Indy

£112k for skylights and glazing seems quite excessive I have to say! Unless they are full PH spec, 3G with solar film etc etc.

Welcome to the forum and your criteria looks very similar to what I had in mind when we started our search - 4+ years ago. What you're going to find is finding properties that haven't been maxed out already in London with the potential for space that you're after (in effect trying to double the floorspace) are very few and far between. Most of them have already been extended and the best shot would be a probate sale where an owner has lived in a property for several years but didn't need to extend as the family had left etc etc. The architect rule of thumb is not too far off - but it really depends on where you are as a lot of places with a proper London postcode will have a London premium also applied to them. £5k/sq may be a bit toppy but the number is definitely between £2.5k - £5k somewhere, based on the extent of work and the level of finish you go for. If you multiply that by the number of sq m you want to add - you're already somewhere between £250 and £500k. At that level, it becomes easier to just build a 200sq m house from scratch at about £2k/sq m (save the VAT)- which would be newer, more thermally efficient and designed just the way you want it to be. And the cost to do the work has shot up massively over the last 4-5y, especially since COVID. With the recent market adjustments, I've found that its actually cheaper in most cases to buy properties that area already done up.

This is a good shout as I'm in the process of finalising the bathroom design on mine and had missed off adding UFH and the towel rads are currently fed off the ASHP. Will go back and incorporate these changes. We've also got a lot of glazing in our design though I'm loathe to change that - it all looks so pretty!

Ok, just had a better look at ours and it’s closer to £22k than £21k, but it does include tiling all the way through all of the rooms and a wet room floor in the 3 bath rooms as well.

The initial post indicates that it already has planning so I'm sure these things would have been considered already?

In the process of getting bathroom designs and quotes and we've had the 1st one come through. £21k for 3 bathrooms (all 3 have showers, 1 has a bath and shower) and a guest WC. This is parts only. I don't know if this is too low or too high but it doesn't include installation. Do I get an installer from the bathrooms company or would this be something the main contractor would be able to do as part of the larger overall build? Also - the brands listed in there are new to me and not the usual ones I see in high street shops - AVA, Faeber, Vado, Kaldewei. Are these any good or any recommendations on brands?

This looks fantastic and I'm going to go the opposite direction and say why not build the space if you can afford to. Whether you need 13k+ sq feet is debatable but I'm all for space. The other points already raised also ring true - if you can afford to build a house of this house, then its unlikely you'll be living in a static caravan for 2 years especially with kids in tow. Also, I would want a specialist concrete builder doing the E2E project management on this rather than risk taking parts of it on yourself. Sounds like a lot of structural elements to consider and be done right. Following the thread with interest.

So you were right on this point - the quote came through yesterday and it's £1530 + VAT. The quote did come through with the VAT added to make it £1800ish though a follow up phone call from them sorted that out. This is only for the original movement to the outside kiosk, and the movement back inside the house would be a different task and quoted for separately. I did ask if there's a way to reduce the cost if we do all the work (which we are already in terms of digging the trenches etc) and the lady said we could use an Independent Connection Provider. Have others used this and does it work out cheaper? One comment to add - fairly impressed with the speed and customer service from UKPN. Both the surveyor and the person sending the quotes through have been nothing but helpful and quick to turn things around.

Apologies if this is an obvious question - but would this show up on a drainage search from when we bought the property? Or a separate call to Thames Water to find out the location of drains on our plot? This is what I have though this doesn't show any details for lines running under the plot.

What can I do at this stage for the drainage planning and finding out where the sewers are? I assume the builder will do the relevant checks before starting to dig up the foundations but if I can help with some planning earlier, I might as well.

Thanks - waiting to receive the quote via email and hopefully it will come in lower than the rough £2k he mentioned while on site. One more question - do I provide the cable or is that provided by the utilities company? As for 3ph, yeah - that's what he said. None of the other houses in the area were 3ph. I guess if the difference is £4k vs £5.5k - then it might be something I do to future proof. But if its £4k vs £8k - harder to justify. He did say that you can get a second feed to the property so a 3ph is not the only solution. Noted, especially the point re airtightness. So all we need to do in this scenario is to safely cap the existing connection and have it moved to a common spot so we can locate it in the future. The water meter is located on the driveway to the front of the property, next to the line with the neighbours. Though it is on the opposite side of the plot where we'd want the TBS. Is it common practice to have all 3 utilities next to each other or would it be ok to leave it where it is? Noted on the duct but I'd want to retain the working Virgin service, at least until Openreach cable up the area. Would I be ok to move the existing Virgin cable or extend by adding a coax coupler (?) and extending the length of the cable to end up where we want it to? And thank you, very informative and useful

Not starting the build just yet - planned for early next year (Feb/March) but planning what I need to do wrt utilities. Current plot is an existing bungalow with gas, electricity, water, virgin media coax. Plan is to demolish and replace. What I've understood so far is that we need to get the utilities moved to a temporary box on the plot BEFORE we demolish. Trying to piece together the whole process so hopefully some more experienced members can help. Electricity Given that we're in the SE, our operator is UK Power Networks. I contacted them a month ago and their guy came to do a site survey today. The drawings on their system indicate that the supply cable runs horizontally across the plot and then under the next door neighbours' house. Guy said this wasn't the case most likely and used his handheld scanner to confirm that the cable comes out to the front driveway which makes the movement much easier. Cost would be £2k to do the initial movement of the cable from inside the bungalow to an outside temporary supply and then another £2k to come back and move it back in the main house when it's built. Me to do the groundworks (i.e. digging up trenches) but they would supply and lay the cables. Here come the questions: 1. Can we leave the supply in the TBS they plan to place on the plot permanently and avoid paying the £2k a second time? 2. Would my builder/electrician be allowed to pull the main supply from the TBS and into the house without paying UK PN for the privilege? 3. Is there anyway to bring the initial cost down? £2k seems like a lot to relocate a cable less than 10m on a suburban plot. Can I supply the parts and dig the trenches and get them to only do the bare minimum? 4. On the topic of 1ph vs 3ph - looks like the supply runs across the road from us which means that a 2 way traffic light system would be needed costing about £2k on top of the £5.5kish for the actual pulling of the 3ph cable. Is 3ph really necessary if we don't want the 22kW car chargers. House is a 5 bed, will have ASHP, Air Con, Solar PV, UFH, MVHR etc. 5. Are we stuck with using UK Power Networks or are there any alternatives (cheaper) that we could use? Gas We have not yet decided on whether we move away from gas completely. Even if we go down the route of ASHP for heating/hot water, we may retain gas for the kitchen and a high efficiency gas fire (vs say a log burner). 1. Is there a similar process to get the gas supply moved to a temporary box and then routed back into the house? 2. Would we need to have the temporary supply moved to inside the property afterwards or could it be left on the TBS being made permanent. 3. Who do I contact to start the conversation re gas connections? British Gas? Water I do not know yet where the water mains run but to have the drainage etc designed - seems like there is a cost of £100 ish to Thames Water for them to do the design work and come back to us with a price? 1. Are they the only ones equipped to do the work or do I have choices? 2. Is there an easy way online (even if not free) to find out water connections, drains, sewer lines etc using a map? Internet The idea is to have the connection coming to the house either via the TBS or utility (both located on the same side of the plot luckily). 1. What do I need to build to future proof either Virgin or Openreach coming into the property supply? 2. No Openreach yet (Dec 26) but Virgin Media supply exists. Do I need to contact them to arrange for the movement of the cable or can I move the coax myself (i.e. builder) to this TBS box?

I'm loving all these ideas - the pull out drinks fridge and the double drawer dishwasher are now on the list of things I need but can't afford! Please keep them coming so I can fantasize even more... Have taken a note of all the changes proposed and will be reviewing with our designer over the weekend and come up with a new plan.

Lights are a placeholder from the designer and definitely not something I would have chosen. Will take the point onboard re hob on island but I’m still not fully convinced that not having a clean island isn’t the way to go? Surely it looks neater?

1. Yes - they’re not so glossy so it’s just the renders. They’re a Matt finish charcoal (idea being dark units and light worktop and light flooring) 2. Hmm… this is one thing we were a little insistent on - ie having a hob on the side rather in the middle of the island to keep the island clear. The idea being we want to use that as prep/staging and also a place for the kids to do their homework, so away from flame and spillages 3. Good shout - I would like them side by side as well 4. Noted - will try a render with that gone over the sink and see what it looks like. 5. The idea is that it’s a breakfast bar with pull down shuttering. My thinking was air fryer on the side of that in the corner and the pull down unit would have things like a toaster, coffee maker and kettle - which can all be hidden away when you close the door to keep it clean.

Just started the kitchen/utility design journey for the new place and happy to hear thoughts on how this could be improved. One change we're looking at straight away is to swap the sink hob even though I don't really want the sink so prominently visible from the living and dining room but it looks a little odd on the other side away from the oven/microwave.

Well... we had our decision back today and it's what we feared. Both the appeal and costs awards have been rejected. I wasn't overly concerned with the costs award but the officer reviewing the application seems to have taken the council's side for almost every point that we flagged in our appeal. There are some concessions made where the 'contrived and incoherent' roof design was forced upon us by the LPA and then ultimately used to refuse our application - but that was swept away in the end as we 'accepted' the LPAs advice and therefore made a change to the design and it can only be considered as it was finally presented. Not sure where it leaves us now...

Exactly this. There is virtually no impact to the case officer if you do appeal. What happens is that your appeal application goes into a 3m validation window, after which it usually takes between 6 and 9m for a decision to be taken. The only impact I see is when the LPA has to respond to the appeal and its usually a templated response that can be thrown together in less than a day from their side. If you win, no skin off their nose but they can tell their superiors that they tried to fight it. Impact on your life on the other hand is almost up to a year of waiting.

Ours are along similar lines: Appeal filed: 28 August 2023 Start date: 02 Feb 2024 Questionnaire due: 09 Feb 2024 Statements due: 08 Mar 2024 Interested party comments due: 08 Mar 2024 Appellant/LPA Final comments due: 26 Mar 2024 Planning Inspector Site visit: 28 May 2024 Decision now due as there's nothing else we can do. There was a long waiting period between August and Feb where there was literally nothing we could do - no chasing up or trying to get information. I got told off by my architect for sending a chaser email too many to the Planning Inspectorate and their response was basically that we're overwhelmed, don't contact us again and we can't tell you anything. In the meantime, we've had the case officer assigned to our case change 3 times (which inevitably means more time as each officer needs to acquaint themselves with the details of the case). In the end, it may turn out to be a pyrrhic victory due to the amount of time it's taken and how much life has moved on since the time we submitted the appeal. Still hanging in there though...

I posted a thread elsewhere on the forum and the exact same thing happened to us. Our case office kept telling us everything was on track and due to be approved, and then on the day the decision was due - his line manager overruled him and recommended refusal. While he was open to discussing how we could tweak the application to make it more compliant - that didn't help as we'd spent over 6m giving in to their demands and they still weren't happy. My architect recommended taking the refusal so we could appeal. We then submitted a separate planning application which was basically what the council wanted and it was granted. Do not underestimate the amount of time an appeal takes though. You may or may not win, and ours has been going on for over 9m now. I'd like to believe it should be done in the next month or so but I've had my hopes dashed before...

Thanks for the replies everyone. Discussing with the architect and we explored the idea of building a more permanent structure before the building is demolished by using PD rights. It's something we could do, though would be very small and internally not much different to a caravan in terms of layout as we need to fit at least 2 bedrooms (1 for us, 1 for the kids), living/diner/kitchen and a shower/toilet in there. Could be repurposed into a gym/office block or granny annexe once the main house is done. Easier option is to drive in the static caravan and either chop it up afterwards (going by the comments) or try and convert to something more useful? Not sure how the structure of these lends itself to long term use and how 'convertible' they are.

Starting to think what we're going to do during the self build process and one of the options is a static caravan. Having talked to the architect, while this would be doable planning wise, I wanted to understand what people do with these after the build is complete. Our plot is long and narrow(ish) with another garden at the base and houses on either side. My proposed plan would look something like this: 1. Demolish existing house and clear access 2. Lay utilities like clean water, waste water and electricity connections to bottom of the garden 3. Place 2/3 bed caravan at the bottom of the garden 4. Build house with a ~1m gap left on each side 5. Obviously the gap would be too narrow to remove the static caravan afterwards What are my options at the end of the project - apart from dismantle and scrap? Can you get cranes that would be long enough to pick up the static caravan and lift over the newly built house? Access from the other ends or the sides would be a no/go as there other houses and gardens. A mobile tourer has been recommended as an alternative but this would have the same issues in terms of removal if we put it at the base of the garden. Putting it at the front would mean blocking up access to the site and also living while active work was happening there - with 2 young kids so keeping them out of harms way would be a challenge!

Missed this one yesterday. #3 - if this is a new build, would a soil survey not be needed? The plot is in an area with London Clay, so I assumed some sort of checks would be needed to understand how to build the right foundation for it? #7 - Noted. The plan is to get all the connections moved to a box on the edge of the property and run ducting from there to the main house. Is this something I do with the utility companies directly or does the builder I instruct deal with this (apologies if this is a naive question - it is my first time at doing anything like this)?

Not yet as we aren’t fully happy with the planning that was granted. The appeal for the design we want to build hasn’t yet been decided yet so we’re holding off. Saying that, the planning conditions are likely to be very similar. So we could make a start on getting the info together - lots about tree protection measures and materials to be used.

Yes, applied at the same time as planning was applied for.