patp

When we moved out of our house to, let it and live in our motorhome and travel, we needed a postal address. We stuck a post box on the wall outside my mother's house (no 15) and called it 15A. Neighbours reported us as we parked for a few weeks in mother's drive and the council official came round to check. He inspected mother's house and found no one living in it other than her and so she kept her single occupancy rate. He never checked whether the fictitious 15A was paying any council tax!

It's like learning a foreign language !

Other half is concerned that the timber part of alu clad might rot in time?

I do like a more traditional style and am struggling to find it with aluminium windows.

That's because I did not know you could get them! Any tips on suppliers? I have found a local window company that does PVCu, Wood, and Aluminium but they did not mention alu-clad PVCu. The aluminium windows I have seen are a bit stark for my liking. I like the idea of not using plastic at all if possible in order to help the environment but must be practical about these things.

We are at the stage of selecting windows. We have lived with the same hardwood windows for about 35 years in our old cottage. Apart from the maintenance which is not onerous on a bungalow I am swaying towards installing them again. They are, however, about twice the price of plastic. Plastic used to not be as thermally efficient as wood. Is that still the case? What about the thermal qualities of aluminium? I am not sold on the minimalist look of aluminium. We live in a rural area. I like the idea of the low maintenance though

Most of the sites developed in our village have been of no benefit to the village whatsoever. One site of 95 houses was supposed to provide, among other benefits, an open green space. They negotiated it down to a piece of land off the corner of the site to go towards a highways improvement.

Living in a village which has been targeted by developers in the last few years I would love to know where all the money has gone! None of it has come to the village to provide footpaths, community facilities etc

I agree that high ovens are not comfortable to use. Hot dishes are best dealt with closer to the ground We are very happy with our Smeg range cooker with induction hob.

We have just got permission to build in our garden but only room for one I am afraid.

I would look in the Breckland DC area. They have not met their five year plan requirements and are desperate for more homes to be built. Talk to the Planning Department to see if there are any sites allocated for self builders already. If not you could try an advert in an area you fancy for a plot.

We have just built a porch on to our old cottage so that messy boots and wet dogs are contained for a while on the way in. We have told our architect to make sure we have a barrier between the outside and inside of the new bungalow for the same reason - dog containment and mud barrier. It is too tempting to go traipsing through the house with dirty shoes otherwise.

Round here you can approach the planning department and ask if the plot you are interested in is "likely", "possibly" or "unlikely" to be granted planning permission. Sometimes they will advise that, for instance, an eco friendly build might be favoured. Are you aware that lots of Local Authorities will grant planning permission to self builders? Might be worth asking that question first?

It sounds as though you are thinking of a dream location and then finding a building plot. If only! Planning laws are very strict and most "dream locations" are protected from building. Your best bet is to look for plots with planning permission already in place as it can be heart breaking and wallet emptying trying to get planning permission on land that is outside the building zone. The exception to this seems to be one of the Grand Design type builds. I know that our local authority will consider a building of exceptional merit to be built outside of the planning boundary. This usually means a huge structure or a really quirky one. One man's meat, though, is another man's poison and they may never agree to a design that you would want to build and live in. Friends of mine have been trying for years to obtain planning permission on some land they own. They are tens of thousands of pounds out of pocket and are just awaiting an appeal against the latest refusal.

Thanks for the response. We weren't planning on any moves away from the architect until all the plans are submitted and approved. It is just that I see some people consult them all the way through and thought that this might not be necessary? It is a traditional brick built bungalow so I would imagine it will have a solid floor or, perhaps a wooden one? Architect is coming next week to discuss our options. It was a complete surprise that it would be positioned where it is so we did not get too involved in the initial plans. When the Planning Officer suggested it be moved behind our house we were amazed and the architect just used the same drawing but re positioned it. In hindsight we might have suggested a few changes then but were amazed at what the planning officer suggested!

The plans that gained us permission were ones that the architect designed himself for that purpose. At first we were not going to live in the bungalow but the planners asked us to move it from beside our house to behind our house, a much better position, so now we are going to build it for ourselves rather than sell it. This means that we want some things changed to suit us. These things are - Moving the driveway to the other side of the existing house making use of a farm track that we have shared use of, changing the orientation of the bungalow to take more advantage of a South and West facing aspect. Moving the room order around for the same reason i.e. so that the living area gets the most light and so that we have a boot room that is accessed immediately from the outside rather than off the hall etc. Is this going to add to our costs much? We realise that we will have to ask permission of the planning department for these changes. When do we dispense with the services of the architect? Chris, my husband, can work from plans. We are thinking of employing trades such as brickies ourselves. Chris can do most things (knees allowing). He is, however, getting on a bit so would laying a floor be a huge job physically? Would brickies lay a floor or is it the job of a plasterer. He is going to treat himself to a mini digger/tractor which he is probably more excited about than anything else! Have others found it difficult to find tradesmen? We hear on the grapevine that they are like gold dust. How far in advance should we be booking them and which ones first? I have to add that these are all my worries. Chris is not phased by any of it but he is not a planner. He waits for things to go wrong and then reacts. I want to be ahead of the game if I can.

Thanks Cake that is helpful. The plans that were approved are for a 3 bed L shaped bungalow, so might be a little more than your costs. Once we get the shell up we can put our house on the market and have somewhere, like the garage, to put the furniture while we continue the build. Chris is already talking about buying a mini digger (he is a bit of a tractor and machinery lover). We do have a large caravan to live in on site. Furniture storage is a concern to me. Will it be ok in an unheated garage or should we make arrangements to have some sort of heating in there?

We are a retired couple who have been lucky enough to get planning permission to build a bungalow in our garden (it is a very large garden :) ) This is our first complete build though we have renovated our 3 previous houses. Chris, my husband, is a plumber and so understands the building trade. He has not, due to knackered knees, worked at plumbing for quite a while. Having said that he completely re plumbed our current house during a recent re modelling. He just sat down for the kneeling jobs! We will have to sell our house to finance the complete build but hope to have enough saved up to put the shell up. I will pop off and post my first question about how much the shell is likely to cost.