mjc55

How is everyone doing out there? SO hot today, managed to be on site 10 until about 5:30 but it was a very, very hot one. Working inside, no way we could have been doing anything outside.

Trying to decide how far to set the windows back in on our Pod build. Vertical timber cladding and I was contemplating about 80mm or so from external cladding. Not sure if there is a standard for this hence wondering what others did!

Absolutely agree with @Bancroft, its the personal aspect of the planning process that has gone to pot. I changed career in 2009 and did a AT degree and after qualifying worked for myself until I retired in about 2021. I lived and worked in Wiltshire and from around 2005 - when I was renovating a couple of houses - to when I started submitting planning apps in around 2012 things had changed significantly. I used to be able to pop round to a council office in Trowbridge, chat through my plans with a planning officer and get valuable feedback when I doing the developments. By the time I was submitting plans as an AT communicating with planning officers was starting to be difficult. When I did a couple of planning applications for friends after I had retired in about 2023 the PO that visited site was a trainee, had to submit his findings to a senior planning officer (who could not be communicated with directly). For our planning application for our build in Dorset the job of communicating with the planning department was pretty much impossible. There seemed to be only one planning officer dealing with apps in our area and he just continually kicked the can down the road. It was only by complaining and going over his head did we eventually get the application approved. Something has to change, certainly the staffing issue seems to be the main area of difficulty and until this is addressed then I suspect that nothing will improve.

No, house will be wet underfloor. It won't be cheap but as we are currently in rental we will be saving enough not to worry about that. Also, given that we have a lot of insulation in the Pod I'm hoping that it will not require too much heating!

Had a tiler come and look at a job today. We have a 22 sq.m. pod that we are building to live in whilst we build the house. The Pod is a test bed for the house build and so the tiles we are using are 1200 x 1200 x 20 limestone as planned for the house. We had planned to tile the Pod ourselves but when the tiles arrived the other day this option rapidly disappeared when we realised how heavy they are. We are planning to use an electrical UFH mat and the tiler seemed to think that this should have a screed over before tiling! I have installed an electric UFH mat in our previous house (under slate tiles) and didn't take this approach then simply sticking the mat down and tiling over. Any views on whether this screeding idea makes sense, is the normal way to do it or are they simply making more work than is necessary? Thanks

My understanding is that disabled access is required only to the principle entrance.

Thanks for that @Nickfromwales they look really interesting.

Thanks @SimonD, very comprehensive. We are planning to use a Thermowood cladding and current thought is not to have heads showing (much - there will be some viability of the nail/hole I believe). Sounds like a 2nd fix nailer is what I need.

Hmmm. Seems to me that a first fix nailer would not be suitable for cladding as it uses larger nails and leaves a larger hole! What I am after is a nailer that uses smaller fixings that don't need any further finishing work on the timber once nailed.

Having looked at this a bit more it seems that a 1st fix nailer is better for timber cladding? Thoughts?

Will need one of these quite soon for the timber cladding. I would prefer De Walt cordless as we have gone down the De Walt route but recommendations for any make are welcome. Thanks in advance

As @Mr Punter says above. The work is of such poor quality that no more should be paid and as it may well cost you more to rectify than it cost in the first place they should be told that you hold them responsible for the shoddy work and any costs to rectify.

Hmm. Is this not an (expensive) solution looking for a problem?

Hmmm. I can only go from my own experience, maybe we were just lucky!

I wouldn't use crushed concrete again after our last lot! Full of rubbish really and didn't compact that well. Local groundworker suggested 75mm crush and run and that was much better. Much cleaner and compacted really well. Also pretty cheap at £21 a ton!

hmm. I think that the idea that some labourers would "muck in and do the screeding" a tad overconfident myself! It may well be that they can screed to a high degree of accuracy, obviously I don't know them. But, the potential for a dogs dinner is definitely there.

Seems a bit bedroom heavy to me! Do you need a 4th bedroom? More than 50% of the space is bedrooms/bathrooms, which are much less used than lounge kitchen areas. I would maybe think about a separate TV room so that the lounge can be a more relaxing area.

Cable running over the top of the door(??) is not in a safe zone (unless that is within 150mm of ceiling)

Any plans to add extra "primary construction types"? Only masonry or steel/timber frame at the mo, We are using Ecobrix (haven't thought about whether this makes any difference though).

Do you want feedback on here @SimonD or would you prefer directly by email?

That's interesting - why do you say that?

electrical symbols are a fairly standard set of symbols. My Architects Pocketbook lists them and they were what I used when I did my drawings as an Architectural Technologist.

Just camping, although we will register address.

We have nearly finished our office/store which we will live in whilst building the house. Around 24 sq. m. of space will be plenty for 12 months or so of living. Will save us 12k of rent plus other bills. we also have 2 containers on site, one for tools etc, the other will be for storage of furniture, clothing etc. It has also been a great way of checking out build process on main house as we will be using the same materials.

10 degrees is sub-optimal isn't it though? I thought 30 degrees was ideal.