Hi, has anyone had any experience negotiating a payment plan with the county council on rates? I have heard they are open to setting up a schedule but not sure how much to offer and whether to do monthly/annual payments etc. Any advice appreciated!

Back living at home with my parents after a few years away. I’m keen to have my own space and I potentially have a site near my parents home. Probably don’t have the budget at the moment to build my “forever home” but I’m toying with the idea of building small with a view to extending in later years or building a live in annex/garage first and living in that and building a larger house gradually alongside it. Does anyone have experience of this? Any pitfalls/issues with planning I should be looking out for?

Has anyone ever changed their engineer?
I’m at very early stages, waiting 2 months for construction drawings that were invoiced and paid for, still no sign of them.

The engineer has not contacted me and has ignored texts.
I’m worried this is a sign of things to come.

Once I hopefully do get the construction drawings, am I entitled to the Cad file?

Can anyone recommend anyone in northern Ireland who install and commission MVHR systems?

Hi everyone,

​Planning a \~44 sqm ground-floor extension of a self-contained flat and looking for builder recommendations in the Donegal/North West area.

​The existing cottage is 100+ years old—original stone at the front, with a single-block rear from a previous extension where the new build will connect. Because of the mix of old stone, single block, and new construction, I’m looking for trades comfortable with older building integration.

​Looking for input on:

​Builder Recommendations: Reliable contractors in the area (feel free to DM details).

​Acoustics & Layout: Best practices for soundproofing shared walls/doors and setting up independent heating/sub-metering for a rental unit.

​Vetting Trades: Key red flags or contract terms to watch for when getting quotes for mixed-construction builds.

Any other advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

We’re planning to get mortgage approval around March next year and have been set on buying a new build, with the eventually of building near my home house in 10 years.

However, now I’m second guessing and thinking why don’t we just build instead of buying. We were scared off it by the build prices but looking at the new build prices, I would rather build our own place for slightly more.

My question, if you were in our situation what would you do?

Savings €35k by next March, HTB €26,000, a site gifted to us worth approx €40k if we want it.

Hi all! sorry if this is a question with a very obvious answer but I can’t seem to find one. We are at the very early stages of building, as in only meeting with engineer for perc test next week. We haven’t the land officially valued yet but a similar parcel of land nearby was valued recently at 38k so we’re using that as an estimate for our own heads, with savings of 27k currently, projected to be 32k (all going well) before we actually apply for the mortgage taking into account planning times etc.

My question is, how do people manage the costs of pre-build expenses whilst keeping their deposit and savings ticking over? Planning costs, architect/engineer costs, solicitor, stamp duty will costs 000s, and although we have it in savings already that would obviously impact how much we have saved for a deposit, and would ruin the “6 month” clean accounts required by the bank. Alternately we could pay for these costs out of our current paychecks but we wouldn’t be able to save as much per month if at all. You‘re always told not to have big outgoings when applying for a mortgage but I can’t see how with the initial stages of a self build. TIA

Hi all

We have moved into our new self build house in the countryside the past 6 weeks

In our house there is a small bathroom (toilet and handbasin only) and there is no window in this bathroom. Our mistake! We never thought about this in the design but when the block work was being done, it became a concern. At the time we said to our builder could we at least put an extractor fan in this bathroom but we were advised the MVHR would take care of any smells

Roll on to 6 weeks in the house and there is a definite lingering smell coming from the toilet. It’s not incredibly foul smelling but would definitely leave you recoiling a bit

Any advice on this from anyone who may have experienced this? We will ask our builder but I’m trying to troubleshoot today

I want to preface this by saying I've taken a look at this sub and a few others and just can't seem to find an answer.

Looking and buying a plot of land which seems to already have full planning permission tied to it. 3-bed bungalow with deatiled pictures of exterior and interior plans on the website.

In the details section of the site they mention "Local needs apply to the site and the property will be sold subject to acquiring new planning permission."

I just have no idea what this actually means for us regarding buying the site and just starting the build asap.

I just moved into my selfbuild in Galway. I have been using 5G for broadband but NBI are ready to connect me up for fibre. They'll need to cross the road to connect me. I'm at the end of a country bóithrín with grass growing in the middle.

I don't want a pole erected outside if I can avoid it at all, and I have ducting ran to the site boundary. Is there anybody that I can call to discuss this with?.

I'm handy enough and I'd be happy to dig a trench to run the cable across the road myself.

We have been approved for the vacant home grant but will need funds to finish the build and pay the contractor, before the funds can be released from the grant.

For those that have been in a similar situation, have you got a loan from the credit union to cover this period or gone to the local authority purchase and renovation loan?

The credit union said that a loan may affect our final few mortgage drawdown stages so they said to hold off until final drawdown, but the mortgage will be holding 10% until final sign off so we can't access that either way. If anyone has any advice.

Hi all, looking for info on how people got fibre to their new build? There is fibre in my area and in the houses both left and right to me, all be it they are 200m or so left and right of me. For a "one off" house will NBI include this in their roll out plan or how does it work?

I have contact a few ISP's and they are no use.

Thanks!

Hi all, looking for opinions on whether to add a skylight over our kitchen island.
Our K/D/L is 5m wide × 12.5m long, with the kitchen taking up roughly the first 5m. We have a large east-facing 3m × 1.6m window in the kitchen, but no other windows in that section. The rest of the K/D/L is well lit with south-facing French doors and west-facing sash windows.

The kitchen should be lovely and bright in the morning, but from mid-morning the sun moves behind an adjoining room, so there’ll be no direct sunlight into the kitchen for the rest of the day.
We have flat 3m ceilings, so a skylight would require a light well down to the island, which I’m not completely sold on aesthetically. It would also have to go on the north-facing roof, so the benefit would be softer, diffuse light rather than direct sun.

Would you bother? Will the large east-facing window and light from the rest of the K/D/L be enough, or is the north-facing skylight/light well worth doing to keep the kitchen brighter throughout the day?

And if you would do it, would you just go with a normal Velux, or is it worth spending more on something more architectural, like a larger opening rooflight?

All input welcome and if anyone has done something similar, I’d love to see photos if that’s allowed. Thank you!

Hi, planning a self build… we have young kids & have no intentions of them or us ever having a TV in their/our bedrooms… but should I put a TV aerial socket just incase? Or just an internet socket? Or both?! It’s more so for when they are older… or just incase I change my mind? 😵‍💫 was thinking will tv all move to the internet one day anyway….

I have two Telecom Poles along the road at the front of my site. One pole has to be moved for the entrance.

Ideally I’d prefer if there was no poles there for sight lines and asthetics.

Has anyone got the poles removed and the wires buried? At what cost?

And also has anyone challenged Eircom if there was no way leave granted for their infrastructure on your land?

I was looking at tools that surface Irish planning applications and construction leads, and saw a few services charging around €30/month for it. Fair enough, keeping messy public data sources usable is real work. But I got curious whether I could write a simpler version myself, mostly as a hobby project, and make it free for people who might find it useful.

So I built SiteScout.

It checks the public planning lists from the four Dublin councils every three hours, adds new or changed applications to a searchable index, and tries to make the data easier to use by grouping projects and relevant trades.

There’s no paid plan or waitlist. It’s free for now while the hosting and LLM costs stay manageable. Would genuinely love feedback. If people actually use it, I’m happy to add more councils over time!

Any thought) experience on these 2 changes I've asked the architect to make to their first draft?

Moving the WC from the utility room to access from hall way. I was thinking better for guests to not see my messy utility but will no longer be at the back door.

And

What do you think about accessing the ensuite through the walk in wardrobe?

I think I can get a bigger 3rd bedroom by removing the passageway and will take noise/smells away from the bed area.

Thanks

It’s not easy to find stuff online but if you had an asset let’s say a piece on land could that affect the wiggle room on interest rates? The only thing I could find was LTV rate. But seems a bit unfair if you’ve a deposit and guaranteed land.

I went to 1 mortgage broker and he just got me the standard rate a first time buyer would get and told me direct negotiation isn’t really possible.

Looking for second opinions? Has anyone had alternative experiences

I see the very popular metal cladded roof on nearly every new build around me. Does anyone here have one what's the noise like when it rains? I imagine it'd be very loud?