Trial pits

At last there has been digger activity at the barns. Our builder has caught up with his other projects and is now going to be concentrating on ours. That said, he is not coming back until Monday...........probably. But at least there has been some work done today, and trial pits were the first job on the list. These are needed for the structural engineer to work out how the barns are currently constructed so that he can decide how our converted barns are to be repaired and made structurally sound. I was half expecting to see a heap of rubble and collapsed barn but all was intact except for the mains water pipe for the neighbour which has now been located, broken and repaired - and wasn't in the position marked on his deeds. The pictures below show the extent of the existing foundations, or more like the lack of foundations.

Virtual Barns

Ground floor barn 2 (diagram using Sketchup)

As we still have no actual barn converting taking place (it's a long story), we have been building some virtual barns. I say 'we' in the royal sense because since I work all day at a computer learning and configuring software, my head would explode if I tried to learn other software in my spare time. This joyful task has therefore been taken on by Mr Barn, somewhat obsessively I would say. Building virtual barns is a good game though, because you can try things out from an interior point of view, checking the rooms from all angles and trying out floor and wall decorating.  For example, it will help us decide which walls we are going to have as plain brick and which will be normal plaster and paint. There is a lot more to do yet as the basic layouts for all the barns have not yet been completed, but it is looking good so far. If only the real barns were so easy to get underway. More pictures of virtual barns will follow, and hopefully in the next couple of weeks there will be pictures of builders on site at the real barns :)

More drilling for coal mines

When reviewing all the planning and mortgage conditions we realised that the drilling for the mining survey had been done in the courtyard rather than the area where one of the barns had collapsed  therefore in the wrong place.The temptation was to just ignore it as the drilling took place actually only about 5 metres away from the proscribed location. However, as much as you can reason that the building collapsed due to poor construction methods (no foundations, thick concrete first floor) and general lack of maintenance over the years including leaking roof and no guttering, if it had been caused by mining we might find ourselves in a difficult position with the coal board. So, to cut a long story shorter, another 30m hole has been drilled, but this time in the right place. We haven't seen the report yet, but fingers crossed they don't find anything. Incidentally, this is one bill we haven't had to pay  - I wish this was the case for a few more of them.

Drilling rig on site (again). This time drilling in the back garden rather than the courtyard.

Once again I can report absolutely no building progress. Hopefully this is all set to change later this week, although with all the delays that we have had I will believe it when I see it. We have a little bit of brick sorting, stacking and cleaning progress which has been done most definitely not by me but by Mr Barn himself.

A nice and tidy log and brick pile.

The battenburg survey

Friends and family regularly ask about our progress with the barns and we rather embarrassingly have none, that is to say physical progress at least. We mumble and mutter about our bat and bird survey and relate our difficulties with co-ordinating our structural engineer, architect, planning officer, builder, mortgage company and solicitor, and frequently find that the only statement that registers is "Battenburg survey! What's that?"

The short answer to  our progress question is that all our planning conditions have now been discharged so we are in the clear for building. Hoorah. A Mexican wave all round. All we need now is the mortgage to be granted, the building insurance to be set up and the builder to appear on site and get cracking. Surely that's not too much to ask after 18 months? (Ironic rhetorical question).

Ecologist Report

The biggest remaining hurdle for planning consent was the bat activity survey and bird nesting check. These took place last weekend at dawn on Sunday and the report was quickly produced on Monday. Thankfully no bats or birds were recorded entering or leaving the buildings although some bat activity was recorded in the vicinity. We have had a tense few weeks keeping the birds out as there are so many holes in the barns; in the roofs, walls, windows and doors. Daily inspections have been made to check for the pesky blighters and when you think you've stopped all the gaps you find that they have somehow got in again. So, then you have to go round doing a fingertip and torchlight search to find the tiniest little holes to bung up with some scrunched up chicken wire or tack up some netting. Talk about stressful, but this herculean effort has paid dividends. I speak as if I've been doing the searching and gap filling, but actually I've mostly just been sharing the stress. The final hurdles are for the planning officer to approve our choice of brick and tile  and for the structural engineer to design the foundations (for any rebuilding that is required). Actually, the final, final hurdle is bringing all the planning and structural stuff together and passing it to the building society so that we can get our mortgage. Then we can heave a collective sigh of relief and get on with the work, or more accurately the builder can get on with the work, although he has already advised us that his original projected start date of last Tuesday has been put back for 3-4 weeks due to delays on his current projects. Aaaaarrrrrggghhh........will this project ever begin................

Swallows are here!

This evening I popped over to the barns on the way home from work to see the progress with the bird prevention screens and to catch up with the news (a biomass boiler man has been on site today). It's been a beautiful day and there was an almost cloudless sky this evening and it was just to well, nice (for want of a better description) to go home.We were just chatting whilst pottering about when the swallows arrived. Most of the screens were ready but not attached to the openings so we ran around pushing the screens shut whilst the swallows whizzed around the courtyard. They are really alarmingly fast and bigger than you think they are, especially when close up. They got into one of the barns and flew around a bit before zipping out again, so we quickly tacked up some barrier screen fabric. I did feel a bit sad about stopping them from getting in, because it was absolutely fascinating last year to capture the baby birds on camera as the parents came in to feed them. I guess all of the swallows that came back were actually born in the barns so I felt especially uncomfortable about keeping them out. Hopefully it will only be for this year as one of our planning conditions is to provide alternative nesting accommodation for swallows. We celebrated (or commiserated) with a fish and chip supper sitting outside the barns watching and listening to the birds. I'm really looking forward to actually living up there, rather than just visiting and talking about it!

Building progress

Well, actually there is no building progress. We are still working through the planning pre commencement conditions and had a fun hour trying out brick samples with our builder and architect, also discussing tile samples. We have planning approval for Staffordshire Blue tiles on the current planning, but the previous planning was for pantiles instead. There is actually a mix of roof coverings on the barns at the moment - staffordshire blues, clay pantiles, roofing felt tiles, and in some cases nothing at all. So a lot of ummming and ahhhhing later and we have completely changed our minds from wanting orangey clay pantiles to now preferring staffordshire blues. We have also done quite a bit of extensive research by driving around the local villages taking surreptitious photo's of other peoples barns. Apologies to anyone who had dodgy looking people taking sneaky photo's of your property, it may have been us :) Now we have to see if we can afford real staffordshire blues or to have some concrete look alikes instead. Obviously we would like the real thing, but you can only spend your money once and I'd like to be able to have a kitchen and bathroom as well as tiles on the roof.

Today has been a bird and weed prevention day. For bird prevention the current project is too make screens for the missing barn doors and windows to deter swallows from making them their home. They haven't arrived yet, but it must be very soon. Last year they arrived just about now. We also have to make sure there aren't any robins, sparrows, wrens or any feathered friends building new nests. We have taken down all the old ones so it should be easy to see when they start building new nests, and is just a matter of being vigilant. On a weed prevention front we didn't think to spray weedkiller on the nettles last year until they were man sized and of course it was too late by then and the only course of action was extreme strimming. This year I've tried to get the little blighters early with a good spray around with something really nasty. It's a good job I'm not trying to grow any vegetables or fruit this year or we might just poison ourselves.

Swallow prevention screens

It was a nice sunny afternoon so I thought I would take some photo's of the barns before any building begins. I'm so looking forward to having a few photo's of work underway, but patience is definitely a necessity not a virtue in the barn conversion world. I might have gone a bit overboard with the sepia filter but it sort fit my thoughts of how the barns look before building and perhaps photo's taken after the building has finished will be all bright and shiny and colourful.

Just a bit of a hint that building will start at some point.......soon.

Now the fun begins........

......well at least it will when we've passed the planning conditions. Unfortunately, one of the conditions is to have a bat and bird survey......in May. What a pain in the proverbial. We had a bat and bird survey last year but it was on 19th April and is therefore no good according to Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, so another bat emergence survey has been booked. Another planning condition was from the Coal Authority. Apparently, their records indicated a seam of coal 2 metres thick only 5 metres deep and directly beneath the barns. We tried not to panic but the cost of drilling, the potential cost of filling a mining void and the uncertainty of it all caused more than a few anxious moments.

Drilling was organised pretty quickly and whoop-de-do we have no coal mines and in fact minimal coal layers were found and only one hole at 30m deep was required. Big collective sigh of relief (including from our bank balance too). Having said that it still cost £2k. How much would it have cost if a mine had been found? Doesn't bear thinking about, so we won't. 

The next huge hurdle was to get finance. Only one building society, the Ecology Society, would contemplate giving us a mortgage for our project. All other building societies shied away because we have 3 properties in total and not just a single domestic building, even though we only want to mortgage our own property. Anyway, we thought it was all in place pending the decision on planning until unexpectedly I was made redundant in September last year. Horror of horrors, this meant that we couldn't get a mortgage until I got another job and passed the probationary period, all within the mortgage application window. OMG what a mess. I kept having a Kevin McClould 'Grand Designs' soundtrack running through my head................you know, the bit where they cut to the adverts and he says things like "Will the project fail?...With no finance, no planning, and the possibility of a mine below these barns, is there any hope of these barns ever being completed?".  Fortunately, I got another job pretty quickly (with a 3 month probationary period) and some redundancy pay to add to the building fund, so it was all starting to look up until the Ecology sent an email in Feb to say that we had exceeded our application period and they would give us to the end of the month to finish off our application after which we would have to re-apply. However, after the end of February due to the popularity of  self build mortgages they wouldn't be able to offer a mortgage on a conversion. Basically, if we didn't get our planning and employment sorted out, we were without a mortgage. Stress alert. Stress alert. Well, after some urgent phone calls to Amber Valley planning and a probationary period completed, we managed to get the planning approval and then after a valuation on the property we received a mortgage offer letter. Phee-eeew. We are not out of the woods yet, as we now have a raft of mortgage conditions to meet as well as planning ones, but at least it looks more promising than it did in Feb! 

Some of the planning (and mortgage) conditions:-

• mining survey
• bat and bird survey
• planning consent to building materials (bricks, tiles, windows)
• planning consent to landscaping
• bird and bat replacement housing (bird boxes, bat boxes)
• life insurance
• site insurance
• legal searches - rights of way, water, electricity, boundaries
• redemption of an endowment policy to provide additional funds
• passing places and road repairs on the access lane

It goes on and on........seemingly endlessly. We are getting samples of bricks and tiles sent for matching to the originals and estimates for windows, wood pellet boilers, mechanical ventilation and heat recovery systems, bathrooms, kitchens.........etc. There is such a lot to think about, so never a dull moment. What will we do with ourselves if we ever get it all finished? 

We had a busy hour one morning hefting a load of brick samples around the buildings and taking photo's to try and match up the bricks. We don't want to use reclaimed bricks for the patching up if we can avoid it as they are relatively expensive and don't have any guarantees regarding frost proofing or salt leaching. Hence the samples from brick manufacturers using traditional methods.