Kelvin

I have that document. The diagram example is similar to my situation albeit a small boundary wall follows the edge of the verge to the road rather than cutting across the land. I've done some rough measurements and it seems to be fine. However, my thought was more about doing a traffic survey to show that the speed of the traffic is well below the speed limit especially coming round the bend and up the hill just to cover all bases.

Planning decision was due yesterday. Today we got an email saying they want visibility splays shown on the drawings. This is despite the transport planning department already saying they had no objections. They’ve had the planning application for 12 weeks. We shouldn’t have any problems with visibility. While there is a bend 43m away on the west side we have clear line of sight all the way around the bend and down the hill especially since I cut all the hedging back. However, the direct line of sight to the bend is under 60m. It’s a 40mph limit road but the traffic is typically going much slower than this so not sure if I ought to take a belts and braces approach and get a traffic survey done. I can get someone out to do a 7 day survey for £450 ex VAT. Any experience in this area? The planning authority is Perthshire and apparently they take a very common sense approach to transport matters rather than sticking strictly to the policy so hopefully it should be straightforward.

Yes just reading about this. Fortunately everything else is coming in below £30k so section 75 protection is easy to manage.

I’m building one of their kits so can’t get alternative quotes. The vesting certificate is a good idea. I’ll ask if they do such a thing. To complicate matters they sub the kit manufacture out so my contract is with the supplier not the manufacturer. Same with the windows.

The kit supplier is taking a small risk. By the time it’s erected I’ll have paid 80% of the total. Prior to kit delivery and erection my exposure is 40%.

Just noticed my % don’t add up. Missed out 20% at the procurement stage. So I’d have paid them 80% pre delivery and erection. There is an advanced payment bond you can buy. The guy I spoke with said they don’t do many of them and they are quite expensive something like 10%-15% of the contract value and maybe more due to the current situation.

I have asked them if I can do that already and waiting on a response. My guess is they won’t allow it.

As we head into uncertain times with the very real risk of small companies going bust I am looking at how to protect myself as we start the build. I know about buying on a CC to get consumer credit protection and getting goods you’ve paid for clearly marked as yours with pictures etc. The biggest single cost for us is the timber kit as it includes the windows from Nordan so will be around £155,000. I’ve yet to ask if I can split the contract and pay Nordan directly. The payment schedule is I pay 20% prior to kit production. Another 40% at fabrication, 17.5% after delivery and 2.5% post erection. The timber kit company will have a large sum of our money before the kit gets delivered. I’ve asked them what client protection they have in place should the worst happen. They were quite surprised I asked this question as apparently no one else ever has. They have suggested some form of insurance performance bond which I know is common in the building trade on larger projects. However this would be at my cost and won’t be cheap. Alternatively they will issue a personal guarantee from the MD. Not entirely sure what that’s worth legally. I know someone who lost £40k to a timber kit company during the 2008 financial crash hence my concern. Any opinions on this?

Our plan is a large storage tank as we have the space. But not plumbed into the house.

1. Keep trying but how much cheaper would it need to be before you decided it would be ok to proceed. What spec are you building to? Anything you are doing that you don’t really need but is nice to have. I had originally specced home automation but removed it. We also wanted to build a big timber garage/workshop to a similar spec to the house. This has now reduced to an insulated steel building. We’ve cut back on our cladding material which has halved the cost. We are still pretty high end on flooring but can half the cost of that too if needs be. I want PV and battery storage but might just go PV for now etc. All of the above decisions have reduced my costs by about £90k 2. This is what we’re doing. It’s a well worn path as many people start at turnkey then go main contractor, self manage, build it themselves mostly driven by cost. You need to be realistic with yourself if you’re going to self-manage which is mostly about the time you have available. 3. Waiting is a risky strategy. Things aren’t getting cheaper. Inflation is in danger of running away from us and is likely to be here for the next few years. There could well be a big collapse in demand and the next 6 months will tell us that. We plan on keeping going. If you make a start on it then the plot keeps the planning status in perpetuity. If nothing else I’d do this as a minimum. 4. Selling the plot is definitely an option. It will have increased in value over the last 3 years etc. However, finding someone to buy it might be a bigger challenge though. No harm in testing the market. If your plan was to build to make money on the deal then forget that. If it was to build a much better house than you could afford to buy on the open market and you can do it for about what the final house is worth without ruining your finances and you plan on living there for a long time then do it.

My surface water drainage is straight into a water course. My soakaway design is for foul drainage. Here are screenshots of the relevant sections of the report:

Anyone have any experience of the Puredrive Purestorage II AC system? I’ve got a quote for battery and PV which seems reasonable in the current climate!

It’s previously been posted on here. Similarly some people are being given dates of many months for a meter installation. In our case it’s been 4 months from request from Octopus although they don’t do the meter installs themselves. The terms of the supplier licence is that they can’t refuse to install a meter. https://epr.ofgem.gov.uk//Content/Documents/Electricity Supply Standard Licence Conditions Consolidated - Current Version.pdf#page157

15.5kWh per day since start of July. We have an EV so it includes charging that. Electric shower and electric cooker. Heating and hot water is from an oil fired boiler. There are only two of us but we’ve had a lot of family and friends staying through July and August. I’ve convinced the farmer that owns the house to consider putting in an EV charging point and PV panels (large south facing roof) It also needs to have the insulation upgraded.

Out of interest. Given you’ve not long built the house. Other than put active cooling in is there anything you would have done differently?

This only works for the folk that use a lot more than the base level they need for heating and cooking. Come the winter we are going to have a whole load of people that will have to make decisions you’d never have expected that folk would need to make.

Thanks for that. My thoughts were 3G on all the other windows, which are mostly the North elevation. And 2G solar control on the big south and west elevation windows.

Heb Homes told us the same that our large windows (8.6m of glazing part of which is a slider) is very heavy and they don’t recommend 3G in it. Nordan is their supplier. We went to visit Nordan on Friday and they effectively talked us out of 3G although said the weight argument was nonsense. Their reason was the difference was marginal for the extra cost (15% more according to Nordan although Heb said it’s 5%) They said a better investment was in solar control glazing for the large windows (south elevation) Somewhat confusing.

I see. If you can try that to rule the foil in or out.

To rule the foil out just bring the doorbell inside (assuming it can be battery powered) to the same room as the router.

I was clarifying for Markc 😉

It’s quite a common arrangement and yes you should be recompensed. You need to decide if you are willing to do it for some form of compensation and how much it needs to be to make it worthwhile and also how frequently you’ are what is a centimetre going to do it. We are building a Heb Home and have been to see three built houses and been shown around by the owners. It was really helpful for us. As far as I understand it they get £100 a go. First off you need to have a conversation with the sales guy to explain that you did it as a favour to him so no more visits until you’ve dealt with the points I made above.

It’s Moso engineered bamboo.

Sample took a while to arrive. It’s very dark and very heavy (2.7 times heavier) compared to a similarly sized sample of Abodo I have. It’s also quite dear at £18,000 ex VAT for 208m2 which includes screws and fasteners but not battens which is £1000 dearer than the Abodo. It’s also very hard so I suspect quite an effort to install. I’m not convinced by the look although it could look stunning because it’s so uniform. I want wood to look like wood though.

I didn’t have much success using a hoover to suck the pull rope through my 25m of 38mm ducting.