Target date been and gone

Apparently a target date for planning permission is just that a target but not fundamentally so important that it's actually going to be kept to! So in summary most people and professional bodies have by the looks of things approved our house with the exception of Highways and the tree conversation man. The latter is another upshot of falling into the Conservation Area. Harry went to see the two Andy's on Monday in order to explain and understand their thoughts. The meeting went well including no objections to the changes made to the east of the house reducing the first floor footprint and making the scullery to a single storey.

Harry went to see Hamish in order to see for himself how much space the wood boilers take .... Slightly frustrating that he didn't completely believe me eventhough I've seen a few examples. That element seems to be fine I think as long as the wood shed with the boiler can have a door on keeping people from looking into our wood supply. I'm increasingly concerned that the garden / yard area is going to be open for all the world to see especially one the splays mean only a 1m height wall beside each gate. The only solution I think is to plant either a beech or hornbeam hedge plus some more willow hurdling. It's not the same as having a large stone wall!

Harry has not yet been persuaded about the Porotherm blocks. We agreed that what Phil Neeve suggests we're go with. I think that no matter what the walls are made of they will probably have to be around 450mm thick. Harry's idea is to have a thinner 1st floor made from kingspan which I simply disagree with in so many ways.

I don't like high density insulation as it's a byproduct of the pretrochemical industry
Changing building methods have seems crazy surely it's better to make the house out of the same material?
I can't see how we're surpass (reach a level 4+) status with Harry's proposal. So I'll wait

Can't really consider any builders as we need more details of the fundemendental aspects of the house but time is rushing by and March will be upon us before we know it.

I'm beginning to hate Pottery Cottage. As I sit on the sofa there's always a cold chill coming from the porch area therefore I must do something.

And the walls came tumbling down

About two weeks ago some friends knocked on our door saying that our wall opposite the primary school was well and truly over. Luckily Martin had been booked for some weeks to repair it so that wasn't a bad thing.

We've been waiting to hear about planning permission since the target date of 29th Nov has been and gone but still nothing yet. Apparently they're waiting for the response from Highways.

Last weekend we spent many happy hours
Listening to the girls play whilst we got on with making our 25m willow hurdle running the length of the telephone exchange end. It took far longer to do with a bit of help from Frank for a few hours and Bruce & Barry cutting and delivering the willow plus lots of help lifting it on to the fence. All I've got to do is find a little time to tidy the top up.

I just want to record that I've been in correspondence with Victor and Francette who live at the top of Provender Mill.

A photo of our bonfire party in November!

Builders and comments

Just a quick one today as I've got to go to work to show two potential wedding couples around and then dash into the car to drive up to Oxfordshire for a wedding we're it will be great to be a guest.

Had a good meeting with Garry and Dave who are currently working very hard at the Chapel in Bruton high street. They come recommended by lots of people which is reassuring. I need to come up with more specific questions to ask them next time.

Harry had a chat with Flora as we're just want to know if there are decisions we need to make like saying we're happy with the changes Harry has made to the upstairs layout taking away the void thus hopefully leaving around £30k. I'm not wanting to obtain a decent quote from Porotherm for blocks so in other words of we can afford thicker better insulating ones then lets go for it. The same applies to the windows needing to get the dimensions and amounts from Harry will then give us the information to start getting quotes. It maybe off the peg are more expensive but I'm sure there is a reason why!

Lastly I didn't report that last Saturday we had a great bonfire at The Ropewalk with sausages and sparklers. We burnt a fair bit of brash eventually and enjoyed the space. It was slightly disconcerting to have a fire at the excate spot we planning on having the dining room.

The delights of having a blog

Well how to get on with your future neighbours! What should I say without deepening further comments? Well we don't live in London or even Paris but a small country town so you think that if someone had issues with the planning they would actually contact us for a chat rather than just send their comments online but unfortunately not! At least it seems that the vast majority of the local residents have offered positive support. It's a tense time for us as we don't want to hurt people's feelings but at the same time we would like to start building our house. I attended a Bruton Trust meeting this evening and had the chance to show drawings of the Ropewalk House and thankfully met a chorus of approval. We will apparently find out towards the end of the month so until then I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

Tomorrow I'm hopefully going to be meeting up with Garry and Dave from G.W buildings? We're have a coffee and talk about how it could happen. My big concern is whether they are able to build such a high standard of green building. Which frankly would be the same concern about any building company! But they come with exceptional references which is a great start!

A decision has been made ....

Before I forgot when we made it and how we feel at the this moment in time I need to quickly get this down.  I finally received the QS's report in a format that hasn't let me understand the detail i.e. the labour and materials are not spilt up into different sections which I thought was what we had asked for!  Anyway it's all a learning curve and I can take lots of time trying to contact him again without any extra charge! whoope I can hardly wait.

The long and short of it was that if we wanted a house that was just to the building regs standard we could indeed manage to scrap the necessary money together just without important factors like having any type of surface on the yard or landscaping (ok that can certainly wait) or indeed anything to do with a sustainable house which completely missing the point of how we're trying to build this house.  So I made a long list of all the additional items that needed to be included some where more Rolls Royce solution but at this point I don't feel like I want to compromise in for example putting up solar PV when the Feed In Tariff is actually a far better investment long term than any savings account and more importantly we could reduce our electricity consumption /  independence on the grid.

So Harry is now working on a smaller design without a void which never really had us convinced.  How can you really have a truly environmental house when all the heat is going upwards?  I think we're have to take the original plans out of planning which will be ok as long as Harry takes them out apparently before four weeks into the planning process.  I feel much happier knowing that we're still have a wonderful house with all the right materials and still being true to our beliefs.

Garden party at the Ropewalk

Last week we went around the neighbouring houses (including all of Toby Mill estate) and dropped off invitations to come and look at the plans, have a glass of elderflower cordial and a slice of cake.  We had some people which was nice probably not as many as we would have liked but they've now had their chance!

Building projects just seem to swallow up time!  Before you've contacted someone and then got a response it's been at least one week.  I've managed to have a good chat to Keith the QS about getting surface areas of the house plan.  This is then hopefully going to enable me to at some point in the near future to ring up some manufactures i.e. porotherm and have some comparable costing for our next meeting with Harry. In short the QS price is within budget if we don't want to have an environmentally designed house!  So we've got to have an uncomfortable conversation about ways to reduce the total cost of the build which in my view just needs have the whole footprint reduced in size.  This is slightly irritating as Tom always said we needed a 200 m2 build which we did convey this to Harry who hasn't taken it too seriously so now the build which has been submitted for planning (there's another story) is about 30 m2 too big.  Surely it's better to resubmit with an amendment of size reduction? 

How many building shows do you go to?

Well one bit of advice do not go to the Exeter Home building and Renovating Show unless you've been given free tickets and the girls are being looked after by their Uncle!

Usually when I've been to something similar there is something interesting to learn or see but this was just a small uninteresting 'warehouse' half full of trade stands that I've either seen before or completely disinterested in what they had to show.  How many window stands can you have in one exhibition?!  I know a window take many forms but on the whole unless they're amazingly big or have interesting mechanics (note to self now sounding like I'm bordering on geek window enthusiast) there really what's the point?

Ok we're waiting for the Keith the QS to send us the paper that may or may not tell us we've got a chance of building our house for our budget.  It's now getting slightly frustrating as I know I'm going to mentally tear it apart as it's 1) using all the traditional / easiest to get to materials and 2) I'm going to have to spend ages typing it out onto an excel spreadsheet in order to then be able to send to prospective builders in the tending process and play with the other possibilities in our materials research.

I may have possibly said this before but it is rather simple trying to calculated how to build our house.

New material vs old tradition stuff

• New material is generally more expensive to buy
• Takes less time to build the house using it
• Potential to have a really well build house in terms of thermal insulation and air tightness is easier to achieve

• Tradition stuff can be bought down the road at a local builders merchants
• It's possible to achieve a very high standard of build but more difficult
• Most builders know how to use the materials but it will take them considerably more time
• Therefore more venerable to bad weather patches 

Planning in the post

Harry has sent the plans to the planning department in Yeovil so hopefully 8 weeks later from now we may hear something positive ... then again!

Ropewalk House from the south west

I've got to ring up Keith the QS to find out if he has done the provisional working.  It may mean we have to revise our plan and not have the void which would be a shame but there you go.  We're going to the Homes and Renovating show on Sunday for some inspiration which will be even better as the girls are going to be looked after by Uncle Hamish, Gran and Stella.  The only other major consideration is that to me it's not looking like we're going to have much of the south facing roof (which was the point!) to have solar PV however it might be possible to either put them on the flat roof wood shed and or another shed could be positioned near by with a perfect sloped roof.  I'm confident that we don't need planning permission even in a conservation area but knowing this general mood we're have to fight to have them!

Monk's stair is a space saving way of climbing height than traditional stairs

Three bathrooms in one way sound great but lots of cleaning and not a mass of storage (the attic isn't going to be big which is a real shame)

Quality surveyor and materials

What to do?  I've taken so long researching loads of different ways in which to build our house and it transpires that Harry isn't happy with anything apart from the traditional block and brick  Something that I thought I would never have to go down as surely there are easier, more cost efficient ways?  Does it matter? Well the trouble is I've got one chance of making this house really the way I want it and I'm dangerously close to having a house that goes beyond housing regs but doesn't reach it's true potential.  I just want someone to suggest ideas of what we could do rather than well this is how we've done it and it works so that ok.  Ahhhhh I want to get better and it's more interesting that all of that!  Maybe I should just capitulate but I want this to be all together working and making something interesting.  I set up this blog for me to express my concerns about this huge project and I hope it's going to work!

I woke up at 4:00 am last night just trying to get my head around the discussion Harry, Keith (QS) and I had had in the afternoon.  I hope that the three of plus Phil Neave will be able to sort out the best solution. Having a QS will help and keep us ultimately in our budget.

On a plus note we spent a pleasant Tuesday afternoon cutting the hedge, clearing the wall and pegging out the rough floor plan which was really interesting.  It looked pretty small which is scary as we may need to reduce the design as it's currently 240 sq m and we were always looking to have a 200 sq m house at £1,400 per sq m.  So we either reduce the price or reduce the floor plan.

Final drawings nearly

We had a spate of meeting last week with Harry trying to thrash out details, possible costs and internal layouts.  For me in one way it's going pretty well as the design he has come up with is very pleasing to the eye i.e. not a glass box and certainly fits in well into the garden.  Harry has somehow managed through I suspect a great amount of charm and experience to persuade the conservation officers to build a two storey house rather than their preferred option of a bungalow all in short space of time.

Harry thinks it will be more cost effective to build the whole structure on site and essentially buy the standard materials from the local builders merchants.  I can understand this advantage of flexibility and employing local builders for more of the time but at the same time I really do have concerns which are: -

• Airtightness is more difficult to achieve if there are lots of piecemeal layers rather than a prefabricated structure or monolithic idea.

• Weather dependency as apposed to a SIPS building where you can a achieve a water tight building in a 5 days building from traditional block and brick will take considerably longer and more importantly be at the mercy of the weather.  It's not a good idea to work with cement if it's very cold and if it's raining how do you keep the masses of insulation from getting wet?

My life these things are keeping me thinking at strange times of the day which might be considered a bit sad!!

Anyway we also met up with Phil Neave director of Brilliant Futures www.brilliantfutures.co.uk
He seems a pleasant professional chap who is going to help us achieve the most amount of insulation and airtightness that the design will be let us.  I think this will balance well with Harry's lack of experience in the latest building regs and possible other products on the market.

Things to do today at some point ha ha ha when I find the time, is to re-look at this company
 Natural Building Technologies

Wind farm? Yes we've got a small one at Mill on the Brue

Progress?

Working with Harry does certainly seem to be more pleasurable experience, so far mainly because I think we have more faith in his ability to design us a lovely house! 

Again I've been inspired by seeing another house near Bruton made of Insulated Concrete Form.  Or in other words "ICF is based on hollow lightweight block components that lock together without intermediate bedding materials, such as mortar, to provide a formwork system into which concrete is poured."  I still have issues with using a large amount of concrete even if the end result is a very well insulated airtight house with high thermal mass (nice and cool in the summer and warm in the winter).  Anyway it's interesting to research.

Further to that as a possibility if we went down the timber frame idea in order to increase the thermal mass of the building and make the ceilings interesting and really importantly score points with Flora these ceiling tiles look really good.  I first saw them at the Eco Homes exhibition.

Most importantly I've managed to actually scan in Harry's first drawings.  We've gone back to the east side of the plot dividing the yard / park parking area thankfully out of site from the garden.  We're still waiting from Andrew Tuckers comments but we're reasonably positive.

Planning officers are clearly frustrated architects!

Last week Harry arranged a meeting with our conservation officer Andrew Tucker.  This was the first time we had met him as we always had wanted to so many months ago as it's generally the best thing to meet face to face!  As Harry said "Well, it went quite well and I thought he was far nicer than I imagined."

Both Flora and I kept pretty quiet and let Harry and Andrew discuss their points of view.  This is what I always thought an architect would do i.e. the negotiation and gentle teasing out of what the planners are prepared to concede.  Having read Andrew Tuckers letter today they are not now adverse to our house being part of the north wall ..... ahhhh rewind 10 months when they were as the house was on a different axis.  Anyway it looks like there will be to-ings and fro-ings but we are both more optimistic than we have been in many months.

Harry's design will certainly look more traditional than I probably would want but I'm now going to concentrate on building a good looking four bedroom house that we are both happy with.  Trying to speculate what the final design will look like is simply impossible. I've wasted far too much time with and without Flora going into details that at the end of the day have had to be changed or not considered.  I'm absolutely determined to sick to my guns by making a very sustainable house that takes little energy to run in the most simple way.  I do think that we're have a lovely exterior designed but it will then have to be worked on dramatically before applying for building regs to come up to a level 4 or higher standard.

http://www.breeam.org

My visit to Eco-Angus HQ

Last Saturday I had a really interesting afternoon at the Eco-Angus HQ ..... ok a house near Bristol airport!  I've looked into the trying to heat the house by wood and I think this is the best quality wood gasifier.  It's 94% efficient compared to a typical wood burner of around 82%.  After a 4 hour burn it can heat a water tank of around 2000 litres which in turn can then supply hot water for washing and heating the house.  The tank that they recommend is Aktverm which in geaky talk means over 2 days the heat loss will be a staggeringly low 2 oC.  I reckon I'll have to spilt around 10 tonnes of wood per year.  Guy the owner of the company that imports these burners from Eastern Europe is a wealth of information.  At times I had make him slow down with the sheer amount of information he was able to impart!  Even better from next year we're be getting paid via the Renewable Heat Incentive. www.eco-angus.co.uk

Circles

Today I had a really difficult conversation with Tom.  Since the last post we've been in a complete whirl of uncertainty brought on by Harry and local architect of a near retirement who has been given regular update by Flora over the past few months.  To cut a long story short we showed him the latest plan with a quick 'these are the plans we're just about to get Tom submit'.  The response was you'll never get planning permission for that!  Oh shit why not we really rather like it!?  It's only after quite some time of deliberating about the finer detail do you realise this isn't getting very far in the right direction.

Harry thinks and dare I say it we agree that our chances would be greatly increased if we move the house down to the other side of the plot - east side which it's worth noting is where Tom suggested we built the house 12 months ago.  Why?  The view of the Dovecot from the west side is limited at best and non existent in the summer, the house would be shadow from the telephone exchange after around 2pm, the entrance to the garden has been dictated by highways which would mean a long pointless driveway looking pretty awful and taking up valuable garden space.

So after many attempts I spoke to Tom and said that we've agreed to try with another architect for the design of the house only.  Tom is a good person and secretly I think relieved to be getting shot of us.  I knew it was the right decision as I felt relieved when Flora and I agreed to switch to Harry.

Harry is worlds apart from Tom but we're hoping that his guidance will help us get a plan we like and the planners are happy with we know that he has a very good reputation of getting planning in Bruton.  Let's hope so don't want to go around in another circle!

A plan of action

I met Tom on Wednesday to try and come up with a plan or strategy in order to maximise our chances of getting planning permission.  I also wanted to know his thoughts on why we sent both the plans to the conservation officer.  There is so much trust you have to place upon architects that what could be considered a small everyday action by the architect can be seen completely differently by the clients, and indeed was!  I didn't know that whatever the conservation officer says in the his comments before the application can't be used either way during the planning process.  Tom seems to think that we've got a good counter argument on the points that have been previous raised.  My only slight niggle is that he isn't robust at this stage but that might be a good thing as long as we finally achieve planning permission for the house we want to live in.

So now Tom is going to come up with a list of points that we need to make in order for him to then 'draw up the final plans' ready for submission.  He made a good point of not all the exact details need to be agreed at this stage is rather the general form and location plus building materials and concept that is important.

• Booked to go and see Guy from Eco-Angus for next Saturday which should be interesting.
• Tom mentioned another client has sourced the re-cycled rubber tyre slates 50% cheaper than TBC uk.
• Welsh Oak sent a follow up email to see how everything was progressing which is impressive and far more proactive than any other oak framing company.
• It's looking like choosing the hexagonal design would sit better than the curved design and cost less.

• Tom is slightly concerned that our budget will be tight so that's something we've got to spend a considerable amount of time on after we gain planning.... get Flora to do some serious bartering.

 

Confused

Collecting my thoughts together in order to write this blog is certainly more tiring than I ever imagined.  Putting down a set of vaguely coherent ideas can be a brain teaser especially if it's late at night (ok past 8 pm).  Over the past couple of weeks since we left sunny Somerset for the wilds of Herefordshire for a bit of peace and quiet Tom has sent us into a spin.

I'm not a expert into this planning game but surely if you send two completely different designs 1) the actual design we've been working with him for the past 3 + months and then 2) a design that we turned down but has more chance of sailing through the planning ....something is wrong?

So refresh your memories this is the design we like: -

And this is the other design that we completely rejected but he showed the planners anyway.

Watch this space as I'm intent on understanding what Tom meant .....

On a positive note my brother in law not only has a 4kw PV system up a running he's also having an 25kw Eco-Angus log boiler installed in August.  Which is great as he has officially become our guinea pig in the nicest possible way.  We both like the possibility of a Aga type cooker but 1/2 the price and runs on electricity hopefully taking it from the PV panels on the roof.

http://www.cookercentre.com/everhot/range-cooking/everhot-models

Could this be the one?

Even this idea has a few alterations to make!  We really like the curve but it could be that we have to just make it three sides if the quantity surveyor tells us that it's going to cost a fortune.  The house will face due south to maximise the passive solar gain and view to the Dovecot.

• Upstairs will comprise of the living area with a open plan kitchen, dining & sitting room.  Additionally on the west side their will be a good size play room (with a large amount of sound insulation) and an upstairs bathroom. 
• Downstairs will have four double bedrooms, two bathrooms, hallway and utility room.

We've had lots of conversations to make the building as efficient as possible minimising the amount of transitional space hopefully making the 200m sq a good size.

Things to agree: -

1. The window sizes especially for the curved end.  Considerations are wanting to let lots of light in the house but not feeling we're living in a gold fish bowl especially from when driving up Higher Backway!
2. Pitch of the roof - lets see what the planner think!
3. The white render section has two bedrooms but the size of the roof is too large and we want to be able to see the sun setting in the west.

Oh I'm sure there are masses of things Flora can think of but I'm pretty happy with this concept.  I'm itching to be able to know the quantities of materials to then be able to research and haggle.

Drawing showing the full plot.

Eligibility and Tariff levels | RH Incentive

Whilst I wait for the new and agreed plans for our house from Tom .... who said they were going to be sent by yesterday but weren't; I've come across this easy to read website detailing all the information about the new incentive to all households to get using renewable systems. It's something that I've always factored into the house design but makes it even better if the payback time is reduced by the government!

Eligibility and Tariff levels | RH Incentive

Another good link to a biomass company able to burn logs and certainly ticked all the right boxes for me is Eco-Angus

http://www.ecoangus.co.uk/

I'm going up to see Guy near Bristol in May to see his burner in operation which I think is crucial to know the implications of the day to day running of the system.

On Friday I had a constructive meeting with Jeff Ingvaldson at Mill on the Brue who has set up a business installing PV systems as well as investing into large solar farms. We looked at one roof with a due south direction which apparently will be able to take a 4kw system costing £12,000 but it would probably only take 7 years to pay back the cost!! So roughly thinking we would be getting some free electricity and around £1700 per year.

It's not like I haven't been busy but...

It's been another month of no new posts.  We're just waiting to hear from Tom who will be sending in the agreed plans.... I've come to the conclusion that building a house is a wife who is a liber has it's own challenges or put it another way I'm going to buy her a t-shirt "Libra but I'm not so sure now!"

But watch this space.

How difficult can it be?

One month later since my last post and still this project amazes me in the twists and turns we have had to take.  Making decisions at times especially with the consequences of living in a house for long time can be hard .... but lets us also put the whole thing into perspective (thank you to a good friend for this bit).  It's also very easy to concentrate on what we deem as perfection which is not to say we should necessarily lower our standards to get on with it together is more important than going round and round in circles winding each other up!  So that's how I feel, after a considerable amount of discussion this weekend, I admit has at times left me feeling a little angry out of sheer frustration of not understanding why Flora can't see my point.

One week later.

More ups and downs with lots more talking and considerably less frustration with Flora (and I hope she is of the same feeling ..... well she says she is).  We responded to Tom's email asking us to list how we can visalise each room and what it will be used for going down to the real details like dimensions of the cupboards.  A worth while exercise that has helped us agree on many points.  I would have liked some sort of slate on the sitting room, kitchen dinning room area as this is a really efficient way of absorbing the suns heat and then in the evening it would let it out when needed.  Well we're having wood as I also agree it is warmed to look at a feel under foot and even more importantly when you drop a plate it is less likely that it will break!  So much for my eco design!

I've been in contact with a few oak frame companies to try and ascertain if our design could be easily transferred to a oak frame house.  So far they've all been in contact which is a good start and Welsh Oak have said we could have a frame built in our budget but lets see I don't want to get up our hopes just yet!

Next small bit we've decided to extend the size of our house I'm calling Ropewalk House by the way.  The design which I have still failed to actually put up on this blog (I promise to tomorrow when I go into work) is for 190 m2 we now know we can push the finances a little more to make the total build 210 m2.  This in turn has cemented our belief that we really want a curved end to the sitting room .... oh God costly curves, yes that may be the case but I'm not convinced by our east elevation windows especially as I saw the same ones (or near to) on a very ugly visitors centre when coming out of the loo!  This may also sound like spoilt children stamping their feet not being content with what they've got.  It could be deemed as pushing the part of how big do you need this house?  However in our defence this is one thing we have actually agreed on from the start that we would like some sort of curve be it in the roof, or walls or just something to make the structure less box like and more dare perhaps organic.  It's not surprising we are taking inspiration from the Longhouse.

I'm going up again to the Eco homes exhibition in London next Wednesday which will hopefully be useful not full of people trying to sell me things are clearly not environmentally designed!

All change!

The Christmas holiday must have done some good or at least calmed us down.  To summarise the conservation officer finally got back to us with his written comments.  He thinks it better if we do the following: -

a)  Not build near the wall boundary

b)  Single storey with possibly a limited second storey element

c)  Position the house towards the telephone exchange rather than in the centre of the garden

d)  Either make the look more modern or very traditional which would have to be clad in stone

So in the other words he doesn't like our house design at all!

So we can apparently do two things

1) either get loads of written testimonials from surrounding residents or
2) start again or at least take on his comments in a view to compromise.  After considerable deliberation we both decided that if they're not interested in the preservation of the trees then we would certainly have a better view from the corner of the garden rather than the middle.

I also have made a decision (I must be growing up all of a sudden) that I need to put my energy into getting the house built rather than getting frustrated and angry with planners..... which isn't to say we're going to build a house we don't want.

We had a meeting last Thursday with Tom the architect and he made the comment that our original house design might be called what his old lecturer would have called a 'sweat house'.  In other words we thought about the design so much you could tell that something wasn't quite right with the final design.  I must admit that I agree and we can use this opportunity to do something better.

We bounced around lots of ideas but we know the dimensions of each room so that's a good start.  The key to the design is to minimise on the amount of hall and landing space as it's effectively dead space or transitory space.  I think it will be relatively easy to design an upside down house, in an L shape with better views and less visual impact but still a house.  It's never going to be ultra modern so we're try with a design of softened aspects (you're have to wait and see what I mean).

I think this all means that you should not be surprised if we don't start building until next year.  It may be earlier but this is a long project as you might have gathered!