Kelvin

There’s one possible issue then. The goal for PV generation ought to be you use as much of it as you can. You could look at fitting a solar PV immersion diverter so any excess you generate gets used to heat your water. You could also look at cheap night rate tariffs and run as much as you can during those hours. It seems your house isn’t that well insulated nor possibly as airtight as you really want. Neither are that easy to fix after the fact.

Lots of plumbers say that. Presumably your heating is off just now and the ASHP is just being used for hot water? Do you have PV and if so have you looked at solar PV. I rent an old farm cottage with hollow walls. It’s chuffing freezing in the winter and heated by an oil fired boiler that I don’t have much control over. I bought 1000l of oil in December for £647. I bought another 1000l in March (just before it went crazy) but it still cost £947. At one point it would have cost almost twice what I paid in December. I don’t know how much LPG costs but it won’t be anywhere near what it cost last November.

I’m in a similar boat albeit I’ll get to weathertight by default because that’s the supply and erect deal I have with the timber kit supplier. They also offer a partial turnkey service that does the groundworks, founds, drainage and gets the roof and cladding on. I can then do separate trades or get a main contractor for the rest. The partial turnkey service is relatively flexible in that I can get someone else to do the groundworks and foundations and I’ve had a local guy estimate that to be about £35k including treatment plant. If that’s in the right ballpark then I’ll go that route. I’ve not had a quote for the partial turnkey service yet. It’s probably my favoured route if it isn’t ruinously expensive.

I got a land survey completed when we were buying the land that included percolation tests and then a drainage and soakaway report as part of the planning process. I asked a local builder to recommend me someone for the land survey and the architect had an engineering company they use for all the civil stuff

Depends on what you mean by froth and whether your business benefits from it. You’ve already heard on this thread some anecdotal evidence of people putting builds on hold. That might just mean that demand falls back to a more normal level rather than the overheated levels we’ve seen. I was chatting to the farmer we bought the land off. He was telling me he’s already seen a reduction in demand for the soft fruit he grows. It’s taken him a bit by surprise just how quickly it’s changed. I’m not convinced we will see an increase in unemployment given the big gap between number of jobs needed and number of people available to fill them. This gap will probably reduce a bit as companies reduce/stop recruitment and folk that left employment during the pandemic go back to work.

High inflation could become embedded. I’m sure you knew that’s what I meant. High inflation, low growth, recession and possible increasing unemployment isn’t a great economic outlook if that’s the direction of travel.

Yep. It won’t get any cheaper if we wait.

The problem we have is the way Heb Homes works is you need to pay for 20% of the kit price to get the final building warrant drawings. Had I known this at the beginning I wouldn’t have gone with them. A year ago I didn’t know there was going to be a war of course. We could of course still pause but we talked that through this week. Therefore, we are going to battle through this and get the house built. We might gain by better availability of labour and materials. We’ll just have to suck up the extra cost. We are also using all our own cash so no mortgage so the quicker we build it the better.

Demand drops, prices are still going up, interest rates get pushed up to try and counter inflation, country tips into recession, unemployment starts to increase. The concern seems to be that inflation won’t quickly drop and could become embedded in the economy.

Our previous house was a huge converted barn. Ceiling heights varied throughout the downstairs from 6m to 3.5m. The only source of heating was an ASHP and UFH downstairs. We never had any trouble heating the place and the insulation could probably have been better in the walls.

Problem is there’s talk of stagflation…

Indeed. Although most folk have more than one TV and the firestick will plug into a monitor. I had a similar problem with a Fire TV box. It worked everywhere in the house apart from the living room even though the wi-fi signal was strong in that room. I tried a firestick in the living room and that worked.

Move it so that it just sees one of the APs to see if that fixes it. That way you’ll be sure you are chasing the right problem. I would have expected the Ubiquity hardware to manage this better though. I use three BT Wholehome Discs routed through a 4G TP-Link router connected to the Starlink router that’s just powering the dish rather than doing any routing. I contemplated swapping it all out for Ubiquity hardware but it’s quite dear so have stuck with my many box approach. It works well enough.

I’m in Scotland so a bit far. It is a bit of a minefield overall.

How is your average punter going to know what’s a good bad or indifferent install? I am reasonably technical but wouldn’t have a clue if it was a bad install until it was too late. I am getting a quote from a dedicated ASHP company. It’s what they mostly do. It so happens I know the owner and trust him and because of this I am going with him. Otherwise it seems a bit of a crapshoot.

Our draft warrant drawings has the drainage going out at various points to basically the shortest straight route to the outside drainage.

I got my supply installed in June and it’s the end of September before they can install the meter. The only reason they took me on is because I already had an account with them. Due to all their screw ups they’ve upped the credit to £150 from £90. Scottish Power are also no longer taking on new customers. It’s ridiculous. Ofgem needs to step in and force them all to do it. If they won’t then the Government needs to do something. You can’t have basic utilities being withheld from people.

Ah right. We are alu clad timber.

Interesting comment on cost triple vs double. In our case there’s 5% difference.

Good thread insights and suggestions. I am a worrier. Always have been. I also tend to overthink everything and look at problems from every angle considering every possible outcome. At it’s worst it can create a paralysis of indecision. Conversely I am very good in a crisis and used to run towards them at work. The difference between the two situations is that the overthinking starts when I have too much time to worry about a problem. In a crisis time isn’t on your side so you have to be more decisive when the information is less complete. Therefore, I’m not too worried about things going wrong and problem solving because I know I have the skills and resilience to deal with them. But I am still a deep worrier and worry about a lot of small seemingly inconsequential small things. The only thing my other half worries about is my level of worrying 😂 The thing I worry about the most, like a lot of us, is the money. We have a good budget with a healthy contingency so I am confident we can do it. But everything is of course very uncertain with costs continuing to rise so we won’t do this at any cost. The consequence is we are already making big cost decisions on things I was sure I wanted two years ago such as home automation and a fully insulated timber built garage/workshop/music room. The stress on your relationship is another good point that we have discussed at length. So far we’ve been able to make the big decisions without too many disagreements but we have had to remind ourselves a couple of times that this is just a house we are building and it’s just the next 18 months. It’ll become our home for the next 20 years of plus afterwards.

That’s very kind. We are only about 30 mins from Dundee. We loved the Abodo (in the patina coating) from the minute we saw it. We also love the Scottish Larch especially when it’s consistently silvered. We’ve made a decision on the larch!

They are indeed. The two sawmill quotes I’ve got are about 40% cheaper. But that’s untreated and I want it treated so the difference is more like 20% plus I’d need to do the treatment application myself. I don’t mind doing this but would rather focus my time elsewhere. Their fixings and batten system is also quite dear at circa £3000 and I estimate I could save about £1500 there. However, if the budget is looking tight and we need start saving a few thousand here and there across the whole build then it’s an option.

The other corner is a bedroom. We are using it as an office for now but it’s at the bedroom end of the house where the downstairs bathroom is. The issue is caused by me adding the cinema room. We like the layout as it is. The easiest way to deal with it is to not have the door at all. Which is what I am most likely to do if I don’t think I can conceal it well enough.

Well if I can conceal the door well enough it shouldn’t be an issue with most delivery drivers apart from Evri who will screw it up no matter what

It’s a vaulted ceiling. The living room is on the ground floor. This is the first floor.