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Ahoy

123sologne wrote:On another note... I just love your house Thurston Garden!

A wood store can be made quite easily using old pallets. Having just build a straw hoose, I had two wooden pallet crates that the slates were delivered in. The house foundations are telegraph poles on their ends as piles and I had a lot of off cuts so made mine like this: I used the pole off cuts to...

Oh, they are experts at manipulating us. Making us think we need stuff we don't.

Now then... I agree wholeheartedly with almost all of the points and comments above, but would like to throw some first hand experiences into the mix. Four years ago, when my life went to hell in a handcart and I had no other option to close down the market garden business and look, very quickly, fo...

That was it Flo! T&M now?

See the planners BEFORE you buy a plot. They will give an informal view on the likelihood of a planning consent on the site. They should also be able to give you any planning history for the site - there may have been an application refused previously. You can search the planning database for applic...

I appreciate you won't want to divulge the location of the plot, but you did say it was in a residential area, so on that basis alone, a lot of the risk is gone. Maybe a discussion with the planners is in order after all. It can be a lot of work but planning can usually be gained with perseverance.

I cannot vouch for that particular stove. The ones in MM always seemed to be very cheap to me. I might have been tempted to hunt down a second hand one of a known brand - morso/charnwood and the like. I think every stove situation is different regarding getting the best heat from the fuel. The stove...

Here's some ballpark figures off the top of my head (this will probably blow my percentages quoted earlier out of the water....): Access road - £5k Reedbed - £2k Grid connection - £3k Foundations - £2k Compost toilet - £500 Timber - £6k Bales - £1k Windows - £12k Lime render exterior - £2k Clay rend...

Thanks. Mine is the Cleanheat version with the top vent in the rear and the lever underneath. You are right, there's a trick to getting the air flows right. I don't have a flue thermometer - I have an insulated flue with maybe 60mm of uninsulated flue between the stove and the insulated parts. I don...

George could you keep the glass clean on coal alone? I find that on coal alone and closed up reasonably tight at night, the glass is black in the morning.

It's maybe worth adding that I was only able to find one lender who would provide a mortgage for straw bales - Ecology Building Society. Their rates are favourable and there's a discount available on the standard interest rate depending on the efficiency of the finished house. I get 0.75% discount a...

I would be tempted to leave the council alone for as long as you can, as far as building control is concerned anyway. You could approach the planners for a view on whether they would look favourable on an application to build a house on the site (or review the local plan - google "town name&quo...

Good description George! Where I fell down was multi fuel - I thought this meant you could burn either wood or coal, but to have a lasting fire you really need to burn both together (in my Squirrel at least). I am not keen on burning coal but pretty much have to. I need to start the fire in the norm...