jack

It's also a fact, at least in my experience, that older people have more time on their hands and/or are more willing to stick their noses in. A gross generalisation, of course, but looking at the history of planning in my immediate neighbourhood before we submitted our own planning application, it was striking how few objections came from those below around 50. There's a generational aspect to this, of course. Unsurprisingly, older people tend to have different tastes to younger people. That said, I do delight in telling those in the 60-80 age range who complain about our "modern" house that the Barcelona Pavilion was built before they were born! If you need evidence of cluelessness and nimbyism, just look at the quality of planning objections that tend to be received from the general public

I don't subscribe to relativism, but "gut wrenching modernist box of the utmost vulgarity" seems subjective to me. I like (some) modernist boxes. I think some are vulgar. I think some people manage to build horrendous houses despite sticking pretty closely to the design palette of what's already in place around them. I'd rather have the full spectrum of reactions: houses I love, houses I loathe, and everything in between. Basically, I'd be happy to have more houses built that I hate if gives me the opportunity to feel joy about some of the others!

You're in exactly the same position we were, even down to your architect's advice. Your architect isn't located in a small market town on the Surrey/Hampshire borders is he? We took to the view that we were going to be here for a long time, so we needed to get to know the neighbours anyway. We were therefore careful not to just be turning on the charm for the purpose of getting planning - our plans for the house came up now and then in conversation, but only when it was a natural part of whatever was being talked about. The elderly couple who were in bungalow before us had been here for something like 50 years, so lots of people in the neighbourhood knew them. It was really interesting learning about the history of the house and the people who lived here for so long. And then we bulldozed it.

Bang on. If I see one more boring rectangular box with hung clay tiles on the top half because it's the "local vernacular", but with the cheapest uPVC windows you can buy, I'll scream. They seem to fly through planning around here.

Agreed on the older tools. Even so-called decent brands like Bulldog have become woeful over the past few years if reviews are anything to go by. I'll vouch for the Roughneck mattock though - my god it's a productive bit of kit.

We've had a few thinly veiled criticisms of our house from one or two neighbours who don't like "modern" houses, but I genuinely couldn't give a stuff.

The main potential issue for me is that if there are enough objections, it gets called into committee. While you should, in theory, not be any worse off, I suspect it'll be easier, cheaper and less stressful if you don't get the planning committee involved. If they get it wrong, you have to appeal, which is more money and time, even if you're in the right. So basically I'm all for reducing objections as a general principle. I posted something on this general point in the last few weeks. I'll see if I can dig it out over the weekend, but the essence of it was to be careful about being too open with your neighbours about your plans. The last thing you want to do is try and keep everyone happy by listening to their feedback on your detailed plans, then realise it's literally impossible to keep everyone happy because they all want different things. Then you've by definition seriously annoyed one or more of them by not implementing the feedback you asked them for, so they object. I think it's better to gradually get them used to the idea of development in a social context, then slowly allow the general to become more specific over time. By the time you submit your planning application, everyone around you more or less knows what's coming and there are no surprises. We got a bit lucky, but this was the approach we took and we had no objections to our plans to knock down a small bungalow and build a large, very modern two storey house with three times the floor area!

Underfloor cooling is usually cautioned against due to fears of condensation. If you don't cool it down so much that there's a condensation risk, you'll be fine.

I personally think it's hugely important. We in theory have slightly better than building regs levels of insulation (although I do have my doubts about how some of it was installed when I wasn't present) and I'm not at all happy with the levels of sounds insulation that's resulted. If doing this again, I'd up the amount of insulation, use resilient bars everywhere, and ensure that all the installation and detailing was perfect.

Yep. It's about decoupling: less surface area = less energy transfer. Probably some minor amount of energy absorbed in the bar itself (which will be even less in the "top hat" style), but decoupling is the major factor at work here.

Here're a few: http://bit.ly/2cPUaNw The reason you need all the other stuff is that different elements are better at different types of noise and different frequency ranges. I wish we'd spent more time on this - I'm surprised, for example, how much noise from our TV room leaks into the bedroom above it (which thankfully is only a spare room).

I think you've gotten very lucky with these guys. Definitely a better finish than we got, especially in the corners and around the edges.

Welcome. Lovely part of the world, Vancouver.

It's not voodoo. It's an extremely common part of sound proofing but generally it's used in conjunction with other measures like insulation, green goo and multiple layers of board.

That's a really nice finish!

Why not call the planners and ask for the source of the information without saying who you are?

All I will say is make sure that the you test fit the cills before finalising window positions. You can see on the drawing you've done that you had to change the angle of the cill from the Nordan detail (which I know you've just adapted) and chamfer the frame. Are you sure that you can get the required fall on the cills with your current window position? We had an absolute world of pain over this point.

Agreed on the Fermacell, although if you can't use the fine surface treatment (maybe because of access) you may find it a bit rough-textured compared to plasterboard. Be careful how close to the edge you use screws - even with the special screws they recommend, we had some splitting.

Never a truer word said. Wish we'd had some advice about this before our window installation. Caused a lot of consternation with the people doing the plasterboarding, and we ended up with bits of airtightness tape peeping around the edges of the plasterboard in a couple of places.

Ah, lucky you! Mine's more or less exactly as shown above, but without the DPM!

It might be belt and braces, but I was told it was needed to protect the frame from condensation dripping off the underside of the cill. Unfortunately, ours doesn't have any either (installer error), and when I went to install some afterwards found that they'd permanently glued the cills in place!

Light on details, but sounds something like a simpler version of zeolite storage: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/heating-vermiculite-potting-plants-heat-storage-summer-sun-winter-swansea-a7234406.html

In defence of the builder, none were perfect, but this one was much worse than all the others. My mate is really, really happy with the work that's being done. I just bite my lip when he shows me around, same as I've taken to doing with just about every other recent extension I've been shown around by various friends over the last couple of years. This is also a rare case of me raising insulation for discussion. I've learned that people don't know and quite literally don't care, and indeed, get defensive if you try and discuss improving insulation and airtightness. The attitude seems to be that it's fine if you want to build an "eco-house" like we did, but that all that stuff isn't relevant for an ordinary build. All anyone seems to care about is how big the kitchen is and how wide a set of bifolds they can get away with.

Even then, perfection isn't assured. From a friend's extension going up at the moment: He mentioned that their current house (loft bedroom) is quite hot at the moment so they're getting air conditioning upstairs. I asked about increasing the insulation depth instead or as well, but he said they don't have the ridge height.

Could your system have more air in it than next door's? I was surprised how much entrained air we had in ours when we first set it up - took quite a bit of effort to get it properly "burped". We also had lots of pressure changes until we got that right.