SarahG

And then allow for what you don't know you don't know. Yes exactly! Great feedback and very helpful, thanks everyone. Going back to my original question if we are mad to PM ourselves, I think the answer is probably yes! And do we want to do something mad, probably not (at the moment at least). I would love to have the time to just crack on and do it all ourselves at our own pace. However, we want to get this build done reasonably quickly and we have designed it with simplicity in mind (rather than a dream house). All we really want is a decent family home to last us the next 10 years. Perhaps if this goes well we might look to do something in the future which is a bit more adventurous and PM ourselves.

Ok that’s interesting. There isn’t really anything complex, it’s just a straight forward brick and block rectangle plot with a rectangle house. We have some restrictions on bricks, windows and roof tiles we have to comply with as we are in a conservation area, other than that it’s all pretty standard.

Yes definitely. Time is not too much of a concern as we can stay with family easily enough. VAT reclaim is definitely a consideration. I had thought that builders could probably get better rates than an individual? We do have trade accounts at most builders merchants Selco etc. I was thinking more windows and doors which will be a big expense. However, I guess that would be more than offset with the money saved PMing yourself.

Just concerned about the time and stress that people keep talking about! OH is reasonably knowledgeable in building trade, he comes from a family of builders. Although all retired or doing other things now. We just don’t have any hands on experience working with trades. We will live with family just down the road so it’s easy for us to be on site every day and not too much of a time pressure to complete. I work full time as a Technical Program Manager, and I’m a little obsessed with spreadsheets and researching online so the organising doesn’t really concern me. I was chatting to one of my neighbours who PM’d their whole build and it just got me thinking that maybe we could, although they were timber frame which I think makes it easier as the TF complete the structure. They have given me quite a few trade recommendations anyway. All your comments are extremely helpful. I am leaning towards getting a contractor to get us to watertight and then potentially take it from there. I do think we need some help and can’t fully PM on our own.

I know there are a lot of threads on this already and everyone has their own specifics! However.. Having previously been against Project Managing the build ourselves I am now wondering if we should go this route. My concerns are that we don't have specific experience in the building trade. Whilst we are capable of checking quality of workmanship for brickwork, roof tiles, plastering etc I am not sure if we would be happy to sign off on construction works for foundations, insulation, roof trusses and things like that. I realise that BCO will check some of this and we plan to do an air test when we are water tight.- is there another professional we can pay to come in and check works at each stage?

@Kelvininterested to know what you thought about the quote? We have been been doing some spot checking over the weekend, most items look about right, some a bit more and some less. Bricks are definitely under, we are using Yellow London Stock Bricks which I think we will struggle to get for the 97p a brick they have quoted (annoyingly had the chance to buy them at 60p a brick last year, but nowhere to store them!). This makes me think there may be some extra costs in the labour, prelims, equipment hire and OHP.

Yeah not bad, might get OH to give up his job and do the build instead! It's certainly interesting. Even adding on the missing items it comes out around £1850 per sqm. I can't see anything that looks way out. Our architect said we should expect to pay £3-3.5k per sqm, which we always felt was too high as our build is so straightforward. However, the amount we can borrow on a mortgage is dropping all the time, I think it was around 5x salary when we started looking, now around 4x. But this gives me hope we are still in with a chance. Obviously with the news today of a two year recession who knows what this means. Hopefully some builders will be keen for a job next year!

Yeah me too! We haven't gone through it in detail yet. Will do that properly at the weekend and get ready to share with a few builders we are talking to. I think probably labour will be more as we are in Surrey- London prices really. These are the labour costs they are estimating.

Just got my quote back from estimators online, it is a lot less than I thought. A couple of things they have missed off and that I need to change, but no issue I can just add them on to the quote myself. I can't see anything for the kitchen, so assume that will need to be added on to the end. I just wonder how realistic this is I guess. If I can get anywhere near this then I will be laughing as it is about 40% under what I had estimated.

Interested to see how things pan out over the next 9 months. I have just sent our drawings off to Estimators online so eagerly awaiting to see what that says. I am started to get a few emails now from companies I contacted over the summer for quotes. Is that a sign things are slowing down a bit I wonder? As long as we can get up a house good enough to live in I'll be happy!

Yes, not the first time I have made that typo!

We have spent the last 10 years saving up to do our self build, so I know what you mean about bad timing. We already have the plot, we live in the bungalow that we are planning to demolish. I'm just hoping that somewhere we can find a happy medium between interest rates, reduced salary multiplier on mortgages, build costs and doing as much as we can ourselves. We are submitting our drawings to Building Control this week so almost in the position to get some quotes. We almost moved house last year, but decided we had waited so long we had to try the build here. Just hope we made the right decision. We are in Surrey, close to London like you so everything seems to come at a premium. So far I have been able to find reasonable priced professional services after a lot of searching!

I'm back to this again and looking for some more advice So we have our suggested u-values for our windows and doors: Front door 1.0 Glazed door 1.2 Windows 1.2 Half glazed doors 1.2 We have some concerns here. 1. Do we have to use triple glazing to achieve these values? 2. If yes, we don't really want triple glazing for the following reasons- it is too thick and looks unattractive in a timber sash window, the cost is a lot higher than double glazing, the patio doors would need to be craned in due to the weight (I think?) so again a much higher cost, I also can't find many suppliers that supply u-values this low Potentially we would prefer to have u-values of 1.4 and add some solar panels to offset this (can I do this, and should we do it now before we submit?). Just wondered what other people's opinions were or any advice? I will of course talk to our architect, but would like to know what others on here think too.

I think the original post has been lost over some tit for tat arguing! Poor @Jack757wont ever want to post anything on here again! Good luck with your plans and look forward to hearing your progress 😊

@CharlieKLPour architect said we would be looking at £3000-£3500 at the moment. He seemed to think £2500 would be ok to get us to first fix. We are in London though so prices are high. It’s a pretty simple build, standard rectangle, simple plot, brick and block, slate roof, timber sashes. Nothing really high end or fancy. I would have hoped £2800 would do us to second fix. Just waiting for drawings so we can start getting some proper quotes in.

You also don’t necessarily need to decide at this stage between brick and block and timber frame. We have only made the decision now before building regs drawings.

You are in a similar situation to us, we are a bit further along though. We have planning permission to demolish our bungalow and replace with a 210sqm house. We decided to go brick and block as this still seems to be the most cost effective. Someone in my area built an oak framed house and said it was about three times the cost as standard masonry, not sure how true that is for all oak frames. We have UFH downstairs, ASHP. We are just going through building regs now. We are trying to keep costs down as much as we can and ideally would like to bring it in somewhere under £2800per sqm. Where abouts in the country are you? We are hoping to get a single contractor to get us to first fix and then we will project manage the rest. This forum has been a huge help to me trying to navigate the process so far. Everything takes so long I just hope we can start sometime next year!

You are assuming we have "nice to haves" 😂. We could ditch the log burner which I imagine is not great on a SAP report, but that's one thing we really want.. we are planning on some pv's in the future but we would need to get planning sorted for those.

I worked out the suggested £25k we could spend to get an A rating would take 56 years to break even. Well depending on how energy prices go. We are actually thinking about putting some pv panels on the roof of our new log cabin at the end of the garden. I wonder if somehow we could include them in the SAP report. We would need to get planning permission though (conservation area), so it won't be soon.

Yes, I thought his comment was a little strange. We didn't ask for an eco house, so he has done the job as we asked which is fine, but it isn't Passivhaus. An eco house used to be my dream, maybe one day Anything over 100 is awesome.

Having chatted to architect this morning we are going to leave SAP report as it is, so unfortunately that will cross Ecology mortgages off our list! See other post about lenders When we do the build we will pay attention to all those small details to hopefully improve the SAP outcome, or keep up with the one we have been projected! Our air tightness is 5, but we can't make walls any thicker for added insulation or the rooms would be too small. @nod I would rather open a window than have MHVR personally! We could probably upgrade our windows and doors, but that will be budget dependant. Glad the u-values look ok thanks @JohnMo

I know, probably the worst time to look at a self build mortgage! We were going to look at Ecology, but they only deal with SAP 88+ and we are 81. It is sadly going to cost us too much to get the SAP rating up. Just wondered if anyone had any opinions on who might be the biggest lenders. Our LTV is about 30% as we only want to borrow about half of the value of the existing plot, so that isn't an issue. However, due to increasing costs we want to borrow the maximum we can on our earnings (assuming we can afford the monthly payments of course!). Just wondered if anyone had any opinions or has been in a similar situation and advise on who they went with? Thanks

Thanks for the replies. @Conor I didn't realise ASHP penalises SAP, that goes against what is in my head that is a more environmentally friendly and the preferred option over gas. Seems strange to me! We don't have a lot of glazing, we have timber framed sash windows, I would guess they aren't the bet for thermal efficiency but we have to use them due to the conservation area we are in. We do have some fairly large patio doors- 4.5m x 2.5m. Would love solar panels but worried about the cost and they would also require us to go through a planning change. @JohnMothese are the values in the report: External walls 0.18 Ground floor 0.11 Slope roof 0.15 Front door 1.0 Glazed door 1.2 Windows 1.2 Half glazed doors 1.2 It does say on the report we can spend between £15k-£25k to achieve A 97, so it doesn't feel a million miles away. I guess it depends on whether it is worth it to us to do that. All we really want is to build a family home in our budget and for it to be reasonably efficient. The house is standard brick and block, our architect said that the new BR are pretty close to Passivhaus anyway so we just said well go with the minimum we need to get through (budget in mind). So I guess I thought we would get higher than that. In hindsight perhaps we should have said to the architect/SAP assessor we want to achieve mim 88. I'll discuss with the architect and see what changes we can make to get the 88. @nod I was wondering who actually checks this after the build, I assume the building officer isn't going to check every single one of those values! Does seem a bit of a joke.

We have just had our SAP report back based on our BR drawings and it has come back as 81 B. Does this sound ok for a new build house? I was looking at Ecology mortgages as they seem to be well recommend, but they only consider builds of 88 B and above. Our budget is limited but the report says we could invest x amount to bring the SAP rating up higher. It doesn't say what exactly we could do though. The build is masonry with UFH downstairs, ASHP and a wood burner in the lounge. The report also suggest we need a front door with a u-value of 1.0, which seems quite low. I hope we can find one as we want a couple of small glazed panels in it.

Thanks, that's good to know. I have called them a few times with various questions so sure I will be calling them again soon. I was just wondering what other people's experiences were really. q