So, what would you do differently next time?

[Kuro507]

It would be interesting to read a thread on what lessons you learnt from your last self-build? (Might also give some of us cause to smile)

 

 

[warby]

From ebuild http://www.ebuild.co.uk/topic/15595-with-hindsight-what-would-you-have-done-differently/page__p__114558__hl__mistakes#entry114558

[Ferdinand]

Reading those threads, we have permission from about 80% of the people to copy posts across, so I will have a look at doing that later.

 

F

Edited May 23, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Guest Alphonsox]

I'd forgotten that thread. I would add :-

- Check room sizes against target finishes etc. Our main bedrooms are all 530x405cm and are to be carpeted. Carpet comes on 4m and 5m wide rolls.

- Our upstairs ceilings are 230cm high due to us not allowing space for MVHR pipes and losing 10cm off the target  240cm. This has made getting cheap built in wardrobes a problem.

[ProDave]

The only thing I would do differently is sell the old house first before building the replacement. The inability after 2 years trying to sell the old house has left us working on the new house in dribs and drabs on an almost non existent pot of money.

[jack]

There aren't enough gigs of storage on the server for me to list them all, but some include:

 

- assumed that external blinds would provide 100% darkness, so didn't allow for internal window coverings.  They provide nothing of the sort, so everyone is presently getting woken very early by light leakage.  Had I known this I've had built in recesses for proper light-proof window coverings.

 

- didn't put in writing some things that I should have, which came back to bite me on the bum when it became my word against the other guy (I actually think he genuinely remembered it differently to me, but one thing I do have is a reliable memory for conversations, so he was definitely in the wrong).

 

- specified in greater detail what level of finish I expected from trades.  According to at least some trades we've had onsite, my idea of basic, workmanlike quality" is "perfection that no human being (or at least English tradesperson) can achieve". I think it just shows how poor many people are at their trades.

 

- I carefully measured up all the window apertures once the frame was up, then proceeded to not get around to comparing them to the plans. Some were slightly short, and that triggered the biggest nightmare of the build (as we all know from watching Grand Designs, it's always the windows that cause the problems!)

 

- kept putting off difficult decisions, which often meant making the decision at crunch time, while under stress (possibly even stress related to something unrelated).  Also meant we sometimes paid over the odds for materials, because we didn't plan them far enough in advance.

 

I could go on (and on, etc).  I suspect that other people will have different issues.  The ones I had above are largely related to my own personal weaknesses as a human, which include a dislike of confrontation, an intense dislike of telling people what to do (you really need to learn how to do this - I'm certainly better than I was as a result of the experience), and problems with making big decisions.  I recommend examining your own weaknesses and seeing where you think they might get you into trouble!

[Bitpipe]

• I'd have specced more external blinds, there are a few windows that I mistakenly assumed would not need them but the sun does find its way in during the day.
• I'd have gone for fully hung door sets vs putting in the linings first and then getting the joiner to hang the doors after. He did a good job and I saved a few quid on the door furniture but it took way longer than expected so the labour cost racked up.
• Included architrave and skirting in the budget.
• Budgeted a lot more for general joinery - really underestimated the post 1st fix work needed to box in pipes etc and get ship shape for plastering plus lots of other small jobs

On the other hand, things I'm really glad I did are 

• Joining e-build (Buildhub predecessor) and never being afraid of asking a stupid question. Infact I almost relish it sometimes  
• Meeting quite a few other self builders, mostly from this forum. Talking to others on the phone. Helped keep ourselves sane, shared good trades, learned a few tricks and was happy to pass on advice to the next generation
• Living on site in a caravan (even with wife, two kids and a cat).
• The basement - was a bit of a leap of faith but worked out really well
• External concealed blinds on east windows and on east and south Velux
• Splurging on really nice stairs and doors.
• Resin floor downstairs
• Choosing alu soffit & fascia instead of uPVC
• Squeezing in electric UFH in the bathrooms at the very last minute.
• Taking the time to be amazed that I managed to big a big old house with zero past experience, stay married and not be bankrupt at the end.

 

 

I also learned to chill out a lot during the build and (try) not to get too stressed out. As they say, two types of problems - things you can change and things you can't, no point loosing sleep over the latter...

 

Edited May 23, 2017 by Bitpipe

[jack]

Continued:

- Not putting heating the bathrooms.  Not quite a disaster, but even with passivhaus levels of insulation, the bathrooms are a little chillier than desirable in winter.

- Didn't think hard enough about level access. Solvable, but would have been a LOT easier if we'd sorted it earlier.

- Same with the garage - really didn't give enough thought to how we were going to manage the access ramp into the garage.

 

More to follow, for sure...

[Triassic]

The thing we're finding difficult is balance our desire for perfection with the reality of what's on offer.

 

My biggest weakness is the desire to do everything myself and thinking and often saying " oh! That'll only take my x hours" when in reality it'll take me 6 times x hours.

[jack]

5 minutes ago, Triassic said:

The thing we're finding difficult is balance our desire for perfection with the reality of what's on offer.

 

Snap!

[Barney12]

35 minutes ago, Triassic said:

 

My biggest weakness is the desire to do everything myself and thinking and often saying " oh! That'll only take my x hours" when in reality it'll take me 6 times x hours.

 

+1. I'm exactly the same!  

[CC45]

Should not have put dormers in (v time consuming)

Should have put ufh upstairs (easy and quick)

Should not have used celotex (the board thickness is so variable and often more than stated)

Should have bought my own digger

Should try to enjoy the whole experience more often

 

[Onoff]

Not that I'm self building but.....

 

- Should have done better at school

- So I could have paid someone else to do it all

[Ferdinand]

 Answers in the thread title posted on Ebuild here:

 

(Some of these views may have changed, but it is still all useful grist for your mill.

 

@Declan52

Quote

Do all you can to get as much insulation in as possible. My rafters are 150mm deep and got 140mm of high density earthwool. If at the time I had of had another couple of grand I could have increased the depth to at least 300mm deep. Same with the sub floor if I had of left it down another 100mm could have got more in.
 

Most of the budget will go on stuff you don't see so sometimes it hard to justify spending it but don't cut corners with the actual structure it will cost a fortune later on down the line to fix. 

 

@ProDave

 

Quote

Air tightness and insulation.

My first self build (the one I am still living in and is for sale by the way) was just built to "ordinary" standards as I didn't know otherwise. It's not a bad house and not over expensive to heat, but I wish I had known a lot more about making it properly air tight, better insulation and fitted an mvhr unit (all or which will be done on the next one)

Likewise it's a timber frame with a blockwork outer skin. That adds almost nothing to insulation and is just an expensive rain shield. the new one won't have that and will be clad in insulation board and rendered onto that. Almost the entire wall thickness will be insulation of some form.

We also "wasted" a lot of space as we wanted a big open feature staircase with wrap around balcony landing upstairs. The new design is more eficcient in terms of usable space.

Separate porch stuck on the front is a lot of extra building for not a lot of useful anything so that won't be there on the new one.

Double garage does not get as much use as I thought so will be a single garage (mainly as a work space) and double car port to keep the cars out of the rain and keep the frost off them.

I doubt I could have actually saved much money on the last one and I fear with increased building cost the new one will cost more to build.

Avoid an architect unless you can get a good deal, I couldn't find one under £20K so didn't use one. This time I designed it myself and then used an architectural technician to draw it and a structural engineer working with him to design all the structural elements. 

 

@JSHarris

Quote

I'd have spent an awful lot less time worrying about heating, as a well-insulated and airtight house needs so little heat that spending a fortune on a complex system is pointless.

I'd have spent far more time on solar gain control. I REALLY wish I'd done a LOT more to build in ways to limit solar gain, as retrofitting solar gain reduction methods is both awkward and potentially costly.

The only other thing I'd have done differently is be a bit more realistic about build time schedules. I'm doing most of the internal work, all the plumbing, ventilation, most of the joinery etc myself, and it is very time consuming for someone like me with just DIY skills. 

 

@JSHarris

Quote

(On tinted glass to reduce solar gain)

Quote

It may make things worse, depending on the layer that is tinted. If it's the outer layer, then you may improve things a bit, but if its the inner layer then all that will happen is that the inner pane of glass will get hotter (because the tint absorbs heat) and you could end up with more, rather than less, solar gain.

Certainly glass with a reflective outer pane will help a lot, which is why this is done on big office blocks, but whether it would look OK on a house is debatable.

I think what I'd have done differently is to extend out the front gable even further than we did, to provide more shading of that window, I'd add a tinted glass porch over the lower half of the front gable and do the same along the east side of the house where we get a lot of morning solar gain.

I would also have seriously considered fitting external roller blinds and building provision for these into the walls above the windows. We could retrofit them, but it won't be that easy and will add a fair bit of cost. 

 

 

 

@Stones

 

Quote

I'll add to my comments by saying consider carefully both your current and future needs. Its also very easy to think the bigger the house, the better it will be. Do you really need a spare room(s)? If only used occasionally, probably cheaper to pay for guests to stay in a local B&B or turf one of the kids out of their room to make space for guests. 

 

@jack

Quote

I have little doubt that there are worse to come, but so far most of our regrets so far have been minor, such as:

- We didn't put thick enough OSB decking (on our flat roof) to cope with PV mountings. We can get around it, but 3mm thicker OSB would have avoided us a lot of hassle.
- We left looking into PV quite late, and now we're running around like mental trying to sort it out.
- I'd have committed to making decisions earlier. I have a habit of putting off decisions until the last minute and it's caught me out a couple of times. Sometimes it's minor, like having to buy things locally at a premium rather than more cheaply online. 
- I'd have thought more carefully about the positions and sizes of windows looking from particular positions within the house. Spent too much time thinking in plan view rather than 3-dimensionally.
- I'd have paid for a proper PHPP (Passivhaus modelling) right at the start. It would have pointed out a couple of issues that would have been far easier to fix back in the planning and design stages (this is only important if you're interested in Passivhaus certification).

No doubt there are plenty more of these to come (including several mistakes we've made but don't know about yet!), but these are the ones that jump immediately to mind.

 

@jack

Quote

The main issues we had with our preliminary el-cheapo PHPP calculations were:

- It wasn't possible to position the MVHR against an external wall. We therefore had to run about 2m of the external ducting through the internal ceiling void. Despite being insulated, this would apparently have had a large impact on the MVHR performance, and hence a negative impact on energy consumption over the year. This was overlooked in the initial modelling. We've now moved the MVHR unit into the attached garage, which should ameliorate much of the problem
- We have a couple of modest cantilevers. We should have seen this one coming, as cantilevers are repeatedly mentioned as being a problem for passivhaus. Our initial modelling suggested we were very comfortably within the 15kWh/m2/yr requirements of passivhaus, so we thought we could get away with the impact of surface area to volume that overhangs introduce. As it happens, it was less the surface area and more the cold bridges introduced by the required steelwork that was the problem. While the steel work will be as well-insulated as possible, it will remain an undesirable cold bridge. If I'd spotted it earlier, I'd have introduced a thermal break in the steelwork at an appropriate point.
- Window sizes to the north: this came about from us increasing some window sizes to the north once we got back the apparently positive preliminary results. As it happened, we should have kept them smaller. By the time we realised we were in trouble, it was too late - changing the windows back would have cost us quite a lot of money and delay, as the windows and timberframe were signed off and ready to go. 
- Some of the winter shading wasn't captured by the topographical survey. Once that was corrected our solar gain throughout winter was worse.

The relatively high cost of PHPP modelling makes it really tricky to get the timing right. Too early (ie, while you're still scratching out high-level designs and perhaps haven't chosen your build system) and you end up repeatedly paying to update the design as it evolves. Too late and you may have committed to design or manufacture decisions that will be expensive to undo. I'd hopefully do a better job of this next time, but I suspect there's always going to be a compromise one way or the other. 

 

There is another thread buried deeper in Ebuild, which I aim to have a look at later.

Edited May 24, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Trw144]

Next time I ll do a better blog - you see what I m saying when I shortly publish the worst self build blog in buildhub memory....

 

edit - if there is a next time

Edited May 24, 2017 by Trw144

[Kuro507]

10 hours ago, Triassic said:

The thing we're finding difficult is balance our desire for perfection with the reality of what's on offer.

 

My biggest weakness is the desire to do everything myself and thinking and often saying " oh! That'll only take my x hours" when in reality it'll take me 6 times x hours.

That is me to a T!

 

The problem is I am a very capable person, I can turn my hand to pretty much anything (Apart from plastering and rendering). Which in turn means I really resent paying somebody else to do something I can do for free   But of course, on a project of this size, with a full time job that can be stressful, I have to realise that my time has a value and that I cannot do everything.  I initialy wanted to build with ICF, so I could do it myself, but lets be realistic, It would take me years...  So instead, I'm costing the build up based on using trades, I will definately use a builder/Company to build the base and shell up to watertight. Then I will decide how to proceed with the internals, some DIY and some professionals depending on how much I want to do. Any DIY equals some saving I can use for something else.

Budget will be done on mid-range stuff, if the other half wants to up the spec, then that decision has to be made on a case by case basis and the extra money found from somewhere else.

Its likely she will keep her apartment during the build, selling my house to fund it. Living in a caravan is not really an option.

[Vijay]

On 2017-5-23 at 21:39, Triassic said:

The thing we're finding difficult is balance our desire for perfection with the reality of what's on offer.

 

My biggest weakness is the desire to do everything myself and thinking and often saying " oh! That'll only take my x hours" when in reality it'll take me 6 times x hours.

 

Been thinking about this a lot cos I've got exactly the same issue with nearly every trade I've dealt with and not been impressed with. The problem is how do you combat the DIY approach when you believe you can do a better job than a lot of trades out there

[Triassic]

I think part of the problem is the death of the apprentiship, my dad is a time served carpenter, his apprentiship was four years. He could build you anything using wood. I myself did a three year indentured apprentiship and I can ment anything mechanical, I can build you a chemical plant, I can manage a multi million pound project. My last renovation project the windows had to be fitted by the window company, so they could supply the FENSA certificate, the two guys fitting the windows, one started out as a butcher and the other was a poor DIYer. They were hopeless. A friend is a time services joiner and worked for a company doing disabled bathroom adaptions, his boss laid off all the time server guys and replaced them with minimum wage tryers. He now works on a self employed basis for the same company, going round fault fixing!

[Jeremy Harris]

25 minutes ago, Triassic said:

I think part of the problem is the death of the apprentiship............

 

Spot on.  Our experience has been the same, that there are a lot of people around calling themselves tradesmen who have little or no proper training in their trade.  Sadly, many of these have bits of paper that proclaim that they are qualified in some way, but it seems that often these bits of paper are meaningless.

 

We were lucky to find some really good people, but that was pure luck in the main.  Most of them were the result of personal recommendation from another very good tradesperson, so if you can get just one good person onboard then you have an in to a pool of potentially good people.  We found that good people didn't recommend people that had lower standards than their own, as a general rule.

 

 

[joe90]

In fairness when I was a builder I had no qualifications in that trade, I am completely self taught and lucky enough to be good at most things. All my work ( apart from the first few jobs) were by recommendation and I have always told people to find a tradesperson by recommendation not the biggest advert!

[Vijay]

I think the problem is also pride too. I'd be ashamed to turn out some work I've seen over the years. Maybe you're just good at things Joe but also WANT to do a good job and not just about the money

[joe90]

Thanks Vijay, yes I have a lot of pride in what I do ( and so do my current builders luckily) . Funnily enough I retired when I Realised I was fed up with doing good work for other people and wanted the good results for myself. ?

[Roger440]

On 2017-5-28 at 17:48, Triassic said:

I think part of the problem is the death of the apprentiship, my dad is a time served carpenter, his apprentiship was four years. He could build you anything using wood. I myself did a three year indentured apprentiship and I can ment anything mechanical, I can build you a chemical plant, I can manage a multi million pound project. My last renovation project the windows had to be fitted by the window company, so they could supply the FENSA certificate, the two guys fitting the windows, one started out as a butcher and the other was a poor DIYer. They were hopeless. A friend is a time services joiner and worked for a company doing disabled bathroom adaptions, his boss laid off all the time server guys and replaced them with minimum wage tryers. He now works on a self employed basis for the same company, going round fault fixing!

 

On 2017-5-28 at 18:17, JSHarris said:

 

Spot on.  Our experience has been the same, that there are a lot of people around calling themselves tradesmen who have little or no proper training in their trade.  Sadly, many of these have bits of paper that proclaim that they are qualified in some way, but it seems that often these bits of paper are meaningless.

 

We were lucky to find some really good people, but that was pure luck in the main.  Most of them were the result of personal recommendation from another very good tradesperson, so if you can get just one good person onboard then you have an in to a pool of potentially good people.  We found that good people didn't recommend people that had lower standards than their own, as a general rule.

 

 

 

Agreed. I did a 4 year apprenticeship. i look at the younger guys ive employed (and got rid of) and think, they dont really have a chance. I dont believe, possibly outside the MOD, that you can do a "proper" apprenticeship any more even if you want to.

 

On 2017-5-28 at 20:11, Vijay said:

I think the problem is also pride too. I'd be ashamed to turn out some work I've seen over the years. Maybe you're just good at things Joe but also WANT to do a good job and not just about the money

 

Agreed again. Dont know how some people can stand back, look at the job and think that its remotely acceptable. But that now appears to be the way.

[PeterW]

4 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

Agreed again. Dont know how some people can stand back, look at the job and think that its remotely acceptable. But that now appears to be the way.

 

But part of the issue is we have created this ..! Trades are competing for work and I would hazard 80% are competing on price alone. So if you take that through to its conclusion, they need to do more work to make money. And quality suffers....

 

I have a brickie on a piece rate for the work I'm doing but he knows it's a fair price and if there are extras then I pay - for example I pay more for heads / soldiers and extra per lintel. I could say it should be in the price but for what accounts for say 3 days extra cost on 40 days, it's a small price to pay for the attention to detail. 

 

Its the classic scope/quality/cost triangle that any good PM knows - if you keep the scope the same and reduce the cost, then quality suffers ...

[Roger440]

1 minute ago, PeterW said:

 

But part of the issue is we have created this ..! Trades are competing for work and I would hazard 80% are competing on price alone. So if you take that through to its conclusion, they need to do more work to make money. And quality suffers....

 

Its the classic scope/quality/cost triangle that any good PM knows - if you keep the scope the same and reduce the cost, then quality suffers ...

true, but how is this any different from any other time? Cost has always been a factor when looking to get work done, now or 50 years ago.