Kelvin

The road the self-build isn’t straight. While our actual build was relatively quick (14 months start to moving in) the whole process from when we decided to make the life change of moving from England to Scotland was stressful. I quit my job, and we put our house on the market. It sold within a few weeks. However, the sale fell through twice. We uncovered a load of legal stuff that our conveyancing solicitor missed when we bought the house that nearly caused the sale to fall through a third time. The plot purchase took longer than planned and we couldn’t find anywhere to rent for months because of all our animals. At one point I was unemployed, we owned an expensive house we couldn’t complete the sale on, we owned a plot of land we couldn’t build a house on and we had a house we’d rented we couldn’t move into. However, I got us through all of that and things settled down. We then go into the design and planning stage to find out that our architect was incompetent so what should have been relatively straightforward took 10 months. We then got into the build to find out that the builder the architect used was also incompetent and caused some serious issues. We dealt with the issues but the delay caused us problems all the way through the rest of the build. However we are now in. Did I ever consider throwing the towel in? Not once but I did get very frustrated and pissed off at times. However, I could see what a wonderful life we’d be able to build for ourselves here and I knew the final result was going to be exactly what we hoped. We’ve made some brilliant and supportive friends. My long term friends were also very supportive and my wife was awesome throughout. I’m retired so having the time and head space helped enormously. That said, there’s no shame in quitting. It’s easy to say keep going. But ultimately your health and wellbeing matter more. Just make sure you are completely honest with yourself.

Yes retention is normal. My retention % varied between 2.5% to 10%. I didn’t pay 100% of anything until it was installed and defects fixed.

My experience was any questions specifically to do with their work was free. Anything additional to the original work was charged at an hourly rate.

A little over a year ago. 170m2. Near Blairgowrie. We used Perth Scaffolding. We also only scaffolded three sides as we needed access on the North elevation for the tele-handler. However I had enough scaffold on-site for all four elevations.

£16k? How big is the footprint and how long is it booked for. I planned to have the scaffolding up for 13 weeks but due to balls ups it was up for 17 weeks. Total cost was £4500.

How odd. My brother in law has just bought an old sally army hall too, near Hastings.

I was obsessive about keeping our site neat and tidy and not letting waste materials build up for a variety of reasons not least of all giving anyone an excuse to raise a complaint

We also built it for us, not the next owners. While technically it’s 4 bedrooms we configured it for two. The other two bedrooms are a study (downstairs) and an open plan sitting room upstairs. To convert that back into a bedroom will require adding in a wall and a doorway so easily doable. But it currently gives us the whole of the top floor as a bedroom suite. I wasn’t sure how well we’d use the upstairs sitting room but it’s used a lot more than we thought.

Our roof structure is also hung off the ridge beam. We vaulted the ceiling in the open plan upstairs sitting room and coombed it in the bedroom. It’s 2.9m high to the ridge beam in the vaulted bit and 2.7m to the flat ceiling of the bedroom. We also removed all the voids on one elevation. Transformed the upstairs from small and tight to roomy and airy.

We built the garage first. It gave us a large secure storage space to stage materials and a workshop to work in when the weather was crap.

Like @ProDave we built to the size we would use with reasonably generous room sizes. Our goal is to use every sqm of the house we built. Our previous house was more than twice as big as this and we used half of it 90% of the time. This house feels much bigger than it is (210m2) because the main room is open plan and clear sightlines to the other rooms. Our previous house had an enormous 6m x 4m vaulted hallway and balconied/bridged staircase. It was a nice wow feature to walk into but it was just a hallway/staircase.

I really couldn’t see the advantage of connecting the ASHP to our Loxone system. Just looked to be adding extra complexity.

A year ago. The TF erection company didn’t want anything other than a portaloo. If i had needed to provide hot water I’d have bought a cheap as chips caravan. The erection team won’t be on-site for long (assuming all they are doing is erecting the kit) so you could just hire an all in one welfare hut.

It has little to do with the colour of the stuff and everything to do with the chemicals. It’ll be marked on the packaging if they are septic tank safe. The old chemicals used formaldehyde which is much less common nowadays.

Be interested to hear what you think. It looks a bit too beta for me at the moment. I have a number of legacy HA devices from a previous house install that this would allow me to use.

The water companies don’t want chemical toilets emptied into their system so I wouldn’t recommend doing that. I got by for months with no water on-site. It’s when you get to the wet trades you need it obviously.

I mean over the lifetime of the house. Boreholes might rarely run dry but they can run dry. We have a neighbour who is currently having this problem with their 20 year old borehole.

To give you some idea of borehole costs. The cost to drill our hole, liners etc was £18,000. It’s 147m deep. It was a condition of sale that the vendor had to find a plentiful supply of potable water so this cost was borne by them. I subsequently got various quotes for the plant equipment necessary based on the water analysis and our water supply yield results. The plant needed was: a water softener, pump controls, 2 filters, pump (from garage to house), 1200 litre water tank, two UV lights (we have an unsoftened drinking water tap) Quotes were: 1. £24,000 - Highwater 2. £11,000 - one man band with a good reputation 3. £10,000 - Filpumps We went with Filpumps. In addition you need to do all the groundworks, borehole headworks chamber, and electrical connection. That was another £750 although I did much of that myself. As said, every hole is different. Water treatments are expensive. You might be lucky and just need filters and a UV light. You might be unlucky and need a whole load more plus a big holding tank. The equipment also requires space to house it. Best case it all fits in a kiosk type box worst case you need a separate outbuilding/shed. Ours is in the garage but of house separately it would need a fairly big shed circa 8’x6’. You might not have a plot suitable for a borehole. Also finding enough water isn’t guaranteed. While we have a decent supply it’s way below typical. Our borehole recharges very slowly for example hence why we have such a big water tank. Given a choice I’d probably prefer to be on mains since you’re guaranteed a supply. There’s a certain risk with a private water supply and there are a few horror stories around where I live regarding them.

Where are you? Most private water supply companies are relatively small operations so not national. we have a borehole so have reasonable knowledge of them. How much is 10 times their original estimate? Boreholes aren’t a cheap option either.

We had folk round for dinner last night and I did three courses. First time I’ve used the kitchen to its fullest extent since we moved in a few weeks ago. Both ovens in use and all of the hob. The downdraft extraction worked better than I was expecting. No cooling smells around the house either.

The air from ours isn’t damp nor does it smell.

That layer is on the external walls and ceiling so not sure how it would affect Wi-Fi within a building.

Our drive runs past the front door. BCO told me all I need is a 1.2m2 flat area in front of the door for wheelchair accessibility. I’ll likely put a path in anyway.

My issue was I couldn’t get anyone to deliver at all as the order was too small at 6 pallets.

Yes 300mm. I also rendered them using a specialist Weber product for insulated blocks. Be mindful that I had a nightmare trying to get them shipped to Scotland. Most of the block makers do something similar and none of them are stocked in Scotland, or at least weren’t 18 months ago. Therefore before you commit to that kind of foundation design look into how easy it will be to get them.