Alan Ambrose

+1 Ask them to check with their accountant. They usually have one for income tax and VAT returns.

Yeah, if it’s too narrow for several people to sit out on with drinks, then it’s ‘not fit for purpose’ 😄

OK, I’ll say it: The council, by and large, can’t control what planting schemes house owners have for any housing except for new builds. By and large, bigger developers, get away with turfing their buyers lawns. BBBUUUUTTTTT - new builds like ours get put through the wringer. Any of my neighbours ever had to submit a planting plan and promise to retain it for 5 years? Does the council have any control if my neighbours decide to paint their house purple or plant 200 leylandii or keep several broken down cars in their driveway? Total BS and should be outlawed by Labour in favour of less planning red-tape.

Unfactored, if I remember rightly, means no safety factor applied i.e. the actual calculated numbers. (Because, you only want one safety factor applied - if the timber frame guy applies a 2.5x safety factor and the foundation person applies 2.5x also, then you soon end up with something much stronger / heavier / more expensive than you need. ‘Dead’ is loading of construction materials, ‘live’ is assumed load from people, furniture, dancing, your grand piano etc - usually taken from NHBC assumptions. There’s also wind load, not listed there.

>>> the way they're implementing the self build exemption is outrageou Yeah, agree. The LPA fear is apparently something to do with people ‘pretending’ to self-build, getting the exemption, and then maybe selling the plot to a developer. Doesn’t make much sense to me as this will, by definition, only be for one house, and surely wouldn’t happen that often, and they could probably just deal with it with a simple clause in the PP.

>>> Would one find these on Autotrader? For me, eBay, Autotrader & Machinerytrader - but I know v. llttle about these things.

>>> Pure Carnot thermodynamics I haven't heard that word for .... 40 years since engineering school Knew it would come in useful one day - well it would if I could remember what it was about.

>>> Seems a warranty provider won't accept me doing my own drawings anyway I'm in the same position - possible to say who wouldn't accept that setup?

I only just twigged: it's the end of the tax year. So what? So, plant hire and owner operators are selling their old gear and have bought brand new stuff before the end of the tax year. That means there's a flood of 3-5 year old equipment on the market. Their finance deals are often 3 / 4 / 5 years and capital allowances for tax often incentivise companies to buy new stuff.

That’s because you’re on a mission, and they have all the time in the world. Those facts haven’t escaped them.

>>> I'll just end up with 150mm timber posts (probably oak) on steel brackets in concrete If oak, they probably want to be A4 stainless.

Very topical, I’ll be wrestling this detail in about 5 minutes… Resin anchor into side of slab? Also, it’s struck me that the fixing strips around the top and sides of the door could take some shear load - I think generally they just hold the door in place against wind loads etc.

If you decide to duct, make it larger than you think, min 50mm, preferably straight but definitely not crushed or with sharp bends. If it’s just lights, the smallest 1.5mm SWA: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index/Cable_Index/Armoured_SWA/index.html … will handle lots of lights together with, say, one outdoors socket. Have an extra slot in your consumer unit you can use?

There is an argument that an oversized heat pump may tend to cycle which is inefficient, so you may want to deliberately not have much headroom. Also, how many days are at -3C for 24h in Berkshire? - so there’s already some headroom built in. Ask them to re-run the calc (should take 2 minutes) for a more realistic cold day, to see how much real headroom you have?

>>> I can model with Therm and would be happy to save the cost, but I don't want to do all the work just to be rejected that I am not accredited. There’s the rub. If they won’t, then apart from general interest / investigating design options / double checking - there’s an option which says ‘if I’m going to be paying anyway, I might just as well let the ‘expert’ do it in the 1st place. @JohnnyB - yeah, can do. I’ll see if I can’t find the time to put up an example on here as well. Do have a simple example we can use as a test?

I’m guessing that CIL isn’t relevant here, otherwise there’s a CIL gotcha for ‘start one development and then reapply for something else’.

>>> Not just write some stuff that satisfies the planners That’s not what I was suggesting. The op is caught in a catch 22. I’m suggesting breaking the circular condition: 1 - design something convincing (best guess) that will let the planners tick their box and allow you to move on. 2 - do your demo and get the SI people to do their job. 3 - design your mitigation for real. 4 - if necessary, file an NMA with the planners detailing your new design and saying what you learnt from the SI. Common sense really. If you got the LPA, yourselves, and the SI team ‘down the pub’ for an undocumented conversation, this is the practical solution everyone would agree to.

Interesting, the text smacks of intentional legal BS. First off, did you actually send them something in October asking them to remove the line? Sounds like wayleaves department shadow boxing. Someone here on the hub found a 3rd party working on commission to negotiate with the DNO.

Hi, can ayone recommend a fire engineer? I have two things I need help on: For a small block of flats - risk consultancy re reduced risk following cladding work vs. backup genset and stairwell pressurisation system. For my single storey timber frame new build - plans check and recommendations for fire stopping detail etc.

For Therm you need to get the 2D CAD details of the junction into the package together with the thermal values of the components. Then you apply the boundary conditions (i.e. temperature) on the inside and outside of the structure. Run the calc and it’ll give you the heat flow across the junction. Now, you need to take the heat flow in the idealised junction used in your overall heat calcs. Subtract Therm’s number from the idealised number and you end up with the psi value - that is, the extra heat loss per linear metre of junction that you need to add to your idealised calc to cope with the actual junction details. Once you’ve got the hang of it, the hardest part is getting the CAD into Therm (either redraw in Therm or figure out how to transport DWG/DXF from wherever your drawings are now). The Therm UI is a bit basic but OK. It does produce some pretty pictures which are interesting and enable you to better understand how the junction is working thermally.

Is it possible to split the big dormer into smaller individual ones like the front? The it would ‘fit into the street scene’ better?

How about designing a best guess scheme that the LPA will approve. You can probably add a clause saying ‘subject to local ground conditions when excavation/SI is done’. Get your approval and crack on. Then redesign (and re-submit to the LPA if necessary) once detailed ground conditions are determined. In terms of the actual drainage problem - as others have said, water is going somewhere right now. It shouldn’t be impossible to figure out how that happens. Likewise, I’m guessing there are known mitigation measures for slip. Piles maybe?

Congrats, it must be very gratifying to make so much progress.

We’ve had a bunch of LPA inconsistencies on our various applications. Some of them are laughable. It seems each case officer is allowed to make it up as they go along - a lot of the decisions are based essentially on someone’s opinion, even though they’re wrapped up in the language of ‘policy’. Appeal is a route but plan on it taking 9 months for householder’s. The ‘consistency’ thing is large a myth IMO. Maybe set an appeal rolling but at the same time re-submit a v similar application but this time hassle the LPA management and get it pulled into committee. Good luck, you have our sympathy. p.s. we did eventually prevail on both our applications. Two elapsed years and a lot of energy wasted though.

I don’t know if it helps any (as they probably want an ‘expert’) but I didn’t find the freeware Therm hard to use.