Ferdinand

A BCO HOG? ?

+1. And I have recently had a conversation over the phone with a chap in the water company, which was helpful. This concerned their knowledge on a site which had been in the same ownership for a century and was now being split into about 5. They did not know anything so it was manholes and deductive logic. F

That's fairly extreme ... installing before the walls. A non-embarrassable workforce, and a neighbour who is a compulsory connoisseur in builders' cleavage.

Your problem there is that the sandstone is the same colour all the way through ... so it will wear back to the colour you do not like ???. Sandstone slips? (runs and hides) Could you alter the perception by repointing the mortar?

There is a product called Liquid Weather, that I know nothing about but the name. http://www.liquidweather.co.uk/liquid-weather-for-paving-paths-patios-and-driveways/ Or could you try something natural to stain it and encourage lichen etc?

Drafts = not finished ... sorry.

I did a series of blogs about things including hotel bathrooms (good places to learn about dirt traps and hopefully not phallic shadows from badly placed shower heads and lights) soon after this place started, but it stopped at 1 with an article about street furniture. There is still one in the drafts about bathrooms.

One way to sanity check that and also look for ideas is to allow yourself a few weekends away or citybreaks staying in AirBNB houses or modern holiday rentals, of which there are a lot around. It is also a lot of fun. F

Heh. Just looked him up. I meant Dr Kermode, with a PhD in Horror Fiction.

Personally I wouldn't paint them. Blowtorch to scorch? Or an external beathable dark stain? I think the stain would last better, and would darken further over time. (test first on an offcut)

Did you get caught ....?

Not a place to cut corners. Expensive if a mistake is made.

Does anybody know where the government are with progress on the National Planning Policy Framework? (This is England). I am talking to the Council, and I have just been quoted to from what I think is the Draft Version of the new NPPF. Does anyone know when this will be going active, so I can assess what I need to pay attention to for a Planning Application? I do know about our Local Plan - last month it was withdrawn AGAIN, so I think we are still on saved policies from the 2007 one or perhaps the 2002 one, and there does not yet exist an emerging Local Plan, so I think no weight can be attached to ithe new one yet. Is there any Guidance on how much weight attaches to a Withdrawn Local Plan? This app will relate to a preferred town-centre use (D2: Leisure) on an industrial estate which needs the time limit of the Use Permission extending, so it could be a bit of a shark-infested custard. Cheers Ferdinand

Something valuable that Buildhubbers may have is classic furniture from the 1950s to 1970s. I still have a Guy Rogers "Manhattan" (or similar) double-bed sofa and a pair of reclining chairs which seem to go for crazy money now (though not 20k unfortunately). At one point in the old house we had 3 sofas and 7 chairs because people buying new houses on developments kept donating them as being too big for the new house. That little lot restored could now be around 5k or more, but most went before the move to the current house. Ferdinand

That reduces it to about 20 possibles ! Including the 9 storey tower in the hospital car park in London that had a design concept like a mini Trellick Tower ?, and was arguably very cool indeed but looked like a future maintenance hostage to fortune. One assumes that if she won bigtime you would have been tied down and told about it ! F

Looking briefly at the plans (and without scaling), I wonder two things: 1 - Is that balcony too large wrt the bedroom? By shrinking it slightly can you give room to have some sort of sitting area inside your bedroom to use in the autumn / winter / spring? 2 - Do you have space to make a more sumptuous bathroom without undermining the dressing or bedroom? 3 - The living room seems rather cut off from the kitchen, and the kitchen does not seem to have a place to sit comfortably rather than at the table. Do you want 2 'reception' spaces for when you have visitors, grandchildren in etc. So that you could divide TV / talk or noisy / civilised etc. All of those depend on how you will live in it. F

Good stuff that you already have some exposure; it can be a bolt from the blue if you do not. I'll leave energy comments for the new thread. It will be interesting to hear of your loo but no-longer-a-cesspit strategy. We ended up with an Aquatron, but there are threads about all of that. eg (you may have found) The first thing that they did at ours was to dig 18" down in a trench all the way round the walls, due to change in levels over the years. F

But did she win? I have thought about that. Want to end the introduction with ‘But I’d rather be a millionaire’. Eggheads and Pointless seem interesting at present, but I need team members who know about pop music, ‘classic ‘ English Lit, soap and real operas, film, and football. Sounds like a person with aspirations who didn’t quite make Chiswick, and is now stuck with Corrie, plus a sports nerd. For Eggheads I would need a polymath. Where’s the Good Doctor when you need him? My favourite performance was an unnamed person on Celebrity Mastermind declaring that Henry VII was after Henry VIII. Ferdinand

I may not be been clear, or perhaps cannot find it. I meant a view of the new design from far enough back such that it can be compared with the existing in terms of the size on the plot. F

Interview on BBC News 24 back in 2008 or so when Tony and friends were doing 500k random Section 44 Stop and Searches per annum in search of terrorism without catching a single terrorist. Self and girlfriend were searched after the suspicious activity of looking at the Local Area map at Kings Cross for more than 20 seconds.I think we were the padding to dilute the stats. The Officer said ‘yes, I believe you may be a terrorist’ when challenged, with a straight face. I landed a blog post at no 1 on Google for the relevant term and some Beeboid was doing research via the usual method, and asked for an interview. F

Do you have a site plan, and visual from an angle and distance like the photo to give us an impression of how it sits on the site. F

What about tapping a vertical edging in at the inner edge of the haunch, then fill the 'trough' you have created with the same gravel. You could use something such as slates or edging tiles. I suspect that the concrete, in addition to taking up rootspace, may also be sucking any water that does get there away - just as the soil always dries out at the bottom of walls.There might be a benefit in painting the concrete with some sort of paint-on-DPM, or even lining with plastic sheet. Another thing you could try would be to grow something that flops over the edge, such as one of the hardy ground cover flowery cushion things your grandma had along the edge of her path, and create a narrow border there. Have a look around the locality. I'm trying to remember the name of the one with bluey-purple flowers that we still have, but I can't rmember the name. This one: (update: aubretia) I guess that something Alpine or Rockery might match the conditions. Or you could even use something like Thyme, or a creeping conifer. Or what about planting it in a deep gutter set into the ground if you need to keep control? https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pmapinterest/border-plants/?lp=true F

@Rendall I should add that whilst there are disagreement here, it is to help you think about different viewpoints so as better to inform the synthesis you create, and help your project be better. Ask a question of 3 people on Buildhub, and you will get between 8 and 27 opinions. You'll be fine. F

I need to come back on this, @Rendall. I am not talking about gross criminality; I am talking about managing the inconsistency, the capriciousness, the self-contradictions, and the waste which are part and parcel of our regulatory systems. And the need to be ready for this in case something goes wrong with regulation on your project; you are dealing with a Listed Building and the consequences of things going wrong can be high, in both time and money. Here we are already clear that you are dealing with at least 3 lots of regulators - the Batmen, the Listed Building Men, and probably the Tree Men. You have to choreograph what they say into a dwelling that is attractive and affordable for the next 25 years (say), even when there will be differences between the things they way and they may contradict. My favourite analogy for Planning is Poker with a table stake of thousands, and I like Kenny Rogers "The Gambler" for our options on each issue: corny, but food for thought. Tree Man A may contradict Tree Man B, for BCO (Buildings Conservation Officer) 1 may contradict BCO 2 and BCO 3, but once a decision is made they will probably all stand by it out of solidarity. There are very wide areas of leeway within the bounds of professional competence, and much imo is governed by fashion at the time the partcular person was trained, and the flexibility they display may well be linked with the level of experience. Though there are also factors of some places being old fashioned in their practice, just as a Palladian Villa in the Peak District may be 50 or 100 years later than one in Brighton due to slow spread of the latest architectural fad. eg The last time I had a proper assessment of a TPO tree done, the Wise Owl Treeman listed the names of the local Tree Officers, and was able to tell me what each one would probably let me do, and which would make me use metaphorical nail scissors. The regulation is not consistent. However, there is considerable leeway in most of these regulations eg where the line is on a listed building between "maintenance" and "repair", and whether you need to employ an architect to do a Listed Buildings Consent application (no fee but one day of an architect costs money, especially if you end up doing 10 of them over 5 years). This piece in Building Conservation explores some of the grey areas. eg Do you need to apply for permission to replace the original door handle on your back door to improve security? What about the door itself? What about painting the doorframe? You will get different views and suggestions. eg When you apply for PP, a Tree Officer is likely to appear out of the sky, and it will be a matter of opinion whether you get nothing or a Woodland TPO on the whole shebang, If you get the latter, what would happen to your plans to grow your own firewood if you have any? (It is often advised here to decide what you want to do with your trees and do it before breaking cover with the Council).# I also think that the Bat System in particular is riddled with conflicts of interests - the people who are the key advisers on the rules also make their living from training Batmen - and it all works to increase the overhead on you. There are plenty of horror stories, but in the eyes of the Batmen you lose. I have quoted examples which may or may not apply, but I'll stop there anyway. I love listed buildings and trees, but in these days of kneejerk-bureaucracy and tick-box warriors who shelter in the lee of regulations, they can make life a hell of a lot more complicated (and slower). One thing you need is a wise owl who knows the area and how they all operate, to be a sounding board and adviser. The point is to make sure that you have independent knowledge as to how it might go, and what rights they have actually got - which may be exaggerated - and how this relates to what you want to do, and how you can best achieve your aims whilst developing your project appropriately. (One thing I would be looking at is eg where is the curtilege of your listed building (or where you want to draw the line), and how that may affect you and your plans.) Rgds Ferdinand

The listed building we are talking about on the other thread had big work being done on it from 1976 until at least 2008. A combination of self-managed subbies and self-do, mainly by dad. WIth bits from me. We sold it as basically very sound, ready to have a richer person throw 200k or so at it to make it 21C fitted-out and warm. F