Jeremy Harris

I can confirm that the person applying for consent for a traveller site doesn't need to be a traveller, as a plot of land a few miles down the valley from our old house obtained consent as a traveller site and it was the non-traveller land owner (a farmer) who obtained the consent before selling the land to a group of travellers. There was a bit of a public outcry, especially from the lady that had rented the land from the farmer for years to keep her horses, but now the travellers are established I have to say that they are no trouble, and have made the site look neat and tidy.

I can give some advice from our experience that may or may not help (my experience is that neighbour disputes are rarely rational...). First, the unregistered land may well now effectively belong to your neighbour, under the law of adverse possession, if they had been using it for 12 years before 2002. In essence, if someone has had beneficial use of a bit of unregistered land, without owning or renting it, and without having been notified by the landowner that they should not use the land, then after a period of 12 years they could claim the land as their own. It's a bit messy (we encountered exactly this when trying to buy a plot in the Wye valley and finding that around 1/3rd of the buildable area was part of the garden being used by the neighbour). but the details are here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/adverse-possession-of-registered-land/practice-guide-4-adverse-possession-of-registered-land. Worth a read, as the law around adverse possession isn't as clear cut as it used to be prior to 2002, and a lot hinges on both the date and the length of time that the claimant has had beneficial use of the land without challenge. Secondly, anything overhanging your land is encroaching on your freehold, and you have the right (with some exceptions) to remove it, as long as (as @PeterW says) you offer to hand anything you cut or take down back. There are issues regarding liability if by cutting back something like a tree you cause it to be unstable, so it's always best to make sure work is done by someone who can make that judgement and make sure the neighbour is informed and given the opportunity to agree to the work. You can push the point legally and insist that anything overhanging on your side is removed, though, even if that does mean that the neighbour has to accept some trimming on their side as well to maintain the shape and stability of the tree. Finally, tall hedges etc on boundaries are notorious for causing disputes, and if at all possible it's far better to do all you can to avoid any dispute with a neighbour. The reason for this is that when you come to sell, you are required to disclose any past disputes to a potential buyer, and some may well be put off a purchase if it looks as if there may be an outstanding neighbour problem. This happened to us once, with the first house we bought in Scotland, which was a new house, with an empty new house alongside, that was purchased a few months after we moved in. The woman that bought the house next door turned out to be a "lady of the night", who "entertained" a stream of men into the early hours, making a great deal of noise in the process. We tried talking to her a couple of times, but she was usually the worse for drink, and we quickly realised it was going to be pointless making any sort of complaint. The advantage was that she slept most of the day, so when we decided that the best course of action was to sell up and move, everything seemed quiet when people came to view. We felt a bit guilty about leaving the new owner with the problem, but because we hadn't actually had a dispute with the neighbour we didn't need to declare the problem, so legally we were in the clear.

It's not a banned topic here, but there are some restrictions on what can and cannot be discussed in public, particularly with regard to anyone being able to be identified in the discussion, so it's a bit sensitive. There's no reason I can see not to discuss an issue in general terms, not naming anyone or giving away information that would make them easily identifiable. Whether anyone here has the expertise to give reliable advice I don't know, but I'd guess that many may well have had issues with boundaries, trees and hedges etc, so if you were to start a topic, perhaps in the legal issues section, you may well get some help. The only word of caution I'd give is that legal advice from any internet forum is ultimately only worth what you paid for it, so you would have to judge whether it applied to your particular circumstances, so I'd only take it as guidance, just because the devil is always in the detail with this sort of thing. If there's anything in such a thread that looks a bit iffy, then the worst that might happen is that we hide it and PM you to let you know why.

I could probably put together something similar for our 130m2 house, but I'm not sure it would help you much, as we don't use any energy at all on balance, in fact we export more than the house uses. Before I dig into the data, as a rough estimate I can say that water heating accounts for at least 40% of the total energy demand, with space heating being around 10 to 15% of the total at most, I think, and background loads being the next biggest energy demand. The main background load for us is the sewage treatment plant blower, the MVHR fans and the water treatment UV disinfection unit, all of which are on 24/7, and which use around 3 kWh/day, so about 1100 kWh per year, about 30% of our total demand. We tend to use about 4000 kWh/year, but generate a bit under 6000 kWh/year from solar panels on one face of the roof, hence the negative overall demand from the grid and negative CO2 emissions, despite the house being all electric.

Take a look at the drawings in the linked pdf files I gave above, as they show several SIPs eaves details. The eaves details drawings seem to start from page 13 in both those documents.

That detail has a massive thermal bridge at the eaves, with a risk that there will be condensation in the internal corner. The proper SIPs eaves details seem to be illustrated pretty well in those links, so I suggest going back to the architect and asking how to mitigate the thermal bridge and provide a fixing for the eaves. There are a few ways to do this, by adding some triangular fillets to the roof SIPs panel eaves edge, then fitting insulation in to overhang the wall. It won't be perfect, but will be very much better than the current arrangement.

There's a detail on page 13 here: www.thermapan.com/pdf/ThermapanInstallationManual-Roofs.pdf and from page 13 here: www.sips.org/downloads/sipafigs-colored.pdf

Fascias still need to be fixed to the plate at the end of the SIPs roof, though. I'm not sure what the standard fascia detail is for a SIPs roof but there is bound to be one.

I can give a guide, based on our experience, but that was digging out clay, not solid rock. Three are photos of our groundworks in our blog, in these sections: http://www.mayfly.eu/2013/07/part-six-there-we-were-digging-this-hole/ http://www.mayfly.eu/2013/07/part-seven-pouring-concrete/ http://www.mayfly.eu/2013/07/part-eight-the-wall/ All told, the that retaining wall cost around £35k by the time it was finished. It's about 34m along the North face and another 10m along the East face, with the finished wall, less the height of the boundary wall on top, being around 2.5m high in the corner and tapering away to about 1.4m at the end of the North face and away to nothing at the end of the East face. Muckaway cost alone came to around £10k, IIRC, to remove around 900 tonnes of spoil.

The same is true for many ailments, but very few large scale studies are done outwith the pharmaceutical industry and for obvious reasons they don't usually do any studies on anything that they can't profit from.

Worth looking around in the road, too. We noticed a spot height on the OS map that seemed to be in our lane. A quick look revealed a survey nail and washer in the lane right next to where our drive was going to exit, with a height of 81.48m AOD. We referenced everything from that nail, which made things nice and easy.

When we were looking at using them I went to a demo of them being used as foundations for overhead sign gantries on major roads. Very impressive, especially as they could drive the screw piles in, then fit the new gantry, all in the space of about an hour. We were told that they have extension tubes, if needed, for greater depth. For putting in larger ones they use a torque head on a small digger and drive the pile until a set torque is reached, as the driving torque is a good indicator for bearing capacity.

The evidence that glucosamine is slightly beneficial for joint pain from osteoarthritis seems real: http://www.cochrane.org/CD002946/MUSKEL_glucosamine-for-osteoarthritis The summary of the evidence for glucosamine in joint pain reduction was: The evidence that chondroitin is slightly beneficial for joint pain from osteoarthritis also seems real, but the evidence was of low quality, and that needs to be taken into account when judging the review: http://www.cochrane.org/CD005614/MUSKEL_chondroitin-osteoarthritis The summary of the evidence for chondroitin in joint pain reduction was:

Worth applying a reality check here as to why that advice is so often given. Flooring will get a lot hotter from the sun shining on it than it ever will from UFH in a house built with reasonably good insulation and airtightness. As an example, before we fitted the IR reflective window film I measured a floor temperature of 34 deg C, just from solar heating, but the UFH never, ever gets the floor warmer than 23 deg C, and most of the time runs at not much over 21 deg C. I think the concern about UFH and flooring stems from using it in older houses with poor insulation, where the UFH might be running at over 30 deg C, something that isn't going to be the case for any new build.

The Sofar system I linked to earlier has a UPS function, where the battery bank can run the inverter to supply power to a non-grid tied output, which is one reason why I've been looking at it closely. It's also a lot cheaper than the Tesla Powerwall, with the 4.8 kWh system costing £2,800 (inc VAT and delivery) and the 9.6 kWh version costing £4,600. The UPS capability is the same as the grid tied output, and allows a maximum load of 3 kVA, which would be OK for us for emergency use.

Screw or helical piles may well be a good option, quick to put in, no concrete needed and are load bearing as soon as they are in. We looked at them for the first plot we tried to buy (coincidentally also in Wales, just, in the Wye valley) and I was pretty impressed with what I found out about them, particularly that there were screw piles still supporting some seaside piers that were over 100 years old and still fine.

Sounds like the least hassle way forward to me. In some respects it is reminiscent of the hassle we had when we had a new boiler fitted years ago. The installers were a big local company, and they came out to "repair" the new boiler about 8 or 9 times in the first year. The thing just kept shutting down, always when it tried to fire up first thing in the morning. In the end I got sick and tired of them not being able to sort it and went to another heating engineer, who was also stumped as to what the problem was, but he suggested going back to the manufacturer, which I did, and they (reluctantly) acknowledged that there was a design issue with the position of a pressure sensor and when their modification kit was fitted the boiler became very reliable. Had I just gone to Trading Standards in the first place I'm damned sure that things would have been resolved more quickly.

@jack, I agree, the DIY approach certainly isn't for everyone, or for every plot, either, and I definitely think that a good architect can add design flair, especially to the exterior. I found that aspect far and away the hardest to get to grips with, and even harder was trying to work out why the initial designs we came up with just didn't look quite right. I'm sure a good architect would have resolved this aspect easily, and probably produced a better looking exterior than we ended up with. To qualify my earlier comments, I should add that since building this house I have met a very capable architect who I wouldn't have hesitated to use had I know of her when we were first looking around. We approached four local architectural practices, had initial short meetings with each, and gave each the same detailed brief, but were disappointed with them all. Perhaps if I'd had more patience, and cast our net a little wider, I may have found an architect we could have worked with, I just don't know.

Welcome. My experience with several architects (not architectural technicians) that we originally approached wasn't very positive; the main issue seemed to be that none of them really took on board our essential requirements, but instead tried to push us towards what they wanted to design. The really big issue was that none seemed to have a clue about low energy design, which was a serious concern for us. I'd done much like you, and drawn up sketch plans in AutoCad, overlaid on a topo survey that was provided as a DXF file, so making the task of setting the house design in the context of the plot a lot simpler. In the end, I decided to just design the house myself and submit the planning and building control drawings myself. The only two areas that involved me in learning something new were reading up on all the building regulations and trying to learn to be artistic. Learning the building regs wasn't hard, as in reality there isn't a great deal that impacts the design; primarily fire escape provision (which impacts internal room layout) and disabled access (which impacts things like where the entrance floor WC is and how the route from the car parking area to that WC runs). The hard part for me was trying to add a bit of design flair to the house, as I'm just not at all artistic. I think we went through about 6 different designs before we settled on one we both liked, and I made scale models of most of them to get a better idea as to how they might look. Overall I found that not using an architect, or architectural technician, wasn't a problem at all. Our planning application went through fairly easily, and we're in a challenging spot, being inside a conservation area, inside an area of outstanding natural beauty and opposite a grade II listed building, so we had a lot of planning policy constraints. The biggest downside to the DIY approach is really the time it takes to acquire the necessary knowledge, rather than the time it takes to actually produce the drawings. I had no experience of house design, but had been using AutoCad for decades, so I knew how to produce drawings, just not drawings of houses. If you have the ability to produce drawings, then you could have a go at doing it yourself. At least that way you end up with exactly what you want, rather than something someone thinks you want.

Mandatory deviation from the thread topic is almost a requirement here...

The RoI question is a challenging one, as we don't yet have a lot of data on the life of battery storage systems, plus it's highly dependent on so many individual factors, like the amount of excess PV generated, and how much can be utilised if stored, plus personal considerations like being willing to accept a lower RoI in return for anything from a personal desire to reduce grid usage to things like having the option to use the battery storage for emergency power if the grid goes down. The latter is a significant consideration for us, as we're very dependent on electricity, and we often get power cuts around here, especially in winter. The power cuts aren't usually more than a few hours, but inevitably occur at the least convenient time, so I've been thinking for some time about buying a standby generator, just to keep essentials running, like the water supply, MVHR and, perhaps, the sewage treatment plant, as well as some emergency lighting. I've already got battery backup for our internet connectivity, primarily because of the power cut problem, but also because reduces our background grid demand slightly - the VDSL modem, router, switch, wireless access point and file server all run on battery power overnight and then the battery pack recharges during the day, when we're usually generating from the PV system. Our case is far from typical though, as we're more reliant on electricity than most, I suspect.

I did some sums a few weeks ago, based on the Sofar system linked to above, and break-even is a saving of around £280 a year. We have loads of excess generation, so could almost certainly get pretty good utilisation from a battery storage system, but our overall electricity consumption is just a bit too low to make it viable, in terms of economics. In terms of the environmental considerations, plus the benefit the system above has of providing standby power to essential circuits if the grid goes, then it probably just about makes sense. With the rate at which battery storage system prices are falling and electricity prices are rising I doubt it'll be more than a year or so before the economics stack up just on the electricity cost saving.

The best value battery system at the moment seems to be this one, at £2,800 for 4.8 kWh: http://www.thesolarpeople.co.uk/shop/sofar-solar-4-8kwh-energy-storage/ Still not really worth doing in terms of return on investment, though, I think.

My experience is that East does slightly better than West, as the sun rises North of East for a fair part of the year, plus the air seems to be clearer in the early mornings. By late afternoon it's not uncommon for cloud or haze to have formed, reducing the output from a West-facing array. Having said that, I still think there's a lot of merit in opting for an East-West arrangement, as although the overall output may be slightly lower than a South facing array, power is delivered at times when it's more useful - maximum power in the middle of the day isn't usually that useful.

Spot on. My "problem" was that I was picked up as having high blood pressure when I was 34 years old, during an annual aeromed. I was despatched to my GP, and he agreed with the Surgeon Commander that had picked it up, so my GP referred me to a consultant at Penzance Hospital. They did a stack of tests and concluded that they couldn't find any underlying reason, so diagnosed me with essential hypertension and put me on a low sodium diet. That had no effect, so they then prescribed medication (which luckily didn't lead to me having to stop flying). Every time we moved to a new area, my new GP (and aeromed doc) would just blindly accept the original diagnosis. Around 3 or 4 years ago I bought a home sphygmo, and started keeping my own records. These showed that my BP was, if anything, a bit low (typically it was around 115/75). I kept telling my GP this, and he kept telling me that it just showed that the medication was working. My GP retired last year, and I took the opportunity to tell his interim replacement that my home measured BP was a bit on the low side, and I also told him that I'd noticed that I could tell by lunchtime if I'd forgotten to take a pill that morning, as I had more energy. He wasn't convinced, really, and his lack of interest prompted me to try and find some proper evidence. The first problem I found is that the internet is awash with crap, especially medical crap. I stumbled upon Cochrane, read all their reviews, and found the key information that a diagnosis of hypertension should not be made without a 24 hour ABPM. I went back to my GP and asked if I could be given an ABPM and was told they didn't have access to one, so I went and bought one (not cheap, but by this time I was bloody determined - I still have it, and the analysis software, if anyone wants to borrow it). I stopped taking the ARBs I'd been on for years, waited a week or so to make sure they weren't having any residual effect, then did two 24 hour ABPM sessions, one during a weekday, when I was up and about a lot and one at a weekend. I went back and saw another GP (there's a high turnover of GPs at our old practice), showed her the 4 years or so of home readings, plotted on a spreadsheet, plus the print outs from the ABPM software. She looked at the data, frowned and said that I'd almost certainly never been hypertensive and had been misdiagnosed over 30 years earlier. She said that there was absolutely no reason for me to be taking any medication, and cancelled my long standing repeat prescription. She did apologise on behalf of the doctors that had both made the original misdiagnosis, and those that had been (in her own words) too lazy to do a proper check when I'd changed practices. The bottom line is that I've spent many hundreds of pounds on prescriptions that I didn't need, have suffered mild side effects (primarily fatigue) from taking a medication that wasn't needed and worst of all I've caused the NHS to incur a heck of a cost over the years, both in unnecessary GP appointments and in the cost of treatment that wasn't required. Add in the time off work I've had for regular BP checks and medication review appointments and the cost of this one idiotic error has been quite considerable. Would I trust any doctor to make an accurate diagnosis now? The answer has to be a resounding "NO", I would not, at least until I'd done a very thorough check for myself.