wrote in message
ups.com...
Doctor Drivel wrote:
"John Cartmell" wrote in message

If you're thinking of gas, electricity
and building - I'd probably agree;

What? Have you seen the state of the
crap the developers turn out? I would
increase it in building

The main reason our current buildings are so poor is overregulation,
for 2 reasons.

What strange logic.

1. The excessive regulation has driven prices to many times the free
market price, so we cant afford decent. Expalined more further down.

You are making this up.

2.. All the creative ideas I came up with: nope, not permitted.
Sometimes for fair reason, but in most cases not at all. Too often the
regs are leading clearly and drectly to lower quality stock.

Check the regs. A BCO will have his pet hates. If it is within the regs and
they say no, then ask them to give it to you chapter and verse. If you know
you are "definitely" within regs, and he opposes, then spell it out on paper
and proceed. The BCO is not God.

Look at our building history before planning. We have a wealth of
creative innovative quality buildings from then: but not today.

Name some.

Insulated blocks: Sweden
TJI I beams: USA
SIP panels: USA
Art Deco Design: France
Advanced modern architectu Germany (Bau Haus)

You forget the Victorian crap that was pulled down. Only the best survived.
The term Jerry Built comes from a Victorian construction company, Jerry
Bros.

The Brits did do the first iron framed glass curtain walled building: Oriel
Chambers in Liverpool, 1864.

Just about all of our very finest buildings would be illegal to build
today!

Nonsense

Look at Ben Law's house, a lovely piece, yet it took a vast effort just
to get permission to build it. AND it has to be pulled down when he
dies. What a farce.

That is planning, not Building regs. Increase checks on quality of
construction and we all benefit.

In the 1800s, with nearly zero regulation, anything went, and
everything was built.

And lots fell down. I did a search and thjis came up:
http://www.toxteth.net/places/liverp...20lane%202.htm

The free market addressed quality issues as
usual.

It never, it just promoted greed. Building control should be increased to
prevent shoddy workmanship, which the UK is famed, and planning totally
relaxed. The free market and solve the housing problem, not the quality
problem.

Generally the good stuff survives, and the bad is almost
entirely erased. The result was the country gradually built up an
increasing stock of quality builds.

The quality of the existing housing stock is abysmal. Much needs demolishing
right now.

Realise that today we have way more
resources than 100-150 years ago,
yet are living in houses of similar quality.
Instead of affording much
better, we afford the same because the
cost has risen excessively.

The UK is backwards in technology. This is mainly because of the land being
in the hands of the few and 80% of homes built by about 20 companies. We
need to build 466,000 homes per ann.

The following text is taken from a short article by James Woudhuysen,
Professor of Forecasting & Innovation at de Montfort University and author
of "Why is construction so backward ?". The data being drawn from The Office
of National Statistics.

"In Britain 57.5m people live in about 24m dwellings. If household growth is
to match population growth, 64m people will, by 2030, need a stock of 26.7m
homes. But households are getting smaller, so call that 2030 total for homes
29m - five million more homes than exist in Britain in 2005.

Then there is the rate of stock replacement. Today, ordinary flats or houses
will just about last 100 years - given lots of refurbishment and DIY. So
take it that, over the next 25 years, Britain will need to replace, on a
100-year cycle, stock that rises
from 24m to 29m units. That means building an additional 242,000 new homes
in 2006, racking up to 290,000 in 2030. Over 25 years, therefore, 6.65m new
homes will be needed just to replace worn-out old ones. Add the 200,000
homes required for annual new household formation to the average of 266,000
required for annual stock replacement and one gets an annual output of
466,000 homes -11.65m over 25 years. That's a little different from the
annual average of 171,225 homes built in Britain since 1997.

Wouldn't the millions of new homes we propose concrete over Britain's green
and pleasant land? Wouldn't they mean, at the very least, still more urban
sprawl? It's time to lay these myths to rest. The land cover of Great
Britain is 23.5m hectares, used in 2002 as follows:

1. intensive agricultural land - 10.8m hectares, or 45.96 per cent
2. semi-natural land - 7.0m hectares, or 29.78 per cent
3. woodland - 2.8m hectares, or 11.91 per cent
4. settled land accounts for 1.8m hectares, or 7.65 per cent
5. water bodies - 0.3m hectares, or 1.28 per cent
6. sundry other categories - 0.8m hectares, or 3.42 per cent.

If settlements are added to the `sundry' component (largely transport
infrastructure such as roads and railways), then built-up Great Britain
consists of about 2.3m hectares, or just 10 per cent of the land available.
Clearly, considerable growth in both population and household numbers can be
accommodated - both in high
urban concentrations, and as dispersed settlements integrated into the
landscape."

I think an increase of about 40% or so to accomadate future population
growth is a bit steep, when currently only 7.65% of the land is settled.
Nevertheless, I like then way he destroys the the concreting over the
countyside myth.

Read some of the articles he
http://www.audacity.org/JW-Writes.htm

Yes there are good reasons for build regs,
but they fail in so many ways as to end up
being counterproductive. In numerous cases
cutting one very trivial corner can bring a
gain of far more value than the loss of value
entailed. I dont mean occasionally, old houses especially
are like this. Time after time improvement work
would be seriously beneficial, yet can not be implemented
because some completely trivial
point doesnt meet current OTT practice.

It is not perfect, but to imply to roll back BC is madness. Have a look at
the shoddy developer Estates going up. Better still look at the blockwork
and the cavities filled with 6" of cement. hey get plasterers in to cover
the lot up.

Dont even get me started on the requirement for sockets high up even on
3rd floor flats, paper pushing just to replace your hot water tank, the
requirement to draughtproof then add ventilation, the requirement for
DPCs based on dodgy science,

It is clear you understanding of this limited.

the requirement for deep foundations
instead of lime mortar,

You can still do that. many do.

the upcoming requirement to air pressure test
houses, ad nauseam.

One the best regs to come out is pressure testing. It ensures the quality
in the building of the fabric is stop on.

You really don't know.

We're now unhappy about our legal right being taken away to do our own
plumbing, for reasons that really make no sense, but rarely is it
mentioned we've lost the basic human right to build (and improve) our
own house.

We have lost the basic right to build a house where we want to (within
reason of course) . No one is stopping you renovating.

If we wound the clock back 100 years,
most of us on this group would have
done exactly that, built our house, just as
we want it.

Yep.

How many of you would like to be able
to extend, yet are prevented from doing so?

Depends on if you want to be right up to someone's window.