Alan Ambrose

This is for the connection?

It’s not impossible to have a garage in front of the principal elevation, of course. It might help if the garage doesn’t look ugly. We just got planning including that. It wan’t really possible to do anything else much as the plot is long and narrow. The previous permission also had a car port in front of the house. Run it by your LPA? If you look around your local area you might find a bunch of examples to show the LPA.

This unethical use by LPAs of CIL law (or interpretation) has to stop. Government should be setting an example on ethics, not racing the private sector to the ‘now you’re f….d’ bottom. This makes the dodgy parking enforcers, the seedier part of the insurance industry, the people who sold detached houses as leasehold, and the guys installing flammable cladding in high rises … look like saints.

Congrats

You could double check by putting similar assumptions into Jeremy’s spreadsheet?

I think someone else on here found a 3rd party negotiator working on commission. Is that a route?

Are there not examples on your LPA's portal? There are on mine.

Which reminds me ... I was going to put a pressure guage below mine so I could at least keep an eye on the pressure of the water side.

Probably ok then. Would be interesting to measure tho.

I wonder how important the compensating charge pressure is? I’m thinking that if the water & air pressure are v different the bladder will be stretched to ….y. And we all know what that feels like. It probably shortens its life. I’m thinking a lot of these get installed with the factory 3 bar precharge - which could be way off.

>>> In economics, as opposed to accountancy, if you get your expected return on capital investment i.e. 6%, then it does not matter what happens to any excess. I’ve never come across an investor, who although planning for a 6% return wouldn’t happily take a 9% return.

I said I would report back from the planning meeting. Firstly, it was personally useful as I said hello to our planning officer who I had only communicated with by email (he, by coincidence presented the first two applications on the agenda) and also the councillor for our area who had called-in a couple of the applications. The layout was interesting, with the councillors in a big horseshoe and the 'public' squeezed into a small rectangle. There was a small table for the 'public' to speak from with all the councillors and relevant planning officers bearing down on them. The planning officer spent an age going through each application showing a dozen or more drawings and photos, walking through the history etc, and doing a reasonable job of summarising the LPA's position and the issues at hand. The councillors were an interesting lot. Some said nothing at all, some reacted a bit to the officer's presentation, some were chummy with the planning officers, one sat apart and only had a list of pre-prepared points on a couple of the applications. Some of the 'public' spoke - an architect and a planning consultant speaking for some of the applications and a bevy of town council / posh residents / hired consultants obviously co-ordinated over their objections. As it was getting late, I left after 3 hours and 3 applications, but the meeting was sure to on for another hour or more. Pretty much as expected, but interesting all the same. I'm still not sure of the process for getting an application called-in.

I’m not done yet, but have the same impression that I have to back the LPA into such a tight corner that they have no alternative. They’re still not acting like an organisation that is going to be influenced by what a mere appeals inspector has already put on paper or anything their own employees have said in the past.

I really like our current barn conversion and that’s one of the big reasons. There’s a sense of airiness and generosity (if you don’t mind me slipping into designer-speak) that you don’t get from 2.4m rooms with flat ceilings. I agree that changing light bulbs is a bit hard, but I have a tall stepladder for that. It was 5 years or so before I bought it because a couple of the LED bulbs had failed. You get the same sense from grand houses with their high ceilings and big windows & doors.

>>> flash steam plant for a car There's a guy in Norfolk that my dad used to know who had a steam car with amazing accelaration. I believe he built it himself. I did see it once briefly, but don't remember much about it.