16 steps to Building Your Home step 16: completion
Serial self-builder David Snell concludes his comprehensive 16-part guide to building your own home. But even with the house built there’s plenty to do before it’s completed
And then it’s all finished. or is it? Because although everything seems to have been done and the new home stands there ready and waiting for you to move in, there’s plenty more to do.
For a start, there will be dirt, debris and dust everywhere and cleaning that out is a major undertaking. It will seem as if you can sweep and vacuum to your heart’s content and still not make an impression on the dust that seems to emanate from every floor and crevice. You may have to use a garden or plant spray to damp down everywhere if you’re not to create more dust or simply move it to another place.
Before the carpet layers arrive, check for snags that can be sorted and get the relevant tradespeople in to sort them out. Remember: you can’t sort them all — more will appear in the first year as the house dries out and the various materials contract. It’s best to leave them until all movement is finished and then get the guys back later.
wipe the skirtings down before the carpet layers come in and make a note of any marks on them before they begin. some careless carpet layers choose to swipe the stanley knife along the carpet to cut it off, marking the skirting with a long cut. The carpet layers will, themselves, make more mess and, most probably, their advice will be to avoid using a ‘beats as it sweeps as it cleans’ type vacuum until the pile has settled down. so use a simple suction cleaner instead and pack all of the bits and pieces and off-cuts ready for disposal. But before you do that, retain some of the larger pieces to use as temporary mats at each door
any and all plant that is no longer required should have been ‘off-hired’ by now, but it may not have been collected yet. It’ll get in the way of removals so chase up the providers to come and collect it. The same applies to the site toilet facilities, but do be careful not to get rid of these too early unless you want tradespeople using your new bathrooms that you’ve so carefully cleaned.
any mains gas meter will have been read on installation and your first bills will reflect those readings. electricity and water, on the other hand, will have been on a building supply that you will have already paid for when the services were brought to site. with electricity you will have chosen your supplier and they will have taken a meter reading when the final meter was installed. nevertheless, it pays to take a reading on completion and advise the company accordingly. water will have been to a standpipe and you will have paid for a building supply. You now need to contact the water company to install a meter and take your first reading.
The electrician will have already installed your ethernet cabling. Your chosen broadband and/or telephone suppliers will have to bring the lines to you and connect to the main socket. In a similar vein, the aerial contractors will have to fix their aerials or satellite dishes to the outside and connect.
If the central heating has been running on ‘test’, it now needs to be set to ‘run’. many people forget this and wonder why their boiler is constantly running and yet their home is still cold. It’s because, on test the temperature going through the underfloor loops may be around 30°, while on run, it will be about 45°. once you’ve done that, the house will be warmer and the boiler will stop running so often.
the paperwork
You will need to arrange an energy performance Certificate (epC) in order to obtain a Completion Certificate from building control. This will invariably mean having an airtightness test from a specialist company. This would have been completed typically after second fix but before decoration. (You may have also had one at the end of first fix, too.)
You’ll need all of the above for your final mortgage release, together with the final certificate from your warranty company, who will also want to see copies of the epC and completion certificate.
and then that joyful, but exhausting day comes when your furniture arrives. Before it does, lay scaffold planks or plywood sheets across any grass or muddy ground that the delivery people are going to have to cross and lay cardboard or similar wherever it’s appropriate in the house, even though most professional removers will have dust sheets and protective blankets.
while everyone is taking a tea break, take time to ring your self-build site insurers to switch the insurance to household cover, including contents or, if it’s more appropriate, take out a fresh policy. Be especially diligent with this one. unscrupulous people will notice your stuff going in and if you’re not going to be sleeping there from that time forward, they may take advantage.
Finally, enjoy living in your new self-built home, happy in the knowledge that it’s probably the best decision you ever made.
➳ All binders and bracing to be fixed at node points ➳ Layboards to be fixed to valleys ➳ Dormers to be constructed at this point ➳ Fascia and soffit to be fixed together with any necessary ventilation grilles or strips ➳ Warranty inspection sometimes required ➳ Any roof tanks must be installed at this point
roof covering ➳ Roofers begin to cut and lay undercloaking to the verges ➳ Roofers to felt and batten ➳ Tiles/slates to be laid ➳ Ridge/hip tiles to be laid and bedded ➳ Valley tiles to be laid, or fibreglass or lead valleys to be laid ➳ Plumber to dress down flashings and skirtings ➳ Decorators to paint/stain fascias, soffits and barges
exterior & interior Fittings ➳ Plumbers to fix guttering ➳ Window suppliers to fit external joinery ➳ Plasterers to carry out any external rendering ➳ Scaffolding to come down
➳ Plumbers to fit downpipes and connect to drainage upstands/gullies ➳ External decoration ➳ Carpenters to commence first fix by fitting door linings, building any studwork partitioning and fixing window boards ➳ Carpenters to fix plasterboard noggins and box in vent pipes ➳ Plumber and carpenter to liaise with building of any necessary stands in roof ➳ Carpenter to fix loft trap
First Fix ➳ Plumbers to lay flooring membrane and insulation, taping all joints and sealing up to the damp-proof course ➳ Underfloor heating (UFH) loops to be laid and fixed ➳ All first fix plumbing for hot and cold and waste within floor zones to be laid ➳ Internal gas pipework installed ➳ UFH pipework to be brought to manifolds and outlet positions ➳ Supply and fix company to pump in and lay level floor screed and leave for three days ➳ Protective hardboard/ cardboard to be laid on screed ➳ Electrician to fix carcass wiring for lighting and power circuits together with all backplates ➳ Consumer unit/units to be positioned ➳ Wiring taken to external lighting points ➳ TV aerial/satellite cables to be installed to required positions ➳ Internal telephone wiring to be installed to required positions ➳ Home entertainment/ smart systems/alarms to be carcassed
drainage & external ➳ Groundworkers to begin digging the trenches for drainage runs ➳ Trenches backfilled to 150mm with pea shingle ➳ Drains laid to required falls ➳ Brick/concrete section manholes constructed, or purpose-made manholes, rodding eyes and gullies set in runs ➳ Building inspector to approve laid drains ➳ Drains haunched over with pea shingle ➳ Drainage trenches backfilled ➳ Work to connect to main sewer in road to be carried out by approved contractors ➳ Carpenter to finish boxings and noggings ready for plasterer ➳ Groundworkers to commence driveways and pathways ➳ Bricklayer to build any fireplaces and hearths ➳ Gas meter to be installed and connected ➳ Plumbers and electricians to liaise on all cross bonding and earthing
ceilings/drylining ➳ Main staircase to be fitted by the carpenter and protectively covered ➳ Dryliners/plasterers tack ceilings ➳ All external and blockwork walls lined with plasterboard on dots and dabs ➳ All studwork walls and pipe boxings tacked with plasterboard ➳ All joints and angles filled and scrim taped ➳ All abutments of differential materials jointed with mesh ➳ All joinery to be sealed internally and externally with mastic ➳ Dryliners/plasterers to skim coat all walls and ceilings ➳ Decorator to paint/
91-160m2
Greater London South-East
NW, SW, East & Scotland Mids, Yorks, NE & Wales Greater London South-East
NW, SW, East & Scotland Mids, Yorks, NE & Wales Greater London South-East
NW, SW, East & Scotland Mids, Yorks, NE & Wales
two storey
90-130m2 Greater London South-East
NW, SW, East & Scotland Mids, Yorks, NE & Wales
131-220m2 Greater London South-East
NW, SW, East & Scotland Mids, Yorks, NE & Wales Greater London South-East
NW, SW, East & Scotland Mids, Yorks, NE & Wales
1508 1323
1150 1270
l You are installing a waste disposal unit.
The Water calculator (thewatercalculator.org.uk) is an online tool which uses government methodology for assessing the wholehouse water efficiency of new dwellings. It’s a good idea to experiment and get familiar with how it works at the start, if you are looking for a design-based route to meet the requirement. (There are also specialist companies who can undertake this task for you.)
The calculator is not a design tool for water supply systems and it cannot calculate the actual water consumption of a new home. Similar to the SaP calculation for energy efficiency, the water calculation is simply a way of comparing one home to another using a standardised set of inputs. The end result will likely bear no resemblance to your actual water consumption in the real world.
The calculation method requires inputting figures provided from the manufacturer’s product details — such as the flow rate of taps and showers, the capacity volume of baths and toilet cisterns. So, before the assessment can be carried out, you will need this data at hand.
Mostly, it can be found from the manufacturers, but not always. If you struggle, guidance and comparison of water-efficient appliances and fittings for the industry can be obtained from schemes such as the eU water-efficient product labelling scheme.
The calculation software has a separate tab for each fitting, in which the values are entered to populate the table. The final calculation is expressed as the whole house consumption in litres per person per day. Some figures can be standardised for appliances like washing machines and dishwashers, but using manufacturers’ product data you can input the exact figure. Note that for external taps a fixed allowance of five litres per person per day is assumed and the software includes this automatically in the final calculation.
The great thing about this method is you can enter a variety of different fittings and values just to see what effect they have on compliance and find the right design for your own self-build.
How to Meet the water efficiency regs It’s worth looking at how to improve the water efficiency of plumbed products in your project.
WCs The days of single-flush nine litre cisterns have long gone. Dual-flush toilets discharge at either six and four or five and three litres from the cistern but some variation exists on the market. The calculator gives you some options but the five/three split tends to be a good place to start.
Be aware that when installing low-volume flush Wcs, the pipe diameter, discharge and gradient of the drainage system is critical in ensuring the drains operate as intended. also bear in mind that if the valve seal of a dual-flush Wc eventually wears out, up to 400 litres Follow the Maximum Fittings Method Table route (see table overleaf).
able from the manufacturer’s specification.
Rainwater Harvesting Installing a rainwater harvesting system will help a great deal with meeting your water efficiency target, though it is seldom necessary to meet compliance.
The manufacturers are usually also the designers for these systems and they have a choice of methods (from BS 8515:2009) available to calculate the daily collection figure per person (in litres) and the demand figure for each appliance served by rainwater and totalled up. The collection and demand figures are inputted to the calculation along with the occupancy (based on two people in the master bedroom and one person per additional bedroom) and resolve the contribution made by rainwater to your litres/person/ day figure.
If you are using The Water calculator to design your own harvesting system, enter the collection area from roofs and paving into column a, the yield co-efficient and hydraulic filter efficiency into column B and the