ProDave

I believe all correspondence must now go through the eplanning and ebuilding control websites. I had to use that to apply for my temporary habitation and completion certificates. It is an awful website imho not at all intuitive and hard to navigate.

So standby for a load of greenwash and miss selling about "green" gas boilers. Very much like the daft situation we have with Drax burning wood and claiming to be green.

Well I am against "everywhere you looked" I painted the walls white. I then laid the flooring. Next I cut the skirting to length and oiled it OFF the wall laying flat on it's back, and only then did I fit the finished skirting to the wall, held entirely by adhesive so no fixings to see.

This does seem a case of councils making their own rules. All BC were concerned with were the stove was made to an approved standard, and it was installed according to the manufacturers instructions.

12th post in this thread Sometimes google does a better job of searching than the forums own search feature.

Covid has changed things. I used to get monthly visits from the council fax man, first to see if we had moved into the caravan and then to see if we had moved into the house. The last time I saw him he got his file out that contained loads of photographs and he dropped into the conversation this was his 23rd visit to the site. Since Covid, I have not seen him. And my email to tell him we have moved out of the caravan and into the house and we now need to delete the caravan from the valuation list and add the house to the valuation list has gone unanswered. I don't mind still paying band A council tax but feel sure we will get hit with a bill backdated until completion when they eventually wake up. I remember in Jeremy's case the valuation officer viewed the house and although not finished declared it should only take 3 months to finish if from that stage so that is when they will be billing him from.

Yes, you don't have to own the land to apply for planning. You might want to make a formal offer though, to stop the seller just upping the price and selling to someone else once you have obtained planning. In my case the previous planning had expired 30 years ago. So having agreed the price, I made a formal offer through my solicitor to buy the plot subject to obtaining planning in principle. I then submitted the planning application and when granted the sale proceeded. Had planning been refused the contract would not have been binding and I could have walked away. If you don't own the land there is a standard form you have to fill in to notify the land owner that you have applied for planning.

So you have to have wooden spindles and handrail? If you used something like the Burbidge fusion system that we used, you would only have a dwarf newel post that need not stick up much above the sringer, then a much more slender post above that.

We got ours passed with a 900mm standard banister and spindle set inside.

The basics of a stove are for burning coal you want air in at the bottom, often referred to as primary air. For burning wood you want air in at the top of the fire box, often referred to as secondary air. At our last house, the stove got a crack in the glass that gradually spread, until a little corner of the glass broke off. This meant there was an extra hole in the door, very close to one of the secondary air vents. You would have thought this extra hole meant there was too much secondary air that you could not shut down and the stove would be uncontrollable. But strangely it had the opposite effect and the stove became very much under fired and hard to burn. Solved of course by a new glass for the door.

Do local plumbers or builders merchants not stock it?

Hi and welcome. Just don't mention "thermal mass" and you will be fine.

In Scotland you are not supposed to occupy a house until you have completion or a temporary habitation certificate. A Temporary habitation is provided by building control on request. For that they had to do and inspection, and made is do a few things that they deemed not ready. We also had to provide the electrical certificate, gas safe certificate and unvented cylinder G3 signoff.

In the Highlands there is a general presumption against building in the "hinterland" but there are then some exceptions to that. One of which if the current use of the land is "garden ground". So getting permission for one house on a large plot makes it more likely a second will then be allowed later.

I have just had my completion certificate. Building control did show a lot of interest in the stove, but in the end the questions boiled down to "is the stove HETAS approved" and they were concerned that it looked to be too close to the wall. Providing them with a copy of the manufacturers installation manual confirmed that it was HETAS approved and that we exceeded the manufacturers minimum distance to flammable materials from the back of the stove. They were satisfied with that.

As above 16kW outpur heat pump should be fine on single phase. Make sure on your electricity application you state it is inverter driven soft start.

Yes, we made sure there was always a bowl of rat poison under the 'van. They never got into the 'van so not a direct bother to us.

Did this thread have a time warp? There we were in October 2020 discussing @jen and mark about to move into their statique. And here we are a year later in Oct 2021 sounding like they are just about to move in. Am I confused? Have you been in the 'van for a year or did things get delayed? Yes I did clad the skirt of mine with timber, insulated under the floor and insulated the pipes. Then we spent the year of the "beast from the East" in ours and late one night the water froze. Cue half an hour lying on my back under the 'van in a blizzard with a hairdryer thawing the frozen pipe before it burst. Caused because a mouse had eaten about a foot long section of the pipe insulation so that bit was exposed.

Yes never admit to occupying an incomplete house. Of course we did not occupy ours until we had the temproary habitation certificate.

Drainage will be key. If no mains, 0.3 acre is probably too small to fit a house, treatment plant and soakaway. Who owns the field sloping down to the marsh? That might prove useful for drainage. If owned by the vendor seek a wayleave or similar allowing you to install a soakaway under it (you don't have to own it to do that) But if that is the proposed option you would need a percolation test done so it might be a plan to seek that now.

Stick to your guns that you submitted the claim within 3 months of the date you were made to believe the valuation to have been done and it it was in fact done earlier that is internal politics within the council who chose to only notify you some time later, and you had no way of knowing it was done earlier. If they accept that fact, then the other question is irellevant. It does make me angry this time limit thing, why should some paperwork mix up like this disqualify a claim. Hoping sense prevails and they accept what you say

Plenty of people post their plans for discussion. Like many I started off designating a room as a "plant room" In reality it only houses the MVHR unit and a few valves and a pump for the heating. A monoblock ASHP needs next to nothing inside and the HW cylinder was relocated to the corner of a bedroom (where one day it will be boxed in as an airing cupboard) to get it closer to the taps. The "plant room" is now better used as a workshop, that happens to have an MVHR unit in it and a few bits and pieces relating to the heating.

So they have refused this claim. If you are not successful appealing this, then surely you will get another go within 3 months of getting your completion certificate? Note on that. My completion certificate was dated as the day I applied for it not the day it was issued. If they took 3 months to issue it........

The person who might be on thin ice here is the guy that bought half the plot and built the house. If the planners come back and enforce the original plan to be built, including incorporating the existing buildings then he will be forced to do something with buildings and land he does not own. That could get legal and messy. Your objection to any further planning permission should be along the lines that planning was granted for one dwelling incorporating the existing buildings and that has not been done. Had the original plan been built there would be no spare buildings now left to convert. It needs someone to frame that sentiment in proper planning terms.

Ha ha. I play with wires normally. Pipes and wet things is a side line.