Every grey cloud has a silver lining

With the rain continuing to pour and no chance of cracking on the the ground works in the mill we took advantage of the roof over the long barn and started building the internal walls.

The dinning room with accessible bathroom and en-suite beyond

To help with the budget we will be conducted a lot of the non skilled work ourselves. This weekend our task set by the builders was to remove the rotten floor and floor joists above the hallway and utility room. We finished, exhausted at 8pm on a Saturday night in January,

As the weather continued to present flood warning after flood warning across the south west work in the long barn continued. Buy the end of week 3 the builders had constructed all the internal walls in the long barn, moved up the one remaining elm beam in order to accommodate a slight change in floor level as well as begin able to take advantage of a break in the weather to pour the slab in the kitchen in the mill.

Ground works complete

As we entered week 3 the weather turned (gee whiz we Brits are for ever talking about the bloody weather!!) this time for the better. The pump went into action and the builders finished off the footings and block work for the sitting room. The final 2 concrete lorries arrived and 3 weeks and 2 days into the build the concrete floor slabs were complete.

Concrete from Morris' in Taunton - the one day they didn't send a branded truck

Dan and Graham tamp out the sitting room floor slab

Groundworks

With the reduced dig complete we used some of the concrete blocks from the old dairy and calving pens which we crushed in January to begin the backfill process. The weather has not been kind, however with a roof over the long barn the builders were quick to install the waste pipes and shuttering ready for the concrete.

By the end of week one we had a slab in the long barn, which will form the dinning room and accessible bedroom for when my sister comes to stay.

As the rain continued to pour the footings in the mill began to resemble a scene from the Somme. 

Footings in the sitting room

One muddy site

Mill - Kitchen looking to sitting room

Under pinning in the Mill

The Long Barn ready for concrete

Shutting between long barn pillars over an existing drain into which we have been pumping the footing

The remaining slab in the long barn was next, the area which will form a hallway and utility/plant room. 

The only complication was that we have still not instructed a contractor for our biomass. The biomass boiler will be located across the yard and the hot water will be piped in through a buried flow and return pipe. This is usually provided by the contractor and without one on board we had to improvise. A quick trip to Mole Valley Farmers to strap a 6m section of 8 inch pipe to the roof of our old VW Passat whilst the builders created a box section of shuttering in the utility room and we had over come the problem. The 8 inch pipe will form a sleeve to take the flow and return pipe into the building.

Box section and sleeve pipe

That afternoon we back filled with stone sand and laid the membrane ready for the concrete the following morning.

The mini digger is so useful and cheap it saves so many man days, here it is helping distribute the stone backfill

The JCB is able to bring the stone backfill right in through the front door

Backfilling the sleeve and water pipe

Dan compacts the stone...

On with the sand...

And we are ready for some more concrete from Morris' in Taunton

Having agreed a fixed price for this phase  of work the weather was beginning to stall progress as we were unable to continue with the ground works in the mill.  Thankfully we were able to continue undercover of the long barn.

Slab in the long barn

Plans

To help you visualise the project this section shows the plans submitted for planning permission.  During stage one the family room and the bedroom at the left hand end of the long barn will not be built.

Our Architects can be found at http://www.lcarchitects.co.uk/lca/

The site plan- The mill to the right, adjoining the long barn to the left which joins the gatehouse barn

Ground Floor Plan

First and Second Floor Plans

Elevations

Winter 2014 - Ground Works

Choosing a builder

The reality of this project is that we have permission for much more than we can currently afford to build.  This is because we had an overage payment when we bought the site which will be applied to every planning application for a number of years to come and therefore we did not want to face the situation of outgrowing a home and having to pay an additional overage.  This has presented the issue throughout the project whereby many contractors see the plans or visit the site and think that they have a licence to print money. In short we do not, but it does take a lot to convince them that we are, at then end of the day a run of the mill young professional couple at the start of their married life and not the proud owners of the winning euro millions ticket.

It was therefore crucial that we chose a builder who was fully in tune with our circumstances and approach - an approach that has seen us do the site preparation and will continue to see us do the less skilled tasks on site.  Graham and Gary Bere run Groundwood Developments and have a huge amount of experience.  They have converted in excess of 15 barns and recently build from scratch a 7000 sq feet award winning contemporary eco home.  Their wealth of experience will prove invaluable in ensuring the detail ties this project together. They have come with numerous excellent references and are willing to price the build by stage or work on a day rate plus materials.

As the south west was bettered by storm after storm, the JCB and dumpers rolled in to begin the reduced dig.

Archaeological Condition

Removing the cobbles - allowing SWA to inspect

To be compliant with one of our planning conditions South West Archaeology were present on site to check that there was nothing of archaeological importance below the buildings when we commenced the reduced dig.  They documented the excavation with a number of photographs and produced a report to discharge this planning condition.

First Alarming Call

The following day we received a call from the builders to say that as they continued the reduced dig in the mill they had hit the bottom of the foundation in about 20% of the building and that we maybe into an underpinning situation.

The area of the Mill where the foundation had run out

Having completed numerous inspection pits during the structural engineering package we were under the impression that this would not be an issue, however as one end of the Mill has rising land against one exterior wall it was always going to be a risk.  Quick phone calls to Simon Bastone, our structural engineer and Iain Allars our building inspector ensured that all were able to discuss the issue openly.

Foundations requiring partial underpinning

As the foundation ran out only a few tens of millimetres below the level at which the stone backfill was to be inserted Simon and the building inspector agreed on a partial underpinning as shown in the diagram below.

On reflection this grown up approach has helped the project continue with minimal additional cost, especially as Simon was able to adjust the footings between the pillars in the long barn to raft slabs which are cheaper and less time consuming to construct.

Autumn 2013 - Building Regulations Package

Due to budgetary constraints we were unable to continue with the the specialist architect and instructed a family friend to develop detailed building regulation drawings.  This was accompanied with a structural engineering design provided by Simon Bastone Associates in Exeter (http://www.sb-a.co.uk/).

With the package complete we decided to go down the route of private building control in order to offer us more flexibility on what could be a complex build. The building regs package was submitted to ascent building control (http://www.assentbc.co.uk/) before the Christmas holidays, allowing us to begin the tendering process to begin ground works in the new year.

Winter - Spring 2013 - Planning Application

Consultancy Advice - Pre Application

To develop the basis of the application we undertook the following work:

• Pre-application discussions with Mid-Devon Council and English Heritage
• Topographical Survey (Philip Price http://devonsurveyplans.co.uk/)
• Archaeological Survey and Desktop Study (South West Archaeology http://www.swarch.net/)
• Ecology Survey (Crossman Associates http://www.crossmanassociates.co.uk/)

This allowed us to understand the site better prior to instructing an Architect to help us develop the design.  We chose our Architect, Louise Crossman Associates, because she was a specialist heritage architect who had extensive experience in listed buildings and barn conversions.  

As we developed the design we concurrently instructed a structural survey to determine suitability for conversion.

Cat tied to together all of this work in a planning and heritage statement to accompany the studies and full design package.  

This process allowed us to evolve our ideas with the architect and by June 2013 we were in a position to submit both planning and listed building applications.

Post Application

We also consulted with local community groups, the parish council and our local councillor to rally support.  Our future neighbours were great in writing to the council supporting our application.

Having done pre-application with officers at the council the process ran relatively smoothly and we were given approval within 8 weeks.

Autumn 2012 - Site Clearance

In order to understand what we had to play with, every spare second of the autumn was spent clearing back the brambles which had taken over site in the past three decades.

Community Infrastructure Levy - The Race Against Time

Community Infrastructure Levy or CIL is a new levy that local authorities can choose to charge on new developments in their area. The money can be used to support development by funding infrastructure that the council, local community and neighbourhoods want.  Mid Devon Council is one of 4 local authorities who were selected to run pilot schemes.  During the time of clearance the Mid Devon Pilot Scheme was due to be brought in during October 2013 and with CIL charges rumoured to be upward of £90 per square metre of proposed development it was imperative that we avoided CIL as it would make the project unviable. We were in a race against time and with the help of family and friends we had the majority of the site cleared by the end of November.

For more information on CIL visit http://www.pas.gov.uk/3-community-infrastructure-levy-cil

Day one - walking down our new drive

The Mill

Cat's Sister Julia and boyfriend Si to the rescue

Many tools make light work!!

Cat's Dad busy with the chainsaw in the mill

And finally we find the wheel pit

The mill gable end before..

...and after

Friend Will enjoying his resettlement leave from the Army

Demolishing the calving pens

Most of the vegetation removed we begin to understand what we have bought

Inside the Long Barn - one of the only places without brambles

The Gatehouse

The Stables

The cherry picker comes to the rescue

Summer 2012 - Introduction

Having returned from our honeymoon in summer 2012 we received a phone call from Cat's parents saying they had seen something we maybe interested in; a set of barns and a mill without planning permission which could offer the potential for conversion.

After work one night we headed down from Bristol to Devon where we first laid our eyes on the Barton which had formerly formed part of the Ayshford Court Estate.  It looked amazing!!

The only gamble would be obtaining the planning permission and with the buildings being listed and in a conservation area we knew we had a mountain to climb before we could start building work.  Cat is  a planning consultant for a property company and whilst she was confident it could be achieved we would have to take a calculated risk.  We placed our offer, an initial sum with an overage payment subject to planning permission.

In September our bid was accepted and so began the process of obtaining planning permission, but first we had to find out exactly what we had bought.

September 2012 - We are the proud owners of one overgrown site (left to right: Pole Barn, Mill, Long Barn and Gate House Barn)