Ferdinand

@TheMitchells Planning Resource maintain an interactive map here: http://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1212817/community-infrastructure-levy-maps You will probably need to do the free registration option. They also have an entire site section and blog about it. To read some things it may help to add "cache:" before the url to get the Google cache copy. Ferdinand

Our LA just doesn't do CiL as far as I know.

+1 A good deal of that is perhaps about fixed and variable costs, where the fixed element may be 75% (picking a number out of the air). Ferdinand

@Russell griffiths I have found the Vesma calculator to be the most useful of those available, as most of the others are from commercial companies as a semi-marketing device, and often require registration or are more detailed in the particular area. http://www.vesma.com/tutorial/uvalue01/uvalue01.htm If something is missing from the list, you can probably usefully substitute a similar material (ask here if you need advice). Ferdinand

Ah. The immortal words of Emperor Hadrian President Trump :-) . To add something useful @Russell griffiths, I think that a "typical" wall that you asked about will be referring to one built to meet basic Building Regs' standard or a little better on a "typical" new build house. Say with the u-value quoted of 0.25, whereas people here tend to build walls to a u-value significantly lower than that. One of the design tools that should help you decide what is appropriate could be to model your long term etc costs over periods of 10 or 25 years against the extra cost of the higher-spec wall. Or you could use your intended occupation period if you know it. Others (usually including me) would take a less pragmatic position and build it to the higher spec anyway. Many here are planning to stay for 20 years or often forever. I would argue that at some point the value of a high spec (or not) house will reflect the excess 20k in bills which will be paid over the next 15 years. Hope that helps. Ferdinand

Booklets of Tesco Vouchers Is anyone in receipt of these? I currently have one which gives £13 off a spend of £90 this week, then 9 and 9 for the next 2 periods. Not being a big Tesco shopper except for incidentals and Tesco Direct cases of reasonable wine when they are half price, I buy some minimal groceries (=Pournot so I can make a real London Fog cocktail this evening with the correct liqueur). So I bought £100 of Amazon gift cards instead with £13 off the total, and will load them into my Amazon account for my next purchase. I can do that on most of the weeks as I spend about £500 to £1000 a year with Amazon. With the various vouchers it is perhaps worth £100 or £200 a year. You can do that with other gift cards - but make sure you will spend them and check the expiry terms which are usually 12 or 24 months. I do not the know gift cards are supposed to be in the strict terms of the offer but it seems to work Best at larger Tescos and at weekends when part time staff are on, and when you have gift cards in an order of groceries. Works even better in a 3x air miles offer period and paying with a reward card. That can stack to about 20% of face value. Ferdinand

Interesting on iPads. I shelled out for one of those open and lean iPad cases, which seem a little pricey but I have found worthwhile. eg not a good example but demonstrates ... I usually pay about £25 https://www.amazon.co.uk/JETech-Gold-Slim-Fit-Version-Protection/dp/B00F90P9R0 They also help the iPad bounce. Ferdinand

Found one.

I made an insulated cat box for use in the shed. We also used it for padding at the bottom of garden planters, or insulating the sides thereof. F

Can anyone help? My plasterer has pulled his shoulder and I have a small (2 days prob) job to be done quickly. I need one within distance of Alfreton / Mansfield which is M1 J28, ideally available within 7-10 days. Cheers Ferdinand

i wonder how many year it takes before a 100k kitchen has lost half its value? Is there an "into service" penalty like a new car?

I make £37k per 24sqm more than the unit area cost of a normal house, including the kitchen. Surely for that you can get bespoke from a local Chippy?

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/customer-service/planning-tools/ Or you can go and sit in their Design area and get advice from a boffin-person.

The trick surely with £100k kitchens is to buy it for £20k then sell it to someone else for the £100k? I am still looking for my 2012-2014 Audi A4 Allroad 3.0l diesel for around £15k, but I am not convinced that the kneejerks running some of our cities are capable of distinguishing between an evil 2005 diesel that pollutes badly and an acceptable 2016 diesel that does not do so. So I am also looking at the later version, which may be even more painfully expensive. My current car just about passes the 1% test. All that means is that our houses are obviously too expensive. Ferdinand

I can't yet discern how much of this story is hyperbole and marketing by attention-seeking grant-seeking academics. The last one a few days ago was "London is more polluted than Beijing" as the tabloid interviewer on R4 Today was yelling at the politician, where as I understood the London reading to be a single point peak reading, and the Beijing one to be more of a background average (ie Mr Today was spouting b*ll*cks as per umpteen times per morning). I argued that here: http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=14864&page=1#Item_4 If the harm is "far greater than from traffic pollution" then why do we have a huge flap about diesels at the moment? And did he actually just imply a sample size of one? Can you clarify, ST? Cheers Ferdinand

Interesting.

Hopefully before long we will be able to buy bankruptcy sale Shepherd's Huts for tuppence when the fad moves on. Ferdinand "Omigod, Sebastian ! I can't sleep - there's a COW in that field!"

I was surprised at my readings for 1 Nov 2016 to end of Jan 2017. Elec use is 1400 kWh which at 12p/unit is about £ 170. Gas use was 6330 kWh which at just under 3p/unit is about £170 also. That felt high (2000 sqft house 2007-9 bungalow gobble) as I am looking for a bill of about £750 for the year (*). But then I remembered that we always used to say that the winter quarter = 40% approx, and it has been cold plus we have been running a couple of degrees high for visiting family for several weeks, so I think I can live with it. (*) Worth a note that this was £1400-1500 3 years ago; cut by various means including switching and a big solar array. @AliG Our previous house was a 5000 sqft listed effort, and it was dead easy to get to a 5k a year bill for elec (storage heaters - no gas). I think the major unnecessary bills are for people in normal sized houses paying £1500-£3k a year, and that there are a *lot* of them. Ferdinand

I think there is a good case for a review - in England Green Belt is now 12-13% of Land Area. That is 6,300 square miles - by definition all of it near towns or cities and pretty much on top of all the all the National Parks etc. It is like a ligature. I do not think we can *all* of: 1 - Population growth. 2 - All the existing green belt being kept. 3 - Lower land prices. 4 - Several million new houses. You can't buck even the not very transparent market we currently have. Ferdinand

Being a touch simplistic, he seems to have 3 options: 1 - Build it smaller. 2 - Build it cheaper. 3 - Build it all himself. And those will all struggle to reduce it by 50%. Or go ahead and win a financial Darwin Award. Ferdinand

It seems to be a consistent theme that a number of people suffer a financial bloodbath in these programmes, but others double their money. eg on GD the chap with the Geodesic Dome in the Lakes seems to have suffered. Was it Whitehaven? While the chap with the Yoghurt and Scorched Wood gobbled-bungalow tower house in the woods on the Isle of Wight doubled his money in a few years. This second chap chose the worst place on the best road. I would venture that it is all to do with the local market, and that nothing done on the GD or BTD house adds anything to the value wrt the market - merely detracts less. Some of the difficult projects *do* make a difference, but that could be the same with a conventional house and is due to the innovative people. ie Correct .. do it for blood not treasure. Ferdinand

The other factor is liability, which is perhaps less important for a single plot. We sold our field to a developer, and put it in a limited company even before we applied for planning. That was for tax management, but also to minimise the risk of legal comeback. The company is now liquidated. Ferdinand

Brandy. Or Cocoa. Or a Fog Cutter.

To flag to a user, you ave to actually click in the drop down list. If the result isn't blue, then you haven't got it. @Clareandharry

Hello again, Clare. I spent an hour or so this morning having a read of your blog and Planning Docs, and you seem to have a Planning Consultant and architect who did their job just about right, especially in not giving the Council technical detail about the house that Planners do not need. I think some of us may have some useful comments if you want to start a thread ... or do you want to chat here? For example I think you may have overheating issues with solar gain in some seasons, depending on the spec of your house .. e.g. The experience of some here is that lots of south facing glazing with no shading may cause trouble if you are significantly better insulated than building regs basic spec. I have a few detailed comments which I will hold off until after a couple of busy days. Ferdinand