Mulberry View

As an update to this, I went to the LPA office and checked out the old historic plans for the Barn Conversion. It was converted from being used for 'the restoration of antiques' to 'residential use' in 1998. At this time, the Highways Officer had no concern about the access because he felt that the difference in traffic wouldn't be noticed. Questionable for sure, I'd guess the old antiques business rarely saw vehicular movements, it's hardly as though they'd have daily 'footfall', yet they must allow 2-4 vehicle movements per day with residential I'd guess. Notably, it was the same Highways Office then that is looking at the case now. Here is the view down the drive as it was in 2012 at least. Absolutely NO right-hand visibility whatsoever. It looked the same on the 2008 Google Image too, that hedge didn't suddenly spring up out of nowhere... Then, when the barn was reconverted in 2014, no Highways issues were raised, I guess because it was only reworking, so no consideration was really necessary. However, the hedge was removed sometime after. I guess the new owners of the Barn wanted to be able to leave the drive safely, so did the work voluntarily. As I mentioned early, that totally corrected the right-hand vision to the point where there is no concern. I suppose what I'm hoping for here is that if they weren't concerned about it in 1998, when the situation was MUCH worse, why are they now? It shows a lack of consistency, if nothing else, but also scope for a practical discussion. Oh, as an aside, I think it's been a 20mph zone since the 1990's, it certainly was on the 2008 Google image.

I need a good quality Storm Collar for a 6" Twin Wall Flue, to go above the lead roof flashing. I've had a couple of goes at it, they're all just flimsy crap with poor adjustment that pulls the thing out of shape and it ends up leaking. Any good recommendations?

That's a lovely build and a very helpful blog. Looking forward to spending a bit of time looking through that. ?

We could potentially get ours on the market soon. We can move into the temporary (on site) accommodation immediately if needed. When is a good time to sell?

These are some good tips for sure. Thanks. You've done well to achieve that spend, I'd love to achieve £1000/m2 but I think it's optimistic. I have indeed seen Grand Designs, but we're not looking to builds an eco-warrior glass house in the side of a hill on the Yorkshire Dales. This is a fairly conventional build in a roomy plot. Honestly, I had in my mind that £1700-1900 would get us to a decent spec without us having to do much and that we could drive that cost down, perhaps under £1300-1500 with our own efforts.

We anticipate selling our current home to fund our self-build. By the time our home is sold (assuming we get within £10k of the valuation), settle our current £100k ish mortgage and buy our plot, we should have about £100k to get started on the build. We have a savings account with about £12k currently to enable us to have cash available for design, architecture, planning and clearing the plot. That figure is improving as we continue to save ahead of kick-off. We would like to have the whole project designed, including landscaping, but we aren't looking for a 'turnkey' build even if we could afford it. Part of what we love about our current home is the blood/sweat and tears that lead to it. We'll have the advantage of living practically on-site for most of the build time. My Wife and I are fairly competent DIY'ers, having renovated a totally derelict 1920's Bungalow to what the Estate Agent described as being of 'Wow' status, we thought it would be our 'forever home', it's worth 2.5 times what we paid for it. We did that without increasing our initial mortgage. She is a tough/driven Project Manager by trade, not in construction though she knows how to handle tradesmen. I'm very level-headed and practical. Our skills complement each other perfectly for this type of project. We think we'll be building around 150-160m2, probably a 3 Bedroom Chalet Bungalow with a Detached Garage, to a fairly high-spec. I am confident enough to take the kitchen and bathroom from a bare shell to completion, bar a couple of details (worktop etc). I can confidently do electrics and plumbing up to the extent that I'm allowed to by the associated regs (one of my best friends is a sparky, I'm sure I'll be doing the first-fix at least under his guidance). With respect to them, I have a level of attention to detail I wouldn't expect from a tradesman, even though I know I'll take longer. We can paint, tile, fit most types of flooring and we can/will both labour as required. We both work from home, so odd bits of time here and there during the week is practical and full commitment as needed other times. There'll be a large hard-standing driveway and front to the property, which I know will be expensive. We aren't looking to necessarily tackle the landscaping as part of this, the plot is large, it'll have to be a more leisurely thing once the house is almost done. I know this is rough but... Q1. What do you think our finished m2 cost will be? Q2. Do you think we could get it stood up and watertight within our initial £100k? Q3. How long from planning approval to being liveable (even if not complete)?

I had to do a similar thing behind my washing machine, wasn't my favourite piece of work to be honest, but good luck.

I think he has to pass heating pipes, so by the time you take the 15mm heating pipes, their brackets and the waste pipe to pass that, 80mm is feasible. Moving the units forward is the practical solution for sure. I'd build the whole run, screw them all together, position them to miss the pipework, level the whole lot then contort something to attach them to the wall. Simples.

Can you move the base units a little further from the wall? There is no hard/fast rule about where you position them as long as this works in the room layout and you can get a worktop deep enough to accommodate.

That's the sensible answer. Sadly, I don't think Highways are quite that logical.

I'll get straight on this tomorrow. By the way, I missed your comment above. There is no pavement on the nearest side and the verge certainly isn't 'walkable'. Weirdly, the house whose wall that is have a gate that leads directly onto the road.

A highways officer popped by there last week to take a look, it wasn't arranged, so i guess he was just in the area at the time. He measured it as 1.4m. It would be entirely practical to raise the driveway up to this height, but to lose the 400mm addition height over the remaining 2.4m of driveway would just be too steep and with it's own set of problems. The grass verge is minimal in depth. If you look carefully at the verge on the side where the telegraph pole is, just behind that is a water meter cover. That's set at the height that the driveway would need to be at to stand a chance of meeting the stated requirements. I'm really curious about the other property that was developed there in recent years. It was first converted to residential in the late 90's, then done properly and made into high-spec living accommodation about 5 years ago. When the rework was done 5 years ago, the site notes declared 'no highway issues'. I think the fence on the other side was lowered when it was done in the 90's, I wonder why only one side was required to be altered? I need to see that file I reckon, to see what the stipulation was and how it got through...

There is the driveway in question. As you can see, the wall is very aged. I can't even imagine offering to rebuild the wall will be sufficient based on what @Sensus said above. There isn't a realistic prospect of getting the owner of that wall to enter into a legal agreement to prevent them, or the future owners of their property from increasing the height or adding a hedge, so this would mean that any solution along those lines is merely to satisfy highways for the 5 minute inspection visit, which seems ludicrous. The lack of pavement is annoying in this case, with a pavement there, you'd be further forwards when you arrive at the junction, perhaps enough to give the required level of splay visibility. One solution would be to raise the height of the driveway, then taper it off to meet the highway, although whether this could be done from a practical stand-point and whether it would just create an annoying hump is subject to some debate.

I used 40mm waste pipe (I have a ring main, induction hob and low-level lighting). Be sure to leave a draw cord in there too for future use. Regarding the cut, for speed it's an angle grinder but of course thats messy. Having an 'assistant' be there with a hoover right where the grinder spews the dust out helps a surprising amount (Just don't use your 'good' hoover as @Pete will concur). An oscillating saw, such as a multi-tool with a diamond-tipped blade might work and would certainly be a low-dust option, but it'll take a lot longer. It's only a short'ish run by the sounds of it.

I'll always fly the flag for Quooker. We fitted ours when our Kitchen went in about 5 years ago. It's the 7 Litre standalone one (overkill, but I got it RIDICULOUSLY cheap). Here's my DIY plumbing effort, it's fitted in it's own cupboard, along with a catering-grade filter. The cartridges for the filter are expensive, but I've changed it twice in 5 years and am still getting crystal clear Tea. I'm in the South East, where the water is terrible. It hasn't missed a beat. Not once and I'd definitely buy another if we get to go ahead with our self-build. Oh, the sharp-eyed among you might spot my little plumbing trickery. I fitted a divert system. In the event of the boiler failing for any reason, reverse the positions of the 2 red taps and the domestic hot water for the kitchen sink will be supplied from the Quooker (ours was before they did the combined taps etc).

This is all actually very interesting and quite true, indeed I could pay for a dwarf wall and nice railings if the owner were agreeable, then, as you say, the next owner tears it all out and does something different. I'm just wondering how to work that into a favourable outcome for us, it might just lead to them arbitrarily saying no. As a point to note, of the 3 current properties, one of them is a converted barn. It was converted to residential use in the late 90's. I'm guessing that this would have been raised then. The planning application for that isn't visible online probably due to it's age. I wonder if it'd be beneficial to see the file for that one, would they share it with me? Thinking back, I kind of remember that happening and I wonder if that was when the fence was lowered in the critical direction, so something must have made them decide to agree that the obstruction to the left was OK.

Before we submit full plans, I'm trying to go armed and ready to address the only real standout reason our project may not get approval. The plot is accessed from a shared drive, which currently serves 3 fairly large properties. Ours would be the 4th. The drive joins the highway in a 20mph zone, with speed bumps and pinch points. At the junction with the highway, there is a fence to the right (the 'critical direction') which has been lowered and now enjoys good visibility. To the left there is a 1.4m high wall which definitely does impair the view of traffic from the non-critical direction. I've used the drive for years as it's a family home we're potentially subdividing, I tend to approach the end of the drive on the right-hand side, giving the best possible view to the left, but you still need to edge forwards once you've checked to the right. Highways have already indicated a distaste and unless I can come up with a pragmatic solution, in my own mind at least, I can't see much point in moving things forwards. They suggested speaking with the owner of the wall about lowering it, but the wall looks 100 years old. It's not in a great state of repair, but I just can't see that as being a practical solution. Given that most people object about new developments and change, I can't see any motivation for them to do this to facilitate something that they'll probably ultimately object to. At our end of the road, there is a footpath on the far side only and no other real challenges apart from the wall. The road intensifies further along, away from our driveway, the road gets even narrower, the footpaths disappear and there are cars parked on the road on both sides. The road has a number of tricky driveways, many exit directly onto the road with no turning space and several already have convex traffic mirrors. Could this be a sensible solution to our problem?

Definitely no current TPO's on the address.

Interestingly, I was looking over other planning cases in the local area and noticed one for the felling of a couple of trees. The response from the council was that they wouldn't be looking to enforce retrospective TPO's, so the homeowner in that case was free to remove the trees. Was that person just being over-cautious by applying for permission to remove non-protected trees?

Or just offer the buyers £500/year to give us the readings? Maybe that'll be easier for them to understand? Even if they don't want to keep it forever, we could cash in for a little while at least?

This all sounds very exciting. Can't wait for the onslaught of home-selling problems. We honestly thought this would be our 'forever home', then the opportunity to buy a piece of land crept up on us. Our place was done up from absolutely derelict to a pretty high standard and most of the work by us, it was a labour of love, so it'll be heart-breaking to hear people pulling it apart.

It's a sad waste, but I guess it's life and something we need to come to terms with. I guess I was half-expecting it to add nothing, but I wasn't expecting it to be detrimental!! I'm not overly scared of taking it off if I have to.

We were fairly early PV Feed-in tariff adopters, so we're on the big (circa 50p/kwh) rate. We're earning upwards of £2000/year from it in feed-in payments at the moment and have about 17 years left on the contract (I'd need to check paperwork for exact details). Everything can be evidenced, so let's assume £34k of remaining profit for the sake of argument. So, now we're looking to sell the house to fund our self-build and, as far as I understand, can transfer the tariff to the new owners, it'd be good to understand if there's a rule-of-thumb about how much value it might add?

We're at 'blank sheet of paper' stage. I'm certain, once we select an architect, this will all start to fall into place, but it's good for me to start the cogs turning. Thanks for your input.

Thanks so much for that reply. You're right about the shortfalls in our current property. It was built in the 1920's, we had cavity wall insulation installed a few years back, but I'm dubious of it's coverage and effectiveness. I also dropped a major design blunder with the hot water circuit. I've learnt from my mistakes though!