Want to take advantage of the US sub-prime mortgage crash? Why not buy this pied-a-terre in fashionable Detroit for just $1,500.
31 Aug 2007
House for sale: $1,500
Want to take advantage of the US sub-prime mortgage crash? Why not buy this pied-a-terre in fashionable Detroit for just $1,500.
Selfbuild VAT reclaim statistics
I have been taking at look at the UK’s selfbuild VAT reclaim figures. These are a key statistic, used to measure the size and the health of the selfbuild market where, uniquely in Europe, new homebuilding is zero-rated for VAT purposes. What I have managed to glean from the Revenue & Customs are new figures from March 2004 to August 2006; I already have figures for six years in the 1990s, so there is enough data here to make some comparisons.
In the first period, 1993-99, the average number of reclaims under the DIY reclaim scheme was 10,593 per annum. In the second period, April 04 – Aug 06, this was 10,810, a 4% increase, possibly not statistically significant.
However, the average size of each reclaim has grown dramatically, from £4,166 in the 1990s, up to £6,547 in the Noughties sample. A whopping 57% increase.
What the figures reveal
Firstly, they don’t really tell you the size of the selfbuild market. The only people that make DIY reclaims are non-professionals who aren’t registered for VAT and who buy materials on their own account. Therefore there will be lots of selfbuilds that never appear in these figures. We have to guess how many more, but you won’t be far out if you were to add 50% to the numbers — i.e. around 15,000 per annum.
They do tell you that the number of selfbuilds isn’t really growing. In fact earlier figures that I’ve seen also confirm this. The number of DIY reclaims has hovered between 10,000 a year and 12,000 a year ever since 1984 when VAT first became chargeable on building work.
What about the dramatic increase in the amount being spent? I can see two obvious reasons for this. Firstly, inflation in building materials, which has been growing steadily over the past few years. Secondly, selfbuilders specifying more upmarket materials, in line with housebuilding generally. Granite worktops, underfloor heating, hardwood floors, etc.
Finally, one fact is revealed in the latest figures which I haven’t seen before. Around 15% of claims are disallowed. That seems an extraordinarily high figure. I know the scheme is somewhat complex to understand, but nevertheless that’s quite a figure. I don’t know whether this 15% represents a lot of wholly rejected claims or whether it’s people wrongly claiming for unallowable parts of their build costs — probably a bit of both. The figures I have used for the amounts claimed excludes the rejected claims.
If you want to know more about the DIY VAT reclaim scheme, the relevant page is here. Please note, this scheme only operates in the UK.
In the first period, 1993-99, the average number of reclaims under the DIY reclaim scheme was 10,593 per annum. In the second period, April 04 – Aug 06, this was 10,810, a 4% increase, possibly not statistically significant.
However, the average size of each reclaim has grown dramatically, from £4,166 in the 1990s, up to £6,547 in the Noughties sample. A whopping 57% increase.
What the figures reveal
Firstly, they don’t really tell you the size of the selfbuild market. The only people that make DIY reclaims are non-professionals who aren’t registered for VAT and who buy materials on their own account. Therefore there will be lots of selfbuilds that never appear in these figures. We have to guess how many more, but you won’t be far out if you were to add 50% to the numbers — i.e. around 15,000 per annum.
They do tell you that the number of selfbuilds isn’t really growing. In fact earlier figures that I’ve seen also confirm this. The number of DIY reclaims has hovered between 10,000 a year and 12,000 a year ever since 1984 when VAT first became chargeable on building work.
What about the dramatic increase in the amount being spent? I can see two obvious reasons for this. Firstly, inflation in building materials, which has been growing steadily over the past few years. Secondly, selfbuilders specifying more upmarket materials, in line with housebuilding generally. Granite worktops, underfloor heating, hardwood floors, etc.
Finally, one fact is revealed in the latest figures which I haven’t seen before. Around 15% of claims are disallowed. That seems an extraordinarily high figure. I know the scheme is somewhat complex to understand, but nevertheless that’s quite a figure. I don’t know whether this 15% represents a lot of wholly rejected claims or whether it’s people wrongly claiming for unallowable parts of their build costs — probably a bit of both. The figures I have used for the amounts claimed excludes the rejected claims.
If you want to know more about the DIY VAT reclaim scheme, the relevant page is here. Please note, this scheme only operates in the UK.
24 Aug 2007
Can I still do DIY electrics?
I am in the very early thought process stage for building my own home. I have every intention of carrying out as much of the work myself as I possibly can, and this ranges from ground works to electrical installation, plumbing etc, etc.
However, the recent changes in legislation now mean that I have to employ someone else to do what I could do myself the day before the changes came into force.
To comply with this new legislation, my thinking is that I need to be approved under the "Competent Persons Scheme", and therefore, I need to know exactly what qualifications I need to gain, and what my next move is once I have the qualifications. Is it purely a case of gaining BS7671 and the like ?
It seems very odd that as a "layman" I can visit my DIY store or similar merchants and purchase all of the equipment I require to install systems, but I can't actually do anything with regard to fitting them.
Can you please clarify what the situation is.
Ian Thorley
Mark writes:
It wasn’t until 2005 that electrical work came under the auspices of building control in England & Wales. Part P, as it is known, doesn’t actually state that only competent persons are allowed to carry out electrical work: rather it suggests you have two choices. Firstly, you can elect to have a suitably Part P qualified electrician undertake the work for you and sign it off as having been carried out in accordance with BS7671. Alternatively, you can apply to have the electrical work inspected — and hopefully passed —by your local authority building inspector, or an agent acting for them. This, in theory, allows DIYers to undertake their own electrical work, in the time-honoured fashion, but adds in a measure of quality control that wasn’t previously there. If this work was being carried out as part of a larger project — i.e. building a house — then there shouldn’t be any additional charge for inspecting the electrics, though this may be at the discretion of the building inspector.
However, not every local authority is happy to undertake electrical inspections. Some of them have hired qualified electricians to undertake this new workload, others haven’t bothered and are instead insisting that all electrical work is undertaken by suitably qualified electricians. I suggest you make some enquiries to your local authority building inspectors and find out where they stand.
If they insist on you using a qualified electrician, and you still wish to undertake the work yourself, you then have a further two choices.
• One is to find a Part P electrician who will mentor you through the job, do some inspection and sign off the job as their own. They do exist. One who works regularly with selfbuilders across the land is Ben Addison.
• The other is to undertake the training yourself. There are various places you can do this training. One such is Trade Skills 4U.co.uk, who offer a range of courses suitable for your needs at a cost of around £1,500. This must include a City & Guilds 2381 qualification to show you understand the essentials of BS7671, and a further qualification for Part P Domestic Installers. Having successfully completed the courses, you would also need membership of a certifying body such as The Electrical Contractors Association in order to be able to sign off your own work. It would probably cost you around £2,000 for the qualifications and a year’s membership. However, at the end of this process, you would also have a very sellable skill. If you really enjoy electrical work, maybe this is what you have been waiting for!
However, the recent changes in legislation now mean that I have to employ someone else to do what I could do myself the day before the changes came into force.
To comply with this new legislation, my thinking is that I need to be approved under the "Competent Persons Scheme", and therefore, I need to know exactly what qualifications I need to gain, and what my next move is once I have the qualifications. Is it purely a case of gaining BS7671 and the like ?
It seems very odd that as a "layman" I can visit my DIY store or similar merchants and purchase all of the equipment I require to install systems, but I can't actually do anything with regard to fitting them.
Can you please clarify what the situation is.
Ian Thorley
Mark writes:
It wasn’t until 2005 that electrical work came under the auspices of building control in England & Wales. Part P, as it is known, doesn’t actually state that only competent persons are allowed to carry out electrical work: rather it suggests you have two choices. Firstly, you can elect to have a suitably Part P qualified electrician undertake the work for you and sign it off as having been carried out in accordance with BS7671. Alternatively, you can apply to have the electrical work inspected — and hopefully passed —by your local authority building inspector, or an agent acting for them. This, in theory, allows DIYers to undertake their own electrical work, in the time-honoured fashion, but adds in a measure of quality control that wasn’t previously there. If this work was being carried out as part of a larger project — i.e. building a house — then there shouldn’t be any additional charge for inspecting the electrics, though this may be at the discretion of the building inspector.
However, not every local authority is happy to undertake electrical inspections. Some of them have hired qualified electricians to undertake this new workload, others haven’t bothered and are instead insisting that all electrical work is undertaken by suitably qualified electricians. I suggest you make some enquiries to your local authority building inspectors and find out where they stand.
If they insist on you using a qualified electrician, and you still wish to undertake the work yourself, you then have a further two choices.
• One is to find a Part P electrician who will mentor you through the job, do some inspection and sign off the job as their own. They do exist. One who works regularly with selfbuilders across the land is Ben Addison.
• The other is to undertake the training yourself. There are various places you can do this training. One such is Trade Skills 4U.co.uk, who offer a range of courses suitable for your needs at a cost of around £1,500. This must include a City & Guilds 2381 qualification to show you understand the essentials of BS7671, and a further qualification for Part P Domestic Installers. Having successfully completed the courses, you would also need membership of a certifying body such as The Electrical Contractors Association in order to be able to sign off your own work. It would probably cost you around £2,000 for the qualifications and a year’s membership. However, at the end of this process, you would also have a very sellable skill. If you really enjoy electrical work, maybe this is what you have been waiting for!
21 Aug 2007
Carbon Accounting in Electricity
In order to make sensible decisions about how to reduce CO2 emissions, you need good data on what those emissions actually are. In essence, you need to create a robust accounting system, built out of units of CO2, not to mention other greenhouse gases. There will be both a profit and loss account – energy in use – and a balance sheet – embodied energy in buildings and plant. In an ideal world, these carbon units could be linked to money and you could apply a cost-effectiveness filter across everything.
But the basic data isn’t yet in place. Or, to put it another way, there are still wide disparities in attempting to work out just how much CO2 is being emitted.
Take electricity consumption. It’s a complex beast because it is derived from a variety of sources, some carbon rich (oil, gas, coal) some almost carbon-free (nuclear, renewables). Plus it gets distributed over huge areas and undergoes transmission losses and power station inefficiencies. How can you attribute a single figure to the CO2 content of electricity? Well, we do. It is routinely rated in the UK as emitting 0.43kgCO2/kwh, just over twice as much as mains gas, and this is the figure used to calculate the CO2 emissions of electrical appliances, including heat pumps.
A long and involved thread on the AECB forum looked into just how accurate this 0.43 figure actually is. It turns out it was set in 1998 at a time when the CO2 content of electricity was falling because of the dash-for-gas. It never got down to 0.43, but it was thought that this was a good figure to use because, over a decade or so, it was hoped that the CO2 content might fall to somewhere close, and so it was a good basis to plan electrical installations on. The current figure, according to DEFRA, is actually 0.52 and, worryingly, it’s been going up not down in recent years as coal fired power stations have been coming back on line. This figure also takes no account of transmission losses, nor of embodied energy costs in power stations, nor extraction/transportation costs of coal and gas. It could, in reality be much higher than 0.52kgCO2/kWh. Some comments even set it above 1.00kgCO2/kWh. How can we hope to make sensible planning decisions about whether to install kit like heat pumps unless we can be sure that the raw data on electricity use is accurate?
It is yet another puzzle in this complex web we are weaving. It seems to me to be an increasingly important issue that is not being given the attention it deserves. We are being expected to make ball-achingly expensive decisions about future CO2 emissions and energy paybacks, but there are still huge question marks hanging over the accuracy of the data we are using.
But the basic data isn’t yet in place. Or, to put it another way, there are still wide disparities in attempting to work out just how much CO2 is being emitted.
Take electricity consumption. It’s a complex beast because it is derived from a variety of sources, some carbon rich (oil, gas, coal) some almost carbon-free (nuclear, renewables). Plus it gets distributed over huge areas and undergoes transmission losses and power station inefficiencies. How can you attribute a single figure to the CO2 content of electricity? Well, we do. It is routinely rated in the UK as emitting 0.43kgCO2/kwh, just over twice as much as mains gas, and this is the figure used to calculate the CO2 emissions of electrical appliances, including heat pumps.
A long and involved thread on the AECB forum looked into just how accurate this 0.43 figure actually is. It turns out it was set in 1998 at a time when the CO2 content of electricity was falling because of the dash-for-gas. It never got down to 0.43, but it was thought that this was a good figure to use because, over a decade or so, it was hoped that the CO2 content might fall to somewhere close, and so it was a good basis to plan electrical installations on. The current figure, according to DEFRA, is actually 0.52 and, worryingly, it’s been going up not down in recent years as coal fired power stations have been coming back on line. This figure also takes no account of transmission losses, nor of embodied energy costs in power stations, nor extraction/transportation costs of coal and gas. It could, in reality be much higher than 0.52kgCO2/kWh. Some comments even set it above 1.00kgCO2/kWh. How can we hope to make sensible planning decisions about whether to install kit like heat pumps unless we can be sure that the raw data on electricity use is accurate?
It is yet another puzzle in this complex web we are weaving. It seems to me to be an increasingly important issue that is not being given the attention it deserves. We are being expected to make ball-achingly expensive decisions about future CO2 emissions and energy paybacks, but there are still huge question marks hanging over the accuracy of the data we are using.
20 Aug 2007
Timber frame fires: follow up
The London Fire Brigade have come back to me with the summary report of their findings on the Colindale fire on Wednesday 12 July 2006. Highlights include:
• The building was under construction and consisted of a concrete ground and first floor, with the remaining five upper floors solely constructed from timber.
• A fire was first seen at first floor level in Block B4. This is thought to be the fire’s ‘Area of Origin’. Block B4 was part of an ‘L’ shaped building with maximum dimensions 38 metres by 60 metres. The fire’s ‘Area of Origin’ was close to the centre of the building adjacent to the staircase shaft and lift shaft.
• The fire spread rapidly through Block B4 with full involvement and collapse of this building in less than 10 minutes.
• The fire spread by radiated heat to an adjacent building also under construction. The fire also spread via radiated heat to the top floor and roof of the neighbouring Middlesex University Halls of Residence. There was also damage by radiated heat to thirty vehicles parked in Aerodrome Road and to the “P.N.C. Building” located in the Hendon Police College on the opposite side of Aerodrome Road.
• As a result of the fire approximately 180 construction workers were evacuated from Block B1 and Block B2 and approximately 100 students were evacuated from the Middlesex University Halls of Residence. In addition, an unknown number of staff were evacuated from the Hendon Police College complex. No injuries were sustained during the evacuation.
And as to cause? The report makes these comments:
• The most probable source of ignition of this fire was a carelessly discarded lit cigarette at first floor level in Block B4.
• The rapid fire spread was not due to an accelerant and was consistent with the fuel present, i.e. High surface area compared to mass of construction timber, eighteen metres high with virtually unrestricted airflow.
Further thoughts and speculation
The key word here is accelerant. If there was an accelerant used (i.e. petrol or even paper), then we have a case of malicious arson. The report is quite clear that no accelerant was used. But my first thought was: How the hell can you tell anything about the cause of a fire, if the building has been burned to a crisp in just ten minutes? And why the speculation about a discarded cigarette? Presumably no one has come forward and said “Oh yes, I dropped a fag in B4 just before the fire took hold.” We would have heard. And unless there was a lot of readily combustible material lying around, like plastic sheeting or waste paper, a cigarette would not cause a timber frame building to catch fire. Whilst the fire spread may be consistent with the fuel present (i.e. timber and foam-based insulation), the initial ignition of the fire is more problematic. There surely had to be some intermediary element that could transfer fire from a lighted cigarette to a timber wall. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was a deliberately placed accelerant, of course, but there must have been something easily ignitable present and what that might have been isn’t mentioned.
Finally, it appears that there were builders on site but they were evacuated from buildings BI and B2, not B4 where the fire broke out. This suggests that B4 was quiet. That’s handy. And if you wanted to set fire to a block of flats under construction, where would you go about starting it? The fires area of origin was on the first floor close to the centre of the building adjacent to the staircase shaft and the liftshaft. At the bottom of a staircase and liftwell? Just the spot to turn a small fire into a conflagration in seconds.
It’s enough to make you wonder, if nothing else.
• The building was under construction and consisted of a concrete ground and first floor, with the remaining five upper floors solely constructed from timber.
• A fire was first seen at first floor level in Block B4. This is thought to be the fire’s ‘Area of Origin’. Block B4 was part of an ‘L’ shaped building with maximum dimensions 38 metres by 60 metres. The fire’s ‘Area of Origin’ was close to the centre of the building adjacent to the staircase shaft and lift shaft.
• The fire spread rapidly through Block B4 with full involvement and collapse of this building in less than 10 minutes.
• The fire spread by radiated heat to an adjacent building also under construction. The fire also spread via radiated heat to the top floor and roof of the neighbouring Middlesex University Halls of Residence. There was also damage by radiated heat to thirty vehicles parked in Aerodrome Road and to the “P.N.C. Building” located in the Hendon Police College on the opposite side of Aerodrome Road.
• As a result of the fire approximately 180 construction workers were evacuated from Block B1 and Block B2 and approximately 100 students were evacuated from the Middlesex University Halls of Residence. In addition, an unknown number of staff were evacuated from the Hendon Police College complex. No injuries were sustained during the evacuation.
And as to cause? The report makes these comments:
• The most probable source of ignition of this fire was a carelessly discarded lit cigarette at first floor level in Block B4.
• The rapid fire spread was not due to an accelerant and was consistent with the fuel present, i.e. High surface area compared to mass of construction timber, eighteen metres high with virtually unrestricted airflow.
Further thoughts and speculation
The key word here is accelerant. If there was an accelerant used (i.e. petrol or even paper), then we have a case of malicious arson. The report is quite clear that no accelerant was used. But my first thought was: How the hell can you tell anything about the cause of a fire, if the building has been burned to a crisp in just ten minutes? And why the speculation about a discarded cigarette? Presumably no one has come forward and said “Oh yes, I dropped a fag in B4 just before the fire took hold.” We would have heard. And unless there was a lot of readily combustible material lying around, like plastic sheeting or waste paper, a cigarette would not cause a timber frame building to catch fire. Whilst the fire spread may be consistent with the fuel present (i.e. timber and foam-based insulation), the initial ignition of the fire is more problematic. There surely had to be some intermediary element that could transfer fire from a lighted cigarette to a timber wall. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was a deliberately placed accelerant, of course, but there must have been something easily ignitable present and what that might have been isn’t mentioned.
Finally, it appears that there were builders on site but they were evacuated from buildings BI and B2, not B4 where the fire broke out. This suggests that B4 was quiet. That’s handy. And if you wanted to set fire to a block of flats under construction, where would you go about starting it? The fires area of origin was on the first floor close to the centre of the building adjacent to the staircase shaft and the liftshaft. At the bottom of a staircase and liftwell? Just the spot to turn a small fire into a conflagration in seconds.
It’s enough to make you wonder, if nothing else.
19 Aug 2007
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