Enforcement oficer(??) just stopped my house build!

[Russboy]

So so so pissed off right now.

Enforcement officer has said our build is too high by about 1.5 feet. thing is as he said its down to interpretation as the house is being built on a slope

You can see the slope here:



As the build moves on you can see the kitchen window here and as it is at the front you can see how far out of the ground it is:



This is the roof as of yesterday, looking from where our bedroom will be through the bathroom and the house beyond is my nans:



Looking from the bathroom through te bedroom, with the spare room on the left:



We suspect its the people in the white house who we very much suspect have objected as fair enough it is quite high at the front, but they had forgotten about the build as its been quite a few years since planning was granted, so prob has shocked them:



The view of the rear of the house, and as you can see the lounge which is at the same level as the kitchen looks to be considerably lower, but thats only due to the slope:



The enforcement officer was very sympathetic according to my Dad (he's managing the whole project) and will make his report and put it to the planning officer today, then my Dad will have a meeting with the planning officer hopefully on Mon.

Basically keep your fingers crossed that he see's it as a basic interpretation and minor amendment and we might, just might be ok

[PaulF]

Build the ground up outside.

[Russboy]

Build the ground up outside.

that amongst other things have been discussed but its the original ground level I suspect, i.e the ground level at the time planning was granted.

He reckons we're at 5.249M, where as it should be 5.2m. We reckon it's prob more like 5.216m so still 16cm over but thats about 0.3% more than it should be, all depends on mon really, architect is sure we'll get round it one way or another, very worse case scenario is we do the roof again, prob cost £5k more but then new builds rarely go completely to plan!

[Russboy]

Silly thing was when the guy measured it up he held one end of the tape, my Dad the other and he asked my Dad what the measurement was!!! He so could of lied, but rather it goes through completely legit, then we know we're ok.

[Russboy]

[derdle]

Do the smileys indicate that all is OK and you can continue?

[Russboy]

Do the smileys indicate that all is OK and you can continue?

Well it did..................

Meeting on the Mon with the planning officer went well and he thought it was a storm in a tea cup, plus he hadnt received the report from the enforcement officer. He also indicated that there is a tolerance and at the time we thought we were only 16cm over, roughly 0.3%, enforcement officer thought we were 49cm, roughly 0.5%.

So that went well

However since then obvioulsy the report from the enforcement officer has been submitted and reading between the lines we suspect the enforcement officer's nose has been a little put out with our findings and as such we are now meeting both of them on site tomorrow afternoon.

We're hoping the planning officer is still on our side and is just trying to get the bigger picture and keep the enforcement officer happy. We also have ready more evidence of the orig height of the land with loads of pictures of what was there including the amount of land we've removed, including trees etc. We will also take a lot more measurents whilst there and certainly more than the 1 the enforcement officer took.

Basically finger crossed and watch this space..................

[derdle]

Fingers crossed for ya!

[Rilla]

bloody jobs worths, trying to justify the salary they get for pissing people off. Get em to guard the channel tunnel for illegal immigrants or something equally constructive. And blow your neighbors up too!

[Russboy]

bloody jobs worths, trying to justify the salary they get for pissing people off. Get em to guard the channel tunnel for illegal immigrants or something equally constructive. And blow your neighbors up too!

The thing is they are doing a constructive job (excuse the pun!) as its them that prevent people just sticking up houses, huge extensions wherever they please, but in this case we feel we are within the boundries set as we have cut into the orig ground and therefore lowered the roof height so as to not obscure the neioghbours.

Said to my dad if all goes well im going to Clinton cards to buy a helium balloon with a big smiley face on it and im sticking it on the roof, that'll impress the neighbours!!

[stumpyrs4]

Had a similar problem with my housebuild 18months ago strangely enough.

The problem in my case was that the planning drawings submitted were shown as if on a completely flat road/ground level. The actual site is slightly sloped.
The nett effect is that our house would have had a higher eaves and ridge than indicated on the street scene drawing. The house was built to the correct simensions, i.e. wall heights were the same as those on the drawings, but the base level was different.

The Enforcement Officer didn't stop us from continuing, but there was obviously a risk we proceeded with abortive costs/effort.

In the end I agreed that the difference was only 150mm. So I agreed to lose 50mm in storey height to the ground floor and first floor, thereby leaving only 50mm difference. I also agreed to lose 2 side windows (as it was the neighbour's side who was complaining). Wasn't concerned over this as they weren't of any use, and would also therefore save me the cost of 2 windows/lintels/cavity closers etc.

Had to get the dwgs revised and re-submitted, but all turned out fine afterwards.

Was worrying for a while but we knew we had a good case.

[stumpyrs4]

Did you not consider Engineered joists for the upper floors? Much lighter and have greater spans, and not that much more expensive?

[SteveH]

any update? hope all went well

[Russboy]

any update? hope all went well

Well....................

About 2 weeks back we got the final go ahead. We did hit some probs along the way and felt that the enforcement officer was no longer following up the original complaint and was now making it a personal mission to stitch us up. At one point he said it was 40cm too far forwards and would poss have to be pulled down! Also they raised questions as to why we had moved the front door to the side but from the pics you'll see we would have had to have a huge ramp that would look ugly as hell.

At the same time we have got them to agree to let us have slate tile hanging on the gable ends and slate on the roof, although that is partially to allow us to conform to the 5.2m height.

The roof has had to be modified, again as you’ll see from the pics, which in the long run will cost us about £1500 extra and we have waited and wasted nearly 2 months of time, but we are now making progress which is good.

Deciding on the windows and patio doors on Sun so again progress and looking forward to that.