Kevin from Greenspace just sent these updated images over for the house ready to go in the full planning application. They incorporate all of the changes we’ve made both due to the pre-planning response and us having longer to think about the interior layout.

It’s nice to see some flesh on the design, albeit virtual right now.

The planning officer who picked up our application for pre-planning advice got back to us today a month after we submitted a fairly comprehensive brochure detailing the site, aspect, design, size and materials of the house we hope to build on the piece of land we bought (at auction without planning permission).

Kevin, the architect we are using from Greenspace Architects in Ellesmere, did a huge amount of work to submit with the pre-planning advice application forms in the hope that the planning officers would not be left wondering what this weird and unusual proposal was for. He explained to us that if their response was favourable at this stage much of the work for the actual submission of a planning application would already have been done.

Today’s written response had lots of comments – much of which said that our house was either sufficiently tucked away or not too dissimilar from the surrounding buildings that they would be fine with it in principle. The only gripes they had are the current proposed height of 10 metres making it significantly taller than surrounding houses (yes that is quite tall – partly because it is a house on wooden stilts and partly because the design submitted was really a maximum scale for us which we anticipated scaling down when the actual precise design is worked on) and east facing bedroom windows would over look neighbouring gardens.

We are extremely happy and relieved with this news as had mentally parked the potential project awaiting this response to work out whether we were having to shelve the idea, literally go back to the drawing board with Kevin to put together a proposal that would be acceptable to the planning office or sell the land on.

The only thing which has surprised us is the mention of a 15 metre easement zone surrounding the pumping station which now neighbours the portion of land we bought from Severn Trent. Apparently previous applications to gain permission to build on this land have been withdrawn when people heard about this easement but neither we, our architect nor our conveyancing solicitors have seen any mention of such an easement in the documents. So tomorrow I’ll start investigating where and how the planning officer has found out about such an easement zone which we the land owners did not know of and how the agreement is worded…

We had a message from a planning officer that he was off to inspect our site the week before last. I called him to suggest he may wish for me to unlock the gates to have a proper look but he explained he had already been on the visit and had been looking at the buildings and roads surrounding the site and he would get back to us early the following week.

Early this week we heard, via the architect that we are using, that the planning officer was hoping to meet with his colleagues in the conservation department next week and would not be getting back to us with a response before that meeting on Monday.

In the meantime I am noticing every small detail of each building I interact with – houses I pass in the street, public buildings I enter and door furnishings and layouts of friend’s homes. I feel I should be logging all of the opinions I am forming somewhere so I can recall them if/when we come to the detailed design of our proposed home.

I have been given a wonderful book as a Christmas present by a friend who is also contemplating their own low-impact self-build. It is called ‘Diary of an Eco-Builder’ by Will Anderson who was a columnist in The Independent newspaper while he and his partner had their own home built.

As mentioned last week we’re going through a pre-planning application with Shropshire council to see what they think of our plans.

Well today Kevin at Greenspace submitted it on our behalf and *drum roll* here it is (18MB PDF).

We’ll convert it to something web friendly in the coming days.

After a five long and interesting years since our upping sticks and leaving London – initially ‘downshifting’ but ultimately wending our way across the UK with our eyes becoming opened to a lot more than we bargained – we have hopefully reached our final destination and purchased a 0.5 acre rectangle of flat land in a small market town in North Shropshire. The site is surrounded by houses but does not have planning permission to build anything on, yet. We bought it at an auction from Severn Trent who were having a big sell off of various parcels of land that they no longer required. Ours has a sewage pumping station at its entrance which is on the corner retained by Severn Trent.

In 2010 Bealers attended the Roundwood Timber Framing course held in Prickly Nut Wood in Sussex where he was taught by Ben Law. He learnt some of the principles of using wood ‘in the round’ and came back very keen to emulate the process by building various structures including the possibility of a house one day. From the proceeds of the London house sale some years before we started to look for a conifer woodland growing unthinned trees (giving slow grown, densely planted individual stems) of about 50-60 years old. As we were living in mid Wales it wasn’t long before a local 4 acre patch of Japanese Larch came up for sale at a price that we could afford. It also had the benefits of great road access (situated on an A-road with a layby by the large gate) and wasn’t too steep like many of the conifer plantations are in Wales.

We started to collect tools which would be useful in general forestry and carpentry but more specifically the odd roundwood timber framing tool. Darren also became a licensed chain saw user completing courses with a local arboriculture training centre.

Now that we have a potential plot we are working with a local architect to put in an application for the building of a modest timber framed, hand-built house using only local, natural and recycled products where possible. Having been inside Ben Law’s cottage and similarly constructed buildings at The Small Woods Association, Shropshire and at The Sustainability Centre, Hampshire, we know it would be a very beautiful inspirational build showing people that with a bit of forward planning and re-skilling it is possible to have a lovely low-guilt house which is warmed by the winter sun and has a light impact on the wider environment. We hope it will be very similar to this one constructed at Merion Farm in Sussex by Ben and his extended team:

It is early days yet and we are preparing for a heartbreaking ‘No!’ from the planning department but we do have a chance that with a lot of hard graft and a few years of low creature comforts we may one day realise our roundwood timber framed dream.

The idea at present is to begin to find people who would be interested in getting involved with our build if (when) it happens. We assume we will need experts like master carpenters, eco builders, plumbers but also perhaps there are people who would relish the opportunity to get skilled in any of these areas by working alongside us as volunteers.

We plan to ‘open source’ the entire build and all plans, applications, the highs and the the lows will all be posted here to hopefully help others should they decide to embark on a similarly low cost but high utility project.

As they say, watch this space.

If you’d like to help then please get in touch via build@roundwoodhouse.org.uk