Ferdinand

I can't really comment on this one, as my preferred approach to painted fences is "don't, without a really good reason".

Somebody else may know how easy it is to paint on top of that ... the docs for Ducksback say it has a "Wax-enriched formula", which (to me) implies a possible difficulty in overpainting, which perhaps suggests taking careful advice and perhaps a test patch or even a different shade of the same stuff. Ferdinand

Welcome to the forum @zoe61. I think the biggest saving was to do with finding a cost-effective solution for @recoveringacademic's piles. IIRC a brief aside from a professional site-treatment specialist in an email hinted at an alternative treatment for said piles. See this post and others either side in the blog. The takeaways are REALLY sweat the detail of what you *are* told, and research the adjacent stuff you have not been told. Ferdinand

Wouldn't that be to spray with gold paint and bequeathe to Blue Peter as an example of excellence ! I was asking more about ground level, as marked, which I hope is part of the plot for this conversion (even if you own the whole farm) - if not boundary disputes may rear their heads in a generation. I think that I can't comment more without knowing more, which it might not be suitable to post. And then there are the intricacies of Part Q ?, which I will avoid: F

On the design - what is your plot shape. Is there any scope for inside/outside living (eg Franch Doors) on the more attractive North side? I do not see that in the model, or perhaps I missed it. Ferdinand

Welcome to the forum. An exciting project. Could you do something interesting with the Barn opposite, like paint it in camouflage or a mural of the landscape behind, or put some mirror-type strips on it with climbers in between? Or even something that will break up the shape? Lots of possibilities, perhaps also using lighting from your side. I think I would consider something to break up the monolithic block of ugly, and also something to make people coming in look beyond the wall and imagine that it is not there. This is interesting - put a fence in front that reads like a garden then other side, then a mirror reflecting your side to pretend it is there. You could make it look like another house, or the landscape beyond the end of the alley beyond your house for visitors looking at an acute angle, who then see an image of the side of your house as they walk forward. There are probably lots of good ideas you can borrow from tight urban designs, or other places, for your outside environment too. Here's another I like. >The long rooflight running east-west (see model3.png) is to allow light into what might otherwise be a dark central corridor, and allow borrowed light into the north facing rooms via internal clerestory windows off the corridor. Grand Designs last week had one of those that worked spectacularly well by being aligned carefully with the internal spaces of the room. F

Well, at last. I am told the EU having now sorted out their new diesel economy tests, I can expect delivery at the end of October. F

The problem with that proposal is that your neighbour could plant a row of Lleylandii or Eucalyptus ! Is this one reason why Bishops (apostrophe - how many Bishops?) Avenue is loved by foreign Potentates? I always think of it as one of only a few areas close to Central London where relatively basic helicopters can get in and avoid the safety-over-urban-areas problems, plus the restricted zones around Heathrow etc. Ferdinand

I partly think of architects as being like an iceberg where the bit you do not see is the 7 years of training, and the hundreds of houses and buildings that they have studied, which ideally informs what they in theory do for the self-builder. if we do not have one one (in whatever form for however much of the project) then we have to put in the time to develop those bits of the iceberg that we need ourselves. F

Sounds good. Just check that you have enough left over for minor repairs - eg if the shower overflows or the loo pipe leaks or the little darlings wee on it and for some reason you do not find out for a couple of days (have I mis-estimated the age of the little darlings?). I imagine a big repair would be replace-in-toto. Ferdinand

Brilliant. The missing phrase is “God’s personal instructions are not a relevant planning matter in Torridge”. It reminds me of the Fracking Protesters sent to prison last week who maintained that they had been sent down for ‘peaceful protest’ when they had actually blocked a public road for 4 days by camping on top of a convoy of lorries and been found guilty of ‘public nuisance’. And also of the Freemen of the Land who still think we are living in a Georgian emergency. The irony is that they could do it for 28 days a year without worry. It seems that the 3+ static caravans are still there, so there could be a bargain for a Devon based buildhubbers with suitable transport available who want to help out.

Welcome.

Noisy and generally difficult to work with. Experience - bil used it for the extendi bit at the back of a terrace. In particular, difficult to cut tidily. I think the technique is to do it in 2 cuts .. the metal separately from the insulation. If using it, I would be ordering the stuff in exactly the right sizzle. Flashing pieces and profiles should be available. Others May have better experience. Ferdinand

May be that my session expired. PP is PA16/12154 at Cornwall County Council here: http://planning.cornwall.gov.uk/online-applications/search.do?action=advanced&searchType=Application

Quite an interesting story to the site, and I'm quite impressed with their site choice. Design an Access Statement is here: http://planning.cornwall.gov.uk/online-applications/files/EB78B92DCA5359BB70240ABD67F8BB66/pdf/PA16_12154-Design_And_Access_Statement-1273611.pdf (Restrain yourself, @ProDave)

I wonder if they will get the VAT Reclaim properly maximised.

Nice to see it going well at .. er .. @Hecateh's House. Spot the advertising industry sense of humour...

Missed this before. I know a couple of people who have static caravans they rent out, and the sites seem to have a policy that vans are not allowed to stay on site after they are 10 years old. That fits with @epsilonGreedy’s comment. Ferdinand

.

I see this is not .. thanks @jack .. a polite thread. Given that iirc you are German, I think a Bundesalder. I have a soft spot for the corpulent one that looks as well-lunched as Helmut Kohl. Alternatively a life size bird characteristic of the district. Do you have Red Kites? Or a character from Pixar’s film Newt, which was cancelled before production: (I may have mistaken waterspout for gargoyle). I hesitate to say take inspiration from Kilpeck church, but since we are all equality-mongers and the thread is about penises it deserves a mention.

If your sprayer is experienced you will not get that much more than a stripe round the edge as he is will know how to balance it all to avoid paint bouncing off much. Back roll after spraying, or do the topcoat with a roller and you can retouch. I would say spray before floor and skirting then masking is that much less. F

There is no reason why information going through the client should be inaccurate. That is the question of the client doing things competently eg proper version control etc, and is IMO no reason for a restrictive approach. On ours we maintained an archive of frozen baselines copies, that were used for supplying the next professional. It may have helped that both of us had backgrounds in IT project management. Judging from your account, the client dug himself a hole then fell into it. He should have as you wanted required you to do sufficient due diligence to be satisfied that the data was reliable, then held you responsible for the reliability with whatever caveats had been agreed. Ferdinand

I can't think of anything to say. Ouch. And sympathy.

It said "You" not "I". . (Not planning to go on Grand Designs any time soon.)

Interesting reply, and good to have a conversation about it with someone with whom I mainly disagree. It perhaps also depends on the arena we are in. A self-builder is different to a small developer or a custom builder. In the PP that I usually refer to on BH, it was an Outline PP then sell to a developer project, and I was able to have pretty much everything electronically from everyone - even when I did not have the software to process it. But I still got slightly caught-out by assignment fees for my buyer to have a right to reuse everything to the tune of £1k+, when my purchaser made that a condition of contract, and it was not in all my contracts with my consultants. Interestingly, some of them treated it more as a positive opportunity to develop further business. Your comment about it usually being OK to give information to consultants seems to me to be quite a weak protection, since I can have a contract clause with my PM (say) which gives me access to all the information s/he has received, or if in law he is my Agent then I have an absolute right to it anyway. I think that if I had all these people passing information around that I had paid them all to produce with a "nope, you don't get a copy" stance, it would succeed in carving a chip on my shoulder fairly rapidly ?. If an architect had an issue with me having everything electronically I would probably see that as a red-flag warning of a potentially difficult relationship and go elsewhere. But I would be wanting to work very collaboratively anyway, and perhaps be sitting in the role of 'professional PM' myself. Ferdinand