kandgmitchell

You can't enlarge a dwellinghouse in a conservation area by altering or adding to it's roof by using permitted development. You'll need planning permission whatever face it's on. Not to say it wouldn't be approved if sympathetically done.

Well no the caravan wasn't insulated enough but you get what you get - 25mm polystyrene between a metal skin and vinyl coated hardboard. For a 12 month stay it's not worth overcladding the outside (ruining any resale) and it's small enough inside already. So yes you have to suck up the extra cost of using electric heaters. As for a 4x4m shed - luxury! SWHMBO has put up with a 6' x 4' with washing machine and tumble dryer and a small freezer balanced across them. This is a building plot not a sports field. What with a sloping site needing to take a 100m2 footprint house plus scaffold space, a 36' x 12' static, two 20' containers with our stuff in them not to mention two cars which can't be left on the single width track outside; add materials and contractors vans.... As for mud - don't have any! Wish! We did have stone laid but hey as soon as a machine gets digging during wet weather I defy anyone to say their site stayed clean. Just taking the machine from excavation to low loader spreads mud across the access let alone moving around the site. All that lovely stone laid under the sun disappears under a coating of glutinous brown clay that sticks to everything. It's then you find out why you kept all those offcuts of carpet in the loft of the previous house - told you they'd be useful! Throwaway door mats - the latest thing. I wouldn't say these are negative views, just saying as it is. If you can't manage a bit of discomfort (or even the occasional "why the f... did we start this" screaming match) then self building is probably not your thing. Go buy a nice house already done for you. With a clean driveway.

From the Planing Inspectorates own statistics. From 2019 there have never been more than 30% successful appeals overall and for the written representations approach (for most domestic stuff) success rate hovers between 25% and 28%. You'd be better off with a public enquiry where success rate was 66% in Jan-March 2023 but that may be a bit much for a shed!

The issue seems to be that by using goats to control the weeds the land may somehow lose it's brownfield status and become classed as agricultural (or any of the other uses excluded from the brownfield definition). I am assuming that the land is on the Council's brownfield register and they are meant to update it every year (but probably in the same way as they are meant to maintain the roads). I can't see that using a small number of goats/pigs as environmentally sound land maintenance is going to make the Council think this is now a viable agricultural unit or a playing field, or domestic garden etc etc and should be removed from the register.

With the new house being in the open countryside it may be the planners want to keep "domestic clutter" such as sheds etc close to the house so as to reduce the impact on openness. In AONB, National Parks etc there is a general rule that PD outbuildings cannot be more than 20m from the house if the total floor area exceeds 10m2 for a similar reason. The condition on your approval removing PD rights would have a reason attached to it - that may give you a lead on the planners thoughts. It's a difficult one. Do you move the shed position and get on with things or take the refusal and appeal with all the delay that entails and no guarantee of success - Inspectors do agree with Councils quite a lot you know (roughly 70% of the time). I'd go back to the planners and get a clearer understanding of where they are coming from and look to get a compromise - additional planting to shield the shed, a change in colour, offer to let them condition that in any approval. If they are not willing to play ball, it'll come down to how soon you want that shed I'm afraid.

Cost was an issue for us as well. The static was £7500 inc delivery with a deal to buy it back at £3750 within 12 months . We may just make that so "rent" would be £300 odd a month. The furniture is in a 20ft container on site avoiding the £90/week the removal company wanted to store it. I accept there are on costs to a self build that cannot be avoided but I'd rather keep as much money back to fund the odd extravagance my dear wife insists will set the finished job off.....

Two of us and we've been in a static on site for 9 months now. I won't say it's been easy but we got into a routine with some electric heaters on timers and others on remote switches so we could warm up the bedroom without getting out of bed. Only one day of frozen water but that was really my fault as our excavations had exposed our temporary water supply and I hadn't dealt with it. The advantages - on site all the time so it became more like home. It allowed us to do some landscaping/hedging/tree planting and lots of thinking about how we should lay out the exterior whilst sitting in the sun. We could control deliveries and sub-contractors easier as we were there - no commute. We have two cats so we could get then used to the site and settle them in. Cheaper than renting in some town centre with no parking and we'll sell on the static when we're done. Disadvantages - the mud. Make sure you have plenty of hardstanding laid because walking from car to caravan and back was a nightmare during this really wet winter! Also my wife moans about having the washing machine in a shed behind the caravan. Why any woman should complain about having their own laundry room I don't know. Finally, being on site gets you embedded into the community. We now know loads of faces because people stop and ask you how you are getting on. You find out all the gossip and some useful contacts, we had two offers of a house sit in the village over Christmas whilst the owners were away. I'd be on site. Would I do it again ? No but with the end in sight now I'm glad we did.

So what is the lawful current use of the surrounding land?

Those proposed escape windows will have to be guarded against falling out as they have a cill height of less than 800mm. Very pertinant given that poor child that fell out of a 15th floor flat through an unsecure window. I can't see any panic hardware being suitable in that situation.

Reading the original post again. The simplified method of dealing with glazing in an extension is 25% of the floor area of the extension added to the area of the original openings which are now enclosed should be equal or greater than the total new glazed openings. So, you have a 28m2 extension so at 25% that is 7m2 which is nearly equal to your 7.5m2 of doors. If your original openings equal at least 6.0m2 (3 x 2m2 roof lights) then you're ok. If not then as mentioned by Redbeard you can do an area weighted calculation where you offset the extra glazing with higher levels of insulation to compensate. If after all that, you can't show it works then I'm afraid it's the SAP calculation if BC insist on it.

Don't just get a house sales SAP calc done. It's a specific one that will compare the house with your extension against the house with a "notional" extension of the same size. The proposed should obviously be better than the standard notional one to comply. Actually it can be harder to prove compliance for a modern house than for an older one simply because the contrast in benefit overall, between a highly insulated extension on an old house, is more than one on a house that is already highly insulated. Just explain to a SAP assessor that you need to prove the extension complies even though you have more than 25% floor area in glazing - they'll know what you're after.

It's not a particularly specialised slab, it's just a little awkward (and has to be "right" dimensionally and level). They want a min. 150mm thick slab to lay their dpm over and then stand the frame on and fix down to. They then dress another dpm skirt off the bottom of the frame onto the vertical face of the slab. In a local DW build they used traditional foundations, built up to level with blockwork and cast their slab across the whole lot. That meant they needed formwork around the perimeter to contain the slab (normally the slab would be within the blockwork on a traditional build). Add to that their internal floor insulation used to comply with BRegs by itself but the last changes meant that some additional underslab insulation is needed as well. We therefore used an insulated raft design. The formwork and under slab insulation is then covered all in one. The only frustration was that they wanted the upstand insulation removed so that their dpm skirt could be fixed to the vertical concrete. I removed that, stored it and will fix it back after completion. If you go that route then make sure the upstand is removable. We used Greenraft who use a plastic "fin" on a strip to join the horizontal and vertical, so removal was easy. I've covered the foundation cost elswehere but it was about £20K (100m2) inc some drainage and a bit of cutting into a slope . One quote for the DW suggestion was £65K. I get the impression that DW are aware of the foundation issue and the rise of insulated rafts following the reg changes, but being based in Poland and feeding the German market it's not had the highest priority. That lack of awareness is illustrated by them not offering a half glazed door option. This is due apparently to the Germans not normally having "back doors". After a concerted push by the UK sales people, they have now added such a door to the options for the UK market.....

Unless there's reasonable fall into that drain then the water is just going to pond, will you be able to dress the EPDM into the drain enough to stop water seeping back under the new sheeting? You might find balck EDPM gets very hot in the sun for bare feet!

No requirement for a trap if just to a soakaway.

So that staircase has two "flights", the upper one and the lower one separated by the quarter landing. Treads in a flight should have the same rising and going. This reflects that you build up a rythmn when using a stair and an odd tread will cause you to trip. So, you could remove a tread from the lower flight but then you would have two risers and not three with each riser being just too high. You could swap the landing and lower flight for winders. I was interested in your idea of adding 150mm PIR over the existing floor, covered by presumably timber sheet material. Surely that will make all your doors 170mm shorter, put the bottom of the radiators on the floor, alter that under stair wc and create a step at the front door etc etc? All to make the current stair look like the desired picture. Sounds like a lot of work to me!

You will need to clear all the pre-commencement conditions before a start could be defined as commencing the works.

The driveway thing is from Part M, the BCO is flagging a requirement to have an approach route (between the curtilage and dwelling access) with a "suitable ground surface". Some BCO's will not accept gravel as being suitable because you can't easily use a wheelchair on it ( I must admit to overfilling a driveway with gravel which trapped my car the first time I used it - much like one of these emergency bays on steep hills).

Basically the B Regs have now got a section purloined from the CDM Regs. In effect the designer of the work has to be competant for that complexity of work and so does the contractor. This indeed does stem from Grenfell and is an attempt to put a name to who designed the building/extension and who built it, making sure they knew what they were doing. However, Regulation 11G says: 11G.—(1) A principal designer must have— (a)where the person is an individual, the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours necessary, (b)where the person is not an individual, the organisational capability, to fulfil the duties of a principal designer under these Regulations in relation to the design work included in the project. I'd say the OP with his experience has the skills etc to design a dwelling house. The structural elements will no doubt be designed by an SE who again will have the level of skill appropriate to to the complexity of design. It doesn't demand an architect with insurance, just someone with the knowledge. The same goes for the contractor in Reg 11H: 11H.—(1) A principal contractor must have— (a)where the person is an individual, the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours necessary, (b)where the person is not an individual, the organisational capability, to fulfil the duties of a principal contractor under these Regulations in relation to the building work included in the project. So I guess the OP will be using a builder who will assume this role, but you could have someone who could do both jobs if they had the skills, so you could well be both designer and contractor - it isn't against the rules. From what you have said I'd be looking for an alternative BC supplier!

The Building Regs certainly are a challenging read and are only getting worse to understand! Requirement B2 says: B2. (1) To inhibit the spread of fire within the building, the internal linings shall— (a) adequately resist the spread of flame over their surfaces; and (b) have, if ignited, either a rate of heat release or a rate of fire growth, which is reasonable in the circumstances. (2) In this paragraph “internal linings” means the materials or products used in lining any partition, wall, ceiling or other internal structure. That's my emphasis, I can't see a plenum being used to line a partition etc so they are not "linings" and thus not covered by B2. If your ductwork is not penetrating a "fire separating element" of which in a simple two storey dwelling is likely only to be a floor over a garage (assuming first floor bedrooms have escape windows) and the party wall (if not detached) you don't need to close off that ductwork at the penetration.

If it was part of the original house footprint. However, before you rush off and build there are other more significant restrictions on what constitutes permitted development - heights, depths and positions relative to the dwelling. The footprint one is probably the least restrictive as few owners build quite that much. Single storey extensions are not all PD. So, you need to look at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d77afc8e5274a27cdb2c9e9/190910_Tech_Guide_for_publishing.pdf that gives more detailed guidance.

This is the requirement he should use: 4.1 The surface linings of walls and ceilings should meet the classifications in Table 4.1. Table 4.1 Classification of linings Location Classification Small rooms of maximum internal floor area of 4m2 D-s3, d2 Garages (as part of a dwellinghouse) of maximum internal floor area of 40m2 Other rooms (including garages) C-s3, d2 Circulation spaces within a dwelling Other circulation spaces (including the common areas of blocks of flats) B-s3, d2(1) NOTE: 1. Wallcoverings which conform to BS EN 15102, achieving at least class C-s3, d2 and bonded to a class A2-s3, d2 substrate Sorry the table doesn't come out but I think you can see for small rooms it's D-s3, d2 and others C-s3, d2, hallways etc B-s3, d2 So if your bathroom is over 4m2 then it ought to be C-s3, however if your panels do not cover all the walls then paragraph 4.4 says: 4.4 Parts of walls in rooms may be of lower performance than stated in Table 4.1, but no worse than class D-s3, d2. In any one room, the total area of lower performance wall lining should be less than an area equivalent to half of the room’s floor area, up to a maximum of 20m2 of wall lining. That may help you work it out. If all else fails and you are a bit over then try to point out that a bathroom is a low fire risk. They do not need fire doors when opening onto a protected route because of that very reason so the chances of a major conflagation starting in yours is low..............

No, curtilage is the area of the land the house stands on (there can be subtle interpretations of that for farm houses etc) and runs with it that forms the "planning unit".

The BC side is not too much of an issue. The foundation stuff is dealt with as normal and we did that so it didn't move as quick anyway. As for the superstructure technically it's a dpc inspection but DW cover the whole slab and a photograph did the job there. The rest is factory manufacture and BC seem very happy. DW do the pressure test and provide all the certificates for MHVR etc. Hopefully the final sign off will be smooth after we've done our bits. We had seen an Adelia made by Scandi Huis, they have one on their factory site near East Grinstead. It was too big (and too dear). We had looked at DW but couldn't find a design we liked although some of the features we thought were interesting. So we came up with something along that scandinavian look which would not be out of keeping in the streetscene. MBC quoted and whilst we were considering where else we could go for an alternative quote, we spoke to DW just on a whim and they said they could get close. We had to drop a few bits, partly due to their system and partly due to cost so there was a compromise to be made but we're not far off. Just couldn't face several years of pain at our age just to get the fully glazed gable that you can't curtain anyway!

You are going passivehouse for a garden room? I'd buy a kit like JohnMo says and sit it on a reinforced slab. At 20m2 it'll be exempt building regs if you keep it away from the boundary.

To use Class A.1 Permitted Development to extend your property, one of the constraints is that the total area of buildings within the curtilage excluding the original house should not exceed 50% of the ground within that curtilage excluding the original house. So it's plot minus original house = X, you can then have up 1/2X to use for buildings (obviously subject to other constraints depending on size, height etc etc). So the workshop uses 18m2 up and the porch another 5m2 leaving you (1/2X - 23m2)m2