What’s the worst mistake you’ve made on your build?

[TerryE]

I have a photo of the old fence line, but if you look at the LR regs they are only to ~ +/- 0.5m accuracy and the boundary is what the boundary is on the ground, or at least as it was before (IIRC) 1995 otherwise adverse possession doesn't apply.  The only way to have a more accurate boundary is to go through the boundary dispute process, and have it "proved" by a chartered land surveyor.  I am talking about a wedge of land about 3½m long going from 0 to ½m at the widest.   The dispute process can cost £1,000s and £10,000s if you end up in court over it.  All for 1m² of land — life is just too short: it really isn't worth getting into a dispute over this.

 

As far as LR is concerned, there is a major flaw in the process of initial registration, as in our case because we bought the plot with a farmhouse on it in 1984 before registration was required in Northants.  All of the houses around our plot were sold to new owners after 1994 when registration became mandatory, and the boundaries were registered during these sales, but there was no requirement to get your neighbours agreement that the registered boundary is the agreed and actual boundary during the actual registration process.  This has led to countless disputes for others. Luckily most of our boundary, the line isn't too far out. 

 

However on the North side of our old farmhouse, we had a 4ft wide path leading alongside our property giving access to our front door and that was part of our plot when we bought it.  (The path was described as part of our property in the original 1912 bill of sale and deeds.)  However, when the neighbouring cottage was sold in 1996, they incorrectly recorded the boundary at the farm wall, effectively pinching the path.  It then got sold another couple of times and no one noticed the mistake, until I tried to register my own plot in 2015.     The neighbour played hard to get in agreeing to do a TP4 to transfer the path back to me, and I ended up having to give him a £1K sweetener for his "time and inconvenience".

[Carrerahill]

On 12/03/2022 at 22:10, NSS said:

Not yet, but (conveniently) one of my daughters has since met and settled down with a guy who specialises in laying LVT. Only trouble is he's so good he never has any time to do jobs at 'family' rates 🙄

If he loves your daughter he will find time.

 

Show him this post! 😄

[TerryE]

I've been tracking with and engaging with self-builders on this forum and the previous eBuild forum for about 8 years.  During that time Jan and I split our old plot, built a new energy-efficient low-maintenance home to retire in, and have now lived in it for over 4 years. 

 

What I find very interesting is tails of self-builders here and how they fall into a spectrum:

• At the blue end of the spectrum, you have a lot of builders whose builds seem to go to plan and budget; everything comes good with the final house living up to expectation.  OK, many have the odd bump along the way, but they address the issue(s) head-on and overcome or mitigate them.  I think that we fell into this category.
• At the other red end, you have some where their build is a tail of woe; of one disaster after another; of being "unfairly let down" by suppliers and tradesmen; of time and costs spiralling out of control. 

And you've got all shared in between, but even so spread seems to be more of a double hump than a normal distribution-style bell curve.  So I think that a more interesting Q is not "what was the worst mistake" but more: why do some people succeed and some fail so badly?  And the corollary: what do I need to do so that I and my build is in the falls in the first category.

 

I would suggest that there are some key success factors:

• Research, research, research.  Understand your issues and risk factors and establish viable solutions well before you start to implement them.  If you don't have the skills to do this in any area, then you have to be prepared to hire the expert skills that you need at a realistic commercial price.  If someone offers you a deal that sounds too good to be true then 9 times out of 10 that is because it isn't true.
• Realistic cost and time budgets. If you start out with an infeasible cost plan, then magic doesn't happen; things don't just turn out for the good; you will inevitably make mistakes that just compound and derail the project.  You need to scope your build project honestly and include sensible time and cost contingencies.
• Clearly defined scopes and responsibilities.  Every aspect of the build must be "owned" by someone, and both you and they must agree on that.  Pay particular attention to three-way interfaces, because these are a hot-spot of failure.
• Expect that mistakes will happen. We all make mistakes, even the best of us. So you must be continuously on the watch for them.  It doesn't matter who is responsible.  You and your build will ultimately suffer if they aren't identified and mitigated in a timely manner.  This means you (or your PM) must be prepared to do continuous quality assurance on the build.  Check and validate each stage before starting on the next^(*).  When mistakes are found, then agree an action plan to address them and execute it as soon as practical.
• Respect your tradesmen and subs, and be flexible with your mitigation. (Trust but verify).  This is a corollary to the previous point.  Most decent tradesmen include some contingency in pricing a job.  If the final cost is within that contingency then they will be flexible.  Once they've used up the contingency, then they'll start to cut corners.  So even if a mistake is down to someone else, then be flexible and try to identify a mitigation that minimises everyone's costs, because next time it might be your mistake.

 I could add more but I hope that you get my drift.

 

(*) There was a notorious case in the history of the forum where one self builder seemed to have a "magic happens" personal philosophy.  The foundation sub screwed up the pour of the slab and one edge slumped by up to 40mm along one wall.  No one picked this up and things really started to come apart when the TF arrived and they tried to erect it.   Pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  By contrast, when my slab team did ours, I thought that they did a great job, but I still closely monitored sub-base layer compaction,  then personally checked and OKed dimensions and diagonals before and after pour; ditto levels across the slab with my Dumpy.  We did have a slump of about 3mm in one area of the living room floor, but I decided that this wouldn't compromise frame erection. (I later let the slater know before he started putting down the finished floor.)  Was this my job? Not really, but I would have ultimately borne the consequences if the slab had been off-spec, so I still did it.  (We had a different cock-up with our rebar design which could have been as bad for us, but I picked it up in time and agreed on a mitigation with the supplier before to pour.)   

Edited March 19, 2022 by TerryE

[Faz]

Nearly made a big boo boo on the spec plots - the architect had specced a combi boiler which the plumber thought (and I agreed) would be shit in a sizable 4b house so we swapped it out for a cylinder.

 

I forgot that SAP calcs really slaughter you if you put hot water storage in and the house was failing with the architect calling for the installation solar water heating (not compatible with the tank) or pv.  Whichever way you look at it - a disaster.

 

Thankfully I was saved by the flooring - the drawings had a beam and block with 150mm celotex but I had put in the Floorspan efloor + which had 600mm effectively of EPS. Got away with one there!

[ProDave]

4 minutes ago, Faz said:

forgot that SAP calcs really slaughter you if you put hot water storage in and the house was failing with the architect calling for the installation solar water heating (not compatible with the tank) or pv.  Whichever way you look at it - a disaster.

Why do you regard installing some renewable energy that will save you money every year a "disaster"?

[Faz]

Scaffold long gone and it is a spec plot - no-one is going to pay me anything extra for it. Loads of cost, delay and grief vs no financial upside - I think disaster doesn't cover it - total effing disaster is probably more appropriate!

[MikeSharp01]

46 minutes ago, Faz said:

I forgot that SAP calcs really slaughter you if you put hot water storage in and the house was failing with the architect calling for the installation solar water heating (not compatible with the tank) or pv.  Whichever way you look at it - a disaster.

Thats a very good point - that is something the sun(amp) worshipers don't mention and I must look up how the Sunamp is handled for SAP calc. 

[ProDave]

55 minutes ago, Faz said:

Scaffold long gone and it is a spec plot - no-one is going to pay me anything extra for it. Loads of cost, delay and grief vs no financial upside - I think disaster doesn't cover it - total effing disaster is probably more appropriate!

And there in one post is the reason to self build.  Builders building to sell don't care about the house as long as a scrapes through building regs and don't care about energy efficiency.

 

Perhaps part of the problem is buyers don't care, but with the rising cost of energy it is time they did care and were prepared to pay a bit more for a well built efficient house.

[Faz]

Not the case for me - the spec of the plot is way way over minimums in terms of energy efficiency.  This is what got me out of jail for the water cylinder snafu.

 

The thing was 2 away from getting an A on the EPC - pretty impossible to hit an A without renewables.

[ProDave]

4 minutes ago, Faz said:

The thing was 2 away from getting an A on the EPC - pretty impossible to hit an A without renewables.

And don't you think it was worth spending a little to get to an EPC A?  Surely in the present energy situation, being able to advertise it as EPC A would be a big plus point?

[Faz]

It is sold....

[SteamyTea]

21 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Surely in the present energy situation

Why just the present situation.

People and governments have been banging in about energy efficiency since the mid 1970s.

Or, to save any mental arithmetic, almost 50 years.

Makes me wonder why the only message that gets through us that energy efficiency is too expensive and difficult.

 

50 (expletive deleted)ing years. We should just tell people that fail to add the best technology that is currently available that they are (expletive deleted).

[MikeSharp01]

6 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

Thats a very good point - that is something the sun(amp) worshipers don't mention and I must look up how the Sunamp is handled for SAP calc. 

We discuss this here: 

AND HERE:

 

 

Edited March 19, 2022 by MikeSharp01
Added further discussion ref

[Pocster]

7 hours ago, TerryE said:

At the other red end, you have some where their build is a tail of woe; of one disaster after another; of being "unfairly let down" by suppliers and tradesmen; of time and costs spiralling out of control. 

Christ ! Why not just tag me 😂

[Adsibob]

On 14/03/2022 at 00:53, Gus Potter said:

Hiya.

 

Yes I think your SE has put a bit of thought into it.

 

Can it be changed?  On the face of it you would move beam 9 to line up with beam 12 and that would open up the stair well. But the load from beams 9 & 10 would move from roughly the 1/3 point of beam 8 to its mid span so the bending forces not least in beam 8 may increase, I'm not sure though how much they may increase if that much as you will have to support less floor area. I can't give you a definitive answer as I don't have all the info.. but ask your SE the question as it may be simple to change. They may be a bit peeved as I think they will have put a good bit of effort into this.. so you may need to part with some cash.

 

But if you don't need the floor space the extra light may offset any aditional SE fee. But perversly if you are going to sell the house on the every sq metre of floor could count.

 

 

 

 

So SE has said it will take him 7-9 hours to design a change and wants to charge me his hourly rate. Seems excessive to me. Can a design change really take that long?

[saveasteading]

39 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

Can a design change really take that long

Yes, I think so.

discuss what you might want to do 1/2 hour

get the file out and review. 1/2 hour

discuss with you or architect, then personal review after the meeting,  1 hour

admin re agreeing what to do and the cost 1 hour hour

do the new design 2 hours

draw the new proposal, check, sign off, 2 hours

admin in sending 1/2 hour

admin in invoicing 1/2 hour

allow for interim discussions 1/2 hour

 

that comes to 8.5.  If it is a bigger practice then some of that is done by admin/draughtsperson

 

Edited March 20, 2022 by saveasteading

[Gus Potter]

21 hours ago, Adsibob said:

So SE has said it will take him 7-9 hours to design a change and wants to charge me his hourly rate. Seems excessive to me. Can a design change really take that long?

Surprisingly yes. Once you change the loads and the stiffness / positions of the beams framing in then you need to review the whole thing. If you move the steel supports you need to go back and check the bearings and so on. It can be quite involved. Then sometimes you need to redraw a lot of it, change the detailed specification and so on. Before you know it the clock runs up.

 

@saveasteadingmakes good points.. good flavour of how things add up.

 

I think your SE is probably doing you a favour here. In the grand scheme of things if you want to open it up more then pay the SE and enjoy the result. If you like the open feel then others will often too. When you come to sell you'll get your money back anyway?