To explain the previous post, the NHBC were going to reject the type of render and boards chosen by Dot and Dab, until head guy at JUB (render) rang head guy at NHBC who agreed that the system was indeed acceptable, as they had maintained all along. So eventually after a load of stress, I had a rather humble-sounding NHBC guy on the phone telling me it was ok to proceed after he was obviously told what was what by his boss.

So the house is battened out, and the boards started going on this morning. We're currently thinking about the drive and what specification/depth we want for the gravel etc. I think we want MOT type 3 for the subbase, as this is permeable, and then 35mm ish of 20mm 'traditional cotswold gravel' over the top.