can’t achieve the required visibility in another way.

We had exactly the same system in a previous house. The main Grundfos pump failed and was replaced by a different Grundfos pump as we couldn’t get a hold of the original pump. We then had regular E911 errors (and occasional E912 errors) The flow rate was above the minimum needed going by the meter. Our system was designed as is being described here. No buffer tank but had a pump and mixer at each manifold. I eventually figured out that the errors were only being triggered when the living room was calling for heat. In our case it turned out to be a failing manifold pump. It was still running but not at the required flow rate. We also had various valves all fail at the same time too so the fault was hard to diagnose as we had several failures. System was 8 years old. None of these pumps/valves are specific to heatpumps so could happen just as easily with any other heat source.

Are there trees/hedges blocking the visibility?

Weak pound makes them attractive to sell abroad.

Facing stones like a flint wall using cobbles. Easy enough to do for a beginner and doesn’t need to be massively neat.

Why does it need to be seen at all. Hide it away. Anyway you can’t pretty up the three cables attached to it.

Average sale price is 3% below asking