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Policy 22 according to Cotswold district council restricts any replacement dwelling to be SIMILAR in size to the original property. We are asking to build a house that is 166m with an attached garage of 43m we have a piece of land in excess of 14 acres. apart from our other house that is small. all property around us are large detached barn conversions or substantiall old farm houses with loads of outbuildings. Our neighbour who is completely on our side has a seven bed five bath place. Every single bit of our application makes perfect sense, the planning officer just has a hang up over this similar in size wording.

Beware before buying any programable room stat. Read the instructions. We didn't and got lumbered with two that were battery powered, and forgot their programing every time the battery went flat.

I knocked down around 220sq metres including garages and replaced with 504sq metres. Although there may be some reference in the planning guidance to replacement dwellings there is usually also some reference to acceptable coverage of a plot. In the conservation area I am building in the limit is considered to be 20% of the area for the building and 20% more for driveways patios etc. My house is 19.8% of the plot. In an urban area that is not a conservation area coverage can go much higher. It is a very good rule to show these figures in the block plan e.g 4000sq metres plot, 200sq metre ground floor so 5% coverage, but architects don't always do it. Unless of course the figures actually look bad then best not to mention them You can also take rough measurements of neighbouring houses to show what the prevailing plot coverage is in the area, you might get the outlines of them from the planning website. Although there are not really planning precedents you can point to whether or not your house is in keeping with the plot coverage in the surrounding area.

You can control that in due course. Once branches start falling off or it seems dangerous, a call to the Tree Officer may get some action. F

The time consuming bit isn't making the model, it's getting everything from the topo plan to the building plan and elevations to the same scale and in the same CAD format. Once that's done, the model making is really just a bit like painting by numbers, with the glued on scale drawings as the templates. In your case, what would be useful would be to be able to show the planning committee "before" and "after" views of the whole site, to scale, so that they can see the relative impact of your proposal versus what's already there. The hardest part may well be getting scale drawings for all the existing buildings, as my guess is that you may already have them for what you're proposing. The key is really having them all in a format that can be made common. In my case, the guys that did the topo survey emailed me a .dxf file, I purchased the site plan map from the Ordnance Survey as a .dxf file (so used that for the base map) and I had done all the design drawings for the house in Autocad, that will happily read in .dxf files. This means that, with a bit of tweaking of units, I was able to get all the data to the same scale and in the same file format, which then meant I was able to make up printable sheets of parts, that were spray mounted to the material that had to be cut. The rest was just a bit of fun, and didn't take anywhere near as long as getting all the drawings together.

I think you mean leeward? Windward means you are upwind of it so it won't fall on you. It won't immediately fall down when it dies and a responsible land owner would fell a dead tree long before it rots and becomes unsafe.

Chances are Ash Die back will see to that in due course. There's barely an Ash tree left alive up here now.

If you are going to do this, use crates to contain the stone and only do it on a straight run. My first house the developer (or the planners) decided resin bonded stones on the private road and parking spaces would be a good idea. At the point where the road turned, the stones just got scuffed off in no time leaving two bare strips where the car wheels went. The builder re did it twice and both time it did the same. I would have MUCH rather just had a tarmac road.

For the scale model of the whole site, I used ply base board, then cut out layers of 5mm thick foamboard to the contours from the topo survey. I just printed off the topo survey to scale and then used spray mount to glue the printed sheets to the foamboard, which then made cutting along the contour lines with a craft knife easy. A bit of polyfilla to fill the steps and I had a reasonable representation of the ground. The buildings were all made using 2mm liteply, a very easy to cut modelling ply, that's far more forgiving than balsa and yet is easily cut with a craft knife. I used the same technique, drawing up the walls and roof outlines to scale, printing them off and then using spray mount to stick them to the sheet of liteply. A steel rule as a guide plus a sharp craft work made cutting out the panels easy. To glue the buildings together, I used modellers super glue, the stuff that cures very quickly when glueing balsa or liteply (modellers seem to refer to it as "zap glue"). I did add textures to my model, using stuff from the local model railway store, who sold stuff like grass and gravel texture powder that you just sprinkle on to a glued surface. The same store also sold bits of died dry moss than worked well for adding shrubs, or making small trees (I used cocktail sticks, dyed with felt pen, for the trunks). I found that after I'd made the first model, which took a few hours, I could make additional models very quickly, less than an hour, as there is a knack to finding the best way to do stuff. On the final model, the bits of paper that I printed out for the walls, roof etc I pre-textured, so that a bit of water colour paint gave a more realistic looking finish. This was the model I took to the planning meeting:

There's a couple of very high end, high performance, exotic cars parked on the drive in one of the shots, which I think is what was being referred to.

My advice is to make two scale models, one of the site as it is now, one as it would look if your proposal was granted. People have problems visualising stuff from plans, and are getting mistrustful of computer graphics, but still seem to trust scale model representations. It doesn't take that long to make a pair of reasonable scale models, I found, and the one I made really turned the tables at the planning meeting. I'd go so far to say that it was the single most significant contribution in getting people on side.

We just went to our local Councillor and asked him if he would support our application because the Planning Officer was being an awkward bugger. He did support us as did the Parish Council and as we didn't have any objectors the Planners were overridden unanimously when it went to the Planning Committee.

Wooden sheds will be classed as temporary buildings and not really part of the dwelling or living space. He's saying if you want to replace/keep these sheds & outbuildings and build a 66m^2 replacement dwelling that might be acceptable. One approach you should consider is what size is the house after you have maximised permitted development? E.g max rear and side extensions + loft conversion (even if in practice you wouldn't want to) and use that as a basis for your arguments.

sorry @Hecateh, there is a picture of a drive in their page which shows exotic cars on it.

Getting closer, fitting the sink has been a real mission. Needed to drill out the granite to take the plugs as discussed elsewhere and the sink fitting for open close interfered with the cabinet frame. Wouldn’t have been a problem if some wally hadn’t stuck the granite down already...

I feel a case of Boolean is called for. "Doctor, Doctor, we have a case of dysentery on the ward" "Make a change for Chablis"

Yes. And you can start one with "and" as well!

The ideal size of a garden shed is one that is the exact size of your land that you own. You can always park the car on the street but no chance you will leave the lawnmower out on the street. Only then can you say for certain that you couldn't make it any bigger to fit stuff you should have dumped years ago in.

I think there is also the added issue that some of us self-building have significantly higher expectations than some contractors who build stuff every day. There are some really good tradespeople around, but my experience is that they are a bit thin on the ground. There are many tales on this forum, and it's predecessor, that bear this out. One consequence I found was that I ended up teaching myself to do things, rather than contracting it out. Even if it takes me four or five times longer to do, at least it will get done to the very best of my ability. Finally, a comment about the observations that it's the small stuff that gets to you, in terms of decision making stress. Many years ago I was subjected to a "management transformation programme", one week a month away on the course for 6 months, that was intended to produce the needed new generation of senior managers for the brave new world of running defence research as an internally-trading "business". Generally it was a load of BS, but there was one session that was brilliant, so much so that I can remember practically all of it. It was run by a psychologist, and as well as the usual stuff about personality types, building teams etc, there was an exercise to demonstrate how the importance of a decision was often inversely proportional to the amount of effort put in to the decision making process. This is the sort of thing we've probably all seen; spending more time researching what new widget to buy than you spend on choosing what house to buy. In this case we were divided into two sets, and sent off into separate rooms, where there was a sealed envelope with a question in it. These rooms had video cameras set up, so that we could watch how we behaved afterwards. In one room, the question in the envelope was "How many nuclear warheads should the UK have in order to form an effective deterrent?". In the other room, the question was "What is the ideal size for a garden shed?". There was a time limit, around 10 or 15 minutes I think, to come up with an answer. The interesting point was that the team asked to decide on the number of nuclear warheads came up with an answer very quickly, after less than 5 minutes of debate. The team asked to decide on the best size of garden shed didn't reach a conclusion; they were still arguing about it when their time ran out................

Following on from this there is another benefit - I've been on some anti-anxiety drugs for about 4-5mths now. The net benefit apart from some more mental clarity is that i'm much more comfortable walking about up on the top of the scaffold :-)

Well, I am in a very fortunate position, I don't get stressed!!!!!. I am retired, I have all the funds to complete the build plus contingency, we don't have a firm completion date (temp rental just down the road on a month by month basis). I have a wonderful builder working for me. A word of warning, Stress causes illness, I know, after many years of a stressful life with more than my fair share of illness myself and even the death of a person very close to me I suddenly said " NO MORE", I am very lucky that I can do this, not everyone can. If something goes wrong, shit happens, so what! get over it. It's things like Ian's (recovering academic) misfortune with builders and bankers that make me feel even more lucky. "RANT" We went out for a meal with friends last night as we are about to move from Bristol to near our build site in Devon, the evening descended into a tirade of "you cant do this, you cant do that anymore, pay tax on this, pay tax on that, government don't know what their doing. It reminded me of the "grumpy old men" programme on TV. Both other couples were successful, had good health (in fact one couple had just collected their brand new convertible Mercedes Benz after returning from their boat on the Med. I confess I kept quiet but felt very annoyed. I dont suffer negative people very well. I consider myself very lucky. "RANT OVER"

Sadly there is no "universal" EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment). Currently there are three main systems, none of which are truly compatible with each other. The most common, and the one that's found on the vast majority of public charge points, is the IEC62196-2 Type 2, usually with either an IEC62196-2 socket, or a tethered lead with a J1772 connector fixed on the end. The next most common is the Tesla-specific Supercharger, which is unique to Tesla and not used by any other manufacturer. Tesla have done a good job of setting up Supercharger public charge points, but only Tesla cars can use them. As a backup, a Tesla can slow charge using a separate IEC62196-2 Type 2 connector, rather than the Supercharger connector, which means the Tesla is compatible with all the IEC62196-2 public charge points, albeit at a slow charge rate. The final standard is CHAdeMO, which is a DC fast charge standard, similar in some ways to the Tesla Supercharger (but not compatible with it, AFAIK), but it's not at all common here in the UK. If you're thinking of getting a Tesla, then look at getting three phase power in, so you can install a home Supercharger, but be aware that this will only charge a Tesla. If you want the closest there is to a "universal" solution, then look at installing an IEC62196-2 Type 2 EVSE, without a tethered J1772 lead and connector, but with an IEC62196-2 socket on the front. That should be pretty future proof. I would strongly recommend installing a 32A unit, which will allow home charging at around 7.3kW or so. The majority of newer EV can accept a 32A charge now (often colloquially referred to as a "7kw" charger), and it very much looks as if the IEC62196-2 connector is going to win out from the other AC charge connector options. Virtually all the non-Tesla public charge points that don't have tethered charge cables (so need you to provide the cable) use the IEC62196-2 connector - in fact I'm pretty sure there are no other AC EVSE sockets in use at public charge points in the UK now.