Ferdinand

ENough so that when all the clutter and the gubbins and the sticky-out bits are in place, you can with reasonable ease put scaffolding in place to maintain it in 20 years time. And get anything through the gap that you may need at the other end. If I can do it I like space for a decent digger, which means about 1.1-1.2m. Not always possible and you may have another route. F

Pond and a plank, like Bluebeard.

If it is a door in window mode, then surely you need a safety something across the opening on the outside anyway to stop you falling out and landing on your bonce? That IS a Juliet balcony. If for some reason you do not have one, then a Juliet balcony as in a grill to stop you falling out would normally be permitted development as long as it had no floor. I think the other test is that it must be within 150mm of the face of the wall. You would not even normally need PP for a new window unless there was potential overlooking ie on the side. This point may be nullified by your being in a National Park Iirc (?), but in principle you could perhaps just add it afterwards in most situations. I think that is all right, but I am open to challenge. @Prodave the advantage of a Juliet balcony has always seemed to me to be that the balcony space is inside your house so you get to have the floor space all year, rather than on the Perhaps 7% of days where the weather is OK. But that argument does not hold against a cantilevered balcony, just vs one of those that is recessed into the building. F

Learning point for most places: always have a cheap phone in your pocket to call help when working alone. Do we all do this?

You could probably put small circles of theatre light colouring on those if needed, or use the paint-on stuff; they run cool. F

I think you perhaps cannot use other people's land to fulfil your turning requirement anyway. Though I wonder what *he* will do for Fire Engines when he builds his new house? Or can you get an extra bit of land beyond just for the Fire Engine (is it a field?). Suspect this will go back to sprinklers...

In that you presumably supply the meters?

Hmmm. It does say "or Hammerhead" in the text. Any use?

Good. Personally I would be wondering about growing watercress...

Looking at @Russdl‘s detail I would do one or two things differently. I would not have OSB sitting underneath the gutter. At the least I would use waterproof ply, but ideally something even better that is entirely unaffected by water. I would probably want a fall towards the outside wall in the sheet beneath the gutter for belt and braces. I would ideally want to run the below tiles membrane straight down into the gutter for simplicity and continuous coverage. I am not sure how I would detail that. Ferdinand

Yes. But needs care and appropriate lintels. Creating two was the first DIY construction job I ever did. F

@deuce22 From a different angle, do you have to bury this? Can you make it a defining garden feature with waterfalls, maybe fountains, and a "babbling brook", and perhaps a cistern with a pump for feeding your hose pipe and outdoor shower? Some magnificent gardens have been designed around springs on hillsides. Or could your "dam" be a reflecting pool and a fountain? In a flight of fancy could you build a natural swimming pond? Could be far more economical than digging holes and building walls and dams and culverts, and no one could dispute the accessibility. Ferdinand (carefully avoids mentioning cherub based on @pocster's avatar).

@laurenco Clarify for us - you are talking across the bottom of the roof, not drainage down the verge? And do you want all the water from the roof to find its way into *this* gutter (which implies some sort of slot all the way along the bottom of the roof above your gutter-cover)? If it is the former, I made a neighbour do something like this along a 20m roof when his gutter was going to overhang my garden - though it was not quite *fully* concealed. My dad designed a detail for them. Essentially you sit the gutter on top of the wall, and flash underneath it and up the back and sufficiently down the face of the wall. And then you need a robust detail that will protect your wall and inside of the house, keep your gutter clear (anti-bird and insect grilles at the ends etc), and let the water get into it in a maximum water-flow event. It needs to be maintainable for when it *does* get blocked :-). You also need the face and appearance of your wall to be robust to the runoff water that lands on the gutter-cover, and overflow if the slot has insufficient capacity or gets blocked. I think my neighbour used lead flashing, but it could be one for glass fibre or EDPM. Will try and get some piccies. Ferdinand

The limit of 25W says to me that it isn't not there yet except for specialised and niche stuff. Imagine trying to wire 16 down lights from it. Ferdinand

Usually you can 2 shower rooms in the space for a Jack and Jill.

Recognising that a lot is cast in stone as you have a Planning App in, but commenting a little more widely as I am wondering if your overhangs will be seen as taking the p slightly on a footprint restriction and they may say to think again in some respects. I like that you have not told the planners *too* much stuff they do not need to know. 1 - I like the placement, orientation and layout on the plot, but wonder if you need something for winter / wet weather playing for kids that is not the main lawn; area by the South end of the house? Being cater-cornered always make it seem more upmarket and bigger, like laying tiles diagonally in a room. 2 - I like the curved wall - if stud should be OK to build (insulation inside it) if planned carefully by good people. Not sure a pantry that deep and narrow will work at the back - lay it out in full plan size and experiment physically? I might make the last 1.2-1.8m into a cupboard or shelf unit in the hall. 3 - To me the overall look and feel is a bit retro, and does not match recent ideas of open voids and "wow" spaces inside, and in the use of windows. May not be a issue for you. That may be partly the furry sketch style of drawing, which always feels more busy on the page. Has it been run through a furry-iser program ?, or is it a real by-hand sketch plan (gold star if so)? 4 - I half agree on the "4 beds to one bath" comment. I would consider a compact ensuite (perhaps shower / whb / no loo) in Bed 5 - either where the desk is shown, or at the house corner and move the Master Ensuite (does it need a bidet? Would a shattaf be OK instead?) down slightly where there is room and the M.E. window round the corner (in two minds on this as that would make the road-facing elevation asymmetrical). I would make Bed 5 a potential alternative or second study wrt to sockets and lights etc. Make sure all the showers are large, and not like telephone kiosks. 5 - I think the lounge-dining works OK but if that is a woodburner it may be a pink elephant in a Code 6 house. Consider a flame effect gas fire or even electric, or spend the money on a lighting designer for your lounge diner to create an intimate feel? 6 - I think your biggest issue is that the hall / loo / utility / stairs area is not resolved enough, and could be a lot better. It feels a bit maze-y to me. There is a lot lost to circulation space in the hall and that dogleg walkway in the utility. I would: a - Put the hall-utility door by the kitchen, so that the utility walkway takes up less space and you only have doors in one corner. b - Straighten the wall between the utility and cloakroom, for me towards the utility so a shower can go in the cloakroom for disabled or frail guests etc. c - Put that inner-hall space into the Cloakroom, and use that as a coats and "things" (pushchairs, wheelchairs, golf clubs etc) area - could have a large closet, with a further door to the downstairs loo, into which I would put a shower as (b). As it is that circulation space is wasted. d -I would take away the wall between the stairs and the front door, so you get a more fluid space and the impact of the void above the stairs is your "wow" perceived on entry. e - I would consider moving the front door to the West or Centre within your 3 section door design and consider either making the staircase wider (ie open well between the two halves), or making it a 90 degree not a 180 stair to lead the eye into the void. That would increase your impact for minimum changes, but may need a bit of juggling with your door design. I think it would be grander and suitable for a large house such as this. f - I would make sure the stairs are at a more relaxed than typical angle - go for 34-38 degrees if you can, not 42. It makes a huge difference to the "feel". IMO insist on this. This should be a building regs not a planning matter. g - I would be more generous with my staircase windows, perhaps double or treble the width. That may affect your Code 6, however. 7 - I think you could reconsider your other windows at the front - at present there are too many different sizes, and I am not sure about the "tall and thin" subdivisions. To me that is not a suitable entrance face for this house. This would unfortunately involve returning to the planners. 8 - What is your provision for house-wide disabled / elderly access in future? This will become important. 9 - Do you need a snug? HTH - it may be more than you wanted but even for validating your decisions different suggestions can help; there is also a lot you could do within your PP if this is approved. Ferdinand

Thanks for the suggestion for a 3kW option. £150 is also a price point for the non-elecronic version of the Siebel, and smaller versions of the Electronic will be in-between. It's a tricky call. Current use of the facility is relatively limited to peak periods (8-11, 4-9, occasional at w/e) with a some 6-8 early morning, but our membership could easily double this year - so more potential demand. Currently there are quiet periods, but we are working to increase usage, and filling in the gaps etc. I need to look at our constraints, I think, and do a short project-memo to lay out the options. Ferdinand

Build a hinterland, and also read all the blogs from end to end. F

Yanking this thread back from the Elysian Fields... Is this range still a good option to heat a tap on a washbowl in a cloakroom? The application is for a gym changing room where we currently have hot showers but no hot water tap for hand washing. I have a whisper in my head that it may be a regulatory requirement somewhere. Our supply to this is not preheated, and the most need I can see for expansion would be one further bowl ie 2 taps. If I could use something more like 3kW than the 10kW discussed here to avoid any need for running new electrics it would be an advantage, I think. If I can save £100 or £300 that would be another extra little improvement project I can do more quickly. And I have a list of dozens of small improvement projects I would like to carry out which are gradually being done one by one. Having run a few numbers I think that I probably want 2-3kW per sink, and that I cannot rely on averaging to reduce my demand since they may all be in use at once. So it may be do something inexpensive now and accept that new wiring might be needed should we add another sink. I'll first have a detailed look at the electrics just to check that there is not a heavier supply close by. Ferdinand

SO that is ganja too, then. Has Levi Root self-built yet? His twitter handle is @levismokehouse.

THat is interesting. How large an installation is that? F

I have a similar issue with an 8x parent now; i need simple controls. Not dementia afaik, but increasingly forgetting things. We also cannot get Freeview sufficiently - so I am also looking for a simple to drive service and set top boxes perhaps on Freesat which can work identically across 3 or 4 televisions. Ferdinand

I read that as "this is the spitting image of our last house" rather than "the photo below is a picture of our last house". Apols if I have slightly misinterpreted what @Sue B meant, by my assumption that a comparison was being made. F

There are threads somewhere, and various people have. You will get some dealings with the star, but mainly with reps, you may get some good ideas, but may have to mess your schedule around to cope with them, and they will not usually give you money. eg Grand Designs. IMNVHO you need to be sure that your project is going to work, and probably know what you want to do with it. I would say that the biggest downside, and perhaps the best programmes for *them*, are catastrophes; you do not want to be that chap with the barge that floated away and was discovered on a beach in the Thames Estuary, or the one with the bee-in-his-bonnet about Geodesic Domes in the Lake District. The people who have benefited from Grand Designs are those who leverage it into projects or a career, or sell their houses for yonks more money, or people who run B&Bs. I think that the chappies with the Ancient Monument Tower in Yorkshire did well for their B&B, and there was one who built in the Isle of Wight and I think doubled his money quickly - but he bungalow gobbled in the middle of a forest on a posh bit outside town (classic project anyway so may have doubled in any case); helped his career as a project-designer. That was the one with the eccentric but immensely likeable artist partner who put yoghurt (or it may have been horse-poo) on the corrugated cladding to make it grow lichen; it didn't. On a canal you may get the rest of the packet of wafers that Kevin McLoud uses to build a model of the canalside piling ?. Get the ice-cream in. Do you have a B&B market for 3 men in boats? More seriously, some of the programmes are really good, and the people likeable. But go in with your eyes open, and your agenda written down on a piece of paper first so you can stand your ground, and the image you want to project. Approach it like an unpaid TV professional, and make sure you communicate what you want to communicate, that you have scoped out at a project level stuff that could seriously undermine you (I would not do anything with suspected Unknown Unknowns such as bleeding edge tech.), and that any disasters are endearing not embarrassing. Someone posted that their architect had an increased-fee clause if it was on TV. F

Not sure if I compeletely agree with @Sue B here. The crack for the OP looks irregular and quite small, and suspiciously follows from the windowsill and that pipe penetration. Even though your piccie is close, you had to draw a line to help us find it. It matches the grain of the render, not the blocks beneath. I am assuming conventional construction in that comment. Is it in the render, or perhaps a rotten something beneath the window. Check water ingress and when it was actually pebbledashed? Matching the pebbledash will be fun. Whilst the @Sue B crack to is large and squared off / angular, and I would think more likely to follow a fault in the underlying structure. Ferdinand