Tony and Pam Field, like many self builders, had not originally intended to build their own home. When they wanted to move south they were doing the usual round of estate agents but just couldn't find the house they really wanted, either the house was fine but the location not or vice-versa.

They then saw a derelict house in the most wonderful location in one of the unspoiled parts of the New Forest - it had to be theirs.

Pam said: "Building our own house from scratch was brilliant because we could design it to suit our particular life style. We chose Nu-Heat underfloor heating because it was so adaptable. We wanted the heating throughout the whole house and to run the hot water. We decided on a condensing boiler and the system has proved very economical to run. It's wonderful walking into the bathroom on cold winter days and the kitchen too, it's got flagstone floors which could otherwise prove cold. What we also like is the fact that we've got a wide variety of different floor finishes, from the flagstones through to tiles, timber and carpet and the underfloor heating was suitable for all.

Building our own house didn't cause too many problems and we were lucky in that we didn't have to sell our existing house whilst the new one was being built - things might have been very different though had we been living in a caravan permanently on site".