Alan Ambrose

OK apologies if there was a mis-communication. My thoughts, hopefully a bit clearer: + I think Ubiquiti kit is good but I believe U6 Pro is described as ‘indoor’ i.e. prob not waterproof. Poss to cover area from indoors - I don’t quite get the scale of your drawing but I’m imagining max coverage 5-10m? + my pref is to run PoE cable to everything possible and avoid wifi except for mobile / occasional devices for the reasons mentioned. + from memory cat5 signals are a fraction (50%?) of the speed of light so local cable length is irrelevant. Any delays will be software / wifi authentication / round trips over the internet to China etc. + the Reolink PoE doorbell is about £100 with no ongoing charges. I don’t get why you would use cat5 for power and not for signal, if I understood you correctly. + there are some phone apps that will let you temporarily position an ap and then measure the signal at the places where you need it. + any cable route is good where it works installation-wise for ease of routing / avoidance of damage etc. I probably wouldn’t have the cable sitting in water if I could avoid it, just because of long term permeability of the sheathing. Hope that helps.

Err, not possible to run cat5, armoured if you like, with PoE? No need for battteries and no problem with wifi signal.

You take a bit of a leap of faith - not warranted for either of my accounts right now. I did get ‘hello’ to check that they could in theory change my dumb 3P meter for a smart 3P before moving. It took 3 months and multiple and fairly firm prompting on my part, but they did at least accomplish that - something that Eon were incapable of doing.

>>> I have been with Octopus for my last house and this one and can’t fault them for customer service and reasonable prices, >>> I have 3P and am on Octopus but they can’t/ won’t offer me a 3P smart meter so I can’t change to any of the more appropriate tariffs. 😞 I have had Octopus fit a 3-phase smart meter - it took about 3 months. OTOH I am getting no sense at all from Octopus support - to the extent I'm suspecting there's just a bot at the other end. For instance, they won't let me sign up to any of their smart tariffs, even though they have installed a smart meter...

>>> Alan contact Andrew Read (andrew.reid@suffolk.gov.uk), until recently he was our local councillor, taken over by Sally Noble, but she's not been to any meeting yet so don't know her yet. Thanks, Jill.

Depends on how much competition in your area, but here (in East Suffolk) it is effectively sales value of planned building (say, £4-4.5K per m^2. for a swish place) minus build cost (say, £3k per m^2). That is, negating pretty much any profit you might make. It may be better in Yorkshire. There's a bit of subtlety you can add e.g. stamp duty you won't have to pay for an equivalent property, price inflation between the time you buy the plot and the time the house is build. But that's fiddling around the edges. Maybe look at any plots you see advertised in your area over the last 2 or 3 years. Check plot price vs. size of building with planning permission. Analyse.

Yeah, EPDM roof on ply, insulation to taste. Super waterproof and probably 30 year life.

Electric under floor is good because it is quick to heat up. It's great sitting on a lot of insulation and it's easy to fit smart controls. It may depend on how often it is used. In my workshop which has OK, not great, insulation, but where I'm fairly active and thus like a lower temperature, I just have a wall mounted fan heater on a smart control. Works fine. I use it maybe 30% and don't notice any particularly high bills. The fan heater only gets use in the 3 winter months anyway.

FYI I'm getting random nonsense back from Octopus 'hello' email address. In fact I suspect it's been chatbotted.

If it any consolation, I have the same problem with East Suffolk LPA.

I ordered £1.5K of green oak from UK Timber https://www.uk-timber.co.uk/ during Covid, worked out OK.

>>> A re-build requires a Full application. I sand corrected...

Actually just remembering back to when I scraped off my own Artex - well the bumpy bits at least: It was all really the lumps / stringy bits that came off - there was next to no dust. It's the dust if anything that'll get into your lungs, the lumps certainly wouldn't - well unless you try to snort it.

Maybe a polite informal chat with them? You still want them to do snagging and maybe other jobs in the future. Politely suggest a compromise based on the various parties actual costs?

>>> is there anything proactive I can do I think the practical answer to this is 'no'. That may sound like cold comfort, but I'm sure you'll agree there's little point in worrying about stuff you can't control now after the fact. FWIW I think the risk is low. I remember scraping some Artex ceilings 30 years ago, and I had no idea it contained asbestos. It doesn't worry me and I concentrate on other risks I can control, like when I'm up a ladder or driving or drinking whisky. (I seldom do all three at the same time, for instance).

>>> In areas that have got the issue sorted you have to buy "credits". Is that related to RAMS 'Recreational Avoidance Mitigation Contribution Payment' or is that different? >>> if you drop down dead you can't live in the house for the 3 years needed to keep the exemption. I guess 'not your problem' at that point

There are some automatic fire extinguishers which might be worth investigating too.

Traditional oak framing joints + dowels or A4 stainless coach bolts if you want it to look more contemporary. Your design looks like it's halfway to traditional joints already. They don't have to be millimeter perfect - this is rustic green oak right. Robin Clevett has a video or two on YT showing a little bit of green oak work he did.

>>> nutrient neutrality issue Well that's a new one on me. Bats, newts, archaeology, contamination, heritage, flooding, SUDS, access, materials, sustainability, trees, ecology, design, overlooking, noise, solar gain, ventilation etc etc etc ... but nutrients ?

Swings and roundabouts - materials are expensive but coming down in price a bit, contractors are getting a bit more reasonable and more available. Maybe the major factor is availability of good plots in the area you have in mind. It can take an age to find the right plot, and then an age to get planning for the thing you want - anywhere from a year to say 5 years, depending. Also, you have to balance the normal value of your time against the cost of contractors. It's unlikely you will have enough time and energy to make much of a difference if you have a full time job at the same time. Some basic calcs may help you decide - typical cost of plot in your area plus, say, £1.5 - 2.5K per m^2 build cost, depending. Are you in the right ballpark?

>>> Would you wait for the current plans to be approved, then make a new app? Would the answer be any different if the design was identical? <<< You might ask your LPA informally - they may accept as a non-material change once the original is approved. Also the answer might change if they think they might approve or refuse the original application. Planning approval is really about the eternal look and feel, size, style etc so if the rebuild is going to look the same as the renovation then pretty much the same plans will be involved. You don't say how much longer you expect it to take for your original application to get a result - that would be an important factor, of course. If you're 100% decided to do the rebuild and you only just submitted the original application, then you might as well submit a new application in parallel. They run independently - at least in principle.

The beauty of oak is that it weathers to a silver colour and doesn't need any treatment. It's quite acidic - you need to use stainless fixings, A4 rather than A2 if it's not too expensive. I like to do things only once - so I used oak for our raised beds etc. If you paint then you'll be painting every few years, but if you insist then I would use Bedec 'Barn Paint'.

OK just to report back - for anyone else needing these kind of services. I used these guys: https://www.fiverr.com/quark_visuals - and they we're professional and reasonably priced. I was careful to write a 8-page brief specifying my objectives and the exact viewpoints and another 7-page brief on materials (lots of images in both of these). They were careful to do quick mock-up images to verify the content / viewpoints etc which I thought was professional. I supplied the CAD models from Fusion (actually in sketch-up format) and the block plan drawings for positioning. The objective wasn't to make the whole thing 100% photo realistic (actually better so the split between what is rendered and what is original image is clear) but to demonstrate what the casual viewer would see looking at our proposed build in relation to the farmhouse 'heritage asset'. There was a bit of flexibility on both sides - I asked them to add a driveway and adjust some colours and I put up with some small image artifacts (which are inevitable with this kind of image manipulation). I chose to build on top of Google street view images (which were fortunate as they were taken on a sunny day). These are not the best quality, but it does allows the LPA to verify the images. Here's the kind of thing - our proposed building is on the left:

>>> or just put in some simple plans for pre-app discussion. Of course, if these look graphically attractive, that helps - everyone's human after all. Maybe a discussion/pre-app about the principle with the LPA with a simple plan (i.e. from above) plus 3D elevation made as an outline only shown with a white line. You can probably draw on top of Google street view images. (Not just a squiggle as above, a reasonable accurate outline.) Listen carefully, if they'll talk to you (some LPAs won't). Then if they don't hate the idea, submit a good quality render / plans taking care to observe any guidelines they give. Probably as a full application.

I was going to say I thought it looked good as it is