Ferdinand

I like that. But "50% less to £800". Er .. ouch. Probably needs the VAT Reclaim ? And I need a vanity one mainly supported from the floor. F

Overheating I had the impression from the text in the plans that it is essentially a Building Regs build, which would mean less risk of overheating. @Werrington1, could you comment on your wall buildup, please? Cheers F

A very quick sanity check on a couple of things that may need PP / Building Regs. 1 - In England do I need PP for a loft conversion with a road facing roof window? (Rear facing roof window is already in place) 2 - In England do I need PP to insert a new rear-facing window in a bedroom? (I think the answers are probably yes to 1, and yes-but-I-may-get-away-without-it to 2 for PP, and yes to both for Building Regs approval). Cheers. Ferdinand

I would think you would be double your 8k plus or minus 25-50%. Assuming insulated and a slab.

Welcome. Good idea to leave space for your retirement house at the side :-]. What is your design EPC? Looks as though there could be interesting heating bills? F

I think this looks great, and searching for press coverage it was nice to see some non-sensational accounts of the planning process in the local media. Quite close to me, too. And some nice precedents from quite early Grand Designs. Best of luck. Ferdinand

Re: Large tiles. You could use what I think they call "plank" tiles, which come in sizes such as 1000x200. A single one might do it. Or something like this - a 600x600 white tile, which could be sliced in 2 and give 1200mm run at any depth up to 300mm. https://www.tiletown.co.uk/en/alaska-white-floor-tile One sample might do it. F

What is the width of the washbasin? I think that several things could work as an splashback there. 1 - Large format tile. Ideally a single tile, or two, about 100mm or half to two thirds of the way to the taps, or past them (Can you put something behind the taps etc - ie will they come forward by 5-20mm?) 2 - Glass. Could be coloured or annealed. 3 - Something like a sheet of stainless steel or anodised ally. Powdercoat may not be good enough. Copper would be tempting, but would not match the taps. Perhaps something with engine turning? I think various colours could work or a pattern. On MultiPanels that could be from a single piece or the whole wall. If a single if it is just the splashback it might look chunky-clunky, though their edgings are in satin or gloss alu iirc, and would match. If you use the version with aqua-lok joints, they are invisible unless you choose a strange pattern. If you want, you can have them printed with a roomsize photo of your own. Ferdinand

Personally, I like gates gate-coloured (ie the natural material), and would not usually paint them without a good reason. For me, all that means is that the next thing is that they will have to be re-painted. I am still fighting a siege-of-Constantinople style rearguard action against one of my Ts who has wanted the front of her cottage painting since 2010, and I still maintain that the 150 year old grey pebbledash with flint is just fine, and that showing patina is a good thing. I can see that eventually I will lose because there are genuinely a couple of scars from an ill-advised porch that existed from about 1980-1990. Ferdinand

btw I *do* like those gates. Not Fort @Onoff & OnaTopp, or Castle Buildhub, but well made, normal, attractive gates in the right place..

I really cannot see a problem, but I might try my biggest ever barbecue as the first one in midsummer heat to make sure. There’s nothing stopping you reinforcing it with a few discreet taut wires in a Union Jack or Gridiron Plan, just in case. F

Miserabilist ! Half the joy was just sucked out of my day. Real men build geodesic domes for their BBQ shelters. F PS I cannot see any problem unless you BBQ a giraffe, as long as it is the right stuff for the span.

An interesting, and complex one. So what have we got? Spent an hour looking at this out of interest. Planning App is South Hams Council 0852/19/FUL. The "huge forest being destroyed" and "cut down massive woodland" and perhaps the nature stuff is a little heroic - it is a proposed site of about 1 acre for nine houses, retaining part of the wood. The trees were planted as a green buffer by the developer of the houses the objectors live in in about 1995-8. I see a long term issue there - if environmentalists keep trying to portray modern developer buffers as being as essential as ancient forest then that will make ancient forest less unique. They need to explain how a farmland-scrubland bird - Cirl Bunting (which is actually doing very well says the RSPB) is protected by eveloping woodland. The interactive map on the Council website shows it as a scrub field with I think whips planted (below). I do not think it has any protections except for the one imposed with the Planning Permission. Something being on the National Forest Inventory is as meaningful for protection as it being on a Ordnance Survey Map. IMO they have 5 real issues with bite: 1 - It is outside the community boundary ... though the link road seems a more logical boundary in some ways. 2 - if he has chopped more than 5 cube of wood within a quarter, then he needed a licence from the Forestry Commission. But I think it is only restoration plus a £5k fine. 3 - There seems to have been some sort of planning requirement on Linden Homes to maintain a green buffer. The current were built in 1998, so it may be that that has expired - or perhaps the requirement to maintain has expired. 4 - If there is any proven damage to protected wildlife, then he may be under animal law. Felling in December mainly excludes bats and birds nesting trees, so it may be down to badgers etc. Unless perhaps there are reports from bird surveys or bat monitors. 5 - Not zoned for housing. Plus politics. There is still some time to comment deadline. Objectors playing a cute game on timing. IMO this could be developable, maybe, but it would have to be a 'sylvan natural community in the woods' type of vision, and would need something very heavy in the planning balance on the pro side. Affordable self-build plots in a woodland setting might be the type of thing, plus sustainable community benefit, or a version of what the Southwell Eco-Community was in the 1990s when that was built. After all, 3 million houses have to go somewhere. I think Linden called this right, and walked away when they could, though perhaps they should have offered to sell it to a local trust. I wonder how much they sold it for? Ferdinand Very before - Council Interactive Map http://gis.swdevon.gov.uk/CNET4914LIVE/CMFindIt/ Before - Link above After - Link above

Do you have a photo of the brook in full spate?

There are people here with projects on that scale. My first thought would be to employ a detail orientated experienced Project Manager. Ferdinand

Jeremy for one has one of these under his drive made from IBCs. Ferdinand

Lucky for you moss is not like bats or trees. ?

Hmmm. Leca might do it. But I think that is more expensive.

I like some moss and lichen on my patio. It reminds me I do not live in Celebration, Florida.

It seems to me that you have them over a modest barrel. Dependent on contracts, they need to put you in the position you would have been in if they had not c*cked-up. Depending on your spec, the loss of height may not be significant. Probably the only solution they can *insist* on is rework-to-spec, and then you should get losses (eg delays) compensated. Alternatively work out what you actually want, and negotiate it. An acceptable compromise, plus the difference in cost between that and the 'replace it' one, plus a compensation sum for time + other resultant costs, should be where the ballpark is. The quickest timewise answer may be a further 18mm floor at right angles, but you may want to run checks with an SE etc. Ferdinand

Call local Building Control and see if they know anything. You may need to be judicious as they auto-publish less information than Planning.

Has anyone entered any awards with your self-build? Or been entered by anyone else? I do not mean TV; I mean things (picking an example out of the air) like the Brick Awards, run by the Brick Development Association. There are also local awards and the Civic Trust Awards, which are for a "contribution to the built environment". Presumably there are also awards for contributions to ecology etc. What was your experience? Ferdinand

Good luck. I prefer Mixology (which needs some more cocktails).

I think that is offensive. If a house has been well-designed by an Arch-Tech, then they have no business taking the limelight away. Do you know what the reason was? It sounds like the nasty little clause in RIBA House of the Year on C4 that limits entries to those designed by RIBA and Wales, Scotland and NI versions of RIBA. I want "House of the Year" not "House of the Year by a member of The Sponsoring Organisation". Gets! Ferdinand

? On insulation. Do you have any details on what you have actually got? Material, thickness, u-value etc. The space that insulation takes up when it is in a pile is quite startling. Assuming yours is a house not a bungalow, I make your wall, roof and floor area about 1300sqm. All those surfaces insulated with 250mm of EPS (OK, but worse performance than many here would use) would require 4 x 40ft containers, or a volume stacked solid equivalent to your 10 x 8 x 2.4m kitchen. Plus a third. As it happens my parents restored a 5000sqft house that had been empty for several years. That was a small manor of 5000 sqft. They took two decades and did it slowly. Everything always costs that much more money or time if there is that much of it. By the mid noughties their energy bills without a strategic 5 year fix would have been running at 6-7k per year. I thought when I first read it that that was the house budget ! On insulation and slabs, have you considered external wall insulation? It may be a bit daunting as you would be looking at spending 80-100k on it, but if you are looking at all that digging for ufh, the EWI plus extending it downwards by 600 or 900 may well be a viable option. Needs analysis, but if you save 5-6k a year on bills it could be viable. You need to do some heat modelling including long term costs. My experience on multiple attempts to consider EWI on houses roughly 10-20% of that size is that it is usually totally unviable if you have done much other stuff first. But here if you get to avoid some major work, who knows? Ferdinand