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it is always a good decision to have good brandy around. But perhaps not before mini digging. I think I agree this might not be a time to try something new. Best of luck. Ferdinand

Only way out of not digging out at least 40-50mm is to use less insulation in the floor. How much had you planned to use?? How much have you left from the top of the hardcore to the bottom of your door frame?? I am removing wood chip off my sister's walls so digging hardcore out would be music to my ears. Only thing left to try and remove it is petrol and a match.

I think the basic rule, is take the bottom of your foundation trench, project a line outwards and downwards at 45 degrees from the bottom of that trench. Your excavations should not pass through that line. If you are digging 2.2 metres away from the foundations, then even with very shallow foundations, you would need to be more than 2.2 metres deep before you would cause concern, so I think your 1.5 metre hole will be fine.

This post has reposted from an Ebuild thread called "Planner's Commission". It is reflections on the use of Expert Advisers, which ones may be needed, and how to get the right people, and how to reward / incentivise them, based on the experience of taking a larger project (site for several dozen houses) through planning, and other aspects of the Planning Process. We used a full gamut of advisers, through an excellent Planning Consultant. It is based on experience of taking a larger site through Planning. I hope there are useful insights for smaller projects, too. My aim is to help others avoid elephant traps which are not obvious at first site. The context is a question from poster Grifter74 about a Planning Consultant asking for a substantial percentage bonus in return for them "covering costs": These are my reflections on the real costs likely to be involved in a larger Planning Application, and some of the risk/reward balances and elephant traps with which you will need to deal. In a largish project, there are a lot more people who get a pound of your flesh than the Planning Consultant. On a 10 acre site the fee for submitting an Outline PP application to the Council will be around £18000 in 2015 - that is merely to cover the Council's cost to process it. If you are going for Full Detailed PP that fee will be more like £40k-£50k. Your whole Planning Application and Appeal budget will need to be more like £600-1000 per potential plot for Outline. Perhaps that figure if you are doing Detailed. That is your stake in a game of Planning Poker, and you need to be able to afford to lose all of it without crippling damage to your finances or family. A large developer can lay that risk off across 8 or 10 applications per year. Are you in a position to take it on personally for a single site?See http://www.planningp...neFeeCalculator .On top of that you have everything from Bat Reports to Tree Reports to Traffic Surveys to (potentially) Ground Sampling to Flood Simulation to Entrance Design to blah de blah de waffle de gubbins. We had about a dozen consultants and their reports. Don't forget the Woodlarks and the Nightjars, and if somebody found a bronze age arrowhead 3 miles away in 1864 an archaeologist may be involved too.Our Planning System can be well described as "Teutonic". It also changes like a Kaleidoscope month to month, and only Pros can keep up. An important role is for the Planning Consultant to notice that any one of the 436 people involved in processing your plans in the 40 different organisations consulted has c*cked up a detail and said no because they didn't read one of the 437 documents properly wrt to current Guidance, and to get things back on track - ie attention to detail followed by polite, knowledgeable bullying. That is one reason why success fees can be a helpful incentive.Your key role wrt everyone is to make sure that your consultants are going in the right direction and making sure that your detailed knowledge of your site and its history (which your team won't have) is folded into the process effectively which may involve insisting that certain things are checked because of your gut feel. I have had a small number of occasions when stuff I know from decades ago has turned out to be significant, which might eg be proving previous land use from family documents, or knowing where a fence was in 1986 and the current address of the previous neighbour who can make a sworn statement about it.I would suggest that going for Outline on eg a 10Ha site you need to budget £100k plus a £25k contingency for Planning Application plus a possible Appeal as a minimum.If you are going for Detailed that budget needs to be at least doubled.You may not need it all (but you will need half of it), but it needs to be there at short notice when it is needed. Since you may lose you need to be willing and able to afford losing it all. Giving your Planner a share may help manage your downside risk. Only you can judge the balance.You don't say whether your site is controversial, or where it is. If PP is likely and the area is popular with developers (read roughly: South West of a Line from the Wash to Chester in 2015) or is metropolitan or posh, then you may get a developer to take it on from scratch, but they are all hugely risk averse. They *will* want 25% or more of the uplift and a 5 or 7 year option. That may be a good deal depending on umpteen factors.What is worth more to you - 100% of a field with cows or 50% of a £10m housing site?Your Planning Consultant is perhaps trying it on if it is a likely site eg if it is in the Local Plan. If it is a difficult site it is very high but if it is your only option then that may be acceptable.You need to know *precisely* what "covering costs" means. It does *not* mean Section 106, which will simply be deducted from the sale price by the potential purchaser eventually. It will mean your Planner's Professional Fees (10-20% of total budget); it may or may not mean fees of consultants (50-70% of total budget); it is unlikely to mean the Council Fee (20-30% of total budget).The process will take 2-4 years overall. No developer will do more than talk until the dust has settled after the Election unless your site is gold-plated, but you should take 6 months investigating and ruminating anyway unless there is a specific reason. Depending on the next Govt, you may be able to sell it into some sort of State Housing Programme at a price yet to be determined.Our deal with our Planner is that we have covered fees, including his, but there is a (small) percentage success fee on sale from which the planner's own fee is deducted. That caps our fee exposure.Your suggested share agreement seems to make you potentially liable for paying your Planner before the site is sold.Then you have to sell it :-). Not easy always.What you should do.1 - Above all, stop and think and take your time.2 - I'd say take advice from someone you trust or who is beholden only to you. That is probably the *senior* Property Expert of an experienced local firm of solicitors or someone who routinely advises on similar projects. You will get an initial meeting free, but if you want a report with advice expect to pay £1000 to £2500 (write a one page spec. and get a quote) for an exploratory assessment report which briefly assesses the site, the context, local policy and your options to go forward. It will be a lot of work because the system is complicated. Listen to them about the process. It will be a legal or property professional, or Chartered Surveyor, not an architect.3 - If you get any Planning Consultant make sure they are used to these big projects in your locality. You will be working with them for 3 years. Look back through similar sites. The right Planning Consultant may be your adviser, but you need to get the right one and there are quite a number of .. er .. w*nk*rs out there, often refugees / early retirees from senior positions in Council Planning Departments. Find out how many Appeals they have won on your type of project; if they can remember them all easily it is not enough experience. Be aware of their motivation and manage them accordingly - our Planning Consultant enjoyed winning the battle as much as getting the application. and could have been a good Barrister as an alternative career.4 - A national planning consultancy may be a good idea and will be more likely to be professionally reliable and have subject experts to call on, but you still initially need your independent expert you are paying to advise you.5 - Consider local reactions. You may have demos, petitions, and Facebook groups. You may lose lots of friends and be in the local paper as the local selfish capitalist barsteward concreting over the Green Belt.Given our Planning Politics, this is the highly honourable and ethical activity of helping young people off the homelessness list and onto the Housing Ladder.6 - You also need advice from a suitable accountant. The expert in 2 would advise.There are people out there who invest risk capital in this sort of process, but you will need to find them and they all want a requisite reward for the risk they are taking, and it is not a game of leapfrog.The two balls you need to keep your eye on in evaluating everyone's interests are Risk and Money, and the tradeoffs between the two from each viewpoint. Those two getting out of balance for any party is a red flag.Ferdinand

On the other thread there was a diversion about planning politics. I wrote this: ProDave replied: I replied: and then Ferdinand added this: The 106's were agreed on all three. What has happened on two of the developments is that the access, services and infrastructure have been put in, but no houses are being built. Presumably this has been done to lock in the PP. The third development has been sat with no work being done at all, 18 months after PP was granted and the 106 was agreed. The developer was forced to reduce the housing density on that one, and the local view is that work is going on to get a more application in for more houses on the plot. It's caused some ructions, as two of the most vociferous supporters (in a village that was overwhelmingly opposed to the development, just because it's in a stupid place, on a very steep hill) did so on the basis that they had children who were getting married and looking for somewhere to live in the village, so the "affordable homes" in the development we looked at as a way to achieve that. One of those former supporters has now bought a small infill plot and gained planning permission for their son to build a house and work started about 6 months ago, so that's one less customer for this developer.

I was a mathematician by training, so I am one of those rare wierdoes who is comfortable thinking in equations. So if you are like me then this Wikipedia description is useful: Thermal time constant. The physics of this is dictated by what is called the heat equation, and this is classed as what is known as linear time invariant systems. This formula has the dimensions of time, that is you can measure it and quote it in seconds, hours of whatever time unit takes your fancy, and it is a measure of how sluggish your system is to respond to step changes in external conditions. Dropping the funny formula symbols, this article includes a summary: In other words, the time constant says that larger masses and larger heat capacities lead to slower changes in temperature, while larger surface areas and better heat transfer lead to faster temperature changes. I would say: the longer the time constant the more sluggish is the response to changes in external temperature. The time constant for the walls of my house with its external stone skin and twinwall filled with cellulosic filler is a few days, and because of this I don't really have to worry about diurnal temperature variations in designing my heating system

In a word, yes. See what you have got before you make any final decisions. Not sure if detailed architectural drawings will help, and I'd advise against ordering off plan, measure the actual build. Most of the alu will be stock lengths and powder coating will take a few days. Our guy was on the roof as the scaffolding was coming down around him (I had warned him) and he did all the rest on ladders. Would advise on getting a supply and fit quote as well as supply only (and DIY) it is a fiddly business and 'on show' so make sure you know what you're taking on

Try this company (I'm getting my window cills from them); http://www.mspcladding.co.uk/ I've been dealing with Derek in sales, and he has been very helpful. Their paint shop can finish to any RAL colour, and they are happy to supply any type of folded aluminium profile - fascias, soffit, general cladding etc They are keenly priced and can fabricate to your requirements. I'm getting my cills made to my requirements for around 1/2 the price the window company wanted for their cills (which only came in a limited range of sizes). They recently priced up bespoke aluminium guttering for me, again a lot better priced (1/2) than anything I've seen online, but sadly out of my price range. Derek is aware that he may be getting enquiries from forum members, and is happy to quote for small orders, so be sure to mention the forum by name. I don't have my cills yet, but I have seen examples of the paintwork their paintshop produces, which all looked first class.

Reminds me of this: https://what-if.xkcd.com/91/

Around 35 years ago, some bright spark decided that anyone involved in defence research at the sharp end should have a month attached to a front line unit, complete with a temporary commission into your equivalent service rank. This was not popular with front line units, who really didn't want to have to baby sit someone useless (from their perspective). I was attached to 826 Naval Air Squadron, RNAS Culdrose, as a newbie Sub Lieutenant, supposedly straight from Dartmouth. On my first day, I pitched up to the morning brief and there was an announcement that four junior officers were booked for Aircrew Escape, Survival, and Evasion training starting that day, and transport was awaiting to take us to Lympstone Barracks, where instructors from 42 Commando were to give us three days training followed by a two day escape and evasion exercise, where we were dropped in pairs, with nothing but an aircrew coverall, basic kit that would be in the pockets of your survival life jacket, plus a live rabbit, with orders not to kill it in the first 24 hours. We were blindfolded, dropped somewhere on Dartmoor, and told we had a four hour start on the "enemy" (members of 42 Commando) who were trying to catch us before we reached a declared safe objective. If we got caught before the 48 hours were up we were taken back to Lympstone. It was pouring with rain, our bivvy leaked, the bloody rabbits crapped everywhere, we were both soaked to the skin and actually relieved when we were captured at around 4 am, some 15 hours after being dropped off. The relief did not last long. We were chucked face down in the back of a 4 tonner, wrists and ankles cable tied. When we got to the barracks, we were put in individual white-tiled cells, with bright lights and very loud music, on constantly. We were made to strip and stand on the tips of our toes, with our fingertips on the wall, and hosed down with cold water. We were constantly questioned, and for the first few hours managed to just stick to name, rank and number. After around 10 to 12 hours or so of this, the four of us that had been captured were marched into a room, still naked, and ordered to attention. A WRAC officer walked in, swagger stick under her arm, peak of her cap pulled down over her eyes. She walked along in front of us, quietly giving us abuse. She got to me and poked my "meat and two veg" with the end of her stick, saying "call yourself a man with equipment like that?". At this point I lost it, yelling that I was a civvy, that I wasn't in the bloody RN and they could let me go right now. One of the blokes handed the WRAC officer a bit of paper. She shoved it under my nose, pointing out that I'd signed up, and that I was under military law, as Sub Lieutenant J S Harris RN, whether I liked it or not.......................