Alan Ambrose

Anyone have any leads on passivhaus design detail examples for timber frame with basement. I have the 'Passive House Details' book but it only has a few not-very-relevant examples and I've got another couple of 'passivhause' books which are no help. Anyone used: Understanding Passivhaus: A Simple Guide to Passivhaus Detailing and Design £40 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Understanding-Passivhaus-Simple-Detailing-Design/dp/1916334326/ and/or Details for Passive Houses: New Buildings: A Catalogue of Ecologically Rated Constructions £80 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Passivhaus-Bauteilkatalog-OEkologisch-Konstruktionen-Ecologically-Constructions/dp/3035616868 - I'm interested in basement / sole plate / wall detail atm. Ta, Alan

>>> I don't think that a mechanism exists where the developer can be fined, other than for not complying with an enforcement notice. Well the LPA could probably 'invite' the developer to make a specific contribution / design changes in exchange for not having the building razed. Maybe that's what will happen. But it also means, in general, the UK needs to be more sophisticated with penalties and to stop having 'fragile' laws like CIL - where one slip means you get nailed. Life is complicated enough without the state deliberately (or stupidly) setting up mantraps. In this case, the planning deviation is undoubtedly deliberate rather than by mistake - in which case the developer should be punished. But it begs the question what the LPA were doing while the building was being built. "Asked why it did not act sooner, Greenwich said it was not until 2022, when building work was finally finished, that it became clear that the breaches to the planning permission were more than just external." Yeah, right. I'm sure the LPA will have demanded a big chunk of cash from the developer for planning and a regular review wouldn't have been out of order for a development this big. So I think the LPA takes at least 1/2 the blame. Maybe, by not challenging the build as it progressed, the developer even hoped that the LPA was tacitly agreeing.

Demolish is a very stupid solution if there’s not a great safety problem. The property is 80-90% OK and BC will have signed it off as a safe build. By all means fine the developer so much that they will never think of doing it again - say 3x the saving they made. Our society is getting dumb with it’s overly punitive ‘lose all your CIL benefits if you make a tiny paperwork error’ - style penalties. Sure, punish but don’t actually kill them. Also LPA’s are arrogant enough as it is.

You can raise an objection online at your LPA's planning portal (assuming it's still under discussion) citing overlooking, quote distances, identify which windows etc. You probably won't stop the development, but there's a good chance the planners will, at least, specify that the developers use opaque glass and/or non-opening windows in the right places.

FYI I’ve found I get much more informed service from Octopus phone rather than email.

https://www.planningportal.co.uk/services/weekly-planning-news/planning-news-21-september-2023 Planning fees to be varied after Lords amendment Local authorities can vary fees for planning applications to fit local circumstances after the House of Lords voted under an amendment to the levelling up and regeneration bill. The government had proposed to increase planning fees by 35 per cent for major schemes and by 25 per cent for all other applications. Earl Howe, deputy leader in the Lords, had warned peers that varying fees could discourage development and remove the incentive to “tackle inefficiencies” in the planning system. However, Baroness Pinnock, the Liberal Democrats’ levelling-up spokesperson in the Lords, said nationally set fees fail to take into account regional differences in costs and do not reflect the costs of dealing with very complex housing or commercial developments. “This national approach to fee-setting results in council taxpayers subsidising complex planning applications,” she said. “That cannot be right. “The stark fact is that 305 out of 343 local authority planning departments had a deficit totalling £245.4 million in 2020 and 2021. That is a huge sum, where council taxpayers are subsidising housebuilding developers, for example, who are well able to meet the costs of a planning application in full.” The amendment was carried by 181 votes to 148 after attracting cross-party support. The vote is the second significant defeat for the government in the Lords following last week’s rejection of ministerial plans to scrap nutrient neutrality rules. 18 September 2023 Huw Morris, The Planner

>>> sand or bead blasted +1 fairly messy but you can get contractors. I don't think oxalic will work over varnish - you can always try a small patch though.

Anyone done anything clever with Agile (the 1/2 hour, day-ahead pricing scheme)?

Anyone going? Anyone been before? Useful?

I guess this would be from ‘domestic curtilage’ to ‘agricultural land’ if it makes any difference.

Nice

Can I muckaway (for a basement) to my own land? Ta, Alan p.s. This is light-ish clay.

Ah sorry to be slow replying. FYI the detail was by troughton mcaslan and I know the balconies were a similar design on this particular building. The ‘children’s ladder’ is a concern although it obviously didn’t concern the bco at the time (about 30 years ago). Not I think a problem, I wasn’t meaning ‘exactly this design’ but these materials. However, the op seems to have vanished, and you have to ask ‘how would you get into the position of designing and building this without knowing what the balcony was going to look like?’

>>> Every one expects to have to pay a reasonable fee providing an architect can manage to drawer up a set of plans that will go through planning the first time round. The client shouldn't have to pay for versions 2, 3, 4 & 5 because the architect can't do his job properly. <<< I'm not sure I agree with that. You should generally get through planning first time given a reasonable site, with OK road access, within a settlement boundary, not near a 'heritage asset' - with a bog-standard design nearly identical to next door / the nearest house. However not all sites are like that and may have some planning challenges - and the risk is really an attribute of the site and on the owner, not the architect. If you were the original landowner, you may well have specified "minimum risk - just get me my pot of gold." Now the owner / builder may not want 'nearly identical to next door / the nearest house'. They may want to push the planning boundaries a bit in terms of size, position, style etc. Again the added risk will be down to the owner - if they're the ones that have pushed the architect away from the 'safest' design. A good architect will communicate the risk level and ensure the owner understands it and is happy with it and give them the choices up-front. And given that new plans / iterations take work, it's not unreasonable to pay for them. >>> And when he does the detailed drawings for building regulations it would be nice if the rsj shown was actually resting on something at the other end, instead of being supported by a sky hook. I think both architect and customer need to be clear about the architect's detailed design / structural skills. Again, there needs to be some conversation and thought about the how standard the construction is. Bog standard / within the architect's direct experience - the architect should be able to develop workable BC-style plans. Crazy zinc-clad this, carbon-fibre that, aerogel insulated, custom steel design etc etc etc. Clearly the risk is much higher and you'll need either an architect / SE combination that has direct experience of those exact methods or allow extra in the budget for mistakes / investigation / experimentation. It's the owner's / main contractor's job to understand the level of risk, where the key design uncertainties are, and manage and price accordingly. I guess what I'm getting at is risk, management and responsibilities - dull but important. It's key to understand and sort those out up-front. And there will probably always be some unexpected challenges that need to be sorted out tactically during the build.

Ah one solution would be to use s/s rigging (similar style to below). I like this stuff having done a lot of sailing when I was younger. You'll get maximum ventilation and it'll look minimalist. This is stainless steel 'rigging wire' with clamp on fittings. Proper yacht fittings look best IMO but are pricey. But if you design it right, you won't use many of them. I'd also use S/S tube rather than painted steel tube. Not that big of deal to get it welded if you need. Send a hand drawn sketch on the back of an envelope to a fabricator or two? Also, you have enough glass there already

If part of the objective is to get some ventilation, then covering half the opening with solid glass won't help that much. Would some kind of a minimalist maximally perforated screen of some sort appeal? Even glass with a bunch of big holes in it? Does it face west?

Well I agree with you for domestic. While the look of no pipes is good, anything buried in a wall or floor is a potential maintenance headache.

>>> I think we'll be going full-monty and 3-phasing the CU just for kicks. 😬 I think for general house stuff, single phase is good. Remember, we're trying to use less energy, and all our appliances are slowly getting more efficient. Sure 3P for potential car chargers, heat pumps etc. It slightly bothers me that there's potentially (see what I did there!) 400V between any two line conductors in the house, and I do have 3P in a domestic situation.

@saveasteading >>> pretty much all commercial buildings and blocks of flats etc have the rain water pipes on the inside. >>> Errrm....no. I guess I was thinking of office commercial buildings rather than industrial: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=563740992&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBGB689GB689&q=office+building&tbm=isch&source=lnms https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=563740992&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBGB689GB689&q=apartment+building&tbm=isch&source=lnms Maybe there's some height where external doesn't work for some reason.

Openreach are taking the pi55 with me. I sent them the standard block plan which, of course, has been through 9 levels of LPA validation. (there are 5 houses in this post code...) "We can't see where this is..." "Yeah, maybe the post code or the easting/northing pair, or the road name, the names of the nearby buildings, the plot outline in red maybe?" "We can't see where this is..." So, I take the admin through the block plan on the phone pointing out where each of these pieces of information can be found on the electronic paper. "Maybe you could just type the postcode or the easting/northing into Google maps?" "No we can't do that." "We can't see where this is..."

I get the conventional logic of rain water pipes on the outside for single dwellings. But, it occurred to me recently that pretty much all commercial buildings and blocks of flats etc have the rain water pipes on the inside. So, there's really no reason that internal pipes can't work great. Sure, iron pipes rather than cheap plastic, but yes, that works.

@kandgmitchell If you follow the links, you'll see that 27 weeks is the median, these graphs give as indication of the spread: https://appealfinder.co.uk/Planning-appeal-success-rates-and-timescales.n48.html Here is the list of the dodgiest LPAs - i.e. the ones that lose the highest % of appeals: https://appealfinder.co.uk/LPAs-with-the-worst-planning-appeal-success-rates-in-2022-23.n61.html I'm not sure how appealfinder gets this data, presumably they have a deal with the appeals portal. Or they may just scrape the data from the ACP search facility. There's also meant to be a new government system coming up, with the old one (ACP) closing down, see: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-appeal-a-planning-decision-service-streamlines-and-enhances-the-process - but I couldn't actually see a link to the new system anywhere. Ah, apparently only Hillingdon and Bradford LPAs are testing it.

My shed / workshop has damp course, insulation, flooring. electrics, lighting, internet and a fan heater for the winter. It's still a shed though and BC didn't enter my mind. I could play darts in it, but it would take me two weeks to tidy it up enough to make space.

Very stylish. Oak? Who did you get to design / make them?

Hmmm, prefer centred on the sockets. The good news is, you won't notice either way after 5 minutes.