Ferdinand

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

Have you warned him about splinters? My suggestion would be a kissing bench for a Valentine, which is two chairs orientated opposite ways, so that they can only kiss. Then hampered and restricted passion may lead to a bubbling over later. Just make sure you do not have a left and right handed kisser.

That looks interesting. We always had cans of acetone around from the GRP business. F

We were taking about stained glass on the other thread. This ship window DG unit at about 1.1m x .8m is about to expire on Ebay at 8pm with no bids except for the starter for £100. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/double-glazed-stained-glass-with-brand-new-UPVC-frame-/142255675402 Local collection from Torquay. F

Your project looks really interesting from the blog, and congratulations on your tenacity in chasing Planning Permission. I can see some of us being interested in learning from your experience in finessing the community development boundary. When I applied for my PP, some of the Planning Committee didn't actually know where the boundary was. We similarly relied on the presumption to develop when our plot - a little different as it was for a housing estate - was taken out of the Local Plan at the last minute, and we won on appeal. There are some people building in your general area on Buildhub, so please do ask any questions or share any insights. Ferdinand

Welcome. We are very focused on building, and have spent the last 24 hours talking about guitars designed for women and stained glass :-). But we also do sometimes talk about self-build. Sometimes.

Indeed - it could be as simple as a subframe inside the window opening rather than a complicated manufacturing process. One other consideration might be whether you want to be able to take it with if you move. Personally I would want the fun of commissioning another one. F

Here is my front door - looks like the one that was in the 1940s bungalow before the previous owners rebuilt it from three walls. It is set in a DG unit. The green panels at 10 and 2 o'clock are nearly transparent and can be peeped through - I would specify that if commissioning, and possibly a series of "secret spyholes" at child height. Commissioning an artwork is something special and worth a bit of extra money if I am looking at it every day. And these are my landing rooflights. I think there was a planning condition. This is stick on film that is about 8-9 years old. Not absolutely my favourite but acceptable. Ferdinand

Piccie?

I hear good things about them if you can meet their specification requirements.

If I recall correcttly (please shoot me down @Barney12 if I am suffering from a vivid imagination), Barney's Bat Hotel is the leading operator in the 5* segment of the Pipistrelle Holiday Market. Think Soho House for bats. 1.8m head room. Own private entrance. House cleaning provided annually. And so on. Perhaps we should submit it for an Award , and guided tours could be offered to enthusiastic Bat Men flying in on batwinged microlights.

IIRC when I last did a door with frosted/obscure there were only about 3 patterns available. Or you can spray or (I imagine ... never looked) use a film of sorts - both of which would be useful for temporarily meeting a planning condition.