JaneM

Great house, well done.

We live in Rural Norfolk, we both have what we consider to be nice cars which are kept garaged and the good tools will be banished from the garage. Fortunately we have some storage sheds for tools. Our large guard dog might help ?

We are having an integral garage. Do we really need to consider this kind of door? Or is it that I am looking at the world through rose coloured glasses?

Thanks for your kind words, compliments and encouragement. We won't be steaming ahead with the shell of the building because this is the point that my husband will be taking over the build. The floor of the garage still needs to be done along with the facing bricks and some other bits and bobs that I'm not sure about. We will be going back to p!anning to apply for non material changes. We were lucky enough to win the competition that grand designs live were running for a consultation with Kevin McCloud. It was very enlightening and made me realise the importance of the placement of the windows. The floor area is much larger than I expected and we have decided reorientation of the stairs and moving a large window would allow us to look right through the sitting room from outside. And yes, we do grow our own.

Thanks to the members of buildhub for the constructive advice and a good ground worker we have managed to get our foundations in. The archeological watching brief wasn't the problem we had feared and nothing was found to delay this first step of our build.

Its one of the reasons we left Kent.

I'm not an expert on these matter's but agree with Ian about reading appeals. I don't advocate going in this direction but it does show how some people get what they want by trying anything they think they can get away with while people like yourself and so many others on this forum do the right thing but don't succeed. This appeal has just been granted. Sevenoaks district council ref:17/01595/FUL (look it up its worth a read) I hope this helps.

Sorry to hear about your nightmare. Hope it won't take too long to fix. Keep calm and carry on as they say.☺

We had to have one of those, it was one of our conditions. I found out later that a cemp is normally imposed on larger developments not single houses. Speak to the environment office at the council early on and try not to agree with anything you don't feel is necessary.

I'm most please to have been able to discharge and part discharge 9 of our 21 conditions and will start our ground works next week.

We are currently choosing our treatment plant and are keen on the Graf Klaro. Thanks to this thread I know what questions to ask. Graf have referred us to a local supplier who have recommended the treatment plant be hard wired into a socket. We will be locating the control unit and pump in the garage. They have also suggested we concrete the treatment plant in rather than use shingle due to the high water table. Has anyone got any thoughts on these recommendations? Are there any other questions I should be asking?

We have an archaeological condition which initially would have involved investigating our whole site of one and a half acres, we are building one house. After months of dialogue with all parties involved we have been able to dilute the condition to a topography map and a watching brief for all the places which will be dug/disturbing. Our known monument is the moat on the neighbouring property which just creeps into our plot but has been filled in. There is also the possibility of a hollow way. After what felt like endless hours of talking to some very helpful archaeological contractors we are about to submit our application to get this condition agreed and start the possess of getting it discharged. The whole discharging of this condition has been very confusing and I hope we are now on the road to getting our build started. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the cost involved with the archaeology doesn't impact too heavily on our budget.

Have you looked at skirting board heating?

Hardy plank seems to be what most people have recommended to us however our architect has suggested we use Marley. A few tips on getting a "big discount" would be useful.

Hi, I'm Mrs Peter M and I'm replying on his behalf. I think Lee has answered ProDave's question. We are having brickwork on the single story part of our house and cladding on the top half. It's supposed to look like a "converted" barn hopefully low maintenance. Your place looks good Lee. Did you cost out Hardy plank or any other type of cladding?