Kelvin

Our planning consent included putting PV panels on the roof. We decided to ground mount them instead for a variety of reasons. I spoke to planning last week to confirm that I needed to submit a new planning application. I’ve had a look at other planning applications for ground mounted PV and it’s straightforward enough. Data sheets for the mounting system and panels, dimensions, current location drawing and block drawing and proposed block drawing. Should I include my reasons for wanting to ground mount them instead or simply provide the minimum planning requires?

We had cupboards above our previous utility room sink and have done so again in the new house with no issues. You can get away with it if the sink isn’t in constant use.

Our original plan was to have a full height fridge and freezer side by side with built in water dispenser and ice maker. However, we ditched that idea early on for a few reasons, namely: 1. They take up a lot of space and we would have lost a complete unit of cupboards/drawers which we valued more than ice on tap. 2. It’s open plan so another device to make a noise. 3. More bits in the fridge and freezer to go wrong and they do seem a bit unreliable. 4. We don’t actually have a need for a big amount of freezer space. We also tend to buy fresh daily so not even a need for a full height fridge as there’s just two of us but we have fitted one. 5. We wanted the appliances to be integrated anyway. 6. We have a dedicated drinking water tap and our water comes from a borehole anyway. Our final plan was to just fit an integrated full height fridge in the kitchen and have an under counter freezer in the utility room. If we find we need more freezer space I’ll put one in the garage or in the utility room.

Yes listen to the examples given here. There’s another example near me where the guy got planning to renovate a derelict cottage on a large plot. He got into it and the building turned out to be much worse than he thought. The walls “fell down” so he started erecting a new house on the footprint. Building control stopped by to check progress and stopped all work. In the end he reapplied for planning to build a completely new house on a different part of the plot. It’s not worth the risk to mess about with this.

It seems a big expense for a relatively small space.

I would think the difference in cost between single storey + mezzanine and two storey marginal. Clearly your budget sets your ultimate build but don’t compromise on such a big element so early. If you really want two storey stick to that for now. References are great but they only go so far. For example, we went to see three Hebridean Homes builds before deciding to go with them. The feedback was mostly positive with the negatives being consistent but nothing to worry about. All three loved their finished houses and they did look good. Our experience of them has been pretty awful by comparison.

Having done a fair bit of paint balling with my son the bigger the space the worse and less interesting the game. They tend to drag on for ages which is no fun if you get shot early. The best games are the ones where they’ve created playing area with buildings and obstacles in a relatively small area. These games tend to have a faster turnover.

Yes exactly. It’s much easier to bring the main to the plant room (or specific cupboard) and distribute it from there.

We really aren’t missing the point. It was fine until something changed. That change was adding a lot of extra weight onto the timbers. If the timbers had some space between them (that weren’t filled with packers say) then they can move. Even very small movements will crack plaster. I went around all my first floor timbers and packed out any narrow gaps with thin bits of wood and glue for example.

Either quality is designed in and everyone involved buys in to a quality first approach or you have someone responsible for quality, checking every element and signing it off. Just transferring the responsibility for quality to the people doing the task is never going to work. Oddly one of the older guys on my site described me like his old clerk of works guy which I took as a compliment rather than an insult.

I’m sure I read that it was the logging industry that developed paint ball guns to make it easier to mark trees to fell. I might well have made that up though. I would have that running about an ancient woodland would do a certain amount of damage plus the potential for a load of rubbish being left laying about.

The casing is gelatine like they use in the pharmaceutical industry. It’s not really paint but a water soluble dye.

That is a substantial room and done well it could be a terrific room. It looks as if it’s pretty bloody cold on there too! Your starting point really needs to be what do you envisage using this room for. If money was no barrier and you turned into a wonderful entertaining space would you use it? Done well it would add real value to the house. Alternatively you say you don’t need the space so the other extreme is remove it completely and regain the garden space in what is potentially a sun trap. No matter what you do it won’t be cheap to do it well.

You need to decide what your main objection is. Is it the noise, the potential to devalue a property you’ve yet to even start a planning application for or the safety aspect? If they can satisfy your concerns about making it safe will you be ok about it then? Assuming they go ahead and make the rumour real of course. I struggle to see how a woodland could be turned into recreational use if there’s regular vehicle access through the middle of it. That said, you don’t need a significant amount of space for paint balling depending on how they set it up. I did it a lot with my son and the best ones were where the layout was in a small area. If the area is too big it’s less fun and the games are much longer.

It’s another reason I am ground mounting mine too.

What’s your suggestion? It’s more a scale thing. For all the thousands of extensions etc that make up the biggest proportion of applications it likely works mostly ok. For large complex builds it doesn’t as there is an expectation that the developer is doing it correctly and checking the work which they clearly aren’t in some cases. The consequence of failure in this case is going to cost David Wilson homes many millions to fix. Maybe there also needs to be very harsh penalties for failures too to act as a deterrent.

Yes I would expect there to be no chance. The DNOs only spend money if they really need to. I was very careful to make sure the trench I dug on my neighbour’s field was as short and inaccessible as possible. Therefore it’s not in a place that could ever be dug up or built on.

There wasn’t a house on the site at that point it was just a field with planning permission. Therefore it was making a new connection. If there was a problem in the future now the house is up, I expect the existing wayleave is worded such that they could get access. I never got a copy of it so don’t know the wording but I can’t imagine they word them for a one off new installation.

They can’t get access to it. The electricity to our house is fed from a pole on our neighbour’s land. I needed a wayleave from her to let SSEN access her land to run the cable down the pole and into the 2m trench I dug to my boundary. Had she not granted this we would have been stuffed or it would have cost thousands of pounds compared to the £450 it actually cost. A less scrupulous neighbour may have tried to make money out of it. The situation might be different if the supply is to an existing house and there’s a problem with it. I also can’t see them do something that would cut someone off. You won’t be able to force them to move it very easily. You can ask of course. I suspect if there was an issue that they deemed dangerous they could gain access. What’s your specific issue?

Yes it’s odd how quiet it is. It’s less quiet upstairs though as you can hear the rain hit the rooflights.

They own the assets from the meter back and you can’t mess with them. But they need an easement or wayleave to access your land to do any maintenance.

It really depends on the roof build up. My plastisol coated metal garage roof is metal clad 80mm PIR 35° pitch and very noisy when it rains such that the rain sounds heavier than it actually is. The 45° pitch standing seam metal roof on the house is completely silent but it sits on a vapour membrane, 18mm plywood, 50mm air gap, 12mm OSB, 350mm insulation, 12mm OSB, air tight membrane, 25mm service void, 15mm plasterboard then plastered so there’s a lot of different materials between the inside and outside. When I say silent I really mean silent. It’s quite odd to step outside into torrential rain and strong winds when you can’t hear it when in the house. The flat roof is also very quiet. It uses a membrane (Awitra VSK) and has a similar build up. It’s not silent though.

The reason we did duo ducted pipe for the ASHP was because there wasn’t an easy route from the pump to the plant room due to full height windows and doors in the way. We also put in a few extra ducts to future proof getting power to different parts of the plot. The mistake I made is not making it wide enough. It’s 3.4m long but only 1.1m wide. I could do with an extra 200mm-300mm so yours is the perfect size. I quite like the two separate rooms. If you have the space them why not. Gives you an extra wall to hang things off.

This is a really common question and discussed a lot on here with a few very good threads on it. Do a search. Lots of us have made our temp box the permanent box for example as it’s a cost effective way to do it. You obviously need to build your temp box as a permanent installation though.

I will run into a similar problem with this eventually I suspect. I’m in dispute with the roofing company over the quality of the job. The supplier, who signs off the roof and provides the warranty, have signed if off as mechanically sound. However, my issue is with the aesthetics as it’s very rough looking in places plus the fitters were careless with the material handling so the trims are scratched etc. The installer applies for the warranty on behalf of the homeowner and obviously aren’t going to issue this while I’m in dispute with them. We don’t need it for a mortgage but it would be a problem if we had to sell in the next few years for some reason.