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New garage going up - things to remember before the builders start?


FridgeFreezer

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Has the estate not got a digger you could borrow for the weekend?

My workshop has a 63A 3 phase supply into it :D. I've then got my own consumer unit.

Ring main with 6 double sockets (two on LH wall, 4 on wall above bench).

32A single phase sockets normally with another 2 doubles in it.

A 16a 3 phase supply to the compressor and finally a 32a 3 phase socket :).

Plenty of electricity in my workshop :P. It means the furthest I am away from a 13a socket is a

Max of about 1m. Only time I tend to use an extension lead is when I'm working just outside the door.

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I put some sockets on my roof beams so when charging a car etc you don't garotte yourself every time you walk around.

Think about ho your going to switch the lights too. The common thing seems to be to have them in full length strips but I find it better to section them by where your working.

I was always impressed with the workshop we used to take our hgv to. Each bay had a swinging arm with 3 phase and single phase sockets on as well as airline connections so that where ever you were working around the truck you had the connections you needed. I'm sure it could be replicated to good effect in a home workshop with a bit of thought.

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I'd like a better supply to my garage - but it's at the end of the back garden with my house consumer unit in my front porch - we are a row of 4 and have solid floors ......... So the only way I could see a supply being put through to the back garden would be by opening the walls and floors up.

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One thing I did in my garage at the last place which turned out to be a very good idea, was to split the sockets into two rings (in my case, one down each side). Plenty of sockets on each ring of course. The advantage of this is that if you are using a tool which might trip the ring (e.g. if you stall it), but you're also using something else you really don't want going off (maybe you're under the vehicle with a work light) then you can plug that into the other ring.

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I am going to end up with a split, by dint of the fact that the old garage has an existing feed & fusebox, so that'll be re-used to keep the lights and a couple of sockets on a separate feed. It's going to be massive overkill, but there was no point removing the old one even though the feed is too weedy to run a welder nicely. I'm re-using the old fusebox from the house (kitchen install called for a new main board to meet regs) so I'm going to end up with a 10-slot fusebox with only a couple of breakers in it.

An interesting thing happened when the builders started; they had a 240v concrete breaker they wanted to run, so we plugged it into the inventing shed (wired by yours truly way over-spec) and it immediately blew its fuse. And the next one. They couldn't use it, we went through a pack of fuses. So we plugged it into the old garage and it ran fine, there was enough loss in the ~15m of cable from house to garage to knock the spikes off and keep the fuse intact. That told me I wasn't being OTT running a new cable in to the garage even though there was one already there.

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Are you going to pull those wall stubs out too? Would give you that bit more room which will make all the difference

Only if I get really bored & they annoy me greatly. They've got to stay at least half a brick deep to keep the walls up (if they hadn't been there, the builders would've had to put something there anyway), so I can't knock them out completely. For now I'm going to wait and see how it goes, the place is still a tip and half full of remnants of building / kitchen / displaced junk so I want to get a feel for how it works when it's been cleared out a bit.

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  • 1 year later...

Well, the pillars annoyed me so they're (hopefully) coming down this weekend. It wasn't so bad with the ambulance, but the 109 is too wide to get the wheels off with the pillars in the way :blush: of course I found that out after half stripping the front axle :hysterical: so I've got to demolish very carefully!

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  • 4 months later...

Prompted by Lee's garage thread, here's a few notes I knocked up on our planning process should it help anyone:

Quote

Here's a load of bits from our planning application. It varies by county / council etc. but yours should be similar unless you're in a conservation area or something.

We did it through the govt. planning portal online which actually wasn't too terrible. Stupid thing is, it's all online but all their responses are sent by post so take 1-2 weeks each time they want to query something! D'Oh!

The app_form shows the useful descriptions of bricks, roof-tiles etc. they seem to want on the application - the rest is basically your name & address etc. so easy to fill in.

I went slightly OTT on the 3D plans as it was easy done in Autocad, the thing that bit me in the arse was that the plans MUST be to scale AND IT MUST SAY SO - or the plans can be not-to-scale AND IT MUST SAY SO.

Autocad accidentally re-sized one frame of one of my plans by a couple of % and they rejected it as not being to scale, then they rejected the 2nd try because the extra 3D view wasn't to scale but it didn't say "NOT TO SCALE" on the frame.

Basingstoke have a drop-in planning advice thing where, sometimes, you can drop into the council offices and have a quick informal chat to a planning officer. I did, and it was really handy. I took some hand-drawn plans of what we were doing and she told me they'd almost be acceptable (with some tidying up) for a planning app as they're not super-fussed about a garage going up.

The block plan map thing is a complete stitch-up, you MUST do it and it CANNOT be from any map you don't have rights to - that means no google maps, no open streetmap, no scan of your house deeds etc. you have to pay some stupid website £25 for the privilege of a map with a red line around your house (as if the council don't know where your house is!). Just bite the bullet, pay the money and praise local government efficiency!
They *will* reject your plans if you don't have a 100% legit block plan. We used http://www.streetwise.net/PlanningMaps.aspx

The background papers document is optional but I saw one in someone else's application and thought it might be helpful to head off a few of their queries & concerns so I wrote one and stuck it in. It also gives them a warm feeling that you're taking extra care and thinking about stuff.

They did come back with queries, which held up the application, hence 3 "additional detail" documents/pictures which were added on.

In our case, they were concerned about:
- Vehicles waiting on the road whilst fiddling with garage doors (hence electric roller door being mentioned)

- Doors or gates swinging out over the pavement (hence roller door not up & over)

- The garage roof/gutter encroaching on the street-lamp (had to draw a picture & promise we wouldn't build into the lamp post!)

- Reducing the amount of vehicles parked in the street (hence the outline of two cars parked inside the garage on the additional detail plan) note that I never said they WOULD be parked in there, just that they COULD be... as it happens it's usually the ambulance in the garage and the cars are still on the street, but the planning committee don't need to know that!

They also care about sight lines when getting a vehicle in & out without hitting pedestrians or other vehicles (our case was "no worse than the existing fence").

Also little details like the soakaway for the guttering can trip you up if you don't mention it.

The hard part of the planning app (if you're not a builder) is knowing how to accurately describe different types of bricks, roofs, and windows - note that you can get away with "as existing" or "as / to match main dwelling" sort of stuff... well, we got away with it, all bets are off with some of the jobsworths!

Parkinson's Law of Triviality will trip you up with planning departments.

app_form.png

 

A couple of piccies of the existing/proposed plans with the address removed:

 

existing_detail.png

existing_site_plan.png

proposed_detail.png

proposed_site_plan.png

 

 

Hope this is useful to some.

 

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Fridge freezer what can I say that's brilliant I will go through this and get the ball rolling. Your build looks superb certainly given me a few ideas to consider.

i had a look at the local planning office details and they hold a fortnightly "drop in service" similar to the one you mentioned. So time to put pen to paper and get some outlined plans for them to look over. That's should keep me busy for a while!

thanks again for the info will keep you posted on progress as and when it starts moving along.

 

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No probs! As I said via PM, the planning & building control bods seem happy to help & let you do what you want as long as you're talking to them & asking not telling, if you try to sneak stuff behind their back or argue the toss they have the power to make your life hell, and they know it!

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  • 8 months later...

A small update since I was uploading photos...

I did indeed hire an Arbortech saw thingy and take the pillars back a bit as the 109 is wide enough that you can't get both front wheels off! Worked well enough but was not super easy going, being a hire unit I suspect the blade wasn't exactly fresh & sharp, it definitely had a few teeth missing.

 

IMG_3916.JPG

 

Done and sealed up - will get round to touching the paint up one day :rolleyes:

IMG_3917.JPG

 

 

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Something that occurs to me to allow future upgrades without too much disruption to driveways or hard standings is to have electrics and water supply run through those concrete section trenches that have concrete lids, like smaller versions of those you see along railways, so that you can just lift the covers running trough to a mini manhole just inside the garage (not in a door way) to uprate or add water, electrical, gas and drainage lines at a later date without digging new trenches or knocking holes in walls or foundations.  Alternatively, you could just use stout large bore pipe underground that cables and hose can be fed through later.

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Exactly what I did - you bury a duct or conduit and then pull whatever you need through it. It's how BT etc. do all their stuff to (mostly) avoid digging things up to replace a cable.

The garage has a 2.5" flexi duct coming in which has power & Cat5 pulled through it.

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