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New series of Grand Designs 31st August 2022


Thorfun

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Just watched it on catchup and yes great for some people, fully fitted out, a bit like the old huf house. Yes I am sure building blocks of the same design would work out much cheaper. Shame they didn’t go through the insulation type/thickness and airtightness details etc . (For us nerds🤔).

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12 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

The Huf come round every 2 or 3 years to see if anything needs sorting out. 

Wow, that’s customer service eh? I just loved the Germans work gear (waistcoats) and cleaning the van before leaving, not like some Brit builders eh?

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Aye. The visit to the factory was fun he said. My wife’s dad went with him also an architect. It literally is choosing the house and fittings from a huge catalogue and they give you the fixed price straight away. It’s been up 10 years and looks as fresh and contemporary today as it did then. 

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Some of you will know I did some work in a similar "factory" up here that built modular houses to near passive house insulation levels.  One of their builds featured on "impossible builds" or similar.  But this company did mainly bespoke so it was unusual for them to be churning out rows of the same thing, and their production line was not as slick or automated.

 

One of the things the majored on was building "houses" that complied with the definition of a "caravan" and installed many at Findhorn.

 

Sadly they went into liquidation a few years ago.  

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Just now, Spreadsheetman said:

It was very noticeable how little drama was in that episode compared to the usual GD fare.


That was a stand out feature wasn’t it. 
 

1 minute ago, Spreadsheetman said:

Would it still be standing 50 years later?


Going by what it replaced I think you’d have to say ‘yes’. 

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My thought was what would they have done had they not got that inheritance to build the house. The house they were in was little more than a shed and was falling apart. While it wasn’t exactly like many other GD situations they still ended up only being able to do it due to external input. That said he did pull the extra from his pension. 

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2 hours ago, joe90 said:

Kept patching it up like anybody else without the capital to build!

We could have patched ours indefinitely but having inherited it we thought we would dismantle it and replace it with a newer timber frame building. It was over eighty years old and originally built as temporary accommodation, so about time.

 

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4 hours ago, Kelvin said:

My thought was what would they have done had they not got that inheritance to build the house. The house they were in was little more than a shed and was falling apart. While it wasn’t exactly like many other GD situations they still ended up only being able to do it due to external input. That said he did pull the extra from his pension. 

we enjoyed that episode as well. on this comment he did mention that they would own it outright so if they didn't have the inheritance maybe they could've gone down the self-build mortgage route? 

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Just watched the Canterbury episode. I like the suspense of the last few years of GD. You know that COVID lockdown is coming, but they don’t. The timelines with this build did not disappoint. 
 

Things went wrong on my build from day 1. You have to embrace all the compromises, perfection is a folly. When the build is finished no one but you knows about all the faults and mistakes. 

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39 minutes ago, Nick Laslett said:

Just watched the Canterbury episode.

Me too. Is it bad that I was nit-picking his construction efforts? It had a great many curved features and very few of them would please me. There's a mathematical technique pioneered by engineer Pierre Bézier that creates smooth, continuous curves and once you've based your expectations on them not any old curve will do.

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I think the guys mistake on the Canterbury episode (which we enjoyed watching) was that he didn't engage the architect who designed the house. I think the costs of hiring the architect would've meant someone would be on-site to oversee the progress and you can guarantee that the architect would've ensured it was done properly from the start to make their vision come to life how they dreamt it would. I think that would've been worth £50k if not more. could've ended up saving them a small fortune as well.

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Just caught up with the Canterbury episode. I think it can be a thin line between appearing as a perfectionist and someone who is arrogant in my view. He said the build had made him a better person. Perhaps it has? Or perhaps it just re-enforced his belief that only he is capable of achieving great things. I wonder if he regrets failing to have the confidence to actually trust someone who is skilled and trained in a particular trade to do some work for him. They said they had the funds to pay for "help" but decided no one could do as well as them !! Quite an insult to local trades I would suggest?

Oh well, each to their own. Lets hope they can now enjoy the house after such a long time building it.

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Arrogant or not to be able to build so much of it himself given how complex it was is quite remarkable. It’s not as if it’s square boxes screwed together. Could good professional craftsmanship have achieved the same or better then clearly yes as we see plenty of stunning buildings out and about. 

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