the_r_sole

the reg isn't really about air for combustion, it's for making sure that smoke isn't pulled into the room by the extracts (as far as I can tell anyway)

if you have a stove in the same room as an extract you'll have to do a "spillage test" reg 3.17.8 a. for solid fuel appliances, extract ventilation should not generally be installed in the same room or alternatively seek further guidance from HETAS. However in certain cases, such as large rooms where there is free flowing replacement air, a fan may be fitted provided a satisfactory spillage test is carried out in accordance with BRE Information Paper IP 7/94 Usually you would have had to note that on your warrant drawings, what spec have you had approved for the stove? I actually have had a couple of clients perform the tests themselves, so it's not too difficult - surely the stove installer knows or are they not up to speed on the scottish regs? (that one has been in for as long as I can remember and the BRE paper is from 1994!) If you want a copy of the BRE paper I have a pdf here if you wanted to pm your email address

Can you not accommodate an escape window on either of the other walls in the bedroom? If you've got a big arrangement of windows, having a single opener will always look strange

https://www.timberulove.co.uk/products/siberian-larch-smooth-finish-a-grade-battens-35-mm-thickness/ 6m lengths of this in 60mm I got

Nope, mine is 60mm x 28mm battens with a gap between

that's a bit of mine, you can see the interesting wall lean on the left... but the gaps are all over the place if you look close up, but you get away with it (just about) over the full width - as I said, if you measure then 10 at a time, you can make sure you're not too far out overall!

always good to overthink it ? I'll tell you how I did it... not quite as scientific. Put batten on either end, measure from outside edge of one side to inside edge of the other - divide by the width of the batten plus gap (so for me it was 70mm - 60mm battens +10mm) And that gives you an approximate number of battens you'll need, so then take the whole number and divide the gap by that... I was generally getting figures like 70.3mm for the gaps, so what I did was measure it in 10s (much easier to measure 703mm than 70.3...) then I had a piece of wood marked with the 70.3 on it and marked that along the top counter batten (so it gives you the outside edge of all the battens) and by the time you've marked 10 you can see how far out you are!! I was also only marking spacing at the top, then trying to make them level but I didn't have huge lengths to deal with. Probably better to take some professional advice on it, mine was very much having a stab! I also believe you can get an app which will work out your spacing for you... have you got windows close together, you'd be amazed at how you can adjust the gaps very slightly to accomodate, I only scribed one length where the top of the wall was 30mm out from the bottom ? but everywhere else we managed full boards

You won't notice by the time you've got a full wall on - my battens weren't exactly square either but over a few boards you don't read the difference in the gap

you might get some technical info from a supplier like Russwood who seem to do a fair bit of rainscreen cladding - the one you've posted there, worries me a bit, I'd always want a capping piece rather than having the end of the battens exposed to the weather... (I've actually just done something similar on bits of my house, where I used siberian larch cladding under windows (to cover a bizarre 60's brick detail!) - I used the rawl masonry screws for the battens and then the proper cladding screws for the battens, I tried to leave 10mm gaps, but each section was slightly different. Very painful measuring it out. With a rainscreen, the membrane is really doing the heavy lifting but I've seen various details for window heads/reveals etc - try and find one you like and post it up, can probably work it backwards! (I've seen one before where they had put a bugscreen over the entire wall (over horizontal battens and under the cladding) I didn't bother with mine as it's superficial anyway!

Well, as much as I'd do it differently, its your house ? What is it that you're looking for? if it was me I'd be much more tempted to look at maybe an L-shaped plan with a single room depth plan so that you have dual aspect for most spaces (the plot looks lovely at ground level so the distant view is more a bonus imo... I'd maybe look at having the kitchen diner on the ground floor with a mezzanine level sitting room over it. Wouldn't necessarily go two full stories on it all either. Try to imagine how you will use the house, like you've been out to the shops and coming back in the rain... Whats the way through the house to put the shopping down in the kitchen/larder? Or its a nice day and you want to open the house up, how does it work? You've got friends coming for dinner, how does that all work Etc etc I don't know your lifestyle or anything so can't help much apart from ask questions ? Everyone always wants to build cheap but when you're doing your own house, you can tweak things to work for you, at the moment the Layout doesn't really feel very personal, for example on the site, it looks like there's a massive tree to the south east corner of the site, if it's worth looking at put a window looking at it!

Do you have planning permission in place for this already? The more i see of the site the more it looks like a potential missed opportunity, especially if you're planning to buy the bit next door!

Yeah, it's a difficult balance, what I'd always say to people (and it's not really what a lot of the people on here would say by the looks of their builds) - but build the smallest thing you can build and finish well in your budget, and allow for an extension in the future should you need it. With your site, I'd be tempted to look at a longer, thinner plan as most of the current plan has 1m/1.5m down the middle given over to circulation - with a tight budget you want to look very carefully at the amount of space being used for getting to useful space! Also, the stair position in an upside down house is absolutely key, you kind of want the front door at the base of the stair, but also think about where you arrive and what you face at the top of the stair, for example, would it be desirable to have a straight stair which arrives facing the view over the fields, rather than a stair which turns back on itself so you arrive looking directly at the sitting area. Could you have the dining table somewhere that it gets both morning and evening light? any opportinty to look at bringing in light from above to the living space etc etc, there are lots of things you can do with a simple geometry, the idea is to build with value in mind rather than just bottom line costs

you don't have to carry out the amendment but you do have to discharge all the conditions placed on the earlier consent, so it sounds like they are saying you haven't discharged the conditions of the earlier permission

not for furniture, you ever gone up and down an external spiral stair in the wet? the tapered treads can be a nightmare - Father in law had a cafe with a spiral stair onto an external deck and he eventually closed it because people kept slipping on it!

do you have neighbours close-by in the direction of the balcony - it would normally need planning permission, but if you already have planning it may be able to be approved as a non material variation, but it depends entirely on whether you are increasing any overlooking... why the spiral, possibly the worse kind of stair and most awkward!?

is the boundary to the west a road? For me it's a very ordinary plan but with some curiosities, if you've got dogs, put a door into the utility and have that as a mud room/ wet weather entrance, having a big lobby and then a hallway which is all doors doesn't really feel that right - where are your views coming from? you have a lot of doors and hallway in there The bedrooms look they are all west facing? or am i reading it wrong? It's hard to read when all the plans are in different orientations (or is the door on the site plan the "back door" for that house? In my opinion, it doesn't look like the house has been designed with the site in mind - which may not be the case at all, why the loft extension? you'll have building regs issues coming from enclosed stairs to a room, to a stair, to a lobby before exit - if it was me, I'd look at putting an upstairs on the garage for a home office and get the floor plan of the house working much better

can you put up a site plan and some elevations?

why the fascination with Permitted Development? Design what you want, and see if it fits within PD, not the other way around, the cost of a planning application is nothing if it gives you a much better house

They'll need to consult Fire and Rescue for the hydrant position, usually they are happy with 150m from my experience, but it still takes time - I've waited since december to get a consultation back from them! Drainage, get your CAR from SEPA asap. The biggest issue you are going to have with a tight time line is to get Scotframe engineers to respond to your SER engineer queries, I've got a warrant application currently being held up by them, if your own engineer isn't able to put queries out to them either, I'd be preparing for not getting wind and water tight any time soon! (sorry to be the bearer of bad news, hopefully I'm wrong and my experience is the one exception to the rest!)

Home territory for me! PM who your engineer is in case I can pester them a different way! what local office are you dealing with?, things that can hold up your application (from recent experience) - do you have a fire hydrant within 100m of the site? Have you got a private water/drainage arrangement? Private access road? What build method are you using? Argyll and Bute officers are pretty good at getting applications dealt with at the moment but there's a couple of things that can take a while to sort out!

ten times the fee seems very common with engineers, I guess that will only be tested in court if it stands up!

To be honest, we never submit warrant packages with the engineers SER in place - no matter what, with a new dwelling you will get queries back from building standards - they've even changed the edevelopment portal to accommodate entering the engineers details without the certificate so you can still get the discount for the certificate when it comes. Getting wind and water tight by end of october without a warrant in place now, is very, very optimistic - what local authority are in?

In all seriousness, I'd love to see your Warrant Submission documents, yes, I am THAT sad ?

Is the engineer a one-man-show type? I deal with a mix of engineers and the guys working on their own can be super fast or really slow, they seem to operate in feast or famine without really programming work too well (only speaking from experience) so it might just be you've caught the guy when he's snowed under and should have said to you that he would take a while to come back on it - there's a lot of projects that have suddenly taken off in the last few weeks too! I would give him a call, and say you understand that he's busy and you're just looking for a realistic turnaround time on it, it might be the situation where being nice will get you sorted quicker!

the worst thing is when you bother to do the searches and then discover that the utility companies have just made up their maps from the tops of their head, on a monday morning after a hard weekend!! We had to get Scottish Water to come out and confirm their sewer was at the edge of a site, where they had bought the land from my client 15 years earlier to put the sewer in - their searches said there was nothing within 300m of the site!