Alan Ambrose

I was given something by aldi or lidl with a cable. Cheap I'm sure but it easily does the job twice a year. I guess a battery version would be easier and maybe less dangerous to use. For the plot I bought a petrol combi pole thingy which is great fun. Properly expensive and noisy and not that easy to start, but there's about 160m of hedges and some were 4m high.

Yeah planning was a PITA for me too. We bought a plot with planning on and wanted to change the design for something much more sympathetic with the area. It took 2 years to get permission, via a bunch of planning cul-de-sacs ... for the the thing we first thought of. So, I'm now a couple of years older and I've lost a bunch of enthusiasm trying to push something simple uphill with a bunch of unelected, impractical, difficult people who love to say no ... trying to slow you up or stop you at every point. A big part of the problem is the '20 questions' nature of planning rather than a dialogue. For instance, a late added condition for us was a particular design of entranceway to a standard design by the LPA. We're on a single-track road so we could never get delivery vehicles past this standard entranceway design without driving over the soft verges. Could we radius it more to avoid this problem? Well ... we refuse to answer you - you need to submit an NMA. Is it an animal? Does it have 4 legs? etc

Wow, looks v neat.

Ah, picture paints 10,000 words. Thanks. Is it a PITA to get your battens spaced so they suit both the tiles and the trays? I've looked at the GSE docs and they make it look v hard.

>>> or mounted behind/under the panels. @Dillsue - so you can fit optimisers with in-roof trays OK? Or were you talking about on-roof at that point?

At the risk of being controversial - woodburners & gas boilers are good for heating up a place quick. Heat pumps and UFH are good at being on for long periods and heating things up slowly but being more ecological.

>>> A) He gets somebody to draw up a bill of quantities e.g. a quantity surveyor i.e. QS. You can, of course buy in QS services quite cheaply. You send them the detailed drawings, the QS does their bit, and you get quantities and cost estimates. >>> B) He measures the drawings him / her self and adds 10%. Hopefully a bit more subtle than that … depending on material / ability to source small top up quantities / fungibility (how similar materials with the same SKU actually are). e.g. for bricks & tiles you might want to slightly over order rather than risk a new batch with a subtly different shade.

Neat the way the thermal camera show what's going on...

@Russell griffiths Why sir, you'll need to fill in a DB form in triplicate and send the yellow copy to Slough: Your property boundaries: Apply to record the exact boundary - GOV.UK

Stick build a non-structural truss inside and wood fibre? EWI if your PP will allow it?

Anyone have any clever tips for reading the Land Registry's title and plan docs? When looking at a few titles in an area, I'm finding: - missing and incomplete docs (e.g. a title and no plan) (e.g. title refers to 'the area in pink' and there is no area on the plan in pink or vv) - incomplete history (I can see the current title docs but not the history before that) - little detail on easements and covenants (e.g. I can often see there is a covenant but usually not what the covenant is) Is this just the state of the world? Do you get a more thorough service through the business portal?

I think it’s unlikely to get separate PP as the LPA were v specific re ancilliary usage. No harm in trying but do you have the elapsed time to wait for PP and maybe to take to appeal? That is, can you wait or do you need to move sooner? If this is a reasonably sized plot, you could carve it off under a separate title, sell your current place and apply for PP on the carved off plot at your leisure. The NPPF changes may help - you probably need to ask a local planning consultant for a view. Lastly, I hate them, but you could sell all with an overage condition.

You can buy oak plugs off the shelf for this purpose, never looked for cedar ones. Otherwise google ‘plug cutter’.

If you asked a 5-year old to game BNG, wouldn’t they just tell you to ensure there is minimum B before you send in your planning application? Cut everything back to short grass etc?

As @Nickfromwales says, attention to the insulation both during and after use will work wonders. You should be able to do a simple heat loss calc and therefore heat pump sizing fairly easily. Ditto humidity.

Nice to meet everybody.

Seems a lot of LPAs are paranoid that lots of self-builders are faking it and don’t intend to self-build at all. (Their fear makes no sense to me at all.) Hence the hokey methods to try and plug the torrent gushing through this potential raging hole in the BNG dyke.

Well there’s a bunch of info here on BH on basements and a few members who have successfully built them. All good stuff and worth reading. Actually I don’t think I’ve seen a thread here where the basement build was a disaster. Having said that, basements in general, and watertight basements in particular are just not that common in the UK as they are, in say, Germany. So there just are not that many people in the UK with the skills - and therefore basement builds are somewhat riskier here. I happen to know that Glatthaar has 7 big factories churning out prefab basements in Germany - so they must be doing something right.

That's my guys . One on the rake. And one standing and one digger driver watching . V helpful content though guys. @Nick Laslett - what did you source for MOT3? - I'm not finding local suppliers.

@Nick Laslett great, that makes 6.

Great. Table is in my name, see you later. I think we’re 5 but the table will take 8. Look for a short oldish guy with white hair. I’m sure it had colour before I started with planning.

Agree with @G and J and if you’ve ever spent a few hours of your life trying to figure which xxxxx cable is which, you might agree.

To cover at least some of the downside that could happen during the build - fire, theft and probably injury.

Keep the faith. The decision still needs to be based on planning rules grounds. There’s some recent discussion on here about prep for the committee. Still v useful if the officer comes out with a positive report to brief the meeting.

This is only my amateur's view (I'm an amateur at pretty much everything): >>> Is this something we do, or are we better off using the planning consultant? Suggest going to planning meetings asap to get a feel for how they work. Contact your local councillor as ask for their support. If your councillor / case officer is at the next meeting, introduce yourself. My pref was to do this in a low key manner. The case officer then gave me an update (even though I didn't ask for one) and I thanked him for his work on the application. He also saw me talking to the councillor I just introduced myself to her (we had already exchanged a few emails) and said I wasn't going to bend her ear at that meeting :). I sent them both emails beforehand so to look out for me. There are some here on BH who espouse getting to grips with your local micro-politics. Say hello to the case officer's boss if they're there (they probably will be). Be charming :). While I favour DIY for everything ... I'm thinking planning consultant / architect - as they will stick to the planning issues and they already have a relationship with many decision makers in the room. >>> I have not seen any request for amendments in any of the consultee responses. Maybe this was just a stalling tactic, or maybe he's expecting some conditions from say, the ecology people, highways etc. >>> chance would be a fine thing Yeah, seems 99% are nimbys. They will probably either nominate one of their group to talk or if they're rich/influential find a consultant to talk for them. They may miss the point. One of the applications I watched, the locals made a big deal about access & deliveries - this is in a busy seaside market town. This was obviously their application-killer. Well good point, I thought. Case officer, piped up with 'yeah it's a problem anyway in the town, nothing new, and BTW the applicants already have access for deliveries anyway, so we can't take that away...'. Even better point! Objections blown away.