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.
Saturday, 17 December 2011
Monday, 5 December 2011
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!
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!
Saturday, 12 November 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
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!
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!
Sunday, 16 October 2011
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.
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.
Monday, 3 October 2011
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?
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?
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
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
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
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