Tom

...speaking of which, Jeremy Harris has been incommunicado for several months. Is he OK?

The Biodisc is upsold due to the extra revenue Kinspan/Klargester get from the repair of them - avoid like the plague *told this by an ex-Klargester rep

If you had to rebuild it I think the part q would no longer be valid - as structural works would have been carried out. I think you would need to insure to cover your financial losses if this happened.

Thanks Will, the ground is half made-up as the site was originally leveled for the barns by just scooping out of the hillside - I think this is why the SE has been cautious re the use of an insulated raft. One corner of what's there now is happily slipping down the hill as it is! I'm thinking that with strip foundations and the first few courses of ICF essentially forming a retaining wall this will allow us to properly compact the oversite and make a stable base for a groundbearing slab. Still, no great shakes if it's suspended though I suppose. Does any one know what the U value of marmox thermoblock is? On their site they state the thermal conductivity as 0.047W/mK - so am i right in thinking the U value would be, say for a 200mm block, = be 0.047 / 0.2 = 0.235? Not too bad I suppose. If we use the slab suspended on the perimeter like this I suppose we can use insulation under the rest that has a better U value than could be achieved with eg EPS 300?

So, our build is at the SE/detailed drawing stage. Our plan is to have a warm concrete slab and have the powerfloated finish as the final surface. Our SE has detailed a ring of marmox thermoblock around the perimeter and at intervals running across the slab on footings (the slab will be about 18x9m in total). I understand this is what makes it "suspended" - as it is essentially supported by the thermoblock strips and the insulation inbetween is not actually loadbearing. Does this make sense? Any reason why we can't just have 200mm of insulation under the entire slab and this be the loadbearing element, without having to introduce this marmox stuff? This is what happens with an insulated raft after all. We are having strip foundations and probably going for Nudura, so the insulation could directly abut the Nudura block and prevent cold bridging. Has any one any experience of strip foundations+ICF+warm concrete slab? Thanks all!

Hadn't thought of that... Just looked it up and agricultural buildings are exempt, no notice needed. Most definitely. Also need to hook up a static caravan at some stage...

Quick question if I may: planning permission granted, cosmic, conditions only apply if I go above slab level, alrighteythen, not in a CIL area, back of the net. Can I just crack on - or do I need to tell someone that I'm starting? By starting, I mean getting going with demolishing the existing barns and clearing the site.

Agree, looks fantastic. Whereabouts in S Devon are you James? We're about to embark on a self-build in the Totnes area.

I was wondering the same. I was looking at a thread the other day and looked like a load of his posts had been removed.

Good luck! Have a look on the planning portal and find similar successful applications near you, then follow their lead. I wrote the D+A statement myself and did all the paperwork - took a few hours total and was very simple TBH. We'd employed a planning consultant for the part Q originally and was amazed at how little work they actually did, so was keen to go it alone. Cheaper too!

Hi Sam - we're in south Devon.

No, open countryside.

It was pretty straight forward actually. The hard bit was getting the Part Q change of use to start with, but once you have changed the use to residential you are essentially applying for a replacement dwelling, which seems to be looked on relatively favourably. There is a Court of Appeal precedent (Mansell v Tonbridge and Malling BC [2017] EWCA Civ 1314) which essentially allows for the Part Q permission to be used as a fallback i.e you don't have actually had to have done the building work to convert to a house before wanting to replace, just having the option is enough. With this clear precedent, it seems the planners are concerned with whether the replacement dwelling is an "improvement" over the original Part Q conversion - and this is relatively easy to argue: fabric-first approach, improved air-tightness and insulation, sustainability etc etc We were not asking for anything radically different (in appearance) to what we could have done under the Part Q, but it will allow us to use ICF etc and will (hopefully) solve a lot of headaches. There are examples near us of quite radically different schemes that were given full planning though, so anything is theoretically possible, within limits. If any one is planning to go down the same route as us more than happy to help further if I can!

What do you mean? More than happy to go through specifics if that is what you're after

Got the very welcome news this week that we have been granted full planning permission on our Part Q barn - so we'll be able to demolish/rebuild rather than "convert" and have to deal with all the faff that that entails. Had a zoom meeting with the architect a few days ago so it seems like the wheels are very (very) slightly beginning to turn on this jugganaut. Looking forward to putting some of the last 2+ years of reading on this site in to actual practice! First decision to make: what level of involvement am I planning? This will dictate to what degree of detail the architect produced the drawings. I'm thinking main contractor to water-tight stage, and then I'll sub-contract myself the rest of it. Planning an ICF build with insulated slab/raft. Any pitfalls with this approach?

Restoring or converting?

I'm 100% sure you're right

Are the screw piles themselves isolated from the concrete in the raft? Thinking about thermal bridging...

... or get rid of the concrete. Struggling to see why you need both? You're essentially paying for two floors, but will only ever get to stand on one.

Looks great! We got Part Q permission for our barn in March but have just applied for full planning to completely rebuild. Might have to pick your brains at some stage! Looks like you're not too far away, we're south Devon

Spoke to LPA yesterday: due to COVID, new guidance from central gov re advertising planning applications has allowed them to delegate to the applicant, so I should soon get emailed the site notice and asked to put up myself. I will then need to take a photo as proof apparently.

Ours was close to double that (in the south west) and was frigging useless. Prefer not to think about the thousands... Reminds me, final invoice for 2k due, groan

If it's not done, will that invalidate the application?

Aaagh, really?! It was done by the LPA on our last application...

Hi all - so the full planning application has been in for a few weeks, but there is still no site notice uploaded on the portal or put up at the site. Will this be a problem? Can the planner turn round at the end and say the whole process has to start again as they'd omitted the site notice? Am I overthinking this and should just sit back and relax with a cold Argus 2.6% continental lager from Lidl? Tom