BlackMountainBuild

We got National Grid to remove a pole and bury a cable from the preceding pole (we dug the trench) for not that much (in the end it was circa £2500). It also started out at £20000, but once we started taking out the trench digging, and talking through what actually needed to happen they were fairly reasonable. Try and see if there is anything you can do to help with cost - also find out if they actually have a current way leave agreement, they had lost ours so we agreed to sign a new one, and finally the old pole would have been under 5 metres from our new build so not to code apparently, I don't know if that makes a difference to the pricing but they did come and deal with it pretty swiftly. It was a fairly good experience in the end, and I've never had so many people work for me (sort of), for so little money, must have been 20 people over 5 different teams on site over 3 days. Equally our electrician said he'd had clients in similar situations not pay anything, because they were obliged to remove a pole which would be dangerously close for free, but I could not persuade anybody at the National Grid to go for that one.

This is a good question, assuming you’re starting from scratch / new build - presumably it is cheaper and more responsive to have an air2air, and air2water / immersion system for hot water. If you have air2air and MVHR do you have double the ducting, is this actually a potential problem or am I completely misunderstanding this? My experience has been installers advocate for air2water and UFH - is this just what the UK is used to?

We have picked architects twice, one for a project we are still in the middle of. I followed the same process for both, I went through the RIBA awards (sorry non RIBA architects it’s just easy to look through the website) for the last few years, looking for applicable projects, ie. related to what we want, and/or have a style/taste we like (also obviously location might be important). Looked at their websites, made a shortlist of names. Then we wrote up a brief, basically a project narrative saying what we wanted to get out of the property design, who we are, how we live, and how much we want to spend. Basically try and make this interesting, although you are paying for a service, you are also pitching a project you are going to work on with them for potentially a fairly long time - you aren’t going to buy their interest because your budget is probably tight, so sell them on the fascinating aspects of your dream home or whatever. Finally we sent a dozen or so emails with this brief, and a short couple of sentences tailored to each architect / firm about why we liked them in particular (ie. what you saw in their award worthy work from your initial ‘research’ ) and why they would be perfect for this amazing creative opportunity etc… Some never respond, some say budget is too low, they are too busy, they have given up architecture and gone to live in an Ashram etc… the remaining ones who sound interested we interviewed and got a written quote from. Both times we got great architects, who we really enjoy/enjoyed working with, and neither project is even halfway to a million pound budget. Architects are artists, give them an opportunity to be creative, this does not mean over budget, you can be creatively cheap and it can get very interesting for everyone involved trying to keep to it. I also tried the RIBA picking system but did not find it that useful. We didn’t see any turtleneck wearing architects, although one we interviewed did have a Tesla.

The area I’m building in (pray to the dread gods of planning) is dark skies, I was up there on site recently and the sky was so cloudy there was no moon or stars, no neighbours visible so no artificial lighting, couldn’t tell where the sky began and the earth ended, it was like being alone on the ocean or something, velve inky black as far as you could see - hadn’t seen it like that before, was somewhat disconcerting.

I have not seen this in real life - but video looks good - it has a 2kw heater in it so should do a bit of localised heating, and doesn't need a flue etc... starting from circa £500 and you just plug it in. https://www.dimplex.co.uk/product/evandale-slate-grey

Hi Jake congratulations on getting permission - we are in the planning process for a eco house not far from Hay on Wye on the Herefordshire (just) side of the border. Good luck with the build.