Roselea

Blog

  • Clearing old Trees

    Started to clear out the top of the site. There are about 6 trees here which we will need to to remove. Most of them are old fruit trees which no longer produce a decent crop.

    Time to use that bargain electric chain saw I bought many years ago (I knew it would be usefull someday)!

  • Yahoo! Planning Permission ……….

    Just looked at the planning website and seen those wonderfull words ‘Decision – APPROVED on 16/12/2009′.

    There are some conditions as you might expect, here are the details from the council.

    1. The development must be begun not later than three years beginning with the date of this permission. The reason for the condition is :- The time limit condition is imposed in order to comply with the requirements of Section 91 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 as amended by Section 51 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004
    2. No development shall take place until precise details of the slab levels of the dwelling hereby approved have been submitted to and agreed in writing by the local planning authority. such details shall also provide comparative levels with adjoining properties and details of the levels of any boundary treatments proposed. The development shall be carried out in accordance with the details as approved. The reason for the condition is :- To ensure that the development hereby approved does not have an adverse effect on the amenities of local residents or on the charcater and appearance of the area.
    3. Prior to the first occupation of the dwelliing hereby approved an on-site car parking and turning area shall be laid out in accordance with the approved plan and shall be demarcated, levelled and retained thereafter available for that specific use. The reason for the condition is :- To ensure sufficient parking on-site and to avoid uneccessary parking on Smiths Loke.
    4. No development shall take place until there has been submitted to and approved in writing by the local planning authority a plan indicating the positions, design, materials and type of boundary treatment tp be erected. The boundary treatment shall be completed before the dwelling is first occupied. Development shall be carried out in accordance with the approved details. The reason for the condition is :- In the interests of the satisfactory appearance of the development and to maintain the amenities of adjacent occupiers.
    5. REASON FOR APPROVAL OF THE APPLICATION :- The proposal meets the provisions of the Great Yarmouth Borough Wide Local Plan and in particular policies HOU7 and HOU15 as it is for the replacement of an existing dwelling
    6. NOTES – Please read the following notes from the Environment Agency carefully:- The plant should be installed, operated and maintiane din accordance with the manufacturers instructions as updated from time to time. Our formal consent will be required under Schedule 10 of the Water Resources Act 1991 for any discharge of effluent from the plant, and such consent is not implied by these observations. We would require the developer to niminate a ‘Consentee’ who would be legally responsible for the correct future maintenance and discharge quality of any private treatment works. The Envirnoment Agency recommends the use of a separate sewage treatment plant for each property. A Consent under Schedule 10 of the Water Resources Act 1991 will be required for each individual seage treatment plant. The granting of planning approval must not be taken to imply that consent has been given in respect of the above.
     

  • Solar data from Nasa

    I’ve been using satelite data from Nasa to estimate the output of our solar panels. This website gives you more data than you can possibly use ! For my purposes the ‘data tables for a particular location’ (under Meterology and Solar Energy) are what I wanted. In particular the table of Average monthly insolation on tilted panel.

    For our location (51.7N-1.7E) this gives this table:-

    Monthly Averaged Radiation Incident On An Equator-Pointed Tilted Surface (kWh/m2/day)
    Lat 51.583
    Lon 1.71    		 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual
    Average
    SSE HRZ 0.82 1.46 2.45 3.72 4.71 4.97 4.98 4.34 2.93 1.79 0.99 0.62 2.82
    K 0.35 0.37 0.39 0.42 0.44 0.43 0.45 0.46 0.41 0.38 0.36 0.32 0.40
    Diffuse 0.55 0.87 1.47 2.10 2.56 2.76 2.65 2.26 1.60 1.00 0.63 0.43 1.58
    Direct 1.22 1.88 2.33 3.13 3.78 3.78 4.03 3.85 2.89 2.25 1.43 0.93 2.63
    Tilt 0 0.80 1.44 2.42 3.70 4.73 4.99 5.00 4.31 2.88 1.75 0.95 0.62 2.81
    Tilt 36 1.29 2.07 2.94 4.00 4.67 4.75 4.84 4.54 3.40 2.42 1.49 1.02 3.13
    Tilt 51 1.39 2.17 2.93 3.83 4.30 4.31 4.42 4.29 3.36 2.51 1.60 1.11 3.02
    Tilt 66 1.43 2.17 2.79 3.49 3.78 3.79 3.90 3.85 3.16 2.48 1.63 1.14 2.80
    Tilt 90 1.33 1.93 2.32 2.69 2.79 2.70 2.80 2.88 2.55 2.17 1.49 1.07 2.23
    OPT 1.43 2.18 2.95 4.02 4.85 5.05 5.09 4.59 3.41 2.52 1.63 1.14 3.24
    OPT ANG 65.0 57.0 43.0 29.0 16.0 11.0 13.0 25.0 39.0 54.0 63.0 67.0 40.0

  • Solar Survey

    Performed a solar survey today. This is a check on the site of your solar panels to see what may obscure the sun at different times of the year.

    To do this I produced a 300mm circle divided in 10° segments and put this on top of a tall stepladder so than when I stood on it my eyes were a similar level to the final panels. The stepladder was orientated to North-South Line (Used Google Earth to find a sight line). Then I used a inclinometer (in my case a electronic spirit level) to map the angle of the top of each item from horizontal around the circle and note them down. I then took a series of photos to get a panorama at the same level.

    Stitching the photos together gave me this …

    The panorma around Roselea.
    The panorma around Roselea.

     

    I then traced a line along the top of the obstacles (Faint Red line above).  I Then got a SunChart from the University of Oregon (Lat.-Long. from Multimap/Google Earth). Then took the horizon line from picture and scaled it onto the Sunchart to get this :-

    Sun Heights above Horizon for the Year
    Sun Heights above Horizon for the Year

     

    For more info see the Solar page.

  • Cedar Shingles – importing direct.

    I’m looking at ways to save money on the materials for the build (isn’t everybody). I have found a Canadian firm who ship shingles to England. For the over 400m2 of roof on this build we will save over £1000 including delivery.

    Now I’m looking at the possibility of getting more materials from Canada/US.

  • Planning permission – second try …

    Here we go again. New application for full planning  permission has been submitted.

    The only changes to the design are to the roof and the rooms inside and out.

    Plans

    Its on the councils website as 06/09/690/F

  • Temporary building Phase 1 complete

    We have completed Phase 1 of the Temporary building. Its Waterproof (?), Insulated and has lights in the Store Room.
    Pictures

  • Neighbours annoyed

    Two of our neighbours seem annoyed with the council for not passing the first plans. One of them has started to bring round examples of timber clad building he finds in the local paper! What a lovely neighbour…

  • Planning meeting – OK

    The planning officer (Mrs Pieterman) seems a pleasent lady. She looked at the new designs and was very favourable. It seems like we may have done enough to satisfy them! Now we need to draw up the full plans. Mrs Pieterman suggested that we show her the new plans before submitting them — Good Idea.

  • Updated design ideas

    From what we can work out the conservation officer wants us to do the following.

    • Change all gables to hips — This we can live with! In some ways this looks better, esp. at the ends.
    • Replace the both porches with extended main roof sections — Makes a more complicated roof but thats ok.
    • Change the size and move about the rear extensions to get a symetrical design — This seems pointless as nobody can see the rear of the building except us! So we havent done this at all.
    • Reduce the ridge height to 5.5m — We have reduced the main roof slope and removed 300mm from the downstairs celing height giving at new ridge of 6m – hope thats enough.

    We have also added windows to the TV Room and Utility (This will be a false window or decorative feature in reality) to help with the balance of the front wall. The other thing is extending the roof overhang by 200mm which helps to give a more normal ratio between  walls and roof appearance.

    We will take these ideas to the planners tomorrow.