A change in direction, silver linings, new adventures

By admin | Published: June 24, 2011

So much has happened! I wanted to update as we went along but I noticed that this part of the site was getting a surprising amount of visitors and there were a few things happening where we needed to keep things a little on the DL. I had to purposely keep a little quiet. So to sum up what has been happening these past months…. we submitted planning permission, the planner took absolutely ages, made some vague comments that they weren’t sure, we decided to consult a planning consultant (who was great!). We withdrew the planning permission as we thought the plan would have a better chance of going through if we moved the building back a little on the plot. We were poised to submit the amended plans when we discovered that the land had an obscure covenant on it that meant if we built we would need to pay an extra £125000. If we were developers we would have got out a loan, paid off the covenant, built a house, sold the house, paid off the loan, and then have made a nice profit. However as we wanted this to be our long term home, and soon, this wasn’t a great option. So while we were on our West Coast adventure we finally came to the conclusion that this £125000 had to end our building plans…

However there is a very silver lining. We discovered separately that the land is worth much more than we had thought. So what we are doing now is selling the land and hopefully will be able to have some money towards buying a new place. There is hardly any building land within the city so it is very unlikely that we will be building our next place. We may find somewhere that we will improve and add things such as solar panels as appropriate.

To conclude, my thoughts:

The planning process for little folk like us (i.e. not a developer) is AWFUL. There is a reason why all and sundry give out about this system. There is no incentive to build an ‘eco house’, and in fact they are harder to get through planning as a full-on eco house has to look slightly different from the usual developer style boxy house. It is an obscure and odious system. Ha! We never got to see if our plan would go through as we did not resubmit after finding out about the covenant. I think our plan would have gone through. So I am not saying this from the perspective of a sore loser but as a general user of the system.

All along we have been very realistic that we may not end up building a house, I purposely did not start daydreaming about specifics such as door handles, paint colours, how great our new house could be etc. as I knew full-well that the whole thing might not happen. I would recommend this to anyone else considering building too as it makes the potential psychological blow much less!

Hiring an architect that you get on well with and who is on your wavelength is essential. Our architect was fantastic.

If you are building a whole house or a difficult extension a planning consultant might be a good idea in addition to an architect. You only need to hire them for a one-off visit to look at your plans and plot and give advice. Sure it is another person you have to pay but they should be able to give level headed advice.

So thank you those of you who are reading, this ends this part of our tale. To use a house metaphor: as one door closes another door opens. I’ve been wondering what to do with this part of the site now, I’m not sure if I should close it down or keep it going for the next house. What I do know is that I can’t wait for the next stage in our adventure. Whoop! :)

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planning permission going in

By admin | Published: January 3, 2011

Just a quick note to say that the planning permission is being submitted this week. Fingers crossed!!! I’m trying not to think about it too hard so I don’t get too nervous. We really want to build this house. We should know the result early in February…

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Week 1 million

By admin | Published: October 18, 2010

(Not really week 1 million but it feels like it.) Anyway from the silence on here you’d think maybe things weren’t happening but oh no they really are!

After we did all that research into eco kit houses it seems that is no longer an option. As I mentioned before we’ve now been told the house will need to stand where there is already a structure, this means a rather unusual shape so you can’t just slot a house in. The upside of this is that we get a bespoke house. WE can decide everything. I’ve been remembering the list we had way back at the start, so far it looks like we are on track to have all those things from our list. The style of house that Simon and I would like is something modern and clean, white, wood, glass… This also is the general style of our architect so I think we are all on the same page. Of course we need to get this in on our budget too.

Our architect did an initial few rounds of drawings that we have been very happy with. We’ve had lots of meetings to discuss layouts, moving staircases, rooms, and windows around. It’s probably a silly thing to say but designing a house is far more complicated than I had thought :) So many rules! Things like how many square metres of openings you can have are so restricted. As ever we also want to have a house that’s environmentally friendly so there are all these calculations that need to happen to decide insulation and building materials. I think we are getting in an extra consultant to do those calculations. We will have a large area of the roof that will be south facing so we will be deciding what sort of photovoltaic we will want up there.

So next steps. We have agreed the general layout that we like and the architect is working these drawings up to something that can be submitted for planning permission. We will be having a great deal of meetings and deciding things, I’ll try to document them here. I think now we are letting ourselves get properly excited about it which in someway is dangerous as there are still quite a few hurdles.Ôªø

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Weekly report 15-29

By admin | Published: September 7, 2010

So, what’s been going on? Again we have been in a HUGE waiting phase. We submitted a second pre-planning permission request following the planning officer’s advice of having a storey and a half and waited and waited… and waited. Having heard nothing and getting anxious we then paid an additional ¬£100 to get the result in writing in case this sped things up. Finally whilst in we were away on holiday in Berlin our architect got the written result. In the time we spent waiting it seems that the planning officer has had a complete change of heart and is now not wanting us to build at the back of our plot. SIGH. The planning process is well known to be an difficult and opaque process, I think we can attest that this is true. Financially one of the results is that we keep having to ask our architect to re-draw the plans, not cheap. But hey ho, onward we go…

We have been having a brainstorm with the architect and we are now onto what’s being called ‘Plan F’. We also have a Plan G, H, and I, but let’s stick with Plan F for now. I think this Plan F is rather like our original Plan A. The Plan A was to build where there is already an existing two storey garage building and this is what we are back to. So Plan F is to knock down what’s there, it’s really not a good enough structure to convert I don’t think (although we will be getting advice on this). Then in the place of this we’d like to fit the house in, hopefully doubling the depth to make it big enough. There is also a possibility that we might want to additionally build a small single storey building back down at the end of the plot as an additional space, apparently planning permission is less difficult (or sometimes not needed) for smaller garden-office type structures.

So what are the implications of this Plan F? It means the house would be more up by the driveway so in that aspect it is more of a conventional project. I think that the neighbours could possibly be less keen on this as it means that right up next to them they will have a house. We might also have to remove some of the trees very near their garden that are on our side. In our other plan the house would have been some distance from them and their views would have been undisturbed. In this Plan F I also have no idea how we are going to be able to harvest solar power and so on, we are completely back to the drawing board on that one. We will need to get in someone who will be able to advise us on this, I am not as anxious about that at the moment as I’m sure there will be many things we can do.

I’m looking for positives and I think they are that probably we won’t have to have a storey-and-a-half building but can have two storeys. Also probably we don’t need to worry as much about the big tree at the back of the plot as the main roots might not stretch over to where we would be building. I also presume that access and so on will be easier for the builders. Really the biggest positive of all that we are clinging to is that there can be a Plan F at all, it could have been that nothing was possible.

Next steps: we are meeting with our architect on the coming Monday to discuss what plans we should work on next to submit for pre-planning and then we will enter the whole cycle again. I’d say our mood at the moment is that we are determinedly ploughing on.

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one and a half

By admin | Published: June 24, 2010

We had another meeting with the architect. In light of the planner saying we should go single storey or storey and a half (rooms in the roof with velux windows) he has drawn up a new L shape idea. Since then I have been on the lookout for single storey inspiration and folks who do single storey eco kit houses in our price range.

I saw this image over on the Yvestown tumblr and it caught my eye as it has quite a number of the things on our wishlist. There is the massive long dining table, a woodburning stove, lots of glass on the ground floor, and lots of white and wood. Plus also this is similar-ish to the one and a half number of floors house height that we are now submitting for pre-planning permission advice.

Posted in Inspiration, Planning, house design inspiration | 2 Comments

Green roof

By admin | Published: June 9, 2010

Green roofs are another way we could help make up for wildlife space that might be lost. We are keen on the idea of these. I have had this image bookmarked for a long time as I love the look and that she used local wildflowers and grasses on there. There were a lot of green roofs and walls at the Eco Build fair that we visited, not all were sedum, there were other plants too.

(image source)

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‘garden-grabbing’

By admin | Published: June 9, 2010

It was announced this morning that Communities minister Greg Clark has pledged to reclassify gardens as no longer being considered as Brownfield sites thus making it harder to build on garden spaces. As it was only announced this morning quite what this means hasn’t been made clear yet. The intention seems to be to block developers who buy large detached houses, knock them down, and then build 10 houses on the site. I am not sure how it will effect people such as myself who are hoping to build on land in the suburbs that was previously part of a garden. I have been discussing it with a few people this morning and it sounds like it will be more that the decision will become a local authority one and will be largely effected by neighbours complaints.

I’m not sure if I mentioned that the piece of land we are trying to build on is next to where my father lives. He is a long time resident and on good terms with his neighbours. From the start when we had the idea to build the house my father has kept the neighbours fully informed, showing them where the house would be and talking about it with them. So far the neighbours have all been very positive, one person even said it would be an asset to have a younger couple living in a more affordable ‘eco’ house! I have my fingers tightly crossed that the harmony will continue as I would love to have a solution that everyone in the locality will be happy with! Now it sounds like this work that my dad has been putting in to help get the ‘buy-in’ of the neighbours could be essential. We have been lucky to have him there already putting a good word in with the community.

As for the wider moral/ecological/community issue of building on what would have been empty or garden land I do agree that garden space is essential for wildlife and the whole feel of a neighbourhood. They have been described as the lungs of a city. In opposition to this I have heard the argument that if housing density isn’t increased in the suburbs then it will threaten greenbelt and the wider countryside as the housing needs need to be catered for somewhere. I am going to keep listening to the various arguments as it is an interesting debate, I suspect that like a lot of things it is something that needs to be considered case-by-case.

I however do not have any great qualms about what we want to do. The site is currently a piece of bare earth, a bit of lawn, and some trees. We intend to keep the majority of trees and I also intend to do my more-is-more style of veg + flowers organic gardening around the site which I do in my current garden. My current garden was just a lawn and a fence when I moved in. At that time there were a noticeable lack of insects and birds for the first year, now however after three years of me I digging up most of the lawn and filling the place with all sorts of fruit, veg, and flowers the place is buzzing with bees around my sage plants, birds nesting in the wisteria, and frogs under the ferns. I guess it all depends on what you want to do.Ôªø

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Courtyard House

By admin | Published: June 8, 2010

I have long haunted the excellent Dwell magazine site (as I imagine lots of people who are hoping to build a house do!). I wanted to mention one of my all time favourite houses on there. It’s the Courtyard House in Toronto:

I love the use of wood and how it looks like such a great space for their family. I like the idea too that is it mostly hidden from public, like those Moroccan riads where it looks like nothing from outside until you step through the door.

It is interesting also given our current predicament how for the most part this house does not overlook anyone else.

You can read more about it here and view the slideshow.

(image sources from Dwell)

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Weekly report no. 9 – 15

By admin | Published: June 8, 2010

(AHEM!) How can it be so long since my last update. There has been action!

We managed to work out with our architect an ideal plan whereby we could keep the big tree and keep the existing building that is at the entrance to the plot. We worked out where the house would have to be for the tree not to shade the solar panels and for us still to have some garden. It is pretty exciting to actually get to the stage with the architect of putting sticks in the ground to show where the walls could be.

The architect then submitted the plans for pre-planning permission consultation. The planning officer visited the site by herself yesterday and then today I went to the site to meet her, the tree officer, and the architect. It was absolutely chucking it down with rain but we stood around with umbrellas.

The good news is that it looks like we have a site! She thinks that it will be possible to build in that space. The more complicated news is that even though the house would be completely screened by trees she needs to consider that one day the trees might not be there. If the trees were not there under the current house design plans we would be able to see into other gardens. So this means really we need to think single storey or one and a half storeys rather than the two storey houses we were thinking of. She said we could have something with a much wider footprint to make up the floorspace that would be lost by having only one storey.

The tree officer also said that as there are such large trees on the site we will need to raise the house from the ground on legs. We were expecting this. We need to find out where the main roots are and avoid damaging these main ones. To find out where the roots are we need to ask the tree surgeon to dig a little trench and investigate with an ‘air-spade’.

All-in-all I think this is a positive step. It kind of complicates things as from our investigations we are unlikely to find another affordable kit eco house that will fit the space. Our whole reason for looking for a kit house is that is a much more affordable option than going bespoke as we do not have a big budget.

However now it is quite exciting as the whole design issue has been blown open again. We weren’t particularly wedded to the design of the house we had been looking into previously, it was mainly the technology, price, and scalability that impressed us with that one. We can go back to considering all sorts of unusual things now, hey we could even be one of those folks who live in an old railway carriage…

(picture from The Carriage Exchange)

Posted in Planning, The best of times, Waiting | 1 Comment

Weekly report no. 8

By admin | Published: April 29, 2010

If schedules align we are meeting the architect next week to look at a few different 3D models. At last I can show some kind of picture! This is one of the possible ideas of what we could have in this space. We will know more soon I hope…

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