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.