There are alot of things that they teach you in school and how to make your dream house that bit dreamier isn’t one of them.
Everyone's gotta live somewhere and knowing the ins and outs of sprucing your house up in the easiest way possible should be something that people teach. Arguably they should - not everyone will grow up to use algebra but everyone has to live somewhere, right? Back to the topic at hand, say you’ve bought a house or found the perfect place to lease, but there’s a few small, practically minute changes - just one or two - how exactly do you go about getting them done? Where would you even start? First things first, let’s break down the preconceived notion of a dreamhouse. A dream house is supposedly where your dreams come true and in all honesty it’s spinning this idea of a home that’s already perfect for you. Yawn! That’s boring! That’s boring and a reach, to say the very least. A better definition of dream house would involve defining a home in terms of it’s potential to be the perfect place for changes to happen. The latter is significantly easier to find and there’s nothing wrong with that. Is a dream home still a dream if that balcony that you’ve always wanted just isn’t do-able? Is it a dream home if it doesn’t allow you to grow in it? If it doesn’t accommodate the evolution of your house based dreams? Food for thought. Every summer, on my street, without fail, someone is getting construction done on their house, adding yours to the mix won’t hurt. That is to say, it’s practically the way of the world at this point. You know it, I know it. And there’s nothing wrong with that, we go to work or then come home - one of those is easier to beautify than the other. What’s more, what if you work at home? Then, your home becomes your environment for everything, I think we take that for granted. But in the small moment that we don’t, let us remember that our forever homes should be as efficient as possible; as comfortable and you as you can possibly make them. Be it in how they mirror how you use the space or how the niche bright tangerine wallpaper brings you peace of mind when you’re only partially through the work day. Your house is your prerogative or it should be. It generally is… up until you want to make physical changes that is. In the blink of an eye it's however many people’s prerogatives that you’ve never even met or heard of. They can seem particularly bossy, pushy even and it can all become a little bit much. To tackle this we have planning drawings! Can you hear the celebratory trumpets playing? When it comes to spaces and how we would like to use those spaces, drawings are the best way to communicate. Drawings forego language barriers and cultural differences because the shapes used to indicate doors, windows and walls etc are the same across the world. This means that nothing can get lost in translation and that your intent for your dream home will remain the same from you to whichever upteenth person on the council may take a look at your application. Hoorah! How do planning drawings work - what do they do?The long and short of it is that whatever change that you’re thinking of making should be recorded on ‘paper’. However big or small you want to clearly indicate exactly what you’re looking to do. Therefore, you show them your house in it’s current layout in one pdf and then a pdf of what you would like it to look like afterwards. You’re going for maximum accuracy for maximum clarity to whoever looks at the aforementioned pdfs. That’s your main goal - that’s it! You’re very simply showing your council what you’d like to achieve. Is it really that simple?What is likely to vary application to application is how many pages your pdf is made up of - so what you’re actually showing. Sometimes you only need to show a little of your property while sometimes you need to show it in its entirety. Moreover, sometimes what you’re looking to achieve might be convoluted, with lots of regulations being met so you might have lots of labels. Why do planning drawings vary so much?The extent of the information that you’re submitting will vary depending on the size of the changes that you’re making. If you’re making additions to your home that are substantial, the portion of your home that you’d be required to show pre-changes of will be larger. That is to say, if you’re only changing a window and nothing else that’s all that you’d be required to show your council - that specific space before and after. This would contrast greatly to the amount that you’d be required to show if you were making changes externally and internally on every level of your house. In that case, you would show drawings from the four sizes of your house from the outside, but also the inside. What is meant by planning drawings? Maybe we should address the fact that drawings What are planning drawings? What drawings are typically shown for planning applications?Good question, great question even! List of drawings:
For the internal changes to a specific level of the house plans are used. Plans are horizontal slices taken between different floors of a building. If a plan is of the ground floor of a property, the plan is taken 1.1metres above the floor. This allows changes at 1.1m to be shown which is an appropriate height to include windows, walls, doors as well as the majority of most furniture. Plans are very commonly used for planning applications to show internal changes - new rooms and the like. For applications affecting one floor of the building - it can be appropriate to only use plans. For a small application, like changes to your windows you would be able to only submit elevations of before and after. For a larger application, of say a single floor extension, you could show a plan of only the relevant floor, four elevations and two sections. And that would translate all of the relevant changes. A note on drawings stating no changes made to the other floors can also be left to reinforce that information. Then for a larger project (in the scale of domestic projects) extensions on each floor and side of the house would need, plans (before and after) of every floor of the house; elevations of every side of the house and four sections would be used. Generally these drawings are required to be submitted together in one (relevantly coherent) document. Often labels and dimensions can be added to drawings to reinforce to the viewer that building regulations and/or height restrictions have been met, which is good practice. What are common changes that planning permission is used for?Just to specify if you have already been granted planning permission and say you’d like to add an internal wall, that’s within your rights. Small internal changes do not require planning permission. To give you an idea of projects that require planning permission:
If you’d like to discuss this further with me or would like any help producing drawings for a project of yours - feel free drop me email.
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