Kelvin

Sorry to hear this Pat. Octopus can be hard work to deal with. The Octopus CEO is a guy called Greg Jackson. Here’s his email address: greg@octopus.energy I had cause to email him about a long outstanding issue I had and it got resolved. Good luck.

Sure but that’s still just £870 per m2. That’s a huge gap from what most self-builders are likely to a achieve. I couldn’t buy the materials for our build for that.

You said in another thread your groundworks and foundations were £80k. So £270k to complete. How much would a 402m2 traditional build cost if you were paying someone to do it?

Why GSHP? They can be very expensive. It’s doable if you are able to do a lot of it yourself. You also don’t necessarily need to do all of it at once. Get it up to where you can get it signed off and live it and then finish other elements when you have more money. You can also spend a load on kitchens or hardly anything. The problem with working to a tight budget is having enough contingency if (and when) something goes wrong.

Yes but is that an apples to apples comparison given, from what I understand, you did a lot of it yourself. Comparing like for like taking similar build routes to get the structure up to weather tight how do they compare? Our timber kit price for 202m2 to weather tight which includes alu clad timber windows, rooflights, all insulation, delivery and erection is going to cost £145k for CPS. If we went SIP it would be £134k. Now that is considerably dearer than 5 years ago granted.

I read that on here a lot. However, there’s a lot of other sources and analysis that says TF is comparable to traditional and one analysis I read saying it was marginally cheaper.

It would have a bit daft for all 5 of the barns to buy a house without having a legal agreement in place for the water supply from the borehole so hopefully something is in place. Regardless of the situation with the farmer I’d be speaking with the other homeowners about drilling your own borehole and plant and splitting the cost between the houses. It wouldn’t be that expensive and you have more surety of supply. It’ll make the houses easier to sell too. If one of the houses has bacteria and the others don’t then it’s not the borehole causing that.

Sheesh. That is a shambles. All because of boards.

43% of our electricity generation came from gas in July. Half of that gas is imported. It’ll likely increase over the winter. This is partly driven by the state our nuclear power stations are in. We’ve committed to build more nuclear at enormous cost and generation is decades away. Our ability to store gas has also not been invested in so building up enough emergency storage for the winter isn’t easy either. It’s almost impossible to get planning permission in England for wind turbine farms. We could have had a lot more solar generation by now and what we are doing is at risk if Truss becomes PM and implements her moronic ideas. Renewables are relatively quick to build, relatively cheap to build, and the generation costs are relatively inexpensive. UK housing stock is some of the least efficient in Europe. Too cold in winter. Too hot in summer. Too expensive to run. The insulation incentives that were in place were badly thought through and poorly executed. We can all hope that the crisis will only extend to this winter. Maybe there will be a negotiated peace in Ukraine in the next 6 months. Maybe the price of energy will drop as a result. However, that seems like wishful thinking at the moment. But it does underline that our investment in renewable energy isn’t anywhere near as where it needs to be.

Sure but that wasn’t my point. Subsidising energy costs for a short time kicks the can down the road a bit and does nothing to address the problem. What happens in 6 months? I agree the very poorest in society will need help with this. If our Government (and others) is going to spend billions then investing a proportion of it in things that might make a longer term difference would seem the smarter move.

Imagine what a £29 billion investment in renewables and insulation improvement could achieve in the medium to long term.

We aren’t having a wood burning stove either. Other half not happy about it at first. However, there’s a long list of reasons not to have one including pollution

Roofs can be sources of concentrating pollutants that is subsequently picked up by water run off. I don’t know whether it’s of particular consideration here. There’s quite a lot of research done on it. Anyway, here’s the regs for the domestic technical handbook (I’ve assumed Scotland) which has a section on surface water drainage and soakaway sizing. My understanding, which isn’t much, is that a filter trench is much the same as a soakaway except that a certain amount of the runoff is allowed to drain to the water course via a pipe. https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2017/01/building-standards-2017-domestic/documents/building-standards-technical-handbook-2017-domestic/building-standards-technical-handbook-2017-domestic/govscot%3Adocument/Building%2Bstandards%2Btechnical%2Bhandbook%2B2017.pdf?forceDownload=true

I thought infiltration (or a soakaway in some cases) was pretty standard. As understand it it’s not just about surging water but also about removing potential pollutants from the water. I haven’t got everything back yet from the SE but I’m expecting something similar. We will have a soakaway for the treatment plant. It was also originally 1mx25m but I pointed out it was within 50m of my neighbour’s borehole so it’s been redesigned to be 9mx2m and however deep it needs to be.

I spoke with SMS again and they’ve confirmed they’ll install the meter with just the cable and fuse in place. However, I’ve arranged for an electrician to do all the other work anyway.

We are having oak engineered boards in two of the rooms downstairs. The supplier is doing the fitting and they’re fine with UFH. I asked about parquet and that was no problem for them either.

Thanks guys. Task for tomorrow!

That’s what I originally thought but when I spoke with SMS several weeks ago they said what I have is fine. I even sent them a picture. I’ll get an electrician round to do their side of it regardless of what SMS have been telling me.

Hi all I have installed a kiosk and SSEN have installed electricity supply and fuse. Octopus (via SMS) are coming on the 20/9 to install the meter. I’ll then arrange for an electrician to come out and install a mini CU, some site power sockets, earth road, and switched fuse ready for the SWA to the house. I plan to keep the meter here permanently. I’ve spoken with the SMS about what else they need done before they arrive and they’ve said what I have is fine but they were a little vague. However, I was chatting to another self-builder today and he said they won’t install the meter unless I have an earth rod so I’m a bit confused. I could just get ah electrician to do all of the above ahead of the meter install anyway. Any advice?

Yes sure I have had negative space explained to me (father in law is an architect) The staircase wasn’t a focal point with the negative space around it. It was an ugly staircase poorly positioned that drew your eye away from what was the wow factor which was the height and shape of the ceiling and the volume of room. The way staircase was done was wasted space as far as I was concerned.

Easy for him to spend your money. I gave up with my QS once he started saying he’d charge me £775 to visit my plot. He lives an hour away at the very most. To get him to do just the order of cost was going to cost £1600 and I already have many of the quotes for the bigger items

Some people must pay it though. Which is mental.

Show us an example of good design from your perspective? (Or show us one of your designs) I don’t have a design gene in my body. I just take a practical approach to everything. Fortunately I live with someone who has a more discerning eye.

I understand the technicalities as I used work in that industry. From my one experience of using WISP for gaming it was great for the year we had it. I had two gaming teenagers in the house and they never complained about ‘lag’ which wasn’t surprising as it was nominally around 10ms.

I’ve seen folk use standard meter boxes screwed to a post for temporary supplies. There’s nothing stopping you making this a permanent supply point though and then running SWA to your house. It’s what I’ve done mounted inside a GRP kiosk.