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I just thought I would resurrect this old thread to say finances have unlocked. I am still awaiting the small nest egg I was anticipating when I started this thread. That is still locked up in legal and technical bureaucracy and the sheer inefficiency and ineptitude of the solicitors dealing with that astounds me. I get the feeling a conclusion to that is still months away, and it pains me to think of the fees they will be charging for the "service" (sic) they have given. Anyway the unlocking comes from the fact a few days ago I attained the magic age of 55. That is the age you can unlock and start doing things with your pension money. So on my birthday I arranged for one small pension fund (the only defined contribution fund I have) to be transferred to a flexible drawdown account and I have taken the tax free 25% lump sum from that. The rest remains in my drawdown account to be drawn later as I need it, but will be taxable as income should I need to draw on it. That was not a particularly straightforward process as the provider the fund was with did not offer what I wanted so I had to first transfer it to a different provider, a process I started in January to ensure everything was in place to action it on my birthday. I always thought this was going to be the last source of funding to be unlocked and it still irks me that I had to wait until a specific birthday to access my own money. Ar least now we can start spending again (actually we started spending in February trusting nothing would go wrong and we would have the funds to settle the bills later this month)

I may reply to this when I have finished the housework

I'm extremely glad to discover that this forum has been set up since e-build closed down. I'm a Structural Engineer by trade, with a personal interest in self build and off site construction, and you can find me answering structural engineering and publishing questions at Quora.

OK. Email lady with what you think she said. Or to reception with a request to forward. Put a time limit on it ("please confirm that my understanding is correct by date X"). On day X+1 email the Head of Department as has been suggested, with the account, and "requesting clarification" or "confirmation that the Valuation Office control the list, and that the Council will stop trying to charge CT on my property"). Potentially your local councillor may help with this. Or wait until the system grinds through. Ferdinand

What a load of old tosh! Presumably, they're peeved because of your letter from the VO. Just because something can be made habitable, that doesn't mean it is. Ask them to put their decision in writing and with the justification for it; at the very least you can stall them whilst you get some more opinion on defending your corner. Would it be worth giving the VO a quick call to see if they can advise as to whose opinion hold the trump card? In any case, as Jack says, if it's not banded, how can they know what to charge anyway? Grrrr!

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http://www.changeplan.co.uk/u_value_calculator.php

Prefabs periodically reappear as solutions to the "housing crisis" since the second world war, if not before. They aren't a solution as the problem is the availability of affordable land that is in areas that people want to live, closely followed by the enormous bureaucratic delays. Actually building things isn't a problem.

I also have an interest in this and have tried to stimulate thinking on it here, to little avail at the moment, because it is a no brainer when it comes to solving the housing crisis, can't quite understand why it has not been forced through / enabled / incentivised by HMG - must be a vested interest I have not spotted - oh the house builders I suppose!

Should be zero rated to you. I would write back asking them to requote with it zero rated because the connection is for a new dwelling and refer to vat notice 708 paragraph 3.3.4b.... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-708-buildings-and-construction/vat-notice-708-buildings-and-construction

should 378 not be the top of the plasterboard? so 366 for the timber? possibly even top of adhesive so 362...ish???

The primary legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/385/regulation/7/made woking per your reference https://www.woking.gov.uk/planning/service/contributions which includes Claims for a self build exemption relating to a residential extension should be submitted on Form 9: Self Build Residential Extension Exemption Claim Form.

The law is the law, and I think I gave links to the case law defining a rateable hereditament in the other thread. Council tax cannot be charged unless a house is on the valuation register. It can only be put on the valuation register by the VOA. It can only be valued and placed on the register by the VOA if it meets the criteria laid down in the previously quoted case law, and the easy case to use is "Does the house have a potable water supply or not?" If the answer to that is "no", then it is, by law, not a rateable hereditament and so cannot be valued for Council Tax purposes and placed on the register. There are other criteria that are either defined in case law, or could be argued as placing the house outside the definition of a rateable hereditament; I only went as far as the water supply one as that was easy for me to control and prove if challenged. FWIW, the moment I started to quote the relevant case law to the council tax woman I was passed to their legal department, and after that the council just backed off very quickly indeed. They just sent me a very politely worded letter asking if I would please let them know when I considered the house was sufficiently complete to be valued for Council Tax. I delayed this right up to the completion inspection, by delaying getting the official public health water test (we're on a borehole), even though I knew from a private test that the water was OK. I only did this because the attitude of the council had got right up my nose, when they sent a snooper around..................

Thanks for the quick replies. Great to have your support Having listened to green sleeves for 25 minutes I’ve managed to speak to her again She is really P off with the letter from the VOA Even more so that the VOA has contacted them after speaking to me today asking why she thinks they have no right to remove it from the CT list I got the wrong end of the stick She never told me that Hope that conversation was taped

Our cables run through 25mm flexible conduit, alongside a counterbatten and up and over the ridge and then down the roof the other side and out behind the wall cladding to the externally mounted inverter. Four cables (for two strings of panels) fitted easily inside 25mm flexible conduit OK.

Nothing can happen unless they put their position in writing. Until then, it's just some idiot trying to take advantage of you on the phone. Personally I'd wait until she sends the promised email. If she doesn't, that's the end of it. If she does, then you have something specific to respond to. If you feel like you need to do something, Ferdinand has the right idea.

As far as i am aware the council do not revise council tax banding even if extension is completed and signed off. The extension is only taken into account when the property is next sold and then they may revise the banding.

Stupid and irrelevant analogy. Her house is a dwelling and presumably she's living and and using the extension. Your house is not a dwelling and literally cannot be lived in. That's pretty funny. Isn't the valuation office literally the only body with the right to remove it? One possible way of proceeding: Make sure you've cancelled any direct debits you might have had in relation to council tax. Get them to put their position in writing. Pretty sure someone calling from the council isn't sufficient - insist that they put their legal position in writing, because as far as we can tell, it's bollocks. Since they can't take money from you, they'll have to start legal proceedings. They aren't going to do that without being sure of their legal position. Maybe contact the officer at the VOA and see whether they have any advice? What's your local paper like? They often like a human interest story like this.

I might be tempted to a la Jeremy write to the legal department, or get a solicitor who knows to write and tell them what the law says. But that will cost money. A neat way might be to write or email despairingly and tell the Valuation Officer what the Council lady said (with email address ?), and ask them to forward a copy of the decision direct. Perhaps you could provoke the Council lady to confirm it by email first - for forwarding the 'neigh' that came from the horses mouth to the VOA for a response. They might not do it, mind. F

Apologies for doctoring your images The objections from the council are basically design and size. You could initally apply for the 2nd storey (ontop of the existing footprint) as attached. It may be that you don't need to make the full application, you may be able to seek pre-application advice and get this principle agreed to (but I would only do the pre-app if it was free). A rear two storey extension of 3m is within permitted development (assuming the house was built originally with a room in the roof) (although the shape of your existing roof would make that impractical). So you would then have to make a second application to get that. Not withstanding that, you still have the issue of design to overcome. The inital impression of the front elevation is something which looks like some of the 60s/70s gable ended houses. I personally am not a fan of very modern looking houses, but would a roof design such as this be of interest? https://www.scosarg.com/mobi-one-timber-frame-house-machine (see picture below the machinery) I'm sure the planners would rather you designed something either very clearly modern, or something in keeping with the 50s type of property you already have, or even something very "period".

Keep in mind the location of the insulation. If you've an attic you can easily add more to the roof later. It's difficult but you can add additional insulation to walls at a later date (either internal or external and very easy if you've a cavity you can fill). Adding insulation to a floor is extremely difficult and disruptive.

How does the self build exemption work (for extensions and residential annexes)? People who extend their own homes or erect residential annexes within the grounds of their own homes are exempt from the levy, provided that they meet the criteria laid down in regulations 42A and 42B (inserted by the 2014 Regulations). Regulation 67(1A) sets out that requirements for Commencement Notices do not apply to exemptions for residential extensions. the main dwelling must be the self builder’s principal residence, and they must have a material interest in it (as defined in regulation 4(2)); residential annexes are exempt from the levy if they are built within the curtilage of the principal residence and comprise one new dwelling; and residential extensions are exempt from the levy if they enlarge the principal residence and do not comprise an additional dwelling There is no requirement for the occupier of the annex to be related to the owner of the main dwelling, or to commit to staying there for a specified period. From @bassanclan link above. We have planning to add approx 250m 2 + to our bungalow, had to fill in forms for householder exemption for for CIL, which is therfore not chargeable. There may be a requirement to get a commencement notice etc. To confirm exemption which you would have to investigate.

Hello & welcome, I am sure your input will be gratefully received on this forum. I would have been great to have someone to ask questions of when our foundations were being designed. I would say ours are certainly robust. +1

I would have thought as a self build/extension you should get exemption from CIL by filling out the relevant forms https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200126/applications/70/community_infrastructure_levy/4 Your design has a large gable end as the principal elevation, which the planners evidently think is not in keeping with the surrounding houses, the new design isn't that much different. I think the fact that the side elevation of a nearby house has a gable end is not going to form part of the planners considerations. I'm not sure if there are houses on the street with a similar front elevation to that attached, but if not then your design is not in keeping. I think the aesthetics have to play a bigger part in your thinking, you will see the house as you drive up to it and away from it every day and should be something pleasing rather than just functional. At some point as well you will have to sell the house and any buyer's first glance will the photo of the front elevation. Are you planning to convert the attic space to bedrooms etc at a later date, or is it simply storage? In your situation you have to take a pragmatic view. You are unlikely to get 100% of what you want, but you could apply for 80% of what you want, then make a minor ammendment or permitted development to get 90% Are you steadfast that it has to eb an extension rather than a knock down and rebuild, as you will not get the VAT benefit nor the benefit of better lower storey contruction. This would also free you up from the exisiting floorplan and allow you to design something more exciting.

I'd suspect this also. To preserve value, the supply is deliberately constrained. Also they may not be willing to invest in the workforce and other logistics to build at a faster rate. Lastly building slowly may help ensure quality, but I doubt this. Reminds me of when a high profile act announces one or two nights at a top venue and it sells out immediately. Then extra dates are incrementally announced 'due to demand' as if they venue and artist had and empty week in their schedule. Ensures that each night is packed and all inventory is sold, even the lower quality seats. Great to have a SE in the forum - we used an all female practice for our basement and associated works and was amusing to hear every trade default to 'he' when referencing the SE, and I'd always correct them to 'she'. On foundation design, she designed quite a sizeable ring beam / slab foundation for our garage as we were building on made ground from the backfilled basement excavation and I remember that frost related heave was given as a reason.

The only time I installed an oil boiler I fitted a water trap/filter in the feed pipe. Not a cure for a lot of water in the tank, but a very good visual indicator of water being present, as the trap/filter had a glass bowl and water was clearly visible. If water does get into a tank, then doing as you do with aircraft fuel tanks on a regular basis, just carefully draining it off from the very bottom of the tank should work OK. Not hard to do, as long as the tank is set up properly with a very slight tilt towards the drain fitting, and suitable precautions are taken to deal with any possible contamination (including disposal of the drained-off water).

Thanks everyone for such a warm and encouraging welcome! If you're trying to win me over you're going the right way about it (the other way I can be won over is good coffee). @Dreadnaught Likewise, and I hope we can benefit from one-another's expertise and experience. @MikeSharp01 Certainly it looks like there are reasons other than engineering/construction/cost that tend to dictate the situation, and as an engineer I find that as frustrating as the next man. There are green shoots though. For example, staying single storey, financing without mortgage, building on flood plains, or under "other" jurisdictions(e.g. waterways, Scottish "hutting", mobile or park homes). I'd be interested on your and other's views on this. @jack Indeed! I'd say it was a mix of structural mechanics and historical precedent, and while the former can be straightforward the latter is hard to come to terms with as a "science" professional, especially when your peers sometimes trump science with precedent. This problem is greatly compounded by the fact that there is little or no feedback loop -- so if a surgeon operates on 5 patients and they all suffer complications, they can look at what the underlying issue is with their method. If a SE designs 5 buildings, they never get to see any of them again. This is partly why I'm here -- to get realtime feedback! @billt Try telling that to any self-builder who never worked on the tools. Just using a measuring tape can be a real challenge for some, and I say that sincerely. I personally think anyone should be enabled to build their own house, and that it's an essential part of masculinity that is denied to men today. @SteamyTea Foundations - see also the above paragraph - are the worst to get data about, in that they're buried and hardly ever see the light of day again. 99.9% of the time if there are problems another Engineer will be dealing with it, maybe 20 years in the future. However, the source of the "over engineered" perception is probably because of NHBC and building control, who often specify enormously deep trenches, and inexperienced/insecure/browbeaten SE's who blindly follow. It's vexing because most SE's I know see it as their utmost duty to save the client money. BTW. I'm more of a coffee man, but each to their own! @JSHarris Thanks for the case study. Conservatism is probably a good thing when it comes to foundations, since a bit more concrete amounts to £85 or so per m3. Like you I've noted the tendency for trench-fill being over the top (see comment above) and have for years been advocating for a pad and beam approach or using mesh reinforced rafts. Also you may be right about the London Clay effect -- where loss adjusters have picked up on "clay heave" and apply it where it doesn't apply. Only last week I was shocked to see another SE who had specified 3m deep trench-fill with clay-master to two sides as underpinning... 1.5m away from a mature broad-leaf...

Not sure I can agree with this. Two bits of evidence in support of my disagreement. Firstly just up the A2 from here they are working on the Ebsfleet Garden City and they have room, and permission, for 15,000 homes but they are being built at a trickle pace, there must be an underlying reason for this pace. The land is there and the demand is there, 17 minutes from central London on the fast train. The builders have a number of excuses but I suspect the rate is controlled by economics not housing need. Secondly, on the other side of the equation, if the houses were prefabricated on a large enough scale they could be assembled on site in no time at all, weeks instead of the the year which looks like the average lead time of more traditional construction, and thus bring the build rate up to something like what we need. Sadly we all know the old maxim that 'investment challenges change' so if you are invested in one method of construction switching to another does not appear to be in your interests until, as happened to stone age man (& woman) they get overrun by the bronze wielding hoards. Talk to my children's generation they get it, or rather they don't get the housing opportunities we had. Although owning your own property makes you 'heavy' it also gives you some security of tenure that is not available elsewhere.

Welcome, I share @SteamyTea's curiosity. As a former scientist I started out from first principles to design a large gravity retaining wall, made some measurements of the max allowable soil bearing stress, knew the underlying ground conditions well (we had a water borehole drilled, so had a detailed hydrogeological survey) and then realised that, just to keep BC and our insurance people happy an SE would need to replicate the design. I went through the copy of his design calcs, and they were much the same as mine, but his final design was significantly more massive, with a margin that very much exceeded Eurocode 7 requirements. He was very good value in terms of what he delivered for the price though, it's just that his design used a fair bit more concrete and steel. Over the years it seems that foundation design in general has become increasingly more complex/costly, and I have a suspicion that some of this may be down to the "London effect" where so many houses built on London Clay decades ago have needed remedial foundation work. I'd be very interested why, apart from a natural desire to err on the side of conservatism (something I can understand - I used to design and build light aircraft as a hobby) this is so.

Welcome I am interested, purely from an academic point of view, about foundations. We only tend to hear about them being a problem, but not the science behind them. Seems to me that they are often very over engineered. Is that true? @MikeSharp01 My very first post 'over at the other place' was about open source house design. A decade on and still not much is happening. I find it hard to believe that we still use labour and energy intensive building materials and techniques on site.

Welcome to the forum. Structural engineering seems to many to be a dark art, even down to the remarkable variations in prices that people are quoted for the same job! Looking forward to your contributions (which I see you've already made a start on).

I am fitting (my electrician) Aico detectors and the control switch, all hardwired and interconnected (no wireless in the fire safety system). The Gira ones appear to be just detectors, designed for battery operation that can be fitted to mains with an adaptor plate, but then the networking is by a separate 2-core networking cable (KNX), rather than the UK standard of 4 core fire rated cable. https://www.gira.com/en/gebaeudetechnik/produkte/sicherheit/rauchmelder.html You would be committing to that type of alame and not the UK standard, especially for replacements.

Not convinced the average plumber is any use for anything other than oil/gascombi/ rads. Finding one as good as @Nickfromwales truly is a needle in a haystack.

Welcome. I shall be following your posts with much interest.

The beams on beam-and-block are cast in the factory, and should therefore be quality controlled. The reinforcement bars they put into the beams are pre-tensioned, which means that they are pulled at each end before the concrete is cast around them. Once the concrete has set, the tensioners are released and the bars cut off flush with the ends of the beams. What this does is compresses the concrete because the bars are trying to regain their original (shorter) length. So the short answer is that you absolutely shouldn't have any cracks in the beams, and if you have, something's gone wrong in the factory. Also the driver's explanation doesn't stack up, since the concrete used is extremely strong.

You would need to ask Mr Putin for that. May get some free Vodka, mind.

Gira make better looking ones and also do a combined heat / smoke detector too but you will need to buy from Germany. They are EU approved so meet U.K. standards. http://www.eibmarkt.com/gb/products/GIRA-Multi-condition-fire-detector-233602-special-offer.html

Me too. . Better to read and ask than pay and regret. Keep reading. It's free....but priceless. .

Great idea I will divert the shower run off through our daughters bedroom - that is something of a s heap, she does not live here anymore but she us coming over to see her mum later maybe I can encourage her to tidy it up.

I looked at a few options, from the rather dubious looking "Heat Squirrel" (I had real worries about the state that the holding tank would get into, and wasn't at all convinced it really met the water regs) to some of the (then) expensive linear systems. The major issue seemed to be the requirement in the water regs for an air gap between the fresh cold water and the warm waste water, and even if as small as possible, this hits the efficiency a bit. Some look reasonable though, and I have a feeling that @jack has one of the better ones fitted. I even looked at making one, as the cost when I was first looking of buying one was so high that it would never pay for itself. The things I learned were that vertical is best, that the waste inlet to the main vertical pipe needs to induce a high speed swirl to the waste water, so it sticks to the wall of the pipe as it goes down, for best heat exchange, that the regs require some sort of twin wall with an indicator that either the waste or fresh water pipe has developed a leak (tough to design in for a home made unit), but that if you were prepared to ignore the regs I think it would be pretty easy to make unit. My plan was to use a bit of 50mm copper waste pipe, with a swirl-inducing offset inlet at the top. This would be over 2m long and arranged to fit vertically down from the shower to a suitable drain on the ground floor. For the cold water feed, I intended to wrap four parallel runs of 8mm microbore copper pipe as tight to the 50mm pipe as possible, to maximise the contact area. If not overly fussed about the water regs, I'd have soldered the four pipes to the 50mm pipe to get better heat conduction. Joining the ends of the 8mm pipes to a 15mm pipe at either end was going to be done with a small manifold. I reckon I could have built one for under £100, a price that meant it would probably pay for itself in three or four years. Whether it would have been worth the effort I don't know! The problem doesn't exist if you use a bath - just leave it to cool before emptying it and you recover most of the heat back into the house.