Ferdinand

Thanks Peter - so about 10p per minute whilst it is running. Good enough to know we won't get an umpteen thousand £££ bill without warning. Thanks. Yep - we need to think it through carefully. Will add a couple of piccies. Ferdinand

Can someone check that I am reading a commercial gas meter correctly. 2 photos taken 15 minutes apart. Am I right that is 5 cubic m of gas, which will cost something like £1.50? I don't mind being out by a third in my guestimate, but I do not want to be out by 10x. I am asking because we have a BFO gas blower in our gym unit - they divided 20k sqft into 3 and as the first occupant we got to choose and had the one with the existing heating system - and I don't want to find I calculated it wrongly in 2-3 months' time. We just want to take it from frozenballs to training temperature in the morning 1st thing through the winter. Cheers F

Oops. Brain addle. The brain was on remote shower taps.

Looks very good, solid, and Scottish. Great stuff. The chapel chairs are an interesting idea. Can I ask what the drive material is, and what will be your maintenance regime - is it gravel + rake once a year?

OTOH you need to be able to reach them from inside the shower when you want to turn it off...

Tricky (as Deep Thought said to Vroomfondel and Majickthize). I think my first comment is that the Deskcheck may be a bit over, but it is not horribly over. I think you may want to be in the £500 ballpark, but it will depend on your site. There is quite a lot you can do yourself; I do not know if anyone here has actually written their own Phase I report, but some have done a substantial part of the spadework (online research and digging holes). There is some stuff on this thread: In your case, is your barn old enough that you can show it has not been disturbed? Can you invite someone to come and look for uxb's as part of their training or "keeping the skills"? Local Cadets? All the best. Ferdinand

This is fun. Bought an accessory from the Czech Skoda accessory site, and they sent me a memory game: With a version on the back designed for people like me who lose their cars in municipal car parks in Sheffield and Wakefield: That's customer service for you. F

Or sleep at work?

Good point. Engineering bricks would be from about £400-500 per 1000 if yu wanted those for the first 1m. You could probably do something with a pattern of reds and blues as one option. Blues would be a bit more. It would be like the finish line at the Indy 500, which has iirc a yard (!""£$%^&* Yanks and their Georgian units) of bricks in memory that the course used to be a brickyard. F

Hope this isn't you then. An unapologetic diversion, 'cos you probably need one. (Mentioning Brexit again ... this is complete bollards imo, but funny and very good). I love Mr Cameron's "Brits don't quit!". Guess who quitted the next day...

(Not implying Scrooge btw, just the outfit.) What about a blanket you switch off before you get into bed?

I'll put us out of our misery - it is a development at a place called Seamill. Three types of bungalow (*). I think these numbers are right. Halyard - 2 bed - 71sqm - £230,000 = £3300 per sqm Lanyard - 3 bed - 114sqm - £280,000 = £2450 per sqm Gimbal - 3 bed - 124sqm - £303,000 = £2450 per sqm Brochure attached. Rightmove site here. Ferdinand (*) Apparently the local for "bungalow" is "single storey cottage". ? chapelton-brochure.pdf

@Moira Niedzwiecka Have you got a more detailed list of tasks that need doing? Ferdinand

.

@Tom The interesting comments in the thread have made me think up a tool design to help thought about "Knowns" and "Unknowns", which is a type of analysis I did when thinking about my own site, and found useful when thinking about factors influencing a situation where I knew very little such as the legal or physical factors around an offer for a building plot, but I have not done a grid before. The difficult thing is to create a list of factors that may or may not be relevant. My method was to brainstorm a list of potential risk factors (eg potential sewer or mineshaft no one has told me about), then categorise on the chart, then prioritise and identify what I could do to manage the risk - even if it was nothing. Hopefully it is useful for someone out there. The grid and download links are below. Ferdinand Cheney Chart Known-Unknowns-v1.pdf Known-Unknowns-Blank-v1.pdf

Welcome to the forum.

A short video about what can be done to make it interesting, and how you can make it for you - in this case by one of my favourite architects who decided to sleep in the lounge in the house they built in the 1960s (and they are still doing it). A good term is "complexly small".

You are most welcome, Jilly. Where is it roughly? And is your PP Outline or Detailed? You may be at a later stage already, but I'll say this now to be sure - park all those people telling you this, that or t'other yesterday, and take your time with a bottle of what cures you. You have more time than money; so use your time well and get more bang for your buck by taking the time you need before you start spending the money. The best way to save money is to avoid spending it on the wrong things by deciding well first. The first thing you need to do is decide what you need and want (Must Have - can't live without / Would Like / Would be nice if; ie MH / WL / WIBNI). Turn it into a 2-3 page spec, then a one page summary. Then get feedback on that - from your own sources and by posting it here. Then, and only then, get into all the implementation and choosing of how to do it on your site. (Unless there is an overriding constraint of some sort to be addressed now). > ground source heat pumps, reed bed sewage system, water bore, passive haus These days the first 2 of those can be done by other means far more reasonably nearly all the time, the water bore depends on off mains or on mains, and the passive haus can be as-near-as-dammit done without spending more money than a conventional route - but park all that as well. That is implementation methods and that comes after your initial needs-specification. You will perhaps want to consider if it needs to be non-hippy-compatible for the future, what is it worth and eg "do I need a bath as well as a shower" - but that can be worked-out later. It sounds as though you might enjoy a "design for living" book called "A Pattern Language", and have the oomph to follow through on it as far as it applies to houses. I was introduced to that by one of my dad's last architectural customers, who was an interesting lady retiring back from Africa having lived for years in huts she built herself - and was considering restoring a derelict windmill. Have a look here: http://www.patternlanguage.com/index.html Best of luck Ferdinand

Dunno. Before long the Worm Man may be a statutory consultee demanding one run be subterranean to provide a non-frozen winter sanctuary for the Lumbicinae. F

Perhaps. But there are umpteen options, all balancing risk vs reward, and different lenses that potential buyers look through. eg Consider a value without PP for this site - £X. Once it has full PP the value is Y. In which case the original owner can: 1 - Invest say £5k in PP, increase the value by £A to £X+A, and gives them £A-5k in extra money. 2 - Assign a higher value for the potential, which gives them £X+B. Where £B is the subject of estimates and the price of a willing buyer. If Fred and Fiona the Self-Building family come along they may be running out of sprog-space so will pay more than Bob than Batchelor or Sheila the Speculator. But Fred and Fiona or Bob pay no CiL and get their VAT back on the build, and Sheila may have an extra 3% Stamp Duty to pay (OK - may not apply to a plot, but makes the point), which may mean that Sheila's offer is forced by the tax treatment to be £25k lower than if there were a different playing field. 3 - Impose an Overage Agreement, which may give them a potential uplift £C in the future, depending, but may also drive people away. 4 - Take a middle route eg Outline PP. Then that increased value goes through the lens to Price, P, and then of Personal Opinions (eg it may save Fiona a 90 minute commute and a second car, so may save £5k a year, which annualises up to £25k or £50k on the price, depending on the current return that Fiona can obtain on £25k used elsewhere, and how much time she wants to spend with her horse and/or her family). Who knows, Owen the Owner may have had some legover with 25 years ago and want to help his illegitimate child for the future, and so be inclined towards selling to Fanny-Mae his Former-Mistress at a lower price. But then the Buyer may only get PP for something smaller than they want, which may mean having paralysed themselves with analysis, they have a financial bloodbath anyway, and end up hiding behind excuses such as "I got my dream forever home" or "it was worth it to get exactly what I wanted". Or perhaps those are features, not bugs ? . Or they may read a self-build website and save £50k on build costs because they build it differently. And that is before the art of the deal and the knowledge of the Planning System or Local Politics, and that Harry the Hoary Old Git thinks he can get four houses on there at Appeal, or if he sells to a housing association and gets local opinion on his side. but OTOH the limitations of Part Q will affect all of those. Favourite quote: Which train are you on? But then some people are travelling on the High Road or the Low Road, not the train. You takes your choice, after working out what you can / can't control, taking advice on what you may be able to do, influenced by your own circs, and then makes your offer depending on everything else, and pays your money if you win. I try to envisage it in terms of money vs risk, in the circumstances, and then wait until I feel I know enough to make a decision. But I really wish you success. Apologies for my early morning maunderings. Ferdinand

Worthwhile points, but there is the intention of Parliament, what the law as drafted says, what the Courts interpret the law as saying, things in the law that do not reflect the interpretation, and our own opinions. What we all think and do which can be different for each of us. Also, the circumstances where I might make a decision for reasons of what I regard as principle may be different from yours; specific examples are easy to construct or to find in the wild. And all the time people attempt to change the law to reflect their personal opinions or damage other for what in their opinion is the greater good. Over a long period (eg a generation) one hopes that the law reflects some sort of average of what society considers acceptable. In the end I (and you) have to live with the decisions we make - and I may make the different decision in similar circumstances, depending eg if something threatens my business viability or I currently have capacity to take a hit and emerge still standing. I tend to be quite skeptical of planning systems because there is very wide interpretation, and I know damned well that they make decisions on a whim of a local politician, or someone who does (or does) not want something new round the corner, and used their personal position to effect or prevent change. I know that my family smallholding was taken out of the local plan as housing land on the basis of a flawed (in this case, a stupidly superficial evaluation) decision after about 7 years, during the final stage of the Shlaa process - so we took the decision to do a Planning App then rather than wait until 2030. When we got to committee some Councillors were woefully ignorant. But I do not know of a better system. Agree that both points matter. But there is a reason why little old ladies rule the world ? . F

Yes, but if the agreement has holes in it, they may as well be pursuing St George's Dragon on a shetland pony with a knitting needle. Both sides should have good enough advice in such circumstances that they both know which party is the Emperor With No Clothes. If they created a duff agreement, more fool them. The purchaser is not responsible for the vendor's cockups. If there had been deception by the vendor, then my attitude would be different, but Overage Agreements are a Big Boy's Game and those who play it should know the score. We had one of these that was really quite onerous ... it was 20 years in duration, and half of the uplift in value would have been due on receipt of planning permission. It was on a super wide rural bungalow on a square half acre plot that the family had to buy to protect us from the restaurant / nightclub the other side buying to develop into something that would have been up against our house. I can't remember whether the uplift was on the value of the bungalow-with-planning-permission or using a valuation of the final value of the project. We identified 2 options which could have avoided the overage within the period - one was to do permitted development, and the other was to do a small Planning Application to trigger the clause (eg PP for a detached garage), then the more valuable PP for the housing estate (say) some years later after the agreement had been dealt with. The latter was based on the thought that the agreement as worded was probably a one-shot thing. At that point we would have had to rely on our legal advice to face the other party down should they come after us. In the event we sold after about 12 years, and the purchasers converted the integral garage and roofspace into a self-contained annexe-unit, and also extended within Permitted Development. We probably got some benefit on the value from demonstrating that there were viable options to avoid the potential overage charges. As has been said, practically you need quality legal advice, a thinking cap, and a willingness to gird your loins. Ethical considerations are a matter for your conscience. We felt our agreement was rather abusive and imposed at the last minute by an every-pound-of-flesh seeking family member in the family who sold it to us, so did not feel guilty. Ferdinand

You also need to know where you are wrt pre-start Planning Conditions. You probably do not want to get tangled up in "you have not met your pre-start conditions so you can't have started!" debates. I would ask the Planners. F

We are actually commercial, though we do get some sponsorship for athletes from various companies, and we are increasingly a venue for competition or trials and courses, and we do already have a community support programme - eg we are currently fundraising for a defibrillator to be in the gym and available for surrounding businesses etc. The real source of the challenge is that we had to jump up to a bigger scale of unit due to suitable smaller units being horribly thin on the ground in our area. Cheers for all the comments everyone. F

Back to topic I will be recommending a bit of secondhand Tekplas currently on ebay plus probably a small number of new panels, for mainly future expandability reasons.