Ferdinand

Several weeks to go yet. I am really horribly out of date. @Visti Yes .. I looked for the Accord estate and found the hole in the range where it isn't.

Time for a brief update. This is not going to an @Onoff thread, but it is likely to rabbit on for a couple of weeks whilst I educate myself about buying cars in 2018. The last one I bought from a dealer was a couple of decades ago. And I'll enjoy the test drives. A couple more have come onto the list, and I had a couple of test drives over the weekend. - VW Passat GTE (phev plugin) is one that I had not noticed previously. Big enough, and huge discounts available of 27-28% for cash or Personal Contract Purchase. Highyl dependent on driving profile. 1600kg towing. - VW Passat Alltrack 4Matic are available on quite special offer at present. £3000 down and £250 ish a month for 24 months 10k miles a year. 45mpg not 50mpg. - Mistubishi Outlander phev seem to be available at discounts of 30%+ off the new price. Which is not exciting for secondhand values in a couple of years - also the VW GTE. Might need to look at recent secondhand too. Suspect the Outlander this does not meet my 2m load deck criterion. 1500kg towing. Test drives. - Skoda Superb very top of the range - "Laurin & Klement". 190 bhp or so. Big inside and comfortable. Hard to even get slight front wheel scrabble without trying. They very kindly gave me the keys and said "come back when you are done". Impressed. - Mercedes E-Class 220D Estate. 190 bhp or so again. *Very* nice place to be, and very refined. The comment above on RWD and snow is right. It struggled with packed snow on this hill, ut to be fair was OK with a very feather-foot. Would need All Season tyres at least, and ideally 4WD. GLS Shooting Break looks really nice, but massively outside budget and practicality. I think I'll need a speed limiter. It would be very easy to drift up to banning speeds on a motorway without noticing. Thank-you for all the previous comments. Ferdinand

I would have thought you could hire a suitable scaffold tower for about £70 for a week.

@newhome I wonder if it might be a good idea if possible to let this dog lie sleeping until you have a normal insurance policy with a legal cover option? Sod's Law says it isn't possible. Are there possible options through contacting the local council re: Nuisance etc. ? F

Don't worry - I am just throwing some ideas about :-). I suffer from washer vibration noises during the spin cycle even though it is in the utility behind a door. Not intending to sound abrupt. Apologies if so. I always feel that it is better to stick my neck out whilst things are still on paper (said the giraffe). We comment and In the end you are best placed to choose the best ideas for you.

I quite like this one, with the precast concrete. I am not sure what the plastic pipe is for however, and whether they are good wines.

Sorry .. and the overall dimensions. I am thinking that it looks quite conventional and there may be quite a lot of potential for space saving and simplification. Three thoughts. 1 Your plumbing is very spread out. Put them more of less above each other? 2 That 1st floor bathroom could become 2 ensuites were you so inclined. 3 You can gain a square meter as @ProDave says, by moving the loo partly under the stair run. Dave said move it whereas I wonder about reversing the staircase which would give you either a squared off living area, or a closet by the front door which could be a coat store, or could take a washing machine and dishwasher in tandem to get them out of the kitchen which would be better noise and space wise. Ferdinand

Can we see the upstairs plan?

Welcome back.

I like the look, but am never convinced by those compartments that stack one bottle on another as it means a You are committed to buying crates of the same wine, which can be fine but that pre-guesses how many types of similar you will have, or b You face the 100% probability that the one you want is at the bottom. @Alexphd1 will you be temperature controlling it? Ferdinand

This from @vivienz' early days may also be of interest. The key thing is to get as far as possible on a level with your contractors and architect understanding wise as far as possible. The way to do that is to give yourself the time to learn, and to understand what you actually need.

Read this thread about @Visti's cost control modelling, that we all pitched in on:

I think that is quite a good scoping study to give a sanity check on the possibility of a project. Clearly they know the Council and the Locality. There is much work to be done after receiving such a document, and the creation of specific proposals plus exploration of more technical constraints, but it is a good start at identifying site and planning policy questions. IMO decent value, although the sort of thing some on here would be do ourselves. If I couldn't do an initial assessment myself or had too much on I would pay them that much quite happily. I think that a brief with specific questions and areas of interest may extract even more value. The only obvious mistake at a quick scan is the suggestion that Trees in Conservation Areas have the same protection as a TPO .. in fact the TPO process to do things to a tree is a free Planning Application needing specific approval ( with an exception of dead, decaying, dangerous or diseased) whilst Conservation Area tree work is give notice and proceed if the Council do not react. But to be fair to them they err on the side of caution wrt to CA trees, which is the right side to be. Ferdinand

Yep. Congratulations,

Talking to them, a space saver seems to be an option on the saloon not the Touring, and in the website configuration for the Touring the RFTs are an option which also requires you to buy more expensive wheels. ANd you lose the mobility kit , whatever that is. So the goo may be the standard, at least on the 5 Series Touring 2.0d SE that I was playing with .. providing they give you something. F

There seem to be some very good deals available at the moment. When I started this thread I was seeing offers which potentially cut the ground from under lower priced brands. - (via Carwow) Mercedes E Class 200D Estates (OTR price £38k) for as low as £30,300 ie 20%+ reduction. - A BMW 5 series Touring 520d 2.0 SE Aug 2017 Pre Reg with <100 miles on the clock for under £27k. List price is £39k. Audi and Skoda 4x4s fall within my criteria. Personal Contract Purchases These seem to be available at about £3k down payment plus approx £250 - 300 plus VAT per month for 36 or 48 months on mileages of about 8-10k/year for private buyers for cars similar to the above. Sometimes better deals are around, somtimes a little worse. I am not experienced with these so am not totally clear good that is, but it looks OK. More modest brands are a little less expensive. But it seems a good time to buy these diesels, especially as Euro 6 diesels are planned to be permissible in urban emission zones. @bassanclan Thanks for the comment. I think the V90 is a little smaller inside (based on reviews) but I will go and have a look. Ferdinand

Like it. So are you going to Appeal his decision?

@Ian D I was looking at the existing planning app, where the Lombardies are a line alongside the common drive/parking area, so could fall into a common ownership of some sort depending on how it is all set up in the new scheme. The trees circled are the ones where future ownership would not be clear, and the back gardens of the houses lose their sunny aspect as they are on the north side. That S106 also looks nebulous - afaics it does not say what the Planning Obligation sum is. That may be to your advantage as you can negotiate it or possibly change your Planning App to avoid it entirely.

What does 'Planning' mean here? What scope will he cover? Does that include the application?

Aha. That looks doable if the consultant is familiar with the local Council policies. But it might be productive to specify a memo report not a posh report. When I look I was a little concerned about all those trees ... particularly the long row of 70ft Lombardies and who would own them as it looked like common space, and about the house orientation with the back gardens facing. North iirc. Without researching local prices, I might look at 2 or 3 with a different orientation, possibly a bigger one for you and two smaller houses. Beware of TPOs, so deal with your trees before PP application. F

I think that £600 will get about 1.5->2 days of time as a maximum unless there is a special factor involved, and 25-30% of that will be writing, so I hope you wouldn't expect too much. Unless it is a very simple, focussed brief I would be concerned about the thoroughness that is possible. If t is a general brief, he will need nearly a day to get to grips with your planning app and the history. With such a small quote the precision of your brief and telling the consultant what not to do will be crucial.

@epsilonGreedy Having thought a little more, I think that in your situation I would: 1 - Contact the architect first, framed as an expectation ("could you clarify" or "could you confirm") that small changes would be OK or attract a small charge only. I think I would do an informal phone call confirmed by email with the drawings. Confirm the contents of the phone call in the email, so you create the contemporaneous record. 2 - Ask the seller more formally after you have the architect answer. Then the vendor will tell you about what he has negotiated. Then if the architect states the charge in the conversation, you have a negotiating lever with the vendor. And if he says it is OK, then you are in the clear. If he wants money, perhaps make an alternative offer involving him being allowed to show clients round your house for 12 months after completion, or similar - if you are so inclined. Ferdinand

THe answer to para 1 is not usually unless the vendor negotiated something with the architect at the outset, or the architect was an employee of his, or there was a work for hire agreement, and the terms of the relationship transferred all the rights.

If you haven't bought the plot yet you could make a right to reuse part of the sale contract, and the seller could deal with it easily because they were switched on enough to have the ownership of copyright or right for a n other to reuse in their contract with the architect, or there could be a fee which they could absorb or negotiate about passing on. Or you could renogotiate with the architect. Or you could ask the seller what it would cost them to get the right to reassign to you, and they may get a better price from the architect. We have covered on BH somewhere because some of us learnt the lesson the hard way. If you are talking about this it would also be useful to talk about you taking over formally as client so you could benefit fully from the architects liability insurance etc. THe cost could be nominal. That was a standard facility from the Surveyor when we had a structural survey done before we sold our last house ... the buyer could become the owner of the report for a very few £ (perhaps £30 iirc). This thread touched on elephant traps where architects are involved: The same applies to all consultant reports :-). F

I think the 5 Series Touring has a space saver. I think.