the_r_sole

Why is agricultural land so precious? The farmer could put up a big shed to service their vehicles with no permissions at all!

You still haven't actually come up with a reason for objecting? Is it a road safety concern you have? Is it the loss of agricultural land? If you want to object to a planning application you need to find something to base your objection on - all I can tell is that you don't want it to happen but so far you've given any convincing reasoning for your objections. There's usually a few opportunities in local development plans for small industry to be accommodated around settlements, it being "agricultural land" can sometimes make it a bit easier to fit with policy too.

that's not really an objection? There's lots of things I don't want to be happening near me, but putting small industry away from where people are living seems better than having it in amongst where people live?

what's the actual basis for your objection?

If you are going to do any of the electrical work yourself, remember that you need to get it signed off at the end - I've had some "money saving" clients go down this route in the past and end up paying as much to get it signed off than they would have just getting it done! Remember you are asking an electrician to take on liability for things they haven't seen getting done so unless you get them to inspect at different stages they might not want to sign off someone else's work (especially a home owners)

Building warrant information is only to get a building warrant, it isn't construction information. For domestic projects the items you're looking at would just be done by a plumber and electrician to meet their relevant codes, if you want them fully designed and specified you'd need an M&E engineer, but they'd probably leave most of those decisions up to a subcontractor anyway!

If you're getting the Timber frame supplier to do the warrant package then you're probably just as well to go with their engineer, plumbing and electrical would be part of the warrant package so presumably this is your kit manufacturer, drainage would usually be engineers remit

Ventilation and natural light are your two show stoppers, I can't remember the nuance of the english regs but in Scotland this could not be classed as a bedroom

If there's nothing live on the site then the there's no material consideration for a planner to account for. If you flip it around, can you imagine if any planning application could be blocked or changed by some unknown future development on the next site? Nothing would ever get permission!

You can suggest anything you like but really, the planning officers can't give too much weight to a potential use of vacant ground (although they will consider the planning history of a site) If it was me, I'd submit a planning application asap which will then make it a material consideration for the planners if there is a live proposal.

are you trying to insulate the midfloor? What's the reasoning?

that's what a concept sketch is for an architect too - but it's where all the skill is, I can knock out a sketch in 5 mins but that's because of the years of experience i have behind me working on hundreds of projects, that's what you're paying for, the ability of the architect to interpret your desires into a built form - when I have initial conversations with clients I'll talk around the options, where you might look at alterations etc but they're essentially thinking out loud. You're asking architects to give your their thoughts on the a design so you can decide whether to give them a job or not. I spend hours and hours with clients at the start of a job before any drawing is done, asking them questions and understanding what they want from us, surveying the buildings/site etc all of that needs to be done before you can anything meaningful at all. If you want ideas you should commission a measured survey and provide it to some architects and pay them for their time - people seem to forget that there's a huge amount of thinking time away from drawings to get ideas out, the more skilful you are, the quicker that should be but it's YOUR home - so asking someone to chuck an idea out without spending any time on it, not spending ay time asking you questions and somehow hoping that it might suit YOUR exact needs is a very flawed approach

Absolutely not! The real value in what an architect does is the concept stage, outputting planning drawings and warrant drawings is a pretty mechanical process but all the value is created and added at design stage. We are some times asked to do some initial concept work on bigger jobs but we'll always ask for a fee. Working with people to design their home, is all about trying to understand what the client wants, what their style is etc, what an architect has done previously isn't particularly relevant to your specific situation unless you are approaching architects who you want to deliver something with their specific style which you will fit your lifestyle around. Why would I spend hours and hours trying to work through concepts for your project in the hope that we might get paid for churning out drawings? We generally have a first meeting for free to see if it might be a good fit but don't expect anyone to give the ideas away for free, that's the one unique thing every designer has.

Be very careful what you wish for, campaigning to have a road acknowledged as dangerous and unable to accommodate any further development can end with a lot of unintended consequences especially if you have a local authority who like parking restrictions or permit parking... Moreover if the basis for the argument is the current state is dangerous

I've not read this whole thread but will, coming at this from an architect point of view - no one on a domestic job wants to pay for full destructive surveys to be done at the design stage. Any structural engineer we work with will want some trial pit/site investigation done for building warrant/regs but there's always assumptions involved, working with existing buildings you will never know every inch until the digging starts and we always tell clients to have a reasonable contingency, it's not just existing foundations, we've had all kinds of discoveries working with old buildings. The key to any project is the communication, as soon as something isn't as per the assumptions made at design stage it needs flagged and addressed before continuing...

get a sap calc done and see if the score is 19% below the target emission rate

Plan for the worst and hope it works out better - I'd say you have zero chance of getting 243m2 for £275k no matter where you are in the country. There are guys on here who have done some amazing things in terms of what they've got for their cash but I'd say they are the exceptions rather than the rules It's more important to be realistic, understand how much you can access in the worst case scenario, make sure it all still stacks up - and then look at how you can deliver it for less, starting out with an unrealistic goal and sticking to it get's very difficult very quickly. Get a qs to give you a cost of that housetype in your area and see what the starting point is

It's a strange one for sure - have they done anything that they didn't say they would do when you spoke to them? Are they a one person firm? There's always a balance of your project being the number one thing for you and then the architect having 3/4/5 others the same but it's the nature of the business - one thing I learnt is to never tell a client that their job isn't a priority - it's fine to say you're not working on it at the moment but if you use the wrong language it can upset clients as you are. Without getting into the timeline so much, what you need to do is figure out if they can do what you want from an architect, if you are happy with the concept and want them to continue on with then, have a discussion about the timeline, what your priorities are and whether they can meet them or at least try to reset the expectations

There's 100s possibly 1000s who could do that for you but as ever context is key! Where in the country are you? What's the situation with the current/previous architect? What construction methods are you proposing?

Have you got no windows or something? Your spec sounds like what we were doing 10 years ago to get a pass!

The only thing with that approach is that the saving isn't particularly huge, as you've built all the external fabric, and most folk will put the flooring in too, so by the end you've only not done some partitions, plasterboard and decoration! Anytime I've designed houses with that approach they've built out the upstairs halfway through ?

Have you got a load of pv or something to balance out the sap? Just doubled checked a recent sap where we looked at similar insulation and needed 50mm pir inside to get to 0.19, even then we needed to add more renewable to get through, ended up being cheaper to rever back to 140 pir between the studs...

Your architect is going to love being told to change their drawings based on what you've been told on an Internet forum ?

What's your construction method? In my experience it's very likely you'll change your thoughts on what the second phase will be so the future planning should be to as flexible as possible for when you change your mind! If you have a plant room or a service cupboard you could take a few below ground ducts in and out that but depends on your floor construction... The toughest bit of adding to a passivehaus is that you're building off the external leaf so that really becomes the difficult bit for bridges so again it's about what your construction method is...

what wall construction do you have where you can take out 40mm of the inner leaf? Acrylic baths are absolutely normal, you can get lots of different specs, it's not as simple as steel vs acrylic - are you having a shower over the bath or is it just a bath? Usually the only time you would "feel" how sturdy a bath is, is when you step in and out (and manoeuvre around in the shower) but I've had both and with a steel bath you'd definitely want insulation around it, I actually changed out my steel bath because it dropped temperature too quickly giving the kids a bath, although it was fine when you ran a proper hot bath and filled it to the brim!