Mulberry View

Anecdote aside, we've done that and it made it more complicated. Walking the boundary shows just how much stuff is affected. We have a big Yew tree for example, our neighbour has trimmed the low growth on his side to form a hedge. It looks nice and we'd like him to be able to retain it. Moving the fence more than I'm proposing will result in that Yew having to be felled for example. However, it puts a cluster of Laurels that he planted right on the line and facing the chopper.

It's so hard because there's not a firm fence, complete hedge or any boundary feature than can be relied upon. In fact, the worst possible place to put a fence would be on the 'line' where his chicken wire sits. Much of the landscape screening that we both appreciate would have to go. I'm conscious that, unlike right now, once we put a fence in that's essentially us defining the boundary. I'm hoping to find a compromise with as little destruction as possible. My proposed line is somewhere around 2ft 'West' of the OS line, which is just under halfway between the chicken-wire and the OS suggestion.

Here is my Topo, we are the house labelled as '26'. Overlaid in grey is Ordnance Survey. I accept that OS is not dependable, it was overlaid using best effort by our surveyor. It matches up well with various other landmarks. Keep in mind that the house we are in previously belonged to my Grandparents, we bought it 18 months ago. You'll notice a slip to the North, but the current debate is with the home-owner of the house labelled '3' to our East. They're a nice couple that we get on well with, we do no intend to change that. They bought their house in the late 80's. Between us is a heavily landscaped boundary that does not have a formal fence. He ran some basic chicken-wire, which he nailed to trees and so on as a means to limit the passage of Deer, which we both struggle greatly with. He tells me that once there stood a beautiful Berberis hedge belonging to my Grandmother, which gradually died over time. In her latter years, she had no interest or ability to rectify the matter, so he infilled with Laurel hedging, which he insists he put on his side. The chicken-wire he added in recent years is patchy and is on our side of the Laurels. Clearly, the survey shows that there is a distinct difference between where the chicken-wire 'fence' is and where OS think the boundary is, in fact it is as much as 1.6 metres in places. We have a measured plot plan from when the plot that our property stands on was formed in the 1950's. He only appears to have what Land Registry hold and that certainly does not seem to include anything detailed or with any measurements. I have successfully run a string like where I believe the OS suggestion of the boundary is and it looks quite terrifying from his side. It lines up nicely with the edge of his lawn and other paved features, but puts the soil area and most of the foliage, Laurels included, in our property. What is clear from our plot plan is that the boundary on that side is straight, but the current landscape doesn't allow a straight line anywhere without collateral damage to existing plant screening. We are not hell-bent on throwing the book at him, so to speak, but we are poised to install a fence on this boundary. We both have a fair bit of land, enough to not have to worry about granularity, but surely we have to get this as close to being 'right' as possible and so shouldn't settle for the 'loss' as it is depicted? I'm sure he hasn't set about to deliberately 'land grab', but I think there has been a bit of artistic license. We both agree that seeking a Chartered Surveyors advice will probably be costly, we are not really in what I'd call dispute at the moment. What would you do?

We're swaying heavily towards Nudura for our ICF build. Their supplier, who have been very supportive so far, has recommended the standard Nudura blocks and suggested that, in general, the extra investment in their Nudura Plus blocks is not worthwhile in terms of energy saving vs investment. They say we shouldn't focus too much on miniscule U-Value improvements. On the other hand, our architect, who has no ICF experience is instead saying it's all about the U-Value and we must do as much as possible. This is to be our forever home and although we do not have an 'open chequebook', we do want to get it right. Any thoughts on this?

If you mean what species they are, we've managed to identify most of what we have with 'Google Lens'. Though the Arborist knew a lot of them, I had to influence some because they came during the Winter when most stuff was not in leaf. I question some of the ones they've ID'd, but it's not that relevant. What is interesting though is that there are a few smaller trees they didn't actually survey (due to them being within clusters of plants etc.), but that might actually qualify as some of the replacements we have to plant so that's positive.

I wish I could find Heras for £10 a panel!! Going rate seems to be more like £20 per panel with a foot/clip, which I'm at peace with but even then, it looks like I'll be galivanting all over the country to obtain the quantity of panels needed. As for the moling, I assumed that would be crazy cost?

Our plot is quite complex and our scheme retains quite a few trees. We're just trying to get to grips with our Tree Protection Plan, it makes me regret working to hard to save trees to be honest, but it's part of what we love about the plot. By my calculations, we need upwards of 70 Heras panels, that's life I guess. The current conundrum is the access driveway, which is shown to require 'no-dig surfacing'. Anyone had similar requirements? What I don't understand is whether we need to be installing our long term driveway sub-structure now or if it's a temporary measure that's needed while we build. It seems to read as though we have to put a permanent geocell structure in place now and a 'sacrificial layer of stone' laid over another geotextile membrane while construction is taking place, to be scraped off at the end. Furthermore, the TPP states that no excavation can take place within the purple hatched area, so it looks like we are going to have to get creative regarding bringing the water main in. The only 2 options I can see are moling, or going across the garden for the existing bungalow, which I'm not that keen on. Talk about throwing us straight in at the deep end!!

Hilarious, but useful. Thanks for your input. I think I shall use some rods fashioned from materials I have or can easily obtain. This is for a generalised guide, it'll be as accurate as I need it to be.

Errrr, excuse me?! What is this?

Not at all important.

I'm not set on anything specific. As I said, I'm not concerned with anything other than the position and straightness of the line. I need to put a marker in, on the line about halfway along and only need the physical position on the ground, so the visual line-of-sight method will work I think, as long as I can see it over that distance. In a nutshell, we are splitting the property perpendicular to the longest boundary of the whole plot. That long boundary has 'slipped' by a fairly substantial amount (over a metre along its entire 70m length), but as we are now going to fit a proper fence I'd like to get the bit on the land we are retaining as close to being on the correct line as possible. The bit on the land we're selling is for the new owners to argue if they wish. I am having our land surveyor back for other stuff but I'd ideally like him to survey the fence once completed, as opposed to him coming earlier to peg out the position.

I had no idea about this, but I can see how it would work. The clear line of sight is at a bit of a height though (above a 2-3m Laurel hedge), so that might scupper things.

I need to throw a straight line between 2 points that are about 250 feet apart, ideally in the daytime. I can see both points and have clear line of sight, but it'll be hard to run a string, not to mention keep it taught. Does a laser pointer exist that will do this? I don't need it to measure or level, just show me a line. Once I have that, I can get some markers down to ground level. Can be cheapy Chinese Amazon type thing, or something perhaps I can hire if more expensive.

Good luck with your planning! Interesting that you've managed to decide on your ICF system so early.

So, I've had a good conversation with ICF Supplies who are Nudura agents. Their support level has filled me with confidence and, if their word is good, means they offer more than just a product, which for a first-time self-builder is more important than pure 'pounds and pence'. I'd like to look at a contrasting ICF system. What's considered comparable with Nudura?

Just seen this. congrats on your planning approval!

Hi fellow Norfolk'er. Enjoy the Assembly House, it's very nice apparently.

I tried that, you ignored my request. ?

I'm not sure many can say this, but we've just had the easiest planning journey, despite what appeared at the outset to be fairly complex surroundings. Our plot is a 1-acre garden split, leaving just under 0.5 acre with the original bungalow and just over 0.5 acre with our plot. We are a stones throw from a conservation area, most of the trees in our garden can be seen throughout the village, our pre-plan noted highways access issues that we were only half-heartedly able to 'solve' and there were 27 neighbourly consultation letters sent out. The plot is about 4 miles from the centre of Norwich. Despite this, we sailed through in 8 weeks to the day. No public comments at all, nothing from Highways, nothing from the District Council. Just one comment from the Town Council who said that we have a good design and our approach could serve as a lesson to all. Relieved is a massive understatement, we have been hugely blessed with this opportunity to build our forever home. We attribute at least part of our success to the fact that we weren't greedy. The plot could have sustained so much more, 4 houses, even 6 or 7, but all we wanted was ours. This was never a cash cow for us. So, here is our design... View from the West... View from the South West... It's just over 193m2, plus a 24m2 carport. It'll be built from ICF. The scheme will save 5x 70ft Scots Pines, a 50ft Hornbeam, a 70ft specimen Lime, an 80-year-old Black Mulberry plus various others from the chopper. Despite the whole unsplit plot having 14 direct boundary neighbours, nobody overlooks us. We plan to do as much as possible ourselves. My small niche recruitment business won't survive the pandemic, it's hanging on by a thread now, so this will be my full-time occupation until it's complete. If we play our cards right, we'll be mortgage free and living in our dream home. Anyway, just using this as a means to try to consolidate our excitement. Now to set off on a VERY steep learning curve!

Sadly it's right in the way. Would have been ideal for sure. We certainly don't have the most favourable site access.

This is why I want to exclude Brickies from our project as far as possible.

So, our planning application is in progress. 'Internal Target Date' is July 2nd. Our 'plot' is a 50/50 garden split of just over 1-acre total. I feel capable of undertaking this build, but this is our first project of this size, so could do with some words of wisdom to get me out of the starting blocks. What are the first steps on site? We have quotes for Mains Electric and Water (both need updating). The water run is VERY long (150m). We can use the existing bungalow for water and electric until we sell it and of course don't want to market it until the planning is approved, so we have a good 2-3 months of headroom there. It's a desirable property, we are optimistic about the sale though. What are the Groundworks/Site Prep steps? Did you employ a company to do all the Groundworks as a package or split it up? I know some of you are experienced builders who may have the benefit of doing all this yourself. There is a list of jobs to tackle, but I don't feel these can be done until planning is passed... * We haven't yet bought a caravan to live in. * We will need to buy loads of HERAS fencing. * We need to fence the plot split (80m - through landscaped gardens) * We need to demolish a garage * We have a few trees and shrubs to clear I am minded to hire a Mini-Digger to test my capability, possibly to buy one if we can justify it. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance!

We are dividing a 1-Acre landscaped garden for our plot and the view from the Kitchen of the 'existing' Bungalow is seen here. Our build will be positioned behind the substantial existing screening in the left-hand portion of this photo and of that, the large Bamboo cluster seen in the centre is a major factor so we would like to keep it. I know Bamboo is an absolute nightmare for controlling the spread, we currently have a cane coming up in the middle of the lawn a good 60-70 feet from the main cluster. The canes stand about 50 feet tall Has anyone any experience of root screening? I gather it's a case of digging a trench around the cluster, installing a liner of some sort to prevent the rhizomes from travelling. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated...

Terrifying. Someone I follow on Instagram has just had to change their plan from a Timber build to Brick & Block.

I've confused the conversation. My apologies! The corrugated cladding would be for my structure if I were to build it. It would probably have 150x50mm roof bearers at a shallow angle (around 15°), ply both inside and on top and a corrugated sheet on top of that with insulation in the void. If we went down the caravan route, alterations would be kept to a minimum, but some are inevitable.