Ferdinand

I have several MX showers in student houses, which have been in for about 4-5 years. No problem so far.

Take a rain check on how carefully the properties are inspected. Offspring could get stung for the full cost of restitution. Ferdinand

@Daiking, as a strategic thing they need also to deal with next door being empty. This is a huge issue now. Write to the Council Empty Homes team, or report it here: https://www.gov.uk/report-derelict-abandoned-building Or to You Spot Property: http://youspotproperty.com/ Or make an offer to buy it, even. Ferdinand

@Ed_MK Reading the pre-App they seem to want a) More turning space but b) Less hardstanding. I think that "permeable paving" may be useful here for part of your turning/parking area ... ie the stuff that is a matrix but lets grass grow in the gaps. Not that expensive, and can be very recycled (point that out). @Calvinmiddle used this in his plans. It may be that the things that are easy for people to say in the 'this is our opinion' pre-App may evaporate once they have to take responsibility for it properly. You do not have to do every dot and tittle they want, it has to be I think "acceptable in planning terms". If they fixate on something, parking is quite good - at least there are defined objective standards for it, so you are not eating blancmange with chopsticks while debating the finer points of oenology with a teetotaller. One possibility for your drive/parking could be an in/out driveway, say with echelon parking in front of the house or against the hedge. Visitor parking can then possibly be on the driveway itself. That might well give the Landscape Architect a fit due to the extra 0.000000000014% of Milton Keynes' endangered stock of hawthorn bushes it would cost, but if you put a net benefit into your landscape plan or your D&A backed by say a letter from your Tree Man (or natural-ologist if you have one) eg double the thickness of the hedge between the entrances, then it might be acceptable on balance. I think you need to take great care as to what you say "we will do", "the applicant intends to do" etc. Do not over promise on specifics where you do not need to. That could be a rod for your back. One for a conversation with your architect. Shades of grey are very useful colours. Ferdinand

@Ed_MK That is probably not legalese - it is quite likely to be people with not-run-of-the-mill designs or sites with some difficult aspect trying to demonstrate to the Council that their unusual approach meets all the policies. That is (channelling and modifying Cromwell ) watering the opposition's potential gunpowder before the start of battle. In the last few years with Local Plans passing and not passing and being approved / not approved / half-approved / going round in circles, a lot of people have used the "presumption in favour of sustainable development" national guideline which applies when a Local Plan and supply of Housing Land is not in place. That often needs a planning argument. Sometimes there can be some bluster, or sometimes the argument can be a work of art. The ideal is not to need to do it at all. It all depends on the context, and you with advice from your architect or professional have to decide what you need to do. A good architect or professional will also - crucially - also tell you what in their opinion you do *not* need to do. That is something it is useful to say when you set the tone of the relationship, and useful to ask from time to time. Ferdinand

If you do it by dunking them in a bath for a few they can suck up a LOT of treatment.

Ian Dreadful news after all you have done / been through. I do not think I have a construction cocktail for this. Have PM'd you with a couple of items and offers to help where I currently am able. Those nearly free kitchens on Ebay we were talking about may be looking attractive at this point. Ferdinand

@Stones Cheers. I am planning to backroll the walls. Perhaps for the skirting as well.

It will be the same person, so I think the second one above with the one set of spare filters is the one for the first job when blowback etc with a new paint machine is more likely, and see whether he prefers disposables once the technique settles down. Ferdinand

I think this is the best place to ask whether there are any recommendations for appropriate respirator masks when doing airless spraying. In my case it will be my maintenance and renovation man, so I want something good. I am thinking about two from Screwfix: One is a 3m Model 4251 at about £20, which seems to be a 28-day and throw away respirator. 100 reviews averaging nearly 5*. The other is also highly rated, and uses replaceable filters, by Reliance, also with a number of reviews averaging nearly 5* . Given that work patterns will be intermittent, a few days here, and a bit more a month or two later, the second seems more appropriate. I do not think I need a full air-fed system for this application. I would welcome guidance, however. Ferdinand

Good point @Nickfromwales The plan is effectively to construct a spray booth in one of the larger rooms with a membrane as the floor. And I think to start at the top so dust does not get puffed up and up.

@Russell griffiths Thanks for the reply. It is an airless spray setup, so prep and washup time is significant - while spray time for that will be short. And since it is a whole bungalow, it seemed to make sense. I will need them again when I renovate the next one. Ferdinand

Following on from the other thread about paint sprayers, I now have one, and the next thing I need is to build some dismountable racks for supporting skirting boards for finishing / painting. I need enough to spray do about 32 4m lengths of skirting in one session, and I need to be able to store them in a small space for next time. My current thinking is for a pair of 2.4m CLS (bought too much CLS) A-frames, joined by a pair of horizontals each side which can be removed for storage. The skirtings to be supported by 2" screws driven 15mm in on the faces of the A-frames at 225mm intervals. That would give me space for 8x 4m or 5m lengths each side for spraying with a finish or paint. i was trying to do a diagram, but it was looking comical so I may just build one and take a photo. I wonder if anyone has any tested designs they could post? Thanks for any help. Ferdinand

Just a note: if that is the corrugated sheet with attached insulation, then perhaps take care to make sure you can work with it first. I had a family member use that to reroof a rear bathroom extension on a terrace and they had difficulty with things such as cutting it and fixing through with long screws etc. It may not have been the Kingspan version, and this was back in the early noughties. One problem was finding a way to cut corrugated metal cleanly with something that could cut a thickness of several inches of insulation at the same time. Another was disposal of offcuts. I am sure it should be fine with the right tools, but they found it awkward to handle and relatively expensive. Ferdinand

I have just read Jeremy's Densign and Access for the first time, and it is interesting to see how that evolved over time e.g. Away from SiPS. I do like the phrase "it is the view of the applicant that" rather than the more common "it is considered that", as if the opinion had emerged fully formed from the summit of Mount Olympus. I can see that the latter can be more useful sometimes. Ferdinand

LIke the look. Is that an Ikea light? I might like to get one

@oldkettle Will reply tomorrow as I am on an iPad at present. Ferdinand

Hi agaiin @oldkettle You asked me to look at this thread again. I didn't dive in first time round because I found it tricky getting my head around the diagrams (see further post I will make next) and spent the forum time elsewhere. Here are my comments: Space efficiency and staircase: I think the basic problem with the plans in the post is that space is not used efficiently - you have lost an entire reception room downstairs to be a staircase lobby, and another entire room upstairs as dead space in a 20sqm landing. Just space lost in those 2 rooms are perhaps 12% of the entire house as you propose to build it in options 1 and 2. Fix that and you get 2 extra not-ungenerous double bedrooms for free. I think the issue is that you have gone for an overly shallow staircase, and made larger compromises in order to satisfy that smaller detail. I love generous staircases, and we had a whole thread about it last year (with lots of personal experiences). Normal domestic staircases are 42 degrees, and something like 34-37 degrees is relaxed. Your rising/going could be something more like 170-180 and 260-270mm, which is relaxed, and could save you about 1.2m on the length if you start the bottom in a circulation space and a straight run. Then theree is no need for complicated wall and floor structures: As @jack put it then: I make your angle 30 degrees, which seem to me to have made it long enough that it does not fit in a normal sized room, so you have ended up with the need to knock holes in walls and put raised areas into floors, and do that strange both-sides-of-the-wall thing in Option 1, which will all make everything else more complicated and more expensive. Not an efficient way to allocate your money. If you *must* have the 30 degree staircase I think you need to design a big enough room (hall or other) such that the staircase fits without compromising your walls and space efficiency so much. That would be option 3, or possibly something with a double height longitudinal open-plan lounge (would potentially give top light which would help with the lack of side windows) with the staircase as a feature running parallel with the ridge. No of Storeys: Do you actually *need* two and a half stories once you gain the extra rooms downstairs and upstairs? If you do need extra space over that footprint it may be easier to extend back slightly more,as that may reduce your need to survey or upgrade foundations quite so much. Or plan more efficient space use. You might be surprised how little extra you need to extend backwards to gain the necessary space. I am living in a converted bungalow which is not dissimilar to your project in size etc done by the prevous people, and I have nearly 1900sqft (plus a 3m x 3.5m conservatory) from two stories, which gives me five bedrooms plus one reception (or 4+2 etc). One bedroom is huge, and only one is a single - and the rest are generous. And my roofs are partly hipped. Will PM you links. Way Ahead: 1 - I think you perhaps actually gave yourself too much freedom with that huge square empty box, and dived straight into details rather than resolving the more general questions first. Most of us aren't including me aren't architects and haven't got the background to instinctively know how to get the coordination of different underlying elements right when starting with a blank piece of paper. We tend to focus on the surface things that we see when visiting a house eg Pinterest and Houzz are full of sexy materials and gimmicks rather than kitchen work triangles, how not to compromise future maintenance of drains by not building over them, and how to live in it in a wheelchair after a bus-running-over experience. I think you need more constraints (architects will tell you that great architecture often happens in the most difficult situations and constrained spaces). Perhaps one could be to try and keep circulation space (halls and lobbies) down to 10-12% of the overall plan rather than 20%+. 2 - I would say start a list what you need, and then develop your house shape around it. That list also needs to be contsrained - a summary in one paragraph, and the whole thing in one page. I think that at that stage it may be worth spending £300-500 on an architect for some rough proposals - for which you would need to write a concise brief of your requirements (a good exercise even if just to focus your own thoughts). 3 - I think you need convincing on the staircase. I would go out and find some staircases you would be happy with, and measure them. People owning the staircases will not mind and will love the conversation with an eccentric doing their own real research. Do not forget that you can increase the perceived front-to-back dimension of a step by using a bullnose front edge. I would combine this with looking into what works in converted bungalows. Go and view 10-15 with an estate agent as 'potential alternatives to developing our own', and study them carefully. 4 - In mine they did a creative arrangement where the staircase runs up over the bath (pic below). The whole staircase and landing and downstairs bathroom fit into a space 4.5m by 2m - 9 sqm, which is about 75-80% smaller than yours and works beautifully, including enough space for a desk at the top of the stairs. Make that space say 5m or so and you can have your 34-36 degree straight staircase with no kite-steps, which lets it go sideways Pic attached. The only thing wrong is that it should be a shower - no point in having the easy-for-old-people option upstairs where they cannot get to it. 5 - Make sure whatever you build works when the children have gone. The people who built ours moved before they finished because the kids had settled down and were not visiting so much. They moved into one that was about the size that this one was before they threw £100k (or whatever) at it, and are now knocking that one about. Like yours, this was reduced to three walls and a hole in the ground, and was beautifully done for us to move into with minimal further work. 5 - DO NOT RUSH. Spend the time to be sure you are right now, even if it takes another 6 months. Ferdinand

Is this something you can disarm by moving it 1m or 2m so proving it to be portable, as some do with advertising signs and fields shelters on sleds for horses? On the slamming door, what about a knocked in post, a nail/screw, and a bungie cord? Ferdinand

Not knowing what tasks you are being charged for it is a little difficult to comment in detail. However could you leave the cable wrapped up inside the boxes, or perhaps behind blanking plates, as a way to circumvent this issue? I do not think the actual connecting is that difficult (speaking from an IT/Telcomms background),and I have done my own when needed. Alternatively it is something that your local computer shop man (or a student on a break) could perhaps do in a couple of hours now or afterwards. Ferdinand

Speculating, that looks to be an interesting smallish cost saving idea. Are these the kind of thing that can be less expensive from eg Poland? Ferdinand

Welcome. Thoughtful input is always useful from people specialists.

Here is the MK Council guidance on the subject in case you have not found it. https://www.milton-keynes.gov.uk/assets/attach/5039/design_and_access_statements1.pdf

Yay. Somebody with Properly Presented Plurals!

I don't believe that a Design and Access - now usually called a Planning Statement - is compulsory in law, though Councils may customarily expect one. It is where you: a - Explain your vision, what you are trying to do, and any other things to give the Planning Officer a nice warm feeling. b - Explain how your proposal complies with all the local and national polices in force this month, and is justified in Planning Terms. c - Disarm in advance all the reasons which might lead the Planning Department to say no. There may be something on the Planning Aid website:http://www.rtpi.org.uk/planning-aid/ If your proposal is contentious, then it is probably the most important document of all, and in those circumstances where a Planning Consultant (if you had one) would spend most of their time. To find some, I suggest reading the relevant posts of all the build blogs on here, and finding where they all link to their Planning Applications - then go there to find the relevant documents to see what they said. There are quite good blog-only search options in the search box. There may be some further ones on EBuild that have not come across. If you are concerned it may be worth looking at something like The Self-Build Bible by Mark Brinkley to see if there is anything in there. There should be. Ferdinand