ProDave

Some planning officers should not be in the job. When I was in the south I wanted to build a garage, which I described as "built of concrete blocks and rendered" The planning officer said to me "even if it's rendered it will still look like a prefabricated garage" and no amount of discussion could persuade here that it was masonry built of blocks and cement. It was refused, and won on appeal.

I must call by next time we go south. J33 is where we always pull off for the cheap petrol.

... And the council need to come and resurface the footpath?

That sounds like you are considering tench fill? which is where you dig a foundation strip, then fill it all up again with concrete. That is one possible way but as you have found, expensive. A normal strip foundation is dug to the required depth, then 200mm of concrete poured, blockwork built up from that then soil goes back on the outside and hard infill compacted on the inside. The required depth nobody can answer without seeing the land and without a test pit or 2 dug. A previous house we had in Oxfordshire I built a garage with 600mm strip foundations in nice firm ground. Where we are now I had to go more than that just to strip the soft black organic soil before I could then dig the strip foundations which were almost a metre down from that, so 1.5 metres overall.

Started in March, Finished in June. No wonder you didn't have time to keep the blog updated. I won't let SWMBO know how quick you built your house...... Looks very smart indeed. Well done.

I think the purpose of a site measurement is to make sure the frame has been built to the drawings. It was a little strange that our builders came to measure the openings before placing the order for the windows as they were the same ones that built the frame. It was virtually a sanity check to make sure that they had indeed made the window openings the size shown on the drawings.

As an aside, I wonder how the insurance will deal with a leasehold flat in this block? Normally it would pay to refurbish the flat I would expect, but that's not going to happen. Would it just pay out the market value of the flat and the insurance company then own a lease on a flat in a burned out block that will almost certainly now be demolished?

And there will be no record of any instruction to do so.

It can work differently with different window suppliers. In our case the window supplier did not attend site, but the builder who was supplying and fitting them did come twice and check all the measurements before finally submitting the order, as he would be the one with a problem to solve if something was wrong.

Being pedantic, that on it's own was not necessarilly an improvement. Contactor 1 cold stick and you would not know, until contactor 2 also stuck and the sunbed stayed on. Such a circuit with two contactors is a recognised safety circuit used in machine controls, but the important addition is they are controlled by a safety relay that monitors the auxilliary contacts on each contactor and will not energise them if it detects that one of them is stuck on already.

You are going to hear a lot more arse covering over the coming weeks and months, and there must be a lot of people now preparing their "it was not my fault" case.

"This property has been removed by the agent. It may be let or temporarily removed from the market" Jesus, £2145 per month. We are renting our 5 bedroom house for less than half that. On the bright side, if that flat was empty that's a few less casualties.

People on the boating forum are discussing how to prepare your boat to make off into the sunset in the event of the breakdown of society. Not seen that since the cold war days.

It's the garage wall so not bothered about any chilling effect. Re a heat alarm, just use a domestic heat alarm normally fitted to a kitchen ceiling, then it can be linked with a 3 core cable to all the other smoke / heat / CO alarms in the house.

I note conventional wisdom is to place the ASHP so the unit (and the fan) is parallel to the wall and half a metre or so out from the wall, drawing air in between the unit and the wall,. and expelling air perpendicular to the wall. Is that really the best orientation? I am giving consideration to mounting it perpenducular to the wall, so it takes air in once side and expells air parallel to the wall the other side. My main reason for this thinking is the direction of expelled air will be away from the habitable rooms of the house and therefore less likely to be audible. Also most of the time here that would mean the flow of air through the unit is going with the prevailing wind. In this scenario the unit may be closer than half a metre to my rendered, wood fibre clad wall. I guess thee is nothing stopping us fitting a heat alarm inside the top of the ashp and linking it to the house alarms?

The sheer key will do nothing imho. It's only keying into hardcore that is laid on a slope, and the whole lot, hardcore included could, no make that probably will slide down the slope. I would level the site in steps so at least the infil is sitting on level ground. Perhaps another footing and dwarf wall at each step? Buttress walls on the inside of your wall which I think is what drawing 3 is trying to show? and buttress walls on the downhill side of any intermediate dwarf wall. To level the site in steps, you will be removing a lot of soil. Use that removed soil to raise the ground around the garage. You will be removing the top layer of organic soil anyway won't you?

Report it as a fauilt "somebody has driven a tall vehicle down the lane and snapped my line"

You won't pop a fuse and 50V will only give you a tingle if you have wet hands. Just make sure you photograph or otherwise note how it connects and in particular what pair of the incoming cable is the live one (it's usually at least 3 pair cable)

There are reports floating around (NOT FACT) that the owner of the flat where it started packed his bags before leaving. Yes finding the cause of the fire is important, but the fact remains, however it started, a fire in one flat should not lead to the destruction of the whole block and massive loss of life. I see the manufacturers of the cladding have been identified and are falling back on "it met building regs" I have not heard one person say "well in that case the building regs are wrong and need changing PDQ"

Re the outline PP (actually called Planning In Principle up here). You need to read the small print and conditions of the PIP carefully. There is a "trap" the owner may have fallen into. When we found our plot, it had long lapsed PP (from 1980) so we made an offer to buy it subject to getting PP for it, and then submitted a PIP application. The application was very scant on details, just a very rough idea of the size and very rough position of the house, but no details. The PIP came back with a set of standard conditions relating the the "housing in the countryside" local policy about being no more than 1.5 storeys, white render finish, 45 degree roof, natural slate roof, vertical emphasis on windows etc. Now this was fine for us as that was what we intended. We did argue the point about not using slate at the detailed plans stage, and instead used the only one "slate like" concrete roof tile that the planners would allow. But if you want to build a really contemporary house design, it may be allowed, but you really want to state the details as early as possible. Applying for something contemporary when the PIP conditions say traditional, and it may well be refused. It definitely sounds like you want a bespoke house built to your design, so looking at a company that makes a few standard designs is not going to get what you want. A Tee shaped house is what we built last time and is very common up here so you won't have issues with that. Re the land purchase, do as we did, make an offer to buy it subject to getting planning permission for what you want. If the seller is happy to accept that sort of offer then you submit a planning application (you don't need to own the land to do that but you must serve notice on the owner that you are doing that). Then the buying process goes on hold until the planning is sorted. If you get the PP you want then you "conclude the missives" (Scottish equivalent of exchange contracts) otherwise if you can't get the PP you want, you walk away and the deal is cancelled. You must use a Scottish solicitor to make an offer for property in Scotland, preferably one that is experienced in building plots. There are lots of other things to consider like access, location of services, waste water drainage, any deeds of servitude (easments) required if any services have to cross other land to get to your plot etc.

I have used that type and more than one person has commented they look cool and contemporary.

Serious sugestion. Should one smoke hood per resident not be an essential item in high rise to allow you to evacuate even if the stairwell is full of smoke?

That is very true. It is a great tragedy for all those involved and a lot of lives have changed forever as a result. But what I think strikes us all, was this was totally avoidable. Had the block been left alone and not clad, I suspect there would have been a fire in one flat, with no loss of life and it would barely make page 2 of a local rag.

Hi and welcome to the forum. Are you looking for a permanent home or a holiday home? The site you linked to I would say are aiming their product at holiday homes. You only have to look at the layouts, no proper kitchens just a kitchenette. And the price per square metre, particularly for the smaller units seems a bit high. I think you could do a lot better with a traditional timber framed design which we are good at up here. Do you have a plot already? if not that is your first goal.

Jeremy made an excellent summary there. Surely, in the case of a building that relied on it's structure (concrete) being totally inflamable, then building regs should not allow a flamable cladding to be put on the outside? I expect the enquiry will fluff around the edges and avoid the real issue, as most enquiries seem to.