Alan Ambrose

For anyone following along at home, I'm finding 2023 daily fee rates are: Partners/Directors £1,240 Associates £920 Other Chartered Planners £680 Which if you assume an 8-hour day is £155 / £115 / £85 per hour. This compares to the solicitors rates:

3 water strikes plus standing water at the surface - no indication how much. Surprising to get standing water in July, but maybe it just rained. Standard Penetration Test value of 7 at 1.6m? Cone Penetration Test value of 50 at 4.3m? Surprised to see both in the same bore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_penetration_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_penetration_test So suggest v. soft @ 1.6m, quite hard at the thin sandstone layer. I think you need to just get on and either run a proper SI or use a digger as suggested and/or ask local BC and/or engage an SE. There's only so much you can accomplish sitting at a desk. Personally I would do the last three to start with. You find out in a matter of minutes what's going on down there with a digger. Even better if you have BC or SE there while you dig. Doesn't preclude geting proper bearing numbers / particle size analysis / shrinkage / chemical analysis using an SI later, but gives you a good clue what's going on with groundwater and you also get a rough idea how firm the ground is. What founds are you thinking of? Strip?

Great views, very nice. Yes, I assumed you were designing in longhouse style.

>>> My only concern is storage Nice design. Looks like you have ample room for a big shed once you've filled up the loft space in the garage. 😀 Put up a picture of the view to make us jealous?

>>> screws are screwed, rather than hammered I've seen my dad use something he called a 'brummie screwdriver' (i.e. a hammer) to sink screws most of thier length. And he won a few prizes for the wooden sailing dinghies he made.

Personally, for the hassle factor I would always go Plasson. You will find that as soon as you get away from bog standard fittings (and 32mm is just starting to get non-standard) that the prices vary wildly - so you need to shop around and ask for discounts and be prepared to order on-line and wait. This isn't B&Q stuff anymore.

Yeah something like that - you're just ensuring that any water runs off. Usually no need to hold down, just do something subtle with a leadworkers mallet. Re the flue - you don't say which make it is, but they usually clip together with an airtight seal, very simple. Check the stove instructions - the outlet is usually sealed to the flue with rope and special 'rope glue' e.g. https://www.solidfuelappliancespares.co.uk/product-category/spares-accessories/stove-sundries-accessories/door-rope-seal-kits/ A CO monitor, smoke test etc and you're done. This kind of work is notifiable to BC if it's not done by a hetas person.

Well congrats

My vote would be replace with EPDM - but we’re a bit short of details. Size, pitch, complexity? A picture always helps.

FYI there is a record low in both planning applications & planning approvals - so how are they overworked? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn034n47528o

>>> I'm now stuck, as I don't know precisely what investigations to commission and how to scope these. What would you guys do? Ask the SEs (who are still at presales stage) to advise? Contact some geotechnical companies and ask them? Something else?? <<< An SE will spec your GI for you for a smallish fee, say £250. Check yourself that it seems to make sense.

>>> You need to play nicely. Yeah, our neighbours did - and their non-contentious application took the LPA a year. By which time the economics of what the neighbours were planning had changed for the worse and so having gained permisssion now, they don't intend to use it.

>>> Appealing to the inspectorate for non-determination means a guaranteed delay of about six months though. Actually a year. I have seen before an informal appeal used to the case officer's boss - the org chart of your LPA is probably published like ours is. Another avenue is the councillor for your area - if anything like ours, that person and their contact details is shown on your planning application on your LPA's portal. An increasingly common problem I think, let us know how you get on.

That’s odd. Ours puts out so much heat we often have to open the windows to cool the place down. We’re fairly tiny at 85 m^2 though. We’re an EPC E on paper, although it’s possible we’re actually a C or D. This is a Rais Viva 100L. Pretty much the only heating we use.

>>> I'm perplexed as to why all the SEs I've spoken to so far seem to be being so very cautious Well, looks like it's quite soft going to 2m or so. The problem is that your ground may not be exactly the same as the ground 85m away. Your soft layer could be at 1m or 4m. Which it is, is important, of course. The route of the storm drain may also be an indication of extra water local to your plot. So, you probably need at least a couple of bores / digs near your proposed foundations. The alternative is to just start digging your foundation trenches and be prepared for BC to say 'you need to go down another metre or two' or to have to order in an expensive pump on the fly.

FYI, there’s no problem adding more than 4 materials with the free version.

BTW you can have quite large faults in timber due to shrinkage that don't affect the strength much. It's all crazily oversized anyway, that's the joy of it, for me at least.

Some tarmac in bags from a cheap DIY store and a welly boot?

OK then there are two problems: (1) the 'engineering problem' of how do you make the roof & veluxes work, and (2) how to get that solution implemented in a sensible way without impacting the warranties. Those are (kind of) parallel problems in that can be solved independently. Question is: whose responsibility was/is it to solve the engineering problem and does any of that responsibility fall on him? On you? Someone else? Was there any written agreement? Has no one seen this coming up in advance i.e. there were not some SE drawings to build to which included this detail? In terms of getting him to be more tractable, maybe a warning shot letter from a solicitor suggesting that it was 'obvious' that the roof and veluxes needed to work together (or include terms from the agreement) and/or suggest 'poor workmanship' if you feel you can justify it. Suggest it would be better for everyone if you worked together to solve the engineering problem. Ask him why it is that he has never encountered this situation with roof and veluxes before? Is he inexperienced? Tell him he doesn't get his final payment until the problem is solved and/or if he doesn't help to solve the problem you will appoint an expert to solve it at his expense. Tread as softly as you can but make make it obvious you carry a big stick. Maybe a third party to help solve the engineering problem - most of this isn't rocket surgery after all? Post up some images / drawings here?

Oh dear, that's disappointing. Suggest first sitting down with them to see whether the problem can be resolved. Start off by saying you would prefer not to have a time consuming and expensive conflict. Is it obvious what practical change needs to happen? - cutting slots out for the hinges, for instance? If so, you can discuss how to get that done without breaking the paperwork. The warranties are probaby worthless except to make a mortgage company or later buyer happy, so I would focus on the above - how can the required physical changes be made with them still providing their standard warranty? You can also very subtly hint on the bad reviews you're likely to post ('I would like to be able to post some good reviews') - that means a lot to all businesses these days. p.s. I would definitely hold the final payment until you have a solution at hand and has been implemented. Presumably this could be as simple as a some careful multitool work and (a) agreed in advance and then (b) signed off ... by whoever is installing the veluxes.

>>> if i get a positive response and then they go on to actually refuse the application surely that would be outrageous We had two pre-apps: one by the previous owner of the plot. One said simply ‘can we build a 1.5 storey?’ (There was already permission for a single storey.) Answer was ‘yes’. Seems the LPA significantly hardened their attitude over time. The single storey application had a single line in the design & access statement re the relationship to the ‘heritage asset’ farmhouse about 75m away. That was deemed sufficient by the heritage guys. For our later applications, the LPA demanded extensive heritage statements - this is for the same plot. Our 1.5 storey design was thrown out for the reason ‘too big’. This, without explanation of what would be an appropriate size and an extensive analysis by us of all the dwellings in the cluster, some of which are 1.5 storey and an 1.5 application has been approved next door. The second pre-app had our single storey design. This time the LPA didn’t like the idea that the building wasn’t positioned exactly parallel to the road, despite the fact that we explained that this was to ensure minimum south facing exposure for solar gain but maximum effective PV generation through the day. The LPA has a specific policy to support this approach re orientation to the sun. Also there are 4 hotch-potch barns next door with different orientations, heights, shapes, roof slopes etc and we would just be seen as part of this set-up. Many, many months later, the same case officer tells us he wants to approve this same design that he ‘turned down’ at pre-app. Nevertheless, the LPA then argued against this design at appeal with some spurious arguments that the inspector then threw out. So, that’s two flip flops. I’m pretty sure we’ll end up building that design after resubmitting it. This is not pre-app but similar. For our present barn conversion, heritage told the developer ‘knock it down if you want to, it has no heritage value’. The developer ended up converting the existing barn. Trying to get our PD rights re-instated, the LPA argued ‘it was important that they had control, so they could preserve its historic barn-like qualities’. Yeah, right. Note that you are unlikely to get any explanation or apology for any change of in LPA’s view. I think as they know there’s no come back then the LPA’s give the pre-apps to junior people and they spend no time on them at all - they’re probably the least important bit of work they do and a small money earner if they can knock them out quick. The LPAs care not a jot that you may expend considerable resource based on their advice, but are happy to change their mind on a dime without any expectation that they will need to explain or justify their change of opinion. So, I will now always opt for full applications - at least the results of those are ‘material’ (i.e. you can argue the LPA’s present decisions should be consistent with their past ones.) Whereas pre-apps are not. Now I think that there is great randomness and variation between LPAs and even between case officers at the same LPA. So, you can also be lucky or unlucky at the amount of real communication and the veracity of the advice/decisions. That is, pre-apps are a complete crap-shoot random number generator imo.

Isn't it odd that all the 'rules' seem to be written in favour of the landowners

See 'doublespeak': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak George Orwell saw this coming in 1949, clever guy. He told us how it works and we said 'hey, that seeks a good idea'.

FYI these kind of companies often have quotas of various kinds of customer & risk to balance their portfolios. When they have reached the quota of one type, they'll downplay it until the others risks (in terms of monetary volume) have caught up a bit. That way they keep their portfolios how they want them.

These are fees from the mortgage company's solicitors? In conveyancing terms, they're not that high nowadays. These'll probably be in-house guys. The biggest element is the search pack and they're looking for things that might impact your build and therefore reduce their security - covenants etc. To that extent, the searches are in your interest even though you may already be sure there's no problem there. Computer says they have to check. I don't think you have any option apart from from talk to a different mortgage provider, and the competitor's fees probably won't be any different. Like the mafia, just a cost of doing business nowadays ..