Drellingore

Dunno, other than the structural engineer and the architects say so. It's not very thick (I've gotten through it with a pickaxe, for example). It's in the category of things that I'd like to be consulted on and informed about, but not responsible or accountable for deciding

Has anyone here bought/used a compact tractor in the process of their build? I've been thinking that a compact tractor with a front-loader and backhoe would be useful. Lugging materials around, moving pallets, some minor groundworks, maybe breaking up concrete... On that note, Spons reckons we'd expect to pay £5k to get someone to break up the concrete floor of our barn. Add in a few more jobs of similar size, and then it'd be more financial sense to spend low-five-figures on a tractor to do it which can later be sold on. Am I totally mad, or have other people thought about this? The bit where I know I'm mad is that I'd like an electric one, but I can't see that being financially viable!

Ha, yeah, I've read that

I'm also late to this, and I assume @thefoxesmaltings is busy enjoying their wonderful new home instead of checking BuildHub! TBH while we were waiting agonising months for planning to make a decision, watching Grand Designs was too painful. How were the Grand Designs team to work with? We're considering applying, and our architect suggested that he'd heard the film crew can be a pain in the backside, for example asking for things to be delayed until they can get there to film them. Is there any truth to this? Also, did you manage to negotiate any discounts on the basis of potential TV exposure for suppliers? Huge congratulations on not only achieving a great result, but doing so with no disasters, on-time and under-budget. Very impressive stuff, and inspiring. We're doing a conversion of a heritage asset so I think we'll need to expect more unpleasant surprises, but it's nice to see that it's not always a case of ballooning budgets and calamities.

Ha, looks like just asking it bog-standard questions might work better in this instance than using Deep Research! I wonder if we should start some sort of UK open source document template repository for self-builders.

Has anyone written or seen a biodiversity protection method statement? This is not to be confused with the biodiversity enhancement plan: the protection statement is how you'll not make things worse while building, and the enhancement is how you'll leave things better once you're done. We've got the below planning condition, and annoyingly it requires a bat survey before we can do anything on site. I'm guessing that these conditions have started popping up in response to the Environment Act 2021, but that the substance of them may well have existing in older documents with a different name? I would've thought protected species would need some bureaucratic backside-covering before the most recent changes? Our ecologists are great and we are very happy with them, but if this document is going to be a load of generic copypasta then I'm tempted to save myself a few hundred quid. ChatGPT's Deep Research has found a few rural developments in my area that were asked to provide similar documents, but as the documents are required post-approval for the discharge of conditions they don't seem to be publicly available anywhere, unlike documents that make up the main planning application. Here's the condition that we need to satisfy:

Just posting to say we have a very similar condition for our project in Kent, so looks like most LPAs will be asking for this sort of stuff. Thanks for posting your example @DownSouth!

We're handling the tendering ourselves, so it could be that knowing this the architects are like "damn, we're going to lose our markup on the tendering, so we need to claw that back." And, in their defence, they were very generous with their time in stage three, giving us more time than they billed for.

The thread is so long and vibrant that I'm not sure if you're referring to my original post mentioning 441sqm Assuming you are, the phased approach might be a good one. Our current house is one of a set of identical modern townhouses in a row, and lots of them have been converted to HMOs. If we can do the same, then that basically increases our monthly disposable income by £3,000. So if we just do the main, timber-framed barn, move out of the current place, convert that into an HMO, increase our income massively, and then convert the second building, it should be much easier financially. I'm sure we'll lose a bit of economy-of-scale, but we don't need the second building to be done right away. Hell, it'll even be useful for storing building materials!

The ecologists we've got are really sound - they care about what they do, and also sympathise with the tribulations of self-building. The issue we have is that in 2018 a bat survey was done that found two (TWO!) droppings on a boat that was stored in the barns by the previous owner. The ruddy bats were roosting in the boat, not the barn proper, and have never been seen since. However the LPA are insisting on a third consecutive survey to find negative results, implying that our ecologists are lying.

Nah, sadly not. We've got the usual preventing above-ground work (external material approval, detailed drawings of conservation-related bits) but also conditions preventing anything happening before a fourth (!) bat survey, which can't take place until May.

I should probably start a blog for this sort of thing, but I just wanted to let y'all know that we finally got planning permission - 4.5 years after buying the site, after one application with a committee hearing, and the latest application that took nine months to determine. Thanks to everyone on here for their help, advice, and nudges on expectation alignment!

Just in case a future thread-trawler finds this, Ecology will lend on oak frames, and bizarrely they don't require a warranty for the lending!

I'm wondering how useful QS cost plans are going to be. The examples we've seen don't seem particularly scientific or detailed... I wonder how much they actually look at the plans, and how much they just go "it's a barn, in this area, so prolly £XXXXsqm, divided this way according to the number of floors". Either way, we've solicited some quotes. Hmm, not sure why that might be? Is there a setting somewhere, or is this a moderation thing? I may have muted you years ago when we had a few not-very-fruitful exchanges, but I undid that a long time ago. Yeah, I mean we have £750k after buying the plot, so that's how we've worked it out. There's not a huge amount of flexibility there as the plot and the build funds are the largest assets that we own, and I've been taking a career break (that's lasted longer than I'd like, to be honest!) after selling my company. I've just got to hope that Mr. Trump stops ruffling the markets and instead gets back to trying to fluff the crypto crowd so that my Bitcoin skyrockets! That's an interesting point. We've got an SE on board who has worked very closely with the oak framer who'll be taking point. We met one of their (much richer!) clients yesterday as it happens to get a bit of a reference and see their work in progress. The SE was applauded by the client for being very creative and a great problem-solver. I never really thought about SE's as a means to push back on cost expectations... I suppose there could be a lot of mileage in figuring out what the SE thinks is required, as maybe the architects are massively over-speccing? No, as I don't think there's much point yet. They think one thing, based on a bunch of assumptions. I need to challenge those assumptions with data; without those data we can't really have a productive discussion. In between bouts of moaning on BuildHub, we're trying to pin down costs that specific suppliers can provide (we've given the energy stuff and plans to an M&E consultant for a quote, and the missus is putting together the glazing schedule). Once we've got a few things like pinned down, we can then think about seeking fee estimates from various folks to do stage four stuff, and consider putting the original architects back in the mix pending a conversation about trust and why we ended up in this situation. BTW, just want to reiterate that I realise ultimate responsibility for being realistic falls on us.

Yeah, this is how I'd've loved to have done it, but maybe I didn't push hard enough in getting all the people together at once. It's certainly what we do in my IT professional life - get everyone face-to-face for fast feedback. Ah well!

The planning officer has said she intends to grant it, and we've just signed the unilateral undertaking to assert that we're self-builders. She says this is the last thing before determination, other than her getting sign-off on the report from her manager. We're thinking to get the determination first (this application was submitted last May) and then raise amendments if necessary, so we've got the original planning permission locked in place if we need to sell. We're already planning to re-apply to enlarge the redline, put the BNG on-site, and therefore not need the self-builder exemption and the S106 and local charge that follow from that. Other headaches today include "will anyone lend on an oak-frame building; will we be able to get a warranty on an oak-frame building; is it remotely possible to meet EnerPHit standards with an oak-frame building without spending millions." I knew this self-building malarkey would involve lots of curveballs and challenges, but I was hoping by now to have a better idea of whether what we're doing is remotely feasible 😅

How has the worked out with planning, out of interest - are you going to have to re-apply with updated plans for the garage?

Ta all. Having started to dig into things a bit, we have a lot of glazing, so we might need to scale that back.

Aye! Three or four identical houses on our road have done it, so it's definitely within the realms of the possible. Planning might be harder now, though.

@ToughButterCup ha, you remind me so much of my old business partner (who I regard highly). He's basically an 'organisational therapist' now I do generally agree with the suggested approach, and it's what I'd do at work.

Thanks to all for your thoughts, it's appreciated. This week hasn't been massively fun. Sadly not, as it's a non-designated heritage asset outside of settlement boundaries. Indeed, "all is as thinking makes it so," and all that. Emotions can be a useful source of information though, and one possible outcome is that if their conduct is unreasonable then I should be making complaints. Thanks! It's nice to have some actionable advice, and a bit of hope to go with it. I'm not sure. I think informally yes, contractually no. They originally estimated that of their fees, 30% would be stages 0-3, 30% stage 4, and 40% stages 5-6. They know that we're unlikely to lean on them much in stage 5 onwards as we're quite far away, so maybe they've bumped up stage four accordingly? Yes, this is certainly an idea. The concrete building would be quickest, and we have the opportunity to convert our suburban townhouse into an HMO which could bring in about £3-4k a month. One of the possible snags here would be as-yet-unwritten planning conditions, that the teenage kids would need to share a room, and that the M&E was leaning towards a central design with the plant room in the other building. Most of those aren't show-stoppers though. Yeah, I think some sort of post-mortem if we bin them off would be a good idea. The email exchange has been informative and civil thus far. I'm glad that I'm not the only person to think so. Both the missus and I work in professional services and consultancy. If we were engaging a customer on time-and-materials basis who had a fixed budget, and we didn't keep them informed of the burndown on their budget, we would expect that client to be pissed off. I would've hoped for some sort of point where they'd raise a flag and say "this scope is starting to exceed your budget, have you realised that" or similar.

Thanks, that's reassuing to know! We're all square for the fees so far. Now we've got the creative bit done, I'm tempted to go back to some of the solo architects we spoke to when we were originally getting quotes who might be better for the more functional and technical stuff. Again, thanks. I know it's all a bit 'how long is a piece of string' but even rough ideas are useful data at this stage, so it's appreciated.

BTW we are in the process now of getting quotes for various bits-and-pieces ourselves, so we can chip away at things like roof, glazing, M&E, and so on. I don't think we can get a quantity surveyor involved until stage four is complete, or at least all the things are specified. However now the architects have doubled their stage four fee quote, we're disinclined to spend five figures so that then we can find out if we can afford the rest of it or not.

Our architects have upped their stage four fee quote from the original estimate and have also just dropped the bombshell that they think the build cost will be double the budget we told them we had when we first appointed them. They're suggesting £3,500sqm. While the wife is an interior architect and designer, we're not looking for ostentation, rather finishes with integrity and a lot of renewable energy tech. Our plans are available on the LPA's website for the curious. It's a dual barn conversion (one 18th century, one 1960's concrete monstrosity) with a link and a newbuild garage. The GIFA (ground and first floors) is 441 sqm for the barns, and another 74sqm for the garage. We're in the south-east, and will prolly do the project management and procurement ourselves. We have £750k working capital available but will need a mortgage to pay off ~£350k of that when we're done (it's complicated). The plot was about £400k depending on whether you include the 3 acre field next door. The architect is now estimating a build cost of £1.2-1.5m, which seems utterly bonkers to us. I can't imagine the thing will be worth £1.9m when it's done, which presumably creates all sorts of mortgage problems. Question 1: do you think we're f***ed, or is the £3,500sqm figure nuts? Question 2: would you be livid if your architect designed something double your budget without highlighting the rising cost? On the subject of the architect's fees... They did give us much more of their time for stages 0-3 than they were contractually committed to. I think they're now pricing in some of that into the next stage, and/or pricing in the risk of us asking as many questions again in stage four. Being charitable I can understand those explanations from a business perspective and can imagine good-intentioned motivations for them, but I would have much preferred an approach of transparency. Being skeptical it feels a lot like a bait-and-switch where they ramp up the fees once we're 'on the hook'. Question 3: do you think the doubling of stage 4 fees is reasonable or are they taking the piss? Question 4: anyone ever switched architect between planning and technical design? I'm slightly iffy about posting this as their name is on the docs in the public record, but these are the facts of the matter.

Hey @LnP - was that a local provider or a national one? We've been quoted £700-2,000+VAT for our site which is a couple of old barns on about an acre, with several old surface water sewers. I dunno whether the prices I've had are reasonable given the scope of our work, or whether I'm at risk of being ripped off! I actually logged on to BuildHub to ask if anyone else had done their own after buying the kit...