The Aiden Project : An Ambitious Self-Build

[Music] So today we're with Aiden Harper who runs a YouTube channel called the Aiden project Aiden can you tell us what is the Aiden project uh it's my self-built basically it's the alien project but it contains many many many projects I originally got a contractor to Shell the property I've done a bit more since then like in terms of installing the bifolds and windows and stuff I've done the drainage myself I had to get rid of him because it was just turning into a bit of a nightmare where I was doing too much work and you don't really want to pay someone and then do the work yourself we have this with a lot of self-builders like yourself where at the start you think I need to get that person in and then you think actually I can see the job now and I think I can do it myself it's all about confidence I think yeah and as long as you do enough research I love a pun so I love the Aiden project so you haven't got any uh domes here or any no any vegetation unless the play that I went for in terms of the channels that's the road that door there that's not the front door so I did wonder when I turned up I thought this is a problem I don't know where to I thought um I can't there's no letter box so I think how do I knock that's the plant room there um but yeah the main the main entrance is actually around here right okay no that's cool I'm glad you've got a planter and Roger will love to see that he loves a plant room yeah yeah I had class Q so that's permitted development and then as soon as we bought it we got a full plan and permission uh today Park conversion we had to rebuild one side so this main section and that section there that was replicates the original and then we had an extension then at some point everything went a bit wrong we had to get a new plan and permission to do a new new build this is looks exactly the same as it would have done had it been a conversion permitted development in terms of barn conversions as long as it meets a certain criteria you can convert into a residential property but you can't change it too much so that's why we went full planning permission so we could change it a little bit and put extend it a little bit more so how much is left of the original Barn uh nothing you see just over here so these These are the metal trusses so I've got two left over I've put probably fall back in right because I wanted to I wanted to like respect the original Barn yeah um so the original Barn it was block work and Asbestos and I'm going to clad that so it almost looks similar I've got um corrugated cement roof just there so that was on the original Barn and features like this the concrete lint on that was exactly the same on the original Barn and it was brick finish see this is like a tidy polished version if you like what was the problem you were having with Windows I saw that in one of your episodes uh these particular Windows because they're French windows so I needed both to open that's because of uh like fire requirements they wouldn't close so they was hitting the cam capes when they was closing so they're the fabricator they've made them in such a way where the tolerances they was too tight by the time you got the glass in it stretched that frame a tiny tiny bit and then it just wouldn't close so I'm having to adapt them at the moment because they've already remade them twice do you have any trouble getting people to deliver stuff here I was amazed at the amount of roads that are barely wide enough for me to get my car down it depends which way they come so we had the borehole done originally and they had to bring like a big rig on a trailer and they came the wrong way through the Country Lane as well but there are bigger roads so you need to just skirt around and any big lorries they're not allowed a certain way anyway so that they'll come down the big roads would you ever have a go at brickwork just looking at this wall here yeah I drove my van for it I didn't um you want to be careful it looks like it's leaning towards you this one does yeah that's that's I mean that's one of them old peers that they put in um I mean one of the first things we done was building this wall so I dug the foundations for that and designed it and um I got bricklayer to do that but the other side is block work so you see where the these headers are they go all the way through onto the other side but he's he stopped it here and it didn't used to touch this wall didn't touch this there was a gap and now it touches yeah it's got a bit of support there now thank you but yeah originally so this this wall here it was complete but what happens when the original Builder was here uh because that side of the building is higher than this side and he excavated everything so it was completely flat and then obviously the brick nose came in but what ended up happening was they effectively made a bowl underneath in the clay so all the water was coming through underneath and it was like a swimming pool so after they left I had to dig out the whole property all the way around and tank everything and because I had to dig this out so low and that was so high I just took the wall down just in case because otherwise it might have fell on us when we was obviously dealing with it [Applause] so this is essentially the bedroom wing all the ceilings are going to be voted it's only one single level or split level if you like and I've had my insulation for a year and a half just because prices are going up so quick so you've got beam and block here block and bean floor yeah there was a bit of an error on that I'll show you just down here so originally the supplier they've done the plan and was it Milbank I don't know okay but they they um they assumed that underneath here there was like a sleeper wall because there's a foundation that runs directly there to tie both sides in and so there's there should be three beams there but there's not so I've got two more so I'll be installing them myself so that would be a little bit of brickwork that I need to do underneath yeah but it won't be on show so it'd be fun all of these things make great videos for your channel don't they anything you can do when you take on a project do you use tutorials on YouTube or I watch skill Builder that sounded like a leading question are there any particular channels you might like to follow um just all of them it's what I tend to do is uh I'll watch several videos kind of take the average of that information and then apply it in your own situation over the progression of the project there's things that I'll pick up that I can apply to something else yeah so I wouldn't necessarily need to research a particular thing but I like I liked doing loads of research anyway we're only having three bedrooms so originally when we bought it this was carved up into several tiny rooms but we didn't we didn't really need that so the the whole point in having a barn type conversion build is the benefit of all the Open Spaces we're going to go into Kevin McLeod Manos very dramatic because all those ceilings are going to be voted there's only one section that's not these are the original trusses that are put back in and they went across the window so I cut that section out and then re-welded it originally the Heritage on on the class queue application insisted that they had critical windows in here oh God don't get me onto critical windows they're like thousands thousands I'd have to sell both kidneys at our house we've got so the house was built in 1834 the critical windows were installed in the 60s they didn't say you can't take them out they said there aren't many crittle windows about now we want you to keep them I can understand why you'd want to keep the original house but something that's been fitted at a later date you think it's not it's crazy yeah and and the new ones are very expensive so yeah on on the new application you can see I've I've got critical style Windows yeah so okay I mean you got back to backspace bars in there and then I've got stick on aluminum bars that I'll go there but it kind of goes with the theme of the whole thing like I said I wanted to respect the original Barn so like the metal trusses have gone back in the windows that were in that section originally they wasn't critical but they was kind of style so this space is going to be divided into three so the plant room there's going to be a wall that comes across here so that's that's why I've got them doors yeah um I've got my electric there and my water running already and I'm gonna have uh MV HR System oh yeah with exposed ducting so I know a lot of people hired it in the ceilings and under floors as well did you see the one we did at Robin's house the mvhr yeah that was a lindau system so I'll have my kitchen here yeah I'm planning on making my kitchen yeah is that a bad idea now why would you make your kids when you say you're going to make your kitchen but what including worktops I'd like to make concrete worktops yeah I don't think the other rafts can have that but yeah I mean the units itself I want to make because I'd like them types of kitchens like handmade ones but to pay someone to do that that's probably looking at 25 30 grand we've just had our kitchen done and I it is eye wateringly expensive I've noticed that on your channel you like a little bit of a the Jeopardy so you I can see a video called I've installed my own kitchen is this a mistake yeah shamelessly clickbaity title in there yeah it's a mess yeah that's the way to do it and then so this will be a TV room but I'm going to put a ceiling in this bit uh so I can have storage up here yeah so that's where I'll put the mvhr unit all right okay because that's North Face in that wall yeah so I can have the ducting going outside because I'm going for a certain level of air tightness yeah um how I was gonna finish the walls so I was thinking I was going to go Dot and dab originally um but now I'm looking at going uh floating set so full full wet plaster yeah and that sells because the bricklayers they haven't done a good job I mean over here it's probably they've actually jointed this that's fine loads of other places there's massive holes so if I was to Dot and dab it you'd have to do obviously the full ribbons around the outside Etc and every plaster you speak to they say if it was my house I would float and say it even though it's more expensive you know you are going to get loads of you want to put a little sign on there because yeah you're gonna get people knocking on it no I just put no entry yeah that's right this is my cart Lodge it's it's Freebay this uh is it's supposed to be in the garage it's not at the moment because it's just storage so I've put obviously some holding I'll put the front and wipe them doors in and then upstairs is like an office it's our temporary home at the moment whilst we finish this it's quite handy isn't it because most people end up in some grotty little Caravan so there's my Caravan over there under the cover all right okay so I was in that for many many months that's kind of like a rite of passage isn't it you've got to do the Caravan stint it was horrible but yeah and the other half she didn't fancy living in the Caravan so I had to finish this first but it's it's never quite finished is it probably going to be 20 28 By the time you've done now you mentioned motorbikes now I know a lot of our viewers are quite into motorbikes I know nothing about them so just tell tell us what motorbikes you get that are going in there I've got a custom BMW r100 with a sidecar I've also got an old 1953 aerial vh500 red Hunter I've got a Yamaha FZ1 obviously a new sports type bike and I've got an old DT 360 Yamaha they all sound fantastic this is an oak front and Douglas fir is the rest I had a little bit though it's a kit I didn't Mill the wood down or anything it's still pretty good going those and then it's a it's large clad it's not treated so I've let it weather naturally none some of the uh I call it a barn it's not really a barn now but that's gonna have some large cladding on us just to replicate what used to be the asbestos cladding that I removed myself so what was the process for getting rid of the asbestos uh so you have to get the right skip from the right company that will be able to dispose of asbestos so they normally charge up to a certain amount so if in mine they charge me for the first ton regardless plus the skip and uh so they kind of like do the notification you have to wrap it in DPM twice so it needs to be wrapped to us and then you obviously wear the appropriate PPA yeah I was going to ask you about that so you have to go full on Hazmat pretty much yeah and then you have to Chuck all of that stuff afterwards yeah but because the asbestos encapsulated in the actual um cement it's relatively safe you just don't want to break it basically but I I damped it down with PVA and water first of all just uh and close any fibers yeah and you need to wear a P3 respirator yeah we had that recently with with Sam I thought I had asbestos so he spent half an hour getting all the gear on no need to Discover it as a bit of hardboard but it's best that way round isn't it yeah be prepared but what you should do you should always just test it first of all yeah so there's loads of kits online I think they're probably only about 40 quid and you just break a little bit off and you send it off to a lab good so I got my table saw there and applying a thicknesser that's what I'll use to make my kitchen one day so I've got the professional tools yeah one of the best things about this project you're obviously enjoying it yeah a lot of people once they're into it they may have regretted it and think oh no it looks like you're enjoying every moment of it and when you get frustrated you just take it out on this punch bag here that's not mine I've never used it it can get overwhelming the amount of stuff that you need to do but you just need to break it down into small chunks and like people they message me and they say that this is like the dream kind of thing and they're not as advanced as I am but really realistically I'm the same as them the last thing I done was my extension and my loft conversion and I've never done anything like that ever yeah okay I know your partner doesn't want to be filmed so you'll have to hide her from me sounds dodgy Aiden who's this this is Arthur uh also known as monkey boy he's our little friendship yeah I noticed him on your channel supervisor yeah that's right so it's technically the office it does have a shower room down the end it's almost like when I built it's kind of like exactly the same as a loft conversion I've splayed my veluxes I have the only YouTube video shown exactly how to do that so no one else has done it not even Robin this is a temporary sink I will be making one a bit more special later on I want to do like uh micro cement oh yeah yeah yeah we've done a bit with micro cement it works it looks pretty nice you want to try that out and there's my shower tray hasn't cracked it hasn't cracked yet that's solid here I wasn't meant to be spending any money so I just done the cheapest of everything because it's self-build I can reclaim the vat but I can I can't reclaim the v80 for it this is only uh the main house and the garage which is downstairs okay so the overall building I can reclaim the vat so I've got two containers a bigger green one I'll turn that into a gym I got it just before the prices went up 16.50 for the green one yeah so that's the high top one but you can see it's slightly higher yeah and then the red one was 1200 quid well he's coming with us he doesn't really like the field because I've got too many thistles you've got the ride on yeah so everyone keeps telling me Oh you've got to get a ride on it I like the exercise I like pushing it I kind of need a tractor for this that's how big it is I'll show you my dumper people love this this is like a wind-up one you have to wind it out to start I think it's from like the 60s I paid 850 quid for this I really want a digger though you want your own digger I want my own digger I I bought a plant trailer in anticipation of buying a digger and I did buy a big Land Rover to tow it as well so that's that's the farm truck just here's my borehole this was 20 meters deep or I paid for a 20 meter drill they found more uh and stopped at 18 meters deep uh I've got about three to four meters of head in there so the pump obviously sits below this plate we had to go for the borehole we're not not on any Mains wall around here uh you can look on a website called the geology of Britain which uh they have borehole scans so you have to have certain depths um lucky enough my both my neighbors they've got hand dug Wells they're a lot older properties yeah so we knew that the depth of the borehole it didn't have to be that deep so you can get a smaller rig in or a bigger rig we got the smaller rig they've done a drier drill that would have cost about two and a half Grand just to see if there was water there basically if not up to 80 meters where they guarantee that they're going to hit water it's about 20 grand when you said ball hole I was thinking that you'd gone for ground Source heat pump it was the hour okay so just for water gotcha I'm gonna have an air source heat pumps I was going to go ground Source because we got the space for it but after the amount of mud and digging I just had enough of it well I'll show you the filtration system for the borehole oh this is one of the first things I've built as well that's the buffer tank so that uh creates like the pressure yeah so that it goes through that first and then I've got three more tanks and then another filter and then the UV like the oh okay these are like a thousand pounds each craziness it is but I don't get any water bills ah of course really water is now the only Bill that we get which is still reasonable I think it's something like 60 quid a month where we are but I can imagine at some stage it may well change so if you've got your own that's fantastic so yeah on the back of the cartilage I've done the in-roof solar panels oh that's nice so I've got the ones that look nice but we never see them normally you save money by not buying as many tiles but I don't really pull up the tiles so I didn't really save anything but we haven't got battery storage yet so normally when when you do your permit development you only have a small cartilage where the property is so that's basically your back Garden um when I apply for full planning I got the top part of the field within the cartilage so in line with the shed there straight across I've got this within the Kurdish that means that I can use it as my back Garden basically so as soon as I'm finished they didn't remove my permit development rights that was one of the things that they normally do that they didn't for me lucky enough so I can put lots of sheds everywhere how many shirts do you want or need um five I want to do one Olympic uh Victorian green houses yeah that'd be nice and just there I want to build like a cabin just for me just for you yeah I've got a rolled up bath just over there so I might just put that in now I'm going to feed it off of a log burner and stuff so you'll just be sat in your bath yeah looking down the valley looking down there I kept the old windows from the barn because they're still I'm gonna weld them all together and then I'll have that as a glazed end on my cabin and I might build a natural swimming pool there as well why not yeah go go for the whole lot we've had a few companies get in touch with us that do sauna room kits that could be another thing add there the sauna should I open a spa exactly yeah I just can't build on more than 50 of it but I want to keep this anyway and then I've still got the agricultural bit there I might get some goats and pigs definitely gets chickens so you're spending money like a Russian inheritance can I ask how you're funding all of this savings savings that's good that's a very old-fashioned concept isn't it nowadays yeah I mean it's more likely to be credit cards just property and a well-paid job right okay but not not for me right because my my job is building this yeah but um my partner she does quite well I can see your setup as starlink how are you finding like the reliability and the speed of that it's brilliant I haven't had any problems whatsoever I didn't put the sandbags on the stand originally I thought it'd be okay and then it got quite windy and it got blown off so it fell down the side of the container and it still works so what sort of speed you don't speed test on it it's over 100 download and it's about 20 for upload okay Aiden well thanks for showing us around if we could ask all the skill Builder viewers to go and subscribe to Aiden and then you can follow his progress see how he gets on and as a final call to action what's a good Gateway video one of your most popular videos and I'll put a link to it at the end of the end I wouldn't say it's the most popular but it is one that I feel should be my whole build video on the lodge so I cut together everything it's over two years basically all squashed into less than seven minutes so that's your video folks head over and check out that video I'm hoping that next time Roger can come because this is kind of like the skill Builder summer break Roger's gone away for a month in France the rest of the guys are doing their own thing which is why you've got me today you've got the so yeah so hopefully we'll be able to come back when you've made a bit more progress maybe we'll come with Sam and Roger something like that it'd be great to catch up with you again thanks for watching see you later [Music]

Channel: Skill Builder

Views: 16,822

Keywords: self build, grand designs, barn conversion, building the dream, countryside living, rural property, do it yourself, man cave, new build, self building house, self build house uk, the aiden project youtube, the aiden project

Id: rswTQJHTE6Q

Length: 24min 19sec (1459 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2023