Friday, July 28, 2006

Ups and downs

Today is typical of the ups and downs we've experienced so far at Lock Farm. We spoke to our planning adviser to let him know of the delays and in response he has been refreshingly positive. In the face of setbacks and uncertainty it's easy to get a little weary of the whole process. So it's wonderful that someone is on our side, that they are enthusiastic about our plans and believe we've got an excellent proposal together. Just as I'm sighing in the face of yet another hindrance, he has been reassuringly upbeat that at least we're making some small progress. Of course, he might be lying (we are paying him, after all), but those sort of lies are welcome with open arms if they can keep us going. The alternative is that by the time we return to planning permission we could be so weary of the project ourselves that we aren't able to communicate the effort and enthusiasm that has gone into designing a house suitable for the area, the plot and our needs. After all, we've had this design, or variations on it on paper for eighteen months now so our new home feels 'old' to us before it's even been built.

As an antidote to the friendly and helpful words of our planning adviser, I spent a frustrating hour trying to meet a joiner who could take an initial look at the barn. Frankly, four hundred year old listed timbers intimidate me a little. Whoever helps us rescue the barn is going to have to be good - not just a good carpenter, but able to work in sympathy those parts of the structure that can be saved. They'll also have to be able to work with the council's conservation department who will want assurance that the job is being done correctly. Whilst we're waiting on paperwork, setting out to find a joiner who meets these needs is a welcome distraction.

Unless they don't turn up when you've booked time off work specifically to meet them.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Still waiting

This isn't quite a blog yet... there's not that much to blog about. Lock Farm is still just a disreputable pile of very second hand buildings and extremely well established nettles. There's a separate post to be written about the garden, but that's really the only thing that's changed.

So far the delay that has held things back since the start of the year is the flood risk analysis - proving to the environment agency that we can survive without waterwings. Most of the time has been spent trying to work out how to prove the site won't flood without doing a full flood analysis. We're not far from the lock that gives Lock Farm it's name, so we have a river at two different levels, flood protection banks and acres of fairly flat floodplane (this is the edge of the fens!). A full flood analysis would cost around ten thousand pounds, which in self-builder's terms is one good kitchen, a double garage or a couple of bathrooms. So, as we'd rather spend money on real things than on paperwork, we've been working on an alternative.

Happily, the alternative turned out to be a set of engineers who appear to be more interested in solving the problem they're given than in doing the job they can charge the most for. We've compromised with the Environment Agency and agreed to build some basic flood protection into the site (actually a low bank along one fence), and in turn they've accepted that a detailed, technically accurate flood analysis is not practical on a small self-build project such as ours. We've saved thousands of pounds, though as usual the trade off is in time.

So finally, our flood protection proposal is with the Environment Agency and we're waiting on a (hopefully) positive outcome that would allow us to return to the planning department with a clean bill of health. Sadly it looks like the wait will be for a while yet, as they're estimating that it will be at least a month before they'll get to our submission thanks to illness and holidays taken by their staff.

It's all progress of a sort, but it would be such a relief to be moving beyond the planning stage to actually building something.