The Appeal Decision

After a very long wait (fourteen months from first submitting our appeal), we have an answer.

Not a good answer.

We cannot build the house as designed - it's as simple as that. Whilst we were braced for bad news, our internal optimists were hoping that this would be the point that we could actually start actually building a house. It would have been a cause for much celebration but instead we had a week of upset, stress and (just to keep us busy) teething and colds for the children. It really was a low point, not only for our self-build but also in our lives.

Still, we're not ones for wallowing in misery, snot and calpol for very long, so now it's time to put all that we've learned into fresh plans.

We've always said that the main goal of the appeal was to clarify where we stood. Even a refusal would leave us with a set of clear and consistent guidelines for planning a house. Getting such guidelines from the local planning department is difficult because as a lone self-builder your project has a very low priority and details get forgotten between the sporadic meetings you can arrange with the planning officer. Our experience was that in having pre-planning meetings we would submit a design, the planner would suggest a change, we'd make the change and submit it, they'd suggest another change and so on. The design became ever more complicated without actually getting to a point where it was likely to receive permission. The lessons learned are that meetings must be regular to keep the end goal fresh in everyone's mind and that if a design has to be changed it must remain simple or change completely rather than accumulating 'tweaks'.

The actual ruling lists twelve points where the appeals officer felt that the concerns of the planners were justified. In the last few years, we've had plenty of time to think about what we wanted from a home and that has changed a little more since we've had children. Living on the site has also given us an insight into how this location works, from light and seasonal weather to views and access. So, we've taken all of these things and re-written our requirements. The end result is two sides of A4 listing the bare minimum we need, things that would be nice to have, things that we want to avoid and some aims to ensure that the new design might get approval.

We'll be taking those requirements to our architect and giving him free reign to come up with a home for us. Suddenly it's exciting again.

The Appeal

The memory of our appeal that will probably stick with me the longest occurred when we were all standing on site in the rough place the house would be built. My parents had come round for the day to look after the children and when we arrived for the site visit, had spirited them away to look at the boats and throw small objects at the ducks. The inspection took ages, so they returned just as we were positioning ourselves to work out where the house would sit. William staggered directly towards us, his woolly hat pulled down so low over his head that only his nose and enormous grin showed. With his arms out wide so he wouldn't bump into anything, he joyfully shouted out "Daddy!", gave me a big hug, shook our planning consultant's hand and staggered on to the caravan for a juice. After a long morning of earnest discussion, it was a bright ray of sunlight.

The meeting itself was hard to judge. It started at 10am at the council offices with the usual suspects - the inspector, our planning advisor and architect, the council planner, 'Ness and I in attendance. Surprising by their absence were the actual planning officer who has been in charge of the case, and the conservation officer who can (and did) object to our plans as they are in the curtilage of the barn (never get involved in listed buildings if you want quick results). Surprising by their presence were one of our neighbours who had completely independently decided to come along and support us, and our local councillor who said he wanted to present the case of the parish council (who've basically echoed the planners' objections to our designs).

The meeting lasted three hours, then we spent two and a half hours wandering round the countryside looking at the site from various vantage points. The inspector took reams of notes and then called an end to proceedings. We feel we made a solid case and came across as professional and sincere in our aims. After the event, it's hard not to think of various points we should have made, but that's how these things go. Unfortunately, however good our arguments may have been, it comes down to the interpretation of the local and national Planning Policy documents, and specifically whether the appeals officer thinks our house would 'harm the character of the area'. It'll also depend how critically he considers the various arguments made as the planner was adamant that our house would cause catastrophic damage to the countryside. We will apparently find out in five weeks' time from the meeting, so mid January. The inspector was completely poker faced (as he's meant to be) so we have no idea whether we'll 'win' or not.

In fact, as we've explained to various family and friends, we are not dependent on having the appeal upheld. Our aim has always been to produce a house that best suits the plot and whilst we're fairly convinced that the design we've produced is an excellent match, it's certainly not the only house that would work very well on the plot. So why appeal? Why not just submit a different design if the planners aren't keen on this one? The issue is that we have been told so many things that the planning department don't want to see that it's hard to imagine what they would approve. We have very little confidence that we could come up with any alternative design that would receive any more favour than the current one. We hope that even if the appeal is rejected, we shall at least come away with a set of concrete guidelines that we can use to inform a new design. An appeal should at the very least clear the tables and allow us to come up with a new plan that suits everyone's needs.

Chicken Crisis

 

Dark days indeed. Or at least, dark enough to make our chickens stop laying. Two are moulting and the other two are on a go-slow.

Before we had the hens, we bought very few eggs. Apart from very infrequent baking and an occasional spate of ice-cream making, we probably only got through a dozen or so eggs a year. However after just twelve months of fresh eggs arriving daily on our doorstep we are dependent on them. Omelette, muffins, eggy scramble for the kids, cakes, custard, fried, boiled.. damn, now I'm hungry again.

Anyway, here's the shameful secret. Yesterday we had to
buy some eggs.

Well, we'd not had bacon and egg sarnies for nearly a week.

Impending Doom

Our planning appeal, which may just see us able to build a house here instead of sitting in the caravan twiddling our thumbs, has been rumbling slowly through the works for nearly twelve months now.

Somewhere deep in a search on the Planning Inspectorate website, there is a page that we have been checking on a daily basis for most of this year. The latest update finally gives us a date for our hearing - and suggests that if we're really lucky we might have a decision by the end of the year.

Appeal accepted	Questionnaire	Statements & representations	Final comments	Site Visit	Decision
Start date: 20 Feb 2007	Due date: 6 Mar 2007	Due date: 3 Apr 2007	Due date: 24 Apr 2007	Date: 4 Dec 2007	Date: Not decided

Cross your fingers for us, please.

Autumn's Coming

 

I Can See a Floor In These Plans

 

Above, there is clearly visible a floor that isn't there. The not-there floor affords visitors to the caravan a fine view of the ground below. It isn't there because I spent yesterday repeatedly hitting it with a big hammer. The hammer attack was very theraputic, but my mental well being (already under question) wasn't the issue.

The real reason for the vandalism was that our shower has never been entirely water tight. The escaping water has spread into the floor around the bathroom - in particular the hallway. Unfortunately, being made out of MDF the floor soaks up water as though it was in a kitchen towel advert and then starts sagging between the joists. As the job of fixing it was going to be a dirty, fiddly day of grubbing around under the caravan I must confess I put it off. After all, the carpet has been doing a fine job of taking our weight when the floor below it had given up.

 

A day later and here's the new floor. No more sags, no more unexpected bounciness to your step as you go through the hall. It's going to take a while to get used to it really.

As a welcome side effect, William now believes I'm Bob The Builder.

Retrospective Blog..

 

Harvest came and went surprisingly suddenly this year and shortly afterwards we zoomed up to Scotland to visit 'Ness parents so this event went uncommented:

Like any small boy, William loves big tractors (almost as much as train!, train! and hello airplane!). So when the combine came to do the field next to us, I took him out to watch them setting it up. To my great shame in the two years we've been here, I've not managed to say hello to the guys that farm the fields next to us. So I took the opportunity to say hello to Gary (bossman) and Rob (combine driver) whilst William attempted to take the wheel off one of the trailers.

As the combine was about to set off, Gary kindly asked "Does he (William) want to have a ride?". He's only two, and wouldn't remember it so we didn't want to get in their way as they got on with the job. Despite telling him this, Gary was insistent that it wasn't any trouble and stopped Rob. Of course Will would love to sit in any vehicle he can, so we found ourselves climbing into the cab for a ride (glass enclosed and air-conditioned - it wasn't like that when I was a lad).

Rob was wonderful (his grandson is also two, so I suspect he knows) and happily worked his way around the field with two extra passengers. William sat on my lap on his best behaviour - he didn't once ask for the keys - and stared down at the machinery below us. He loved the experience and I couldn't be more grateful for our little trip.

Of course, as predicted, the next day Will had no recollection of where he had been, but I've got the photo to show him when he's older.

Alas Poor Fiat

 

It's a sad, sad day on the farm. My Fiat X1/9, that I've had for the last fourteen years and driven the length and breadth of the country, has failed it's MOT. Not just a little bit failed - no handbrake adjustment and off we go this time. Welding is involved.

Or, it would be involved if I could justify it. With two kids, a wife and pickup truck to support, the Fiat was a bit of a guilty pleasure. With 103,000 miles on the clock and nearing it's 20th birthday it owes me nothing and now that I'm facing a big bill to keep it going, it's time to send it on it's way.

So, if anyone wants a winter project and a fun little runaround that is a joy to drive and still suprisingly practical, make me an offer and it's yours. There will be no messing around waiting for over-optimistic values. The best offer I get by September 9th will get the car.

Raspberries

 

These raspberries are a late fruiting variety, but it's their first year so some of them seem to be jumping the gun a little. They taste perfect with a little bit of cream or ice-cream.

 

We quite often have balloons coming over early in the evening at this time of year, dipping low to get the best view of the Cam as they go by. The roar of the gas burners is quite subtle at first but regular enough to get noticed and cause a mad scramble for the camera and a long lens. This one was obliging enough to be taking a slow breeze directly over our house, so I got a few photos. It'd probably help to have a polariser and lens hood (and be a better photographer), but I'm still quite pleased with the image.

It looks like the gremlins aren't being fed enough. These are the things that are sorely in need of mending right now :

Push chair	One bent axle
Toaster	Only cooks one side
Video Recorder	Won't wake up
Camera Lens	Out of focus
Cell Phone	Not recovered from bath incident (glug)
Caravan Floor	As straight as a bouncy castle
Car undertray	Hanging loose
Remote car key fob	No response
Son	Projectile vomiting

Of all of these, the most important and most distressing is the last. First Born Son has no symptoms other than the obvious (oh dear me, it's obvious allright), and is suprisingly happy given that his body has learned a whole new trick that's keeping him awake at night.

All of the others are survivable, except for the fact that we can't record Doctor Who. Ever get the feeling that life is getting on top of you?

It's Hard Work Being Green

Sometimes I'm not sure if some of the energy being put into going green is misplaced.

Standing on the back of our pickup truck gives me an excellent view of the wide open fen landscapes, and early in the summery evenings a view of dedicated joggers doing the loop out of the village and back again. It's also where I have to stand to shovel the half tonne or so of manure out of the truck onto the compost heap. It's very tempting to call over to one of the passing runners and suggest that they could usefully keep fit by helping me dig rather than gasping their way round back to where they started. Certainly after a day of moving compost about, digging over vegetable beds and fighting the good fight against nettles I ache in a way that suggests there might be such a thing as too much exercise. Either that, or I'm unfit.

Our plot isn't that big, but it is hard work to keep on top of all the garden tasks. It puts into context just how much work can be involved in going green. I've read of a few people who've bought enough land to provide a significant portion of their annual food needs, or others who have bought woodland with the aim of being able to grow their own fuel for wood fires. Whilst it fills me with admiration, I can't help but feel that they are going to ache quite a lot. They're also going to be spending plenty of time outdoors when the weather isn't doing the current fresh faced limber up to summer heat.

There again, they'll probably be a lot fitter than I am.

Plumbing - Miserable Work

After over a year of irritation I finally got round to replacing the mixer tap in the caravan. I'm sure new washers would have drastically improved it, but it had got into the habit of turning itself on when off and off when turned on. Whichever would be the most inconvenient. Not only that, but the arm of the tap had become so stiff that moving it threatened to pull the sink from the kitchen surface. No doubt these problems could have been fixed with a complete disassembly and overhaul, but for a few pounds we could get a brand new tap from our local DIY store that had nice ceramic washers, quarter turn taps and a silky smooth arm. Even if it had worked perfectly, the old tap was a fiddly awkward thing so replacing it was an easy descision to take.

Except then I had to fit the damn thing. Half a day of crouching under kitchen tops, cutting my fingers on tortured copper, getting soaked, covered in grease and rushing to get to the main valve in time reminded me why I hate plumbing so much.

Electrics are fine. Plumbing... less so.

I don't mind wiring (though with the new regulations, it's not so much an option these days). Electrical work can be checked and is either right or wrong. At no point does the current in the wires attempt to force them apart. A simple physical inspection shows you if you've made a good job and then the connections are very unlikely to leak 'just a bit', or slowly get worse with time.

By way of contrast, you can connect up a tap and wait for a few minutes before the joint that you thought was soundly tightened goes bang and geysers water out of the cupboard that made it so hard to reach in the first place. At this point there's no convenient trip switch that switches off the water. Instead you have to do the hundred yard dash to the stopcock whilst the kitchen erupts into mayhem. Then after a bout of mopping up, it's time to make the connection again, wringing its neck with a couple of spanners hoping to find that magic point where it's tight enough but not so tight as to strip a thread or twist itself into collapse.

When we start on our house I'll happily run cables around. Might even plug a few things together if it can be inspected to pass regulations. The plumbing though - that'll be someone else's job.

Fine Tuning

The biggest problem I've had with making our biodiesel has been dirty oil. Though our friendly local restaurant is good enough to give us oil that is pretty clean, some of it is less than crystal clear. Leave it a few days to settle, particularly in warm weather, and the bits of fried food and what I assume to be flour sink, leaving a top layer that is clear to the naked eye.

So far I've been pouring that top layer off into our holding tank, from which it is sent through a 5 micron filter. The filter soon clogs up, but as there's no hurry, it can be left to drip through into a drum as slowly as it likes. The end result is a drum of 'clean' oil that can be tipped into the processor and turned into diesel that is good enough to go straight into the car.

However, that leaves a certain amount of oil that never settles. Often it's only a couple of litres in the bottom of a twenty litre drum. Sometimes though, we get given a drum that barely settles out at all. Up to now, the unsettled oil has just been accumulating whilst I've tried to work out what to do with it.

Thanks to Meare Solutions (http://www.mearesolutions.co.uk/) it looks like I've cracked the problem. They sell 32 inch long 'sock filters' which fit neatly inside a tiny space-saver water barrel that was on discount at our local DIY store. The 'sock' can take at least ten litres of dirty oil at a time, allowing the filtered oil to drip into the barrel through the sock wall and leaving a thick layer of 'dry' debris inside the filter. All I need to do is to top it up each morning. By the following day pretty much all of the usable oil has been extracted and the sock can be topped up again. In only a few days I've got through nearly the entire backlog of dirty oil.

The end result is more oil for biodiesel, and conveniently dry waste that can be much more easily disposed of. The only question remaining is how long the socks will last, and whether they can be reused by tipping out the dry waste.

Cough

Cough, splutter, hack, hack..

Little jobs here and there, but no energy whatsoever, with all of us gripped by a rather malicious cold. First born son and beautiful daughter are no doubt suffering the same headaches, stiff joints and hot-behind-the-eyeballs symptoms, but have not yet discovered how to tell us the full gory details. We can see the snot without them having to learn to speak. We can see the snot from a long way away. Buy shares in tissues.

Luckily they are both remarkably stoical in the face of illness, and it's only when they want to sleep but can't that they need us to make things better. Dad definitely gets the best part of the deal here, as I'm the only one who can take the full range of prescription drugs without having to consider whether I'm too young or breast feeding. If you have ever breast fed, you'll know just how many innocent products say somewhere on the packet:

"if you are pregnant or breast feeding, please consult your doctor before using this product"

Once you discount those, you're basically left with water and jam, neither of which have been known to have that much effect.

Unfortunately, even prescription drugs don't do much about the very disturbed nights, so I'll write up some of our little victories later.

Rejected... Not Dejected

The news I've been hesitating to post about is that, just before Christmas, our latest planning application was rejected. The grounds were simple - the new house would 'dominate' the barn, and will be 'detrimentally prominent' in the landscape. They're points that we dispute, particularly as the design has gone through a number of revisions to fit in with the constraints imposed by the Planning and Conservation departments and the Environment Agency. It's hard not to feel that they'd much rather we didn't live here at all. Certainly it's difficult to imagine any design that would fit all of the demands of the powers that be without being a messy compromise. Is that what informs architecture in the UK?

So now we'll go through our plans and decide if the reasons for our choice of design are sound and defensible. If they are, we'll appeal. Regardless, we'll do what we can to take on board the constraints we face and see if a useful alternative design can be reached.

Watch this space.

Foul Weather..

..and rather a lot of it at that.

The weather has been consistently horrible lately, with just regular enough downpours to turn the driveway to mud. Normally the free draining fen soil does a great job of shrugging off rainy days. Now though, as we try to drive in and out of the yard, spinning wheels only help to make the already slippery mush even worse. Despite heavy off-road tyres on the pickup, it's now stuck in four-wheel drive to make progress somewhat more confident. Yet all this is on a site that is almost completely flat. I can only assume that if we were on a hill, at least all the water would have somewhere to go.

This morning we woke to one flapping roof - a corrugated steel lash-up that was quietly rusting on one of the sheds. Armed with a bag of six inch nails and a hammer, I've done the best I can to stop things going too far astray. The repairs aren't pretty, but neither are the sheds.

Slightly more worrying was the wide open door on the chicken coup. Perched on the rail, Ginger was looking out and squawking noisily. None of the chickens had escaped - they just seemed rather annoyed at the sudden loss of privacy. The strong winds were managing to force the door open, so for now a screw is keeping it shut, but I'd better put a proper latch on it soon. I think I'll nominate the cheap rechargable screwdriver I got from Sainsburys as the most used tool on site at the moment - it'd always at hand for a quick fix and though the bits that came with it were rubbish, some new ones allow it to do the job it's needed for with no fuss.

Rather Busy

The reason for our silence in the last few weeks is quite simple. We're very proud to introduce Rebecca Grace, born on 8th December and weighing 6lbs 2oz. She's a lovely little girl even if she hasn't yet got the hang of going to sleep when everyone else has. Mother, brother and dad are all well if a little shell-shocked by a busy Christmas visiting family and friends with a new born in tow.

Snail's Pace

 

Here's one of the interlopers that take advantage of the condensation on the bathroom window. The baby snails (and sometimes slugs - ugh) sneak in through the vents and make themselves at home in the cool damp autumn evenings.

The big news for this last week is that we have - at last got our plans registered with the planning department. Now all we can do is wait, answer any questions sent our way and hope that the council will smile on our efforts to produce an acceptable design.

It's hard not to want to jump ahead of ourselves and start looking at all the secondary details that we've found out about whilst designing the house. We'd been planning an environmentally friendly home even before it was such headline news. We hope to have solar hot water, clean and energy efficient heating, a productive garden, natural pond and a healthy environment to live in. The jury is out on a wind turbine, but our location appears to be quite suitable. There are lots of things, big and little that will make this our home and we can't wait to make them real.

Just yet though we have to hold back and see if we will be allowed to put down the bricks and motar. Wish us luck. 

How to Keep Warm in Winter

Here's a little video I've made about the hot air blower we're going to use to keep ourselves warm this winter. It's the first video I've made, so it's rather simple, but I'm pretty pleased with it.



Now that we've sucessfully made biodiesel from the oil we've been collecting, we can use it to run a heater. It's a very sophisticated device, burning the fuel like a little jet engine and using a heat exchanger to warm up nice fresh air. The heater pushes out an enormous volume of hot air and will be connected to warm our bedroom and bathroom. Though it sounds pretty noisy in the video, once it's warmed through it settles down to be much quieter. Adding a silencer and hiding it away under the caravan should let us keep it on throughout the night without disturbing our sleep.