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About this blog

We are Dave & Jill and this is the history of this site.

The Little Stud Barn 'to be' is a barn in one of our fields.

We bought the host property Little Stud Farm at auction as a semi derelict house with 5 acres, it was a redundant intensive pig rearing unit that had up to 2,000 pigs.  3 acres were covered in pig buildings.  The house had been empty for a couple of years and most of the windows were broken and any wiring eaten by rats.

Anyway, that was 20 years ago and 80% of the old pig buildings were knocked down and put to grass for my horses.

Unfortunately, the contractor knocking down the buildings got a bit carried away and knocked down 9 out of 10 of the high ceiling sheds.  When I arrived on site I managed to stop him from knocking down the last one.  We ended up with 260 m2 of buildings left, but most of them have pretty low roofs.

4 years ago I had a major accident and was in a wheelchair for 6 months.  Although I can now walk we decided that we should try and build our dream single storey house by converting the remaining buildings.

It took us 3 attempts and 2 years to get class Q planning.  Class Q rules are very strict and all dimensions and curtilage must be exactly adhered to and with the height restrictions this has meant that we only have 240 m2 of the 260 m2 full size and some of each of the south side rooms can only be utility space and not living.

The better news is that the floor levels are raised in the 5 south side areas so we can at least get these dug down which will help with insulation and UFH.

 

This is what it looks like at the moment, from the North West.  I've realised that I don't have a direct shot on this PC, I will find one later.

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Building itself will start next year because at the moment we are in the process of a Phase 2 contamination survey with gas monitors.  The gas has to be monitored for 3 months with a visit every fortnight. We have had 2 so far.  Once that is finished then a report will be produced and sent to the LPA.  Depending on what the report says we can then commence (don't forget CIL) or carry out remediation steps.

 

As we are literally self building with help of experts where necessary this is likely to take a number of years to complete.

 

I am hoping to post to this blog weekly once we are underway.

 

 

 

 

Entries in this blog

Oct 28th 2020 - Estimations and dumpers

This week I have been going through each room of the build and looking at what it needs, not furniture, but sockets, lights, floors and painting amongst the list. I have never in the past appreciated just how much is involved in creating rooms from scratch, despite doing multiple renovations & extensions. Before I can send off for estimates I still have the family room to complete, I've been avoiding that one as with the kitchen, multiple doors and outside access it will be quite d
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No gas here - well probably not anyway

Today was the penultimate of 6 gas monitoring check as part of our phase 2 contamination survey.  They dug 6 bore holes of 3 m deep and then left 2 with gas monitors in situ.   I noticed today though that the one on the left has some dying plants around it, which is slightly worrying as it used to look like the other one.   But, at their last check they have not found any gas at all in their holes, mainly because where they are looking is subsoil where a building us
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Another week, another plan change

14th Oct 20   I have spent less time than usual in the last week looking at the build and layouts, probably a good thing. But, I still worry when other commitments get in the way, it doesn't really matter at the moment, but it will do once the action really starts.   Once thing we have done is look at buying a digger rather than hiring. The issue we have is the back of the barn only has a very narrow passage way between the existing wall and a steep bank, so this ne
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PD Planning Permission and Pitch

Another week of not really achieving anything. Due to our class Q PD planning we have to keep the dimensions exactly as they are, well I guess we could be smaller, but definitely not bigger. This is up, down and side to side. I have been looking at the roof, the main one as we have 2, which is huge at 24m x 10m and a single roof, i.e. not a pitch. This is how the barn looks now, we want a zinc or at least metal roof, but the minimum pitch is 8 degrees and I hadn't realised, a
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12

1st Oct, layout decided at last

At last, after a huge amount of discussion and lots of 'what about this.....' we have decided on our final layout. Due to cost constraints, the windows are smaller than originally hoped for.     As the rear of the barn has a low roof I have a ground worker coming on Sunday to look at digging down. The floor currently has 4 different levels, I want them all taken down to the lowest so we can basically start from scratch. We want UFH, but as the roof and ridg
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17

Size does matter

I have been using some layout software to layout my barn conversion to see how to layout my rooms. I have been doing this gradually for weeks now without finishing as furnishing and moving in is probably years away.   But, today I went back to my original plans showing the barn dimensions and realised that I have been doing the external size totally wrong in my layout. The architects proposed layout didn't have any dimensions for the individual rooms and we changed those anyw
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September 16th

Over the last week, although we can't start building, I have been starting to clear the site of brambles, nettles and other growth that we don't want. Cutting it all down and burning is fairly easy, stopping it all coming back is not. I checked with CIL and planning that I could do this as I don't want to fall foul of anything whilst the phase 2 is being carried out.   I'm also starting to try and get my head around building regulations as I need to understand what is being s
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