Building a house

[RMDrive]

Great post Myles. Here's a few things I learned.

If you are going to manage the build yourself you need to have the time to do this and you need to be close enough to the site to be able to pop out there when required. I left it to a builder and was happy with the decision.

If you don;t have any experience with  house building then you will be learning as you go along. That means you'll make your mistakes with this house and by the end of it you will be in a great position to do it again!

+1 on the underfloor.

Insulating your walls is easy. There's a load of options. I've found doing your ceilings to be much harder. It's difficult to do more than the average. Laying 200mm of insulation is grand if you don't intend to use the loft for storage, otherwise it's completely impractical.

Make sure the permanent stuff is done well. Tiling, timberwork, plumbing etc. Painting, kitchens etc can be easily changed.

Don't have too many windows - especially on the north side. They look good but will kill you with heat loss.

Plant trees on your site now. You can have a year or twos headstart on growth. I know this isn;t on your mind now but it will be.

Make sure your utility (or whever you will dry clothes) has a window in it.

Think about wheelchair accessablity. Hopefully you'll never need it but you may grow old in this house and 4 steps up to the front door will break your heart.

Think about where your tv's are going. Make sure you run at least 2 satellite cables to each point. If you are wall mounting a tv then think about where the sat box will go and run hdmi cables for hd tv.

Good luck with it.

[Tony Baloney]

Great post Myles. Here's a few things I learned.

If you are going to manage the build yourself you need to have the time to do this and you need to be close enough to the site to be able to pop out there when required. I left it to a builder and was happy with the decision.

If you don;t have any experience with  house building then you will be learning as you go along. That means you'll make your mistakes with this house and by the end of it you will be in a great position to do it again!

+1 on the underfloor.

Insulating your walls is easy. There's a load of options. I've found doing your ceilings to be much harder. It's difficult to do more than the average. Laying 200mm of insulation is grand if you don't intend to use the loft for storage, otherwise it's completely impractical.

Make sure the permanent stuff is done well. Tiling, timberwork, plumbing etc. Painting, kitchens etc can be easily changed.

Don't have too many windows - especially on the north side. They look good but will kill you with heat loss.

Plant trees on your site now. You can have a year or twos headstart on growth. I know this isn;t on your mind now but it will be.

Make sure your utility (or whever you will dry clothes) has a window in it.

Think about wheelchair accessablity. Hopefully you'll never need it but you may grow old in this house and 4 steps up to the front door will break your heart.

Think about where your tv's are going. Make sure you run at least 2 satellite cables to each point. If you are wall mounting a tv then think about where the sat box will go and run hdmi cables for hd tv.

Good luck with it.

Is disability access not mandatory in houses in the south? We spent some time working out a wheelchair ramp at the back of the house that didn't look like crap.

[JimStynes]

How do I post pictures from my home computer lads? I have a photo of the sort of house we are looking that i could put up.

We have a site passed and foundations are but we are looking to change the plans now, this is also going to be a pain in the ass and could take a while.  We may have to rent for a year or two but i would rather do it right and not cut any corners. I won't be managing the build as i don't have any experience in this.  We are at an early stage but trying to get on the ball now. 

Cheers for all the advice by the way.  I think i will make this an official thread as I am sure others will probably find this quite useful as well.

[loughshore lad]

Don't have underfloor heating myself but know of 3 other people that do.  2 of those 3 have been in their house a couple of years now and think its a disaster, one person in particular recently put a radiator in one of his living rooms in order to generate some more heat.

[RMDrive]

Don't have underfloor heating myself but know of 3 other people that do.  2 of those 3 have been in their house a couple of years now and think its a disaster, one person in particular recently put a radiator in one of his living rooms in order to generate some more heat.

They should really go back to the people that installed it for them. A correctly installed UFH system with the correct number of stats and zones will work really well. Sounds like they have been let down badly. At the end of the day a UFH system is fairly simple. You run a network of pipes through a concrete floor and you pump hot fluid through it. This heats the concrete which releases the heat to the room. It's just a big rad.

[Main Street]

How do I post pictures from my home computer lads? I have a photo of the sort of house we are looking that i could put up.

You can use a free  image hosting sharing site to store the image, like photobucket etc.
http://photobucket.com/?link=topmenu
Once uploaded there, you can post the image here. Just copy the image link provided, and paste the link inside the image tags in your post  here.

[JimStynes]

Something like this lads. Sorry about the size, i dont know how to make the images smaller.

[Main Street]

That's a project and a half.
I'd start with the garage first and move into in the attic there

What part of the design do you want to change?  the upper floor perhaps?

[JimStynes]

The original plans aren't for the house posted in the picture. We are looking to completely change the plans to something similar to the house in the picture above, probably not as big on the upper floors of that house though. If we didnt already have the land we wouldnt dream of trying to build a house like that.

[mylestheslasher]

Thats a dormer design. Remember what I said above about insulation, well you need to apply the same importance to the insulation of the ceiling in your upstairs rooms. You can buy Insulation from Kingspan or whoever or you can get those guys that blow insulation into wall cavities to blow it in between the rafters - its expensive but a class job. Do not skimp on this.
That natural stone is very expensive just so you know, labour is very intense as it takes a lot of time. The most expensive part of that house will be your roof cos of the complexities to the roofers around the windows.

[mylestheslasher]

Don't have underfloor heating myself but know of 3 other people that do.  2 of those 3 have been in their house a couple of years now and think its a disaster, one person in particular recently put a radiator in one of his living rooms in order to generate some more heat.

They should really go back to the people that installed it for them. A correctly installed UFH system with the correct number of stats and zones will work really well. Sounds like they have been let down badly. At the end of the day a UFH system is fairly simple. You run a network of pipes through a concrete floor and you pump hot fluid through it. This heats the concrete which releases the heat to the room. It's just a big rad.

Exactly, the country is full of lads who let on they know about underfloor and geothermal and many of them have not got a clue.

[The Gs Man]

You must be getting a loan aff yer day JimStynes!!!!!

Or you've won the lotto and haven't told us....

[criostlinn]

Just finished a self build and my god am I glad its over. Had know experience of this previous. Heres a few things I picked up along the way in no particular order.

As was said earlier insulate the shite out of it. I put in a 150mm cavity pumped, 50mm wall insulation. air tightness membrane, tape around windows, etc. Probably a bit over the top but really happy with the results. 

The heating took ages to decide. Went through every option but finally decided on air to water heatpump with underfloor heating and heat recovery system. Again so far so good. This combined with the insulation is giving great results. For example rooms only loose about 1-2 degrres in heat during the night with no heating on.

Go for triple glaze windows. Got mine in gradys joinery. The difference in price between double and triple glaze was only 10%. Gradys have a savage triple glaze.

When putting in fireplaces remember to have the size for the block layer. Also if you are putting in heat recovery it makes thing handier if fireplaces are on an outside wall.

+1 on the hollowcore. I work shift work and never hear a thing from downstairs during the day.

Have an idea how much insulation you want to put into the floor at the start. They recommend that you put as much as you can into it but it can add up in cost. The height of d0or frames is usually standard but only allows 75mm insulation.

Put in cat6 cable to all rooms. Even if you dont use it now you might in the future. Think hard about how you wire sound and tv in rooms. I had a go at this myself and made a lot of mistakes. I reckon id make a great job of it the second time.

That all I can think of at the mo. Ill add more if I think of it

[loughshore lad]

Don't have underfloor heating myself but know of 3 other people that do.  2 of those 3 have been in their house a couple of years now and think its a disaster, one person in particular recently put a radiator in one of his living rooms in order to generate some more heat.

They should really go back to the people that installed it for them. A correctly installed UFH system with the correct number of stats and zones will work really well. Sounds like they have been let down badly. At the end of the day a UFH system is fairly simple. You run a network of pipes through a concrete floor and you pump hot fluid through it. This heats the concrete which releases the heat to the room. It's just a big rad.

Exactly, the country is full of lads who let on they know about underfloor and geothermal and many of them have not got a clue.

The 2 people who have it both work in the construction industry and would be very particular about things with the research well done.  To clarify its not a geothermal source of heat they are using rather an oil burner in each case but neither person recommends it at all.  Maybe they have been caught but just posting for comparative purposes.

[JimStynes]

You must be getting a loan aff yer day JimStynes!!!!!

Or you've won the lotto and haven't told us....

I won the lotto Gs man. Dont tell anyone though....

We are going to rent for a while but we are building up near her house asap. Need to get ideas of plans etc sorted now

Anybody know any good architects in the north (we live close to lurgan btw)? good ones, not all your mates now!