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I am short of time today as am on a course, so no time for a Planning-Speculation session , but It seems unnecessary to me to give up the PP. I think I would get documentation that development has started in accordance with the PP ie Certificate of Lawful Development,. That gives you or your children the right to continue to build the house in the future. Then build your garage as you are suggesting a bit later. It is a fairly normal nothing to put in foundations for the future, then bury them, to lock in a PP. Councils may not be delighted but I do not think there is much that they can currently do about it. I do not see this as much different. One potential fly in the ointment is if they try to enforce on the new interim garage, but that is probably unlikely as it would not be expedient and could turn into a paperwork mud-wrestle at much cost in Planner-time. I do not know what the outcome would be should they try, but it could potentially be one for a conversation with either Planning Aid or informally with a Planning Officer. The extant and valid PP would be a significant value and selling point. You would need the docs to prove it, though. Beware the Council purging it’s files in x years’ time, and saying Dunno Guv. I think an FOI for your planning file and decision notice might be a good way of keeping proof in the system as well as in your files, perhaps even via the WhatDoTheyKnow service which will archive it online. I think that if you choose to walk away from the PP as if it never happened, you mayl need planning and or B/Regs approval for a garage development as if you were applying in the situations as it is now, unless it is possible under Permitted Development? The less expensive way to take that route may be via an application to vary your current PP or an Amendment to it, though a full new PP should be possible. Some neighbour-nurdling might be useful just to keep then happy and / or slightly informed of not particularly happy. Ferdinand

I project managed our build and it is very time consuming. I wouldn't consider it unless you can be on site every day. You need to be confident your PM is going to do the job to the standard you want.

Hi Steel has arrived, for back of house with crane coming tomorrow to lift it in

It was the second pint that did it.... then the 3rd, 4th and 5th didn’t help either..!

Yeah back seat driving in the taxi on the way home as we had to abandon the van due to the named driver’s (aka @PeterW) alcohol consumption!!

What ..??!! I was driving ..!!!

It’s mealey Salt in the brick our current is a simalar brick to yours We would simply jet wash it off It stoped coming after about ten years arrest are building near our plot Using a light coloured brick and all the houses are caked in the stuff Tgey cleaned them all off about a month ago but they are starting to show white patches again

To be clear, as @PeterW pointed out, the Building regs have changed (since the edition I was referencing!) and you no longer have to complete the spreadsheet, just confirm that none of the fittings exceed the values in table 2.1. You don't even need to know what is in table 2.1, just confirm.

Nah, the heatwave will come when you want to do the garden and the clay soil has dried to natural concrete; not thinking about my own build at all!

Good luck tomorrow @lizzie

Just ordered another 20 rolls and the discount code still works. 15%aocx

Ask Wallace ! Sorry , couldn’t resist ... ?

Always seems prevelant in spring. Usually goes in newbuilds after 2 or 3 years. Worse if fairy has been used as opposed to plasticiser. Also if rainwater has got in as has been said. Chill it's not permanent!

You can clean it with brick acid but it's nasty stuff. Best bet is let it sit for maybe 18months and let it fully dry out and then see how it looks. Going by the way the staining is I would say the bricks got wet when they where stacked up probably due to not being covered.

It will go after a while.

Works for me !

Why not just build the newly consented garage, thus locking in the consent?

I have a passive spec house with a tiled ground floor slab. I would say definately have ufh having lived in the house through the winter. It is not that you couldn't heat the house with another heat source, but that it is not comfortable walking round the house without shoes on with a cold unheated slab. I found that with the slab at 20 degrees or cooler the floor felt quite cold to the touch, whereas if it is only a couple of degrees warmer it is fine to walk on bare foot. I found it only took having a heat input once or twice a week over the winter for a few hours to keep the slab topped up to a comfortable level. Our slab is slightly thicker than most at 200mm and with ufh about 100mm down. This was due to the amount of steel but seems to even out temperature fluctuations really well. If you heat the air rather than slab you may also find it dries it out and may well be unpleasant to live with. With the cold dry snap of the beast from the east our relative humidity in the house dropped to 35% and normally runs at about 45%. We put electric ufh in bathrooms and used it all winter for an hour a day, the tiles felt cold to the touch without it. Also have wet heated towel rads in bathrooms which I ran for an hour a day over winter to boost the upstairs temp. We have no other heating upstairs but this worked really well.

I've got to give the builder his due. He has thrown everything at it this week with one finishing the back gable and boundary wall and 3 working on the roof. Tensions have educed since we have agreed what will be done and how much I will pay. I think they've worked harder this week than any week since the beginning.

I’d bet that the log boiler won’t get used much after a few months of wood cutting and ash cleaning.

Gotcha! One of these: I won't be using any hopefully. The only pipework joints in that wall will be the 4 compression into the valve and one soldered joint at the backplate for the hose. Everything else will be bent copper.

Has it all been fitted yet ? It's pretty much what I suggested to @readiescards when he was considering going off-grid. I suggested using the residual heat from a diesel genny as additional input instead of ST. Also suggested an LGB but where do you stop ? Complexity, maintenance, constant babysitting and capital cost shot it out of the water.

Did the Phase I report conclude that a Phase II ivestigation was required? If not, job done, no need for Phase II, other than tick a council officials box! PS page 8 gives details of what is required for a watching breif https://www.hackney.gov.uk/media/3231/CLS2-guidance-document/pdf/CLS2_Guidance_Notes

Agreed, and purely for research / information. I would appreciate it as one I'm looking at wants to heat via MVHR and a duct pre-heater. I will pay you suitably for the market research of course. Out of curiosity how much is one pint up your neck of the woods ?

No the ducting is 125mm diameter and is not a manifold system. I designed the ducting system myself and checked with Genvex that it was suitable. The Genvex Combi increases the fan speed automatically if it needs to supply warm air.

Hi and welcome. Id be interested to hear, possibly from @PeterStarck, what the floor temp ( temp of actual floor covering that you walk on with bare feet ) sits at compared to the ambient temp as detected / denoted by the room thermostat . I cant help thinking that if members such as @jack report wishing they'd installed UFH in the upstairs bathrooms because the floors weren't exactly comfortable underfoot, then the ground floor of even a Ph build would be 'worse' than that. Can we filter out those with the "I'll wear slippers" PoV and get some real life feedback from any members WITHOUT ground floor heating please?

Did you have to fit larger bore ductwork or run the fan at a higher rate? Assume that is decided upon by the manufacturer / by design so possibly moot.

We had our Genvex and towel rails running through December, January and February for testing even though we weren't living in the house. The air temperature was set to 19C and the water temperature was set to 40C and the electricity bill was £43.20 for the three months.

+1 You certainly need some form of heating in bathrooms in PH. We have electric towel rails in our bathrooms which keep those rooms warmer than the living areas and the towels nice and warm. The MVHR extract from those rooms recovering that heat.

A normal end elbow has two female sockets to fit regular pipe in egeneral in this case 15mm copper. A street elbow has one end male and one end female, so the male end can go into the compression fitting and the female end left for soldering. It saves having to cut a pi$$y 10-15mm bit of copper pipe to put into the compression joint and saves one solder

There was a story in the 1960 about the UK trade delegation having a tour of a Russian factory. The Russians were very proud to show how efficient and hard working their staff were. Russian "They start 6AM, work until 12 Noon, 15 minutes break for sandwiches, Russian sandwiches, from the machine. Then start work again on the tractor line until 6PM. The second shift takes over, works until 12 Midnight, 15 minutes break for soup, Russian soup, from the machine, then work until 6AM. They do this 7 days week." Brummie trade delegate "You would not get our lads working like that, they are all communists."

Hi, I could indeed do that but from what I’m learning engaging a builder to manage the whole project would be really expensive. I will be using an architect for full pp and to manage the building regs. My my understanding is that £1200/m2 is on the low side. I’m being told to expect £1500/m2.

Three? Three! Colour me sceptical, as I seem to recall pictures of about twenty-three.

Shamefully I was still using the 2010 edition!! Have now downloaded the fresh one.

Which is here... Approved Doc G

Excellent. I was still going by the old version.

As an alternative simply confirm all fittings comply with Table 2.1 in AD G!

https://www.nwleics.gov.uk/files/documents/water_efficiency_calculator_bredclg/Water Calculator.xls If you scroll to the Basic Calc tab at the bottom and just fill in the first column should be fine. If you get stuck I will post a completed one.

The problem you may find, imho, is your power floated floor , will not be perfectly level the guys doing it will be working to an acceptable tolerance this tolerance may be 5mm over a set length so in reality you perfectly flat floor may slope the wrong way?? without wanting to sound like a total t****r this is new technology to the average Neanderthal concrete gang over here and they are not very good at it. The only real way to get the falls you want is to set down the concrete floor. So in effect the floor level is lower by a certain amount and then this is then built up using a screed product to obtain the absolute spot on fall you need. If you you look at @Onoff thread on his bathroom he has just done the exact same job, providing a sloped area that falls straight to his drain. I spent many months in oz floor screeding, we used to set the concrete slab down by 35/50 mm and then screed up to that, you guys will need to make a former out of timber, although I have seen lads on here using a slab of insulation. I have been in a in a few places to fix cock ups, and when the shower was on the water ran out the bathroom door? water is a law unto itself it will get everywhere and anywhere. What are you thinking instead of tiles, one of the stick down vinyls, I have never seen one done that didn’t look like an old people’s home, joins in corners look rough and the amount of colours and styles is limited. Re think tiles. With regards layout they must need to know your toilet position so they can get these in place before the beam and block goes in, so that really should narrow down your shower location, when you know that you then need to decide if you want a central drain with all your TILES ?sloping to the centre or the drain in the wall like @Onoff or a linear drain running from side to side of the shower area. Easy innit.

Ok, if not tiles then what ? Time for a reality slap, cos pouring hundreds of litres of water, not even clean water, onta a flat concrete floor with no hygienic ( maintainable ) covering is a non-starter. Think again my good man . Impey do a great product for you here, and leaves very little to go wrong. Check this out :). With that you can connect and test the waste before the pour and then just leave that corner shy or get a mix that's workable and trowel it to the former as the lot goes down.

@laurenco Take note of this if you need to remove the condition for the Phase 2 without jeopardising the whole shebang.

I had a similar issue. Don't back down until you get an answer as to why this is necessary . There will probably be only one reason which hopefully will be easier to argue/deal with. Good luck

You know, one of the biggest unexpected costs (and angering) for us was this joy the office warriors have of spending other people's money. It's the easiest thing in the world to pontificate from an office and say "I want you to get this, and this, and this" when it's someone else's money. The fact that you can get tests done for £16..... or £3k shows what a racket the whole thing is really.

I know that for our archaeological "watching brief " it was plainly a ready made boilerplate document with our site details cut and pasted in by the archaeoligist. But the various firms all quoted about the same amount for that part of the "work" & since they would be doing the watching brief there was no way around it as we had to have a qualified archaeologist on site (and the national park wanted to know his qualifications and had to agree he was acceptable before we could proceed!) so although the brief could pretty much have been copied from any other site it was useless without the archaeologist himself and of course they wouldn't work with someone else's. I can't see the council accepting *your* say so that nothing untoward was found to be honest. Is there reason to suspect contamination in particular?

Few points to consider. For a mortgage, you need at the very least the following: - bathroom - kitchen - building control cert if it’s new - has to be insured or can be insured - functional drains You may find the insurance part will be the sticky point unless you lie about the state of the property. Council tax should be the least of your worries. If it were me, I would consider the following: 1. Small Loan to get to mortgage state (kitchen, bathrooms, drains and BC cert) 2. Loan secured against the land by specialists lenders (expensive rates) with no penalty fee so you can refi into a normal mortgage 3. Self build loan as I assume your LTV will be very low 4. Bridge loan if you are 100% sure you will be in a state to refi in 4-6months Above in order of what I assume will be cheapest to more expensive. All comes down to your rental property, if it’s has lender consent-to-let and a sitting tenant with cash covering mortgage, then you have options. Without that, your affordability will be judged on two properties.

My OH is a lawyer, a property and planning lawyer of more than 40 years experience. He insisted on us getting a warranty even though we were not getting a mortgage. He looked very carefully at CML list of approved providers and who was accepted by most lenders. We chose Premier Guarantee in the end. We also got a quote from LABC both happy with MBC frame and slab. I am also happy that their inspections give a us a double check as we deliberately opted not to have them do building control inspections too. I like the two separate inspections one may see something another might miss. It is true that you don’t actually ‘need’ a warranty if you are not borrowing to build but anything that makes a future sale easier has to be a good thing in my opinion. OH does know first hand of cases where mortgage lenders have been sticky about the loan because of no warranty in place. I don’t want any future purchaser of mine getting cold feet because there is no warranty in place. Yes there are routes around but its a rubber stamp job for lenders if a warranty from an approved supplier is in place. I think a warranty is not so much for us as the builder but something to make any future sale as smooth as possible. A purchasers finance is not in the sellers control. Who or how they raise funds is for them and as a seller I would always want to facilitate the easiest possible route to a successful sale. We none of us know if we may need or want to sell in the coming decade so I view our warranty as an essential to have in my file. I have spent most of my life in the property market one way or another and anything that makes is easier to complete a transaction is a big plus in my book.

Can we stop perpetuating the myth that you NEED a warranty. I've got a CML list on my computer of all the different lenders requirements. I would estimate 80% accept Professional Consultants Cert, some wanting this also to be supervised by RIBA architect. The remaining want warranties but mostly LABC or NHBC. The lenders which will accept warranties by companies other than these are surprisingly few and therefore makes you question the value of getting a warranty over the usually cheaper PCC if not using the 'big two'!

There are different views about Planning Consultants, and whether they should be used. This is a short example of a Planning Consultant offering superb advice, that most of us self-builders would perhaps not think about. The Problem I have just received a Planning Permission, after 3 months of engagement with the Council. It is a commercial Change of Use but the lesson applies to self-builder permssions. We received our permission, but on the last morning the Planning Department applied an unacceptable Planning Condition which threatened the whole project. The Planning Condition clearly violates several of the basic tests. This condition had not been mentioned in the previous months of consultation, and I did not see it until it appeared on the Decision Notice. At this point the Planning Application has been "determined" (ie decided and frozen), so the Condition cannot be modified without a further Planning Application or an Appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. The problem is that a Full Appeal gives the Inspector the opportunity to reopen the basic Planning Application, and modify it - which I do not want. The Solution The recommendation from our Planning Consultant was: 1 - To apply for a Variation of the unacceptable condition, which might be accepted, then... 2 - To Appeal the Refusal of the application for the Variation if we need. The advantage is that we then if needed we can get a Determination by the Planning Inspectorate on the narrow point, while keeping all the other acceptable aspects of our Planning Permission out of their scope. The Learning Point As self-builders, we think about discharging Planning Conditions at the end of the build process. The same process can be used to vary them before we start building. It takes extra time and a fee, which is smaller than a Full Planning Application fee for a new dwelling, but does not run the risk of reopening the entire Permission to change. More information The appropriate form on the Planning Portal. Explanation of Planning Condition Variations on the Government Website.

Thanks for the detailed comment, Jeremy.

This is a useful point, and one that came close to causing me pain and grief. I was very lucky, in that our planning officer wrote the Decision Notice (it didn't go to committee in the end) a few days before Christmas, but the senior planning officer who had to sign it off was on holiday and wouldn't be back for two weeks. This would have meant that their target for dealing with the application would have been missed, so the planning officer emailed me an unofficial copy of the Decision Notice, assuring me that he'd spoken with his boss before he went on leave and that there would be no problem with it just being signed and released. The unofficial copy of the Decision Notice had clearly been edited from one of the many previous Decision Notices for this site, and still contained a condition removing PD rights. I couldn't see how the reasons stated for this still applied, as they were based on the developed footprint area of the site, something we had significantly reduced by reducing the house footprint by around 20% (and making it 1 1/2 storey) and getting rid of a very large secure motorhome parking area. I rang the planning officer, explained that I didn't think it was fair to leave the removal of PD rights condition in and he agreed and removed it. Had we not had the good fortune of the Christmas holiday being in the way, plus the senior planning officer being away on holiday, we would never have seen this condition until the Decision Notice had been signed and issued. By then we would have had to do as you did, and apply retrospectively to have the condition removed. It's only pure luck, and the thoughtfulness of the planning officer, who felt we would like to know the outcome of our application before Christmas, that gave us warning of this condition. Most would be completely unaware of such a think, as you were with yours. Perhaps there should be a change to the process, so that the draft Decision Notice is released to the applicant before it is signed off. It seems clear that they don't write these things from scratch, but just cut and paste them together (at least our local authority seem to). As a consequence, it seems fairly common to have conditions that are either no really valid, or that are contradictory. One I didn't spot until after we'd built the house and were putting in the drive was that the conditions from the highways department on the drive gradient was incompatible with the condition from the Environment Agency on the finished drive level. The planners just blithely cut and pasted the text from these consultees into the Decision Notice without looking at the site plan at all...........................