Galileo

I was thinking the exact same thing, if the Western isles are anything like Shetland, if it's not fixed firmly to mother earth it will make its way to Norway rapidly. Built a storage shed on my croft back end of last year, made concrete piers formed with an upturned plastic bucket with the bottom cut off, cardboard concrete formers are not common/cheap in the UK for some reason. I used 6 piers, so I could save on timber thickness for the beams and use what the builders merchants had in stock, getting chunky Douglas Fir off the shelf is not an option up here.

It gets lumped in with the no Verandas in my backyard rule, decking is a raised platform. I'm commenting on the daft legal situation.

You learn something every day, as decking falls under "Verandas, balconies and raised platforms", I wonder how many lawbreakers are out there oblivious to their civil disobedience? I would never have thought that a bit of decking at the back of the house needed PP. Oh wait, so if the decking is less than 300mm high from the ground, that's fine. I love planning, such fun, so no, it's not a Veranda (often but not always roofed) but decking officer!

"You don't actually need to own land to apply for planning permission for it. This means you can apply for permission before deciding whether or not to buy a piece of land." https://www.planningportal.co.uk/planning/planning-applications/how-to-apply/who-can-apply

Quite like the idea of the zip board you get in the US with the air tight waterproof coating already made. It's always seemed to me that our building material technology is a bit behind others, you can get ply coated (like "Smartply"), but coated OSB seems to be a mystery product.

Speaking of the 90's, worked for a couple of window manfacturers and we used the same "Brookvent" trickle vent for everything, each one IIRC gave 6m3 air change. Didn't matter the profile, Marshall Tufflex, Swish, Deeplas and Sheerframe (just thinking of the latter still makes sweat remebering how infexible LB were with deliveries) . If there was gas burning in the room it got the non closing one. Tended to put one in each side opener or one in the top hung depending on size of room/window and style.

Looks very in keeping unlike the old garage. I'd love to use those kind of timbers but I look at my bank balance and the distance to the nearest tree and resign myself to 6x2's from whatever Buildbase are called this week!

They do that up here very well too, damp soggy peat bog and 6t of Manchester's finest from 1976 was not a good mix! Maintenance costs have been 20l of ISO 32 (one front ram leaks a bit when hot and holding up a few tonnes in the bucket), steering track rod ends replaced as they were a bit loosey goosey and a new exhaust. It's not perfect though by any stretch, things to fix are that one ram needs resealing, the king pin bushings on the back actor boom have gone a bit oval like above, local engineer suggests it's no drama, they'll just bush it. When I say no drama, it has to come off of course. Incidental items like rear wind screen wiper motor not working, heater stuck on heat (not such an issue at this time of the year), one mirror missing, some rusting under the side windows and it's done enough hours for an oil and filter change all around. Cost me £5k including all the shipping costs to get it up here, drove it 25 miles from the port including one ferry, and it then set to work digging a 200 metre track through peat down to the hard, then moving 400 tonnes of stone that was dumped at the top. My only regret was not checking that it came with a grading bucket. I've had a few people up here ask me for first refusal if I ever come to sell it.

Probably not a solution out there as corporates don't care about serfs seeing the sky, they would just go straight across the skylight and if they're feeling generous might stick in some frosted perspex tiles that go a nice yellow after a few years, matching Maureen's eyes. Seen these office tiles used in US houses, always taken aback to see them in a domestic situation, not sure why.

I've the sneaky suspicion that unlike the French who disposed of their lot with a few shaving nicks, Lord Barrington the 14th who owns half of Northretlandshire is probably why we're all crammed up into small spaces that they thoughtfully donated to us. I can think of many places I've lived were swathes of land is not farmed due to it's poor quality but some toff in a hat* owns it all so it stays as a "nature haven" in case the council accidentally allow development. *Nothing against them in general, went out with one for years!

Don't have an Instagram account, not my scene staring at other peoples food/holiday/latest clothes fit/toned thighs, I'll get Ken from accounts to come over with his slide projector and show me his family holiday in Torremolinos 1981 if I'm into that!

Concerete slabs with holes, horizontal not the vertical ones in the picture. https://www.milbank.co.uk/products/flooring/hollowcore/

Old thread I know (just browsing) but Open Street Map copyright is a generous "you are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt our data, as long as you credit OpenStreetMap and its contributors". I just imported them into a free GIS package I'd used for plotting peat depths on my croft (QGIS 3) and added the North marker and site boundary etc. My LA was quite happy with the maps, met all the requirmenets.

Hmm, looks like the tacky new science block built onto the old school building by a LA inhouse architect to me, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess.

I'd slightly undersize as manufacturers panel specifications are in an ideal world scenario in peak optimal generating conditions, why bother paying for an inverter that will never reach it's MPO? Then there's mono vs poly, the former working better in lower light conditions etc. Sizing to match the location (I'm at 60 North, all of our sun arrives in the summer) and enviroment, if the sunshine records for your area averages out as 3 hours a day, not much point in going up to a bigger inverter for that etc.

I was very intrigued about the blocks they were using, that seemed to just need what appeared to be expanding foam to "glue" them together. Can't deny the house looked perfectly fine when they were finished and it went up quickly.

Ah, close! Top end of Yell, the water is Basta Voe looking out to the East. And you're right, bottom picture is mostly mine, top one neighbours land that I'm cutting across. I've done a poke around, seems to hit the hard at around 200mm at the thinnest, 700mm for a few meters at the deepest. Been looking at getting an old Backhoe digger, like a MF 50B or JCB 3CX to have a poke around before hiring a bigger excavator but logistics is not fun, without a trip down on the boat its taking a gamble and getting something sent up freight somehow. Doing things on a shoestring is not for the feint of heart. There is a drop along the fence lines, so assuming that would be the remains of either stone or a peat dyke. Here's a side to side with the 1843 map, well almost, the left side needs to drop down a bit. Just curiosity more than anything else as this stuff fascinates me, I'm guessing livestock enclosures of some kind that have disappeared almost completely at ground level but stand out very distinctly in the aerial shots. All those horizontal lines must be field drains...

Thanks for cautionary tale Iceverge, I've been trying to do just that for 2 years! It's a thing up here, the local construction people get in with the big projects, ignore the local small jobs, until they end and then they will be chasing around for work. I've rung them all, a few times, some can't even be bothered to return calls. Local crofters hire diggers and do it themselves, there's very much a self sufficiency culture thing here when you need something done. I'll hire as big a machine as a can, buying second hand is just not an option anyway without a lot of expense of getting it to, then shipping it up from Aberdeen.

I'm trying to source a digger for a week to do some preliminary digs to see what's under the peat, this is also proving to be an issue as they are all out on hire with various construction work going on (wind farms to space ports). Be down to a seaside shovel and a bucket at this rate. Island life is great, except when you want anything done.

It wasn't, but that's going to be a good read, thank you. Geology around my croft is "Till and Morainic Deposits - Diamicton, sand and gravel", apparently. There is definitely a lot of very good gravel on the shoreline, not least an entire spit of it, but it's a marine protected area and not only that but a local English landowner dredged the bed and made off with a lot of gravel in the late 19th century upsetting the local fishermen, there's a bit of sensitivity around doing that! Not sure I'd be able to buy a big digger, certainly not in the 5-6t bracket, being in Shetland there isn't really a second hand market. Still, I'm feeling a lot more confident about all this now, I dithered about posting as well.

That is extremely heartening to hear! I have an idea on a suitable place, it's in-between the house ruin and what looks like a raised square in the top photo, the house area has been dug out of the hill and sits on a rocky shale type surface, so I think that's what might be under the peat. Temp, I have PP in place for the track, along the dotted line in the photo, the previous track routes were by foot only and to the croft house shown in the bottom photo, which was last lived in '82, roof and rear extension removed by the previous owners who wanted to renovate it but only got as far as demolition. I have not decided on a house location yet as I'm undecided on how to work the croft to get some income out of it, when I do, then there's a grant for that, and whilst PP is not guaranteed for a house, being a croft it is normally not an issue if sized correctly and fits in, no 6 bed mansion and more a 2-3 bed single story. The old croft house is a very small single story butt and ben; my neighbours say knock it down and rebuild, I'm a bit more sentimental, as after all it's been there over 200 years and part of the croft, minded to re-roof and use as a store, windows and the front door are still in place to keep the draught out, even if the roof is not.

I had a moment four years ago and bought an 8 acre big plot, well, a croft, which currently has no access (boat count?) and I need a sanity check about my thinking. I'll set the scene first. I have an easement for an access road across a neighbours land whose been very helpful and has talked over options of old pathways to the ruined croft house and potential new ones. I've settled on a simple almost straight line down the 170 meter incline from the road using an existing field entrance following the boundary fence to my land where there is also an old entrance, then a turning and parking area. So far so good, the land type is scrub peat, but right by the coast so not too deep, maybe 700mm in one small area. I've PP in place for a 3m wide road, veg strip, textile and 250mm hardcore, joining the road will need to be bitmac dressed for the first 6m. I've had some quotes, £12k plus stone, and therein lies the problem, I only have access to one quarry and they are flat out with other work, plus, £12k plus guessing somewhere around £6k+ for stone (240 tonnes if I could ever get any) is a lot of money and a big proportion to the cost for the land for just access. I realise that's probably a laughable amount for some people, but I've limited funding and so have to work with a tight budget out of my salary. I thought about doing it myself, so spoke to a local haulers about stone delivery who thought I'd need a much bigger excavator than the 3t one or backhoe/loader I had in mind, and experience to pull something like this off, let alone a big issue with delivering to site along a single track road with nowhere to tip, saying their lorry would get bogged down without a solid base. Casual Sunday reading some old posts and I stumbled across someone mentioning that they used a borrow pit to provide the stone for a track on their build and that set me thinking I wonder if I could do the same, at least to get a drivable track in place that I could dress with better stone at a later date, we're talking very low frequency traffic here, not the A9. I'd still need someone to do the entrance as well, that would be a few too many tarmac drive repair buckets. That's a lot of text to get to the point of wondering what my success would be in identifying an area to dig for a stone, as a complete novice, what plant I would need, as a novice, and if I'm just dreaming and should just sell the land or save up like everyone else? I'm not completely useless, spent many years driving tractors around, general horticultural machinery, do my own vehicle maintenance etc. so feel that I might be able to learn enough to do basic stuff with a digger, slowly. This is nice writing it down, feels like therapy! Edit: I'm not sure what all those straight lines are, apart from the obvious fence lines, I'm assuming drainage but some are vertical which makes less sense, it's not very apparent on the ground at all, they pop out when viewed from above like this.

You asked about a chassis, I came across this awhile ago, might help with your internet searching. Steel Chassis For Log Mobile Homes

Followed the "HOPS validation of applications"guidance notes from the planning department and so not allowed to use OS data unless you license it, I'm tight careful with my money so used Openstreetmap, added bits needed like property names, road numbers, North marker in QGIS and sent that off without any issue. When I say no issue, there was a debate about what constitutes an Agricultural Unit in Scotland but that's a different thing entirely...

Seen plenty of motorhome builds including my own one using HEP20, a log cabin will just vibrate less at speed. With a maximum permanent operating pressure 12 bar at 20º, you're safe using a caravan pump with HEP20. Key is to install an accumulator and use a pressure sensing pump, that way you won't get pulsing and spluttering at the taps and the pump will behave better at sensing pressure drops. https://www.surejust.co.uk/5-litre-accumulator-tank (for example, size to suit)