Ferdinand

I would recommend that BBC Gardeners World forum. https://forum.gardenersworld.com/ As to books, I'll leave that to others - except to suggest that you go and look for lots of second hand D G Hessayon (The XYZ Expert) on ebay or in charity shops. He sold 50 million of the various things, so there should be a lot available. eg Bundle of nine. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/295036019575 Alternatively, there are lots of other bundles on ebay of all sorts. I'd say that way on rather than start shelling out at £20-30 per pop/. F

I wasn't referring to products in the brand - just to any product suitable for professionals.

My risk-averse suggestion for that would perhaps be a decorative light fitting that hangs the bulbs 3.5m lower, and a telescopic feather duster. 😁. Though one of the glories of LED bulbs is that they all last for years.

Only if the high quality is known imo. Working at height is not a place for taking potential risks. I have a Wickes work platform like that, which goes up to about 1.8m, and is fine for eg working on a conservatory or bay window roof. But I have a Zarges tower for anything over 2m ,which will go up to about 8m with proper stabilisers. For anyone who has financed an £nnn,nnn self-build, I would suggest a pro-version, which is perhaps only £500 or so more. You probably only get to fall off something 5m high once, as it is on a solid surface. Then you get to spend the £500 saved on an appliance. And lots more £500s on hiring workmen.

I can see the utility, but I'm with Dave on suggesting the back garden as perhaps better. This front one you may be across the pavement at an angle when pulling out. I might be inclined to a brief and inexpensive meeting with a Planning Consultant (say one hour), just to explore if there are better options. If you still in time I think you may win the other one on Appeal - which is free. Not sure how tight it is and it may be deceptive - I would do a layout in a quiet time at a car park with a couple of cones and a space, just to make sure there is ample turning space on to the private road. Or measure it against the standard diagrams in the policy docs. Are you a conservation area? Might complicate at the front/side. ATB. Ferdinand

Ask a flamingo. Or a gammon.

@Duncan62 Thanks for posting the plot. My comments having reread the above. 1 - Roof Your aesthetic is roughly 'Grand Designs Barn-style'. That's fine. But if that is your plan you need to think about maintaining that valley gutter. How will you deal with the heaps of leaves from all those lovely trees? I would suggest a top hung skylight onto the valley from the landing that you can get out of using an extendi-ladder - don't fit it where you fall down the stairs as well if you slip. That also means that your valley must be wide enough to walk in safely - which means 450 or so wide. IMO that roof form is complicated and expensive. However. I expect that with a convincing argument you could get a flat or a monopitch, or something higher, through - if that is what you want. Even a small number of feet could make a difference. Given the severe restrictions on your upstairs rooms, I would suggest considering an alternative form - perhaps a mansard or gambrel roof, perhaps in a vernacular style. Or even dormers for the smaller bedrooms. A mansard roof could easily give you rooms around 1m bigger in that dimension at head height, which would be transformative. 2 - Glad to see you have thought about the plot - great stuff. I would be inclined to move it a little more to the West on the plot, without compromising the garage or space to work - eg at the least you need space for future scaffolding between the house and garage. I say that because imo you want to maximise the garden space for more fun. I also note that the garden side is a potential plot for a nice retirement bungalow should you need - 8-9m width would be ample. You might prefer that to the potential grannexe when you hit 70-75. 3 - Front. It faces south, so I would make sure to get 2m high boundaries to give privacy - so you can sit or play on the S side, and for the veg garden. I think it needs a bit more drama, both to tease passersby, and to give a sense of occasion when someone comes to the door. I'm almost inclined to suggest a separate pedestrian gate. I would think about making the approach to the door more intriguing. 4 - You asked about getting light into the house. I think you have an issue with gloomy bedrooms on the N side plan above - perhaps with amount of light, but also with no sunlight. I would put a generous N-facing skylight in all the ones which touch the North side. I have these and they are gorgeous. A skylight lets in a *lot* more light than a window of the same size. With your roof pitch, there would be very little sun even in summer, and beautiful N-light all the time. With your valley I would consider skylights on the N-face of the front roof section, including a big one above the well, to get light into the landing. 5 - Flexibility for the future. Are you planning another sproglet? If it's twins, what will you do living in this house? 6 - Stairs. They don't look stairlift-able. That could bugger your detailed layout - iirc there are requirements for clear wall at the top and bottom (without looking it up). What are your regs? My suggestion would be to find somewhere to incorporate a proper future domestic lift. Should be possible, and they beat stairlifts to a cocked hat. Also stairs, make them generous in width and angle. My suggestion is 35 degrees and 1m wide. Stairs are one of the places, along with shower cubicles, and kitchen sinks and hobs, where a small amount of extra space makes the whole house feel luxurious. In the case of a stair angle, something shallower may give you an extra 5 years of ability to get upstairs comfortably. 7 - Grannexe. Another good thing you have thought about. I think you could improve the layout by treating the machine room as part of a cloaks / Jack-Jill loo / machine room combo - which might involve turning the bedroom around by 90 degrees. Remember to include the drains etc into the cloakroom so it can be a downstairs loo when the grannexe is activated. Can the cloaks and loo be side by side against the outside wall, so you get the soil drains by the edge? Does that matter? 8 - The bathrooms and plumbing seem to be quite spread out. Think a bit more about making it closer together, so that you get fewer water noises. eg Put the family bathroom next to the master, and swap with that mini-bedroom. And make sure the fittings do not back up against the master. And so on. The ideal is a single service core, but that is not always possible. 9 - Room layout. Yes, make the walls thinner, since it is tight on space. You have too many itty-bitty rooms upstairs. For the mini-study just in case the grannexe is required, you could leave that in one kid's bedroom such that it could be partitioned later - just need to think about placement of the extra door, two windows, skylights, heating and power sockets. (Will this decision have been made for you by 2-4 years when this is built?) You could do the same with the "store", but I think one of those is wise. I'm not sure about washing machines upstairs. Someone will know. 10 - Double beds. I would say work to 2m x 2m for the Master, and 2m x 1.75 for the others. Have just measured mine and these are the actual sizes. The important thing is what size *you* need. 1.9m x 1.4m is now pretty standard for student accommodation. That's me. Ferdinand

The issue is Oxford Council.

OK, @Duncan62. Some more feedback. It is really good that you are taking the time to let your design steep in your head - that is a real benefit. I think you are part way through the process, but there is still a lot of room to get something even better imo. For example, you say it is a forever-house, yet say there is no prospect of working from home. How do you know? You may be a carer for a parent, child or spouse, or cared for, in 10 or 25 years' time - in which case you may have no option. All it needs is an accident, and it could all change. An architect would start off with the plot, thinking about all the things @Bozza asked you about above (which are the most important questions on the thread imo). Then they would think about your statement of needs (do you have one of those?),. and come up with a house design to meet your needs using that particular plot. That is the defining expertise of the architect, combined with a knowledge and skillset to meet that. The reason for the self-builder to spend time up front is to gain some elements of that skillset. As self-builders we don't have the design training, and too easily dive into the bits of the process we know or touch already, which is usually house layout or engineering detail or house features, rather than the context. I use a simple tool to help me think about reconciling the two, which I call a "plot summary", which sits alongside the 'statement of needs'. It's just a diagram of the stuff Bozza was asking about in one place, and you add whatever is of interest. The statement of needs is what you use to sanity check each version of your design as you proceed. Here's one for a much smaller house on a corner plot where a few of us took a user called @simplepimple through the process. He had purchased a plot with planning permission with a design that had just been taken through planning easily to sell the plot, and wanted help to think it through. When you get into your design, you think about stuff like whether you want morning or evening or all day light in which rooms, if you want a window somewhere to throw the setting sun into your hallway, where your partner wants the herb garden, prevailing wind and sheltering from it, and so on. There are lots of examples of people doing this thinking in the blogs, and other threads. @simplepimple's design thread is here. He actually built it very quickly. HTH and keep on trucking. Ferdinand

I think they have a queue.

Shell imo are a bargepole job. I know multiple people with very bad experiences. Escape.

OK. Next update. 1 - In warm weather this is quite capable of lowering my downstairs temperature by a couple of degrees, whillst using about 1kW+ of power. I have not had seriously hot temperatures since it arrived. 2 - The extra control via wiifi is worth it for the extra control. I aim to be working to the thing coming on between 7am and 11am when the temperatuer is above 19C, which can be programmed. So I'll be keeping it.

There seem to be 2 options. One type comes with a solar panel and it's own battery. The other comes with no solar panel, and uses a battery type the same as eg cordless power tools, and is charged occationally. Here's a well-reviewed one of the latter.

I'm after a submersible solar or battery powered pump to fit to a water butt to IBC to drive a garden drip watering system in the summer, or on occasion a handheld hose. Can anyone recommend a suitable product? Thanks Ferdinand

The polishing is a mechanical process. I guess they will also pick up lichen and bird deposit. An interesting little vid from a rockseller how he polished stones, including beach pebbles.

Some suppliers store short term.. I once bought 200 pieces of CLS from Wickes and collected it 20 at a time over 6 weeks. They put it aside for me.

"Rate of 3.66kWh" FFS !

What's PW, and aren't you in the SW not the SE? Explication required. The only PW acronym I am aware of is the one that Brenda at the Samaritans used to use - some years ago.

Mine were also installed in December 2015, so the rules may have changed. It is East / West, with plans in my head to move some of it to a South facing veranda roof. It was not that early as an install, but still some time ago.

Wishing you the best. Persevering works. Usually.

They didn't when I put mine in 🤔. Or someone didn't. 9.98 kWp of panels and 2 x 5.3 kW max inverters. Ironically I blagged 2 spare panels and 2 spare Solaredge panel-optimisation-wotsits from the supplier as spares, so I could take it up to 10.48 kWp out of stock.

Gorgeous site. For a renovation your budget sounds realistic-generous to me at approx £1150 per sqm. Though groundworks etc and site improvements are missing. Is there anything you can do to sort out that drive? One of the first questions we ask - have you considered a newbuild? There are many. many advantages. Update: I'm late. I'm late. It's the end of July. Ferdinand

(Another of my favourite use cases is "where will the drum kit for your teenage child go?" or "where will trombone practice happen"?) For light penetration - it can be helpful just to *see* sunlight coming in in a corner rather than needing it everywhere. Here is a great interview with one of my favourite architects that touches on it: I use a tool where I draw a plan in the context of the garden, and mark up sun angles through the year, views etc - then use that to think about how light comes in, shadows etc. I'm a great fan of exposing yourself to many houses via estate agents or weekend stays. eg Modern houses owned by the Landmark Trust. Ferdinand

I predict 3 dogs, and a snake or parrot. This will not be in your gift. I think you are being insufficiently ambitious there. If you take with windows, glass above doorways, carefully chosen through views of the house, and perhaps stairwells you should be able to have sun of some kind visible from everywhere throughout the day. Others have done some detail sweating, so I will add 2 points. Try some "use cases" eg 2 people working from home, 2 friends come round for an impromptu meal, we want to eat outside at brunch time and suppertime, child stays at home to start a business, we need to care for a pair of grandmas, after an accident you end up in a wheelchair, someone in the family becomes a nudist etc. Think about indoor / outdoor living. This is Scotland, so shelter and supper outside may matter. Storage for lawnmover, garden stuff and bikes? Potting shed? F

Octopussy has at least one tariff that gives you around 8p. And there may be one that gives you more. If you have things like e-cars and house batteries.