Just been called upon to examine this one.

The property is located out of town on a country back road, about 3 to 4 acres of land. The land is longer than it is wide, going back a long way from the road, with woods down one side and to the rear.

There is no power on site at present, and the owner (who runs a small log business there) just has a small mobile home on the site with a generator and small wind turbine/inverter setup.

He's going to build a house up near the road, and to run power from that direction would mean new poles and cabling back along the road about 1/4 mile, to where there is already a large (probably 100kVA or more) 3-ph pole-mount xfmr feeding a farm on the other side of the road. Apparently he's been told "Something in the region of £20,000"

However, just behind the far corner of his land is another house, accessed by a road from a different direction, which has its own pole-mount single-phase xfmr at the end of a single-phase 11kV spur line which comes in from a different direction.

It would mean upgrading the transformer (couldn't see the rating, but clearly small), but it's only about 50 ft. from the corner of his land.

So, if he could build a suitable enclosure for cut-out and meter, and then take over responsibility for getting power from there up to where the house will be, I reckon he should be able to save a substantial amount of money. Cable will be costly for this sort of run obviously, but as he already has mechanical diggers etc. he would be able to provide all the heavy labor himself (hey, you think I'm going to dig a 200 yard trench! ). As I see it, it's got to come out less than 20 grand!

I've never had a job in this sort of position before, so before we get the engineers out to assess, do you think the PoCo would have any objections?

It would mean the meter being 200 yards back of the road at the bottom of the land, but there are houses with long private drives which would involve a trek from the road just as long, so I can't see why there would be any problem.

Any of you had a similar job and run into any difficulties?

Paul,
I worked for the power company in N.Ireland (NIE). Dont assume rational, logical determinations. Do assume nebulus obfuscation!

Hmmm, that's a real tough one Paul!.
Just a couple of questions spring to mind.
Is the HV line system at the front of the property actually passing the front?, or is it a Spur that ends before your customers property?.
I'd go with the rear supply idea, if it were possible, but at the end of the day, it will be the PoCo that has the final say.
Rural supplies are never the easiest systems to design and even the simplest system can cost a bundle.
Another thing to consider, is the fact that the Spur line to the rear of the property may have been installed with only enough capacity for the single load on it, as strange as it seems, PoCo's do silly things like this, especially where profit is concerned.

Paul, It all sounds feasiable, but you can rest assured the PoCo will have a thousand good reasons why you should spend 20K. Seriosly though it all sounds OK to me, But the sub main's gona be a mother to allow for volt drop on 200 yards, might have to restrict him to one light at a time!! Go for it get the PoCo engineers down I have always found them quite helpfull.BY the way, You wont forget to hsve a word with building control as well will you though. ONLY JOKING. Good Luck Mate.

LOL Alan!.
I'm hearin' ya loud and clear there!.
Yes and Voltage drop will be a concern, either way.

Paul, there should be no problem with this at all - at least in my experience up here...

Get them to assess the site. Suggest u/g supply to the new property and get the owner to dig the trench and fill it back in. Up here they will change the tranny FOC if it's old enough to warrant it - or a nominal charge if not.

Labour aside, the only expense they will incur is the tranny and cable - no poles. I doubt if they will go for the 'remote cut-out' idea + private cable; but they might.

I recently did a job where the owner got the PMT and the last two 3-wire spans moved from in front of his house ( an old farm ). The 11Kv PMT was reused back 2 spans, they used one new pole, and the last span to the buildings was dropped u/g. It was self-dug. I'm told the total invoice was £5,200.00.

Thanks for all the replies. More or less what I expected: Fine from a practical point-of-view, but the utility may have other ideas!

It's a spur line to the big xfmr for the farm which comes in from the opposite direction, so nothing running past the front of the land at all. On the other side of his land, beyond the wood, is a large manor-house type place. It looks as though that takes its power from an HV line coming in from the far side. It's quite infuriating, because there's power all round, just nothing in the little stretch where he's located.


We did drive around the lanes and trace the line back. This 2-wire spur runs about a half mile from where its tapped from the 3-phase lines, and as near as I could make out, has about three houses on it, each with its own small pole-top xfmr.

Even if you put a full 24kW load on, it would only add an extra 2 amps or so to the HV current, so I can't see that being a problem. I'm not familiar with the guidelines used for our 11kV distribution system though, so the PoCo might have an objection I suppose.

Yep, that's something I was concerned about. I did point out that when it comes to design it might be an idea not to count on electric for cooking and heat, but he was already planning on gas and oil heating anyway.

As a matter of interest, what size conductors are normally installed on overheads for local 240/415 distribution? I'd never really stopped to think about that before.

That's encouraging.

As you've all said, and as I told the owner, ultimately it's down to the PoCo playing ball. He needs power there one way or another, so we'll have to get them out and discuss the options. Might be worth asking about the option of the utility providing the feed right up to the front from the rear xfmr but the owner providing labor on the trenching.

And another thing, voltage drop aside, no doubt the PoCo should be looking out for this, is the PSCC at the Main Switchboard, that will decide the Category of Duty of the MCB's used in the Consumer Unit.

I doubt there will be a problem with MCB breaking capacities. I envisage a simple switch-fuse at the intake with a BS1361 cartridge fuse to the feeder.

By the time we get to the far end of the 200-yard subfeeder I suspect the PSCC will not be all that great.

Anyway, he's going to contact the PoCo and arrange an inspection visit at a suitable time for all of us to be there.

Any news Paul?.

Nothing yet. I called the PoCo for him to get the forms sent out, explained the situation and our proposals, and they're going to arrange a site visit.

It will probably be a couple of weeks before we all get out there to discuss it.

hey dont see any problem with your idea Paul, i have a farmer customer with a similar arrangment, the meter is over 200 yards away from his barn,,

He wants a new supply, 400amp 3phase, they want, wait for it...£37000.00.. cause they have to put some new poles in and extend the HV cables, to a small sub.

You used to be able to pay this off via your electric bill, can you still do this.. also when i lived up north MANWEB had to install a sub station on my old bosses land because he need an uprated supply, they did this very cheap because it improved there network, could you try that one Paul..

A whole sub-station just for one property?.
I guess, it must be a smaller sized one.

I can't see the PoCo installing anything resembling a full substation here. One side of the land and the rear is bounded by woodland which belongs to the local estate/manor house. That already has power which appears to come in from the far side.

The other side is open farmland, with just the one house at the bottom corner (with its single-phase spur line and small xfmr which we are hoping can be upgraded to give a supply).

The opposite side of the road is also woodland belonging to the estate, plus the large poultry farm which has the big 3-ph xfmr that I mentioned in my initial post. So it seems unlikely there will ever be more demand to justify a full sub.

We are still waiting for the PoCo to get back to us with a date for a site visit.

By the way, the initial house plans have fallen through. The local council planning department has now informed the owner that they are most unlikely to grant planning consent to build a house on the land, even though they had previously indicated that there would be no objections.

So, the plan at the moment is to replace the existing holiday-style caravan (about 28 ft. single unit) with a double-wide "park" type mobile home. The existing unit has already had temporary consent for several years, so he reckons there's no reason to refuse the upgrade. (He intends to go ahead with the plan whether the council like it or not anyway, as his personal position at the moment leaves little choice.)

So on the electrical side I now plan on running just a 40A subfeed from the bottom of the land, and have put a maximum anticipated load of 9kVA on the supply request. That should help keep costs down a little.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 02-20-2005).]

Paul,
What a big nuisance that is!
I'd take the original consent to the Courts.
I'd argue this one!!.
A Council cannot just change it's mind like that.
Considering that the guy already owns the land, what authority, does the council have to tell the guy what he can do with his own land?.
Yet Councils are really good at rating land at exorbitant rates.
You have to listen to them and yet they still take your hard-earned money.
My personal opinion is that we haven't moved on from the 1700's as far as the Land-lords and Kings go.
Just in another name.

{Message edited to clean things up a wee bit!}

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 02-22-2005).]

Well, the problem is that there wasn't anything definite yet in the form of outline planning consent. It was purely at the initial inquiry stage of asking "in principle," which doesn't obligate the council to anything.

It really stinks though. There's absolutely no good reason why a bungalow on the land would cause a problem. But the local council here is notorious for this sort of nonsense.

(I've actually sent Trumpy some examples -- I don't want to post way off-topic here, but if anybody else is curious just e-mail me and I'll forward a copy.)

The PoCo engineer visited the site today for a look. I wasn't able to get out there to talk with him (it was short notice and I was tied up elsewhere), but he had all the details I filed anyway.

First, it seems they are under instructions that all new LV cabling must be run underground. (Which accounts for why the first option of going along the road was quoted at £20,000 I guess!) I'm not quite clear where these orders have originated, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's the local council again.

Anyway, the existing pole xfmr would need to be upgraded as I reckoned, then the LV run down the pole on the neighbor's land and underground across the corner of the woodland. For some reason the PoCo will not provide an exact quote for the work until such time as they have signed letters from the two other land-owners that they have no objections to the work.

I was told that the engineer who came out was very friendly though, and though he couldn't officially provide an estimate he hinted that if all the trench work was done by the owner then the bill would probably be in the region of £5,000 to £10,000.

There's a problem though. Although the owner of the woodland would have no objections (after all, the guy works on his land) it seems that the owner of the other land and house where the existing xfmr is located is unlikely to give his consent.

Back to square one -- Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Hang on a minute, mate,
Sure all LV cabling has to be run under-ground, but what is there to prevent the Spur line being extended?.
Provided, that the Spur uses 11kV or a similar voltage, even if it is just extended until it is out of the jurisdiction of the neighbour that will not give the consent.
I hate to be suggesting a thing like this, but it sounds like there are very few alternatives.
Just like the situation we have here in NZ, there is an "easement" clause for HV lines and thier path across land, no matter who owns it.
At the end of the day Paul, the people that are going to live there are going to need a power supply of one form or another.
It seems that things have changed in the country these days, where neighbours helped each other out.
I work with Rural customers all the time here and they would extend thier lines without a thought and they would help setting the poles.

Here's a quick-&-rough (very! ) outline of what we have to deal with:



I forgot to mention the pond before. As you can see, it's right in the corner of the land where it would get in the way of a direct underground route, hence having to go through the trees to the rear.

I thought there might have been some sort of easement rule as well, but I'm no lawyer.

I'm not sure it would be that easy to just extend the HV lines overhead anyway. To bring them on a direct route onto his land would likely result in them being too close to the other guy's house. The only other way I can see would be to spur off back in the little lane and come round across the field. I can see that costing as much if not more than running from the large 3-ph xfmr behind the poultry farm (which is actually a little further away than this drawing makes it appear -- sorry, it's not to scale!).

[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 03-09-2005).]

Paul,
I never actually realised that you posted that diagram.
It all seems perfectly clear what you are talking about now.
(Sorry I don't mean that it didn't before )
If I was the PoCo and the property owner, here is what I would look at possibly doing:

Extend the 3~ 11kV line from in front of the poultry farm, across the road, to avoid the trees in the adjacent woodland and extend the lines toward the property boundary.
From there, have a 1 or 3~ tranny on the last pole of the line and then run underground along the boundary fence.

What you could also do in the mean-time, while the guy is living in the motor-home, is set up a metering/consumer unit on a post (In an appropriately IP rated enclosure, of course) near to the motor-home, so that he has at least some reliable source of power.
It would mean that when a house is built on the property, the mains would simply just need to be joined to an extension of the underground cable and the metering and consumer unit relocated to the new installation.

I agree with Trumpy's call. I've seen a similar situation here become expensive simply because the other property owner didn't want to grant an easement; with that road there, that's not an issue with the poultry farm.
Though....being thoughtfull here... snce 3~ is available, run wires for it at that time. Having 3~ available can only help his property values!

Thanks for the ideas guys. I thought the rough sketch might help you visualize the situation a little better, although as I said, I didn't get the scale quite right so the 3-ph xfmr feeding thr farm is somewhat farther away than the drawing makes it appear.

Bringing power along the road frontage would undoubtedly be the best in many ways, but unfortunately that's the original option which was quoted as "Somewhere in the region of £20,000," which is why we were looking at the other possibilities.


It's not actually a motorhome, but a "caravan" (US = trailer) like the type you find on holiday sites here, although that's of little consequence as far as the power is concerned.

Your idea is roughly what I had in mind, though with the meter at the far end and a sub-feed up to a weatherprrof distribution enclosure. There are already some barns and other outbuildings up near the road as well, so I envisaged small sub-feeds to each of of those, plus a feeder to the existing mobile home until the house is built.

Anyway, the owner's plans are on the back burner for a little while now while he decides what to do, so there's nothing else I can do for the moment.

Finally went back to this place again. All plans for laying in a mains supply have been abandoned.

Running power from the 3-ph xfmr is out of the question due to cost. Getting power from the the xfmr behind the pond is out, as the owner of the land on which that pole stands won't budge in his stance (yet he's been complaining about the noise from the generator again ).

The plan now is to just replace/upgrade the existing battery/inverter setup.

It seems he's been using three or four old car batteries, and running a 5kVA diesel generator to charge them via a small trickle charger. Hardly surprising then that he's running the genset for 6 hours per day!

The "installation" is really nothing more than a lashup, with alligator clip battery connections, undersized wires draped everywhere, and even the ground connection for the inverter is just a large alligator clip on the rod (I suppose I should be grateful that it has even that much!).

I've figure that we should install about 350 to 400Ah capacity of deep-cycle batteries along with a good heavy-duty charger so that the genset needs to be run for a much shorter time. He also has a much smaller 1500VA generator which should be more than adequate.

The existing small wind turbine is only about 10 feet above ground level, so I reckon that by raising that and installing a couple of PV panels we could also gain some useful trickle charge from those as well.

Ideally, I would have liked to change from a 12V system to 24 or 48V, but that would entail replacements for the inverter and turbine/regulator, so we're going to be stuck with 12V.

I reckon a charger which will deliver 30 or 40A into the battery bank should allow the genset to be run for a much more reasonable length of time.

Any recommendations for a heavy-duty charger with appropriate regulator?

Why not a diesel generator with a bit of ooomph?
Example. Honda 10KW, electic start, 230/115v automatic operation, 65dba @ 7m 20hp engine, c.£8000+vat [+ Possible heating operation from the cooling system].
Business use cuts the VAT!
'Red' diesel at £0.30p litre = 3p/kwh gross = 7.5p/kwh assuming normal diesel efficiency, plus the capital depreciation and servicing costs.
Say he got 500,000 kwh over 10 years, and annual sevices cost £100, that would make his electricity about 9.5p/kwh all in. If he nursed the genny for 15 years, he'd do even better. Assumes zero value at end of period.
With no standing charge, and a bit of free heating, that would come out better than the poco! There are cheaper gen-sets on the market. Batteries? in 2-3 years he'd be buying a new set.


Alan

ps. Or a Honda 4kw model, £4250+ vat, same spec as above. A bit small, but with his present lifestyle it might serve.

Paul,
What sort of budget is this guy talking about to do this?.
If you were looking for a charger with that sort of output, you'd probably have to get something like an Industrial Charger, like is used for Charging Forklift and Pallet lifter batteries.
Bear in mind, one of these won't be cheap.
I think the 12V system idea is a good one.
A friend of mine almost has his house running independently of the Grid here in town.
He uses his fire (which has a wet-back) to heat his water and the only thing the Mains supplies is his fridge, freezer and the kitchen stove (which seldom get's used).
All of the lighting is Compact Fluorescent.
Mind you, he has quite a large PV system on the roof of his house that feeds into a couple of HUGE Cells.
Even on an overcast day he has plenty of capacity to run everything he needs to.

I know these 48/24/12v solar/wind systems work fine but the drawback is 2.5-20 times the amperage of a poco supply = heavier wiring. Receptacles, switches, fuses and light fittings etc. hard to source, (witness several threads on this subject recently), and IMO an increased fire risk.
Household machines limited choice. 120/230v ac kit needs an inverter.
Folks get seduced by the 'free power', but the overall cost per kwh soars once you depreciate the generator/ panels/ charger/ batteries over their useful life- particularly the batteries which are the achilles heel.
Given this guy's track record, I'd give his batteries 2 years, tops! I can see them now, with chickens perched on them pecking at the crocodile clips!

Alan

Alan,
I think that you may have the wrong end of the stick here.
I think that what is being proposed is a Battery Bank feeding a Permanently installed Inverter, which would provide the same 230V supply as the PoCo Mains.
Provided that the capacity is there in the Battery bank and in the Inverter(s), I really can't see why this couldn't work.
I've worked with LOTS of 12 and 24V installations in my time and to have a bit in reserve is always good.
With the rising price of fuel in general, I would sort of think that getting away from Petroleum-based generation would be a good option.
The thing is, the place would be wired for 240V as per normal and fused the same but it would be fed from an Inverter.
And before anyone starts to rubbish Inverters as to thier size, you can get them in sizes, up to 150kVA, fully Sine-Wave Compensated, which means you can run a Microwave oven on them properly.

I sure hope so!

The thing is that he's not actually using that much electrical power at the moment. Heating and cooking is done on LP gas, as is water heating. It's really down to just a refrigerator, lights, and a few other intermittent minimal loads, e.g. TV, radio, chargers for cellphone, tools, etc.

Yet he's cranking up a 5kVA diesel generator just to run a trickle charger for the batteries. That's why it's costing him a fortune in fuel. He does transfer some 240V loads direct to the genset when it's running, but I doubt whether the load on it ever exceeds about an amp!

The present inverter is a Swiss-made Domino model, true sinewave output, about 1000VA (I had to replace the eight power transistors in it when they burned out a year or so ago).

I can't see that running a generator all the time could even get near to a sensible cost per unit in this application. I reckon that with an improved installation he should be able to get enough power for a lot of his needs, then just use a genset to boost the batteries if needed.

Oh yeah, he says that the drainage culvert running down the side of the field is pretty fast-flowing and full in winter. I now have the notion of constructing some sort of waterwheel to add to the generating power.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 08-09-2005).]

Paul,
I saw an interesting method of feeding a generator on TV some time ago and would work well, depending on the amount of fall you had to work with.
It meant "collecting" some of the water at the top of the system and feeding it into a length of alkathene pipe (of about 2" dia),running the pipe downhill and then feeding it into and old pump turbine and connecting the armature shaft of the generator to that.

A water turbine to run a generator? Let's try some math to quantify requirements!
Let the average power required be 2.0kw, drawn from an inverter and battery storage charged by a generator and turbine. Let the additive efficiencies of all the above devices = 50%
Then 4.0kw continuous water potential power is required.
4000W = 5.36HP = 176944ft.lb/minute = 2950ft.lb/second

Using a hill to create a head of water for the machine, say a hill 6ft high.( Modest, but this is Norfolk after all!)
176944/6ft = 29491 lb water/minute needed.
= 2950 Imperial gallons per minute= 4,250,000 gallons per day net.
Sufficient energy must remain in the water for it to flow out of the machine, say a gross water requirement of 6 million imp. gallons per day.

Or, try using the kinetic energy contained in the flow of the culvert. Let water velocity = 3mph, (modest walking speed), = 4.4 ft/ second.

KE = 0.5mv2/g ; the mass of water required
= 2x32.2x49/4.4x4.4 = 163lb water/ second.

16.3 imp. gallons per second= 58,680 imp. gallons per hour. Again, additional water is required to drive exhaust stream, say 75,000imp. gallons per hour, 1,8 million imp. gallons per day.

This would dimension the culvert at only 1ft wide by 7.4" deep, with water travelling at 3mph! In practice a combination of its existing kinetic energy plus as high a fall as practical for the turbine feed pipe would be aimed at.

nb. An undershot wheel shoved directly in the culvert will be nowhere near as efficient as a turbine.

Alan

Wow! Thanks for the calcs Alan, but the waterwheel notion isn't really a serious contender.

What's so darned annoying about this project is that we have mains power all around. It's not as though the place is miles from anywhere. If it wasn't for the guy in the house at the back end of the field I'm sure we'd have gone with the original plan.



6 ft. isn't a hill around here -- It's practically a mountain!

Here's the final chapter (for now) of this long-running saga.

Alan's comments about chickens perched on batteries pecking at the crocodile clips wasn't all that far off the mark!

The main feed to the inverter, for example, was two rusty old clips with the wires just wrapped around one side with some tape. It seems that the inverter itself, along with the regulator and load resistors for the wind turbine were perched on whatever junk happened to be there at the time they were "installed" and all wired up with whatever offcuts of wire were laying around in the barn, held up with sticky tape and bits of string.

Anyway. the whole sorry mess of assorted old car and tractor batteries is gone and we fitted a large plywood sheet on the wall to take the equipment.

The system is now running with four 100Ah deep-cycle batteries in parallel, the existing wind turbine which has been hoisted another 8 or 9 feet into the air, plus an 80W PV panel installed on the shed roof temporarily. That panel plus another two or three will go on to the roof of the new mobile home when it arrives (probably next spring).

I've installed a 60-amp bulk charger (Mastervolt) to give a boost when the genset is running. It was darned expensive, but with temperature sensing and voltage sensing at the battery terminals it's going to be just slightly better than the horrible battered old trickle chargers he'd been trying to use until now.

Of course, everything is now wired with decent-size cable and proper protective devices too. (I really don't need to tell you that there wasn't a fuse in sight before, do I? ).
I was going to try and take before and after pictures to post, but forgot to pick up my camera.

Anyway, there is still some "interesting" wiring in the barn where the genset is located about 200 feet away which drastically needs work. He's going to "let me know" about that one, but let's say that until it's done I've told him it would not be a good idea to run the dryer which is sitting in the shed!

Sometimes you get jobs you wish you'd never seen!

The next chapter:

Just added a second 80W PV panel and increased the battery capacity to around 800Ah. It seems that during winter/spring the wind turbine was providing ample power for much of the time (dumping into the load resistors), so the extra capacity should make better use of the turbine. Seems that for his modest needs he's now down to running the generator for just a couple of hours every 3 or 4 hours for a boost, so this should reduce that even further.

He's hoping to get finance for the larger mobile home this summer, then we'll transfer the existing PV panels and add a few more onto the roof of the new unit.

P.S. His planning application for continued siting of a mobile home for residential use is still pending after over a year!



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 06-01-2006).]

Paul,


This guy is not having a very good time with the local Authorities!.
Is there an Ombudsman for the People in the UK?.
I personally think that this guy is being unfairly treated by people that should be doing more.
To be censured by the Ombudsman here is tantamount to "You guys don't know how to do your own job!" it is also widely publisiced(sp?), not a good look for any local or central government, usually after the censure is issued, there is a vote of "no confidence" in the local council.
Councils here have been toppled by the Ombudsman.
The Ombudsman is impartial and will not enter into any correspondence with any person.
The simple fact that this guy has got all this land that he cannot build on really tears my shorts.
Who, I ask, is he affecting by building there?
If he owns the bloody land I say build anyway!.
I'm going to stop before I hit 2nd gear!.

Ah, the joys of UK Planning Departments, the last vestiges of UK-style 1940's Stalinist Autocracy, run by [ not very ] civil servants.
My advice Paul, if the area is not in an area of outstanding natural beauty or green-belt zoned, is to tell him to submit a proper outline-planning proposal through an Architectural Draftsman's or Architect's Office. Take no notice of 'letters of intent' , the Officers all get promoted somewhere else every 2 or 3 years and policy changes with the next incumbent. One of the idiots I ran up against insisted all the elevations of a small country cottage extension must have 'golden rectangle' proportions, because he admired the Parthenon! Six months later, the new boss couldn't give a flying monkey's!

Planning will then have to make a proper decision, yay or nay, taken with consultation with elected councillors, ooh, they hate that!
If nay, appeal. This really gives them the diahoreas, as the appeal is to the Minister, and the costs are astronomical. He has a statistical 36% chance of success based on latest data, very much improved by a solid case properly drawn up by an experienced professional with good cogent arguments. Many of the failed appeals will be DIY jobs of cretins wanting to put up a totally unacceptable pink cement carbunkle in a conservation area!

Oops!


I meant to say just a couple of hours every 3 or 4 days!

As for the local council, I've yet to find anyone in the area who hasn't had some problem or complaint (yours truly included, and I have a stack of papers a mile high to prove it).

The planning committee here seems to have its own very specific agenda based upon the personal preferences of its members. Several people on my estate who have submitted quite reasonable plans have been rejected while they've allowed some monstrosities of "executive-style" homes to be built in a nearby village which are completely out of keeping and stick out like a sore thumb. It's clear that they don't like approving anything which isn't yet another boring red-brick "conventional" house.


As it stands at the moment, the pending application is for continued siting of a mobile home, as he intends to get rid of the tatty old single-unit and replace it with a nice double-wide "park home" style unit.

I think he's so throroughly fed up with the council (and who can blame him?) that he's just going ahead with siting the new home anyway. If the council can't be bothered to answer in over a year, what else can be done? Do they think people can just put their whole life on hold while their endless committees shuffle pieces of paper around indefinitely?



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 06-03-2006).]

Yeah Alan,
I know what you mean there,
Building Planning places are bloody funny things.
I'm looking to get permission to build on a block of land that was gifted to me years ago,
nothing huge, but I went to the local Council (called a Territorial Authority these days) to see what I needed to provide and what have you for my application.
Bearing in mind I want to also install a radio tower of some sort, I booked an appointment with one of the Inspectors.
(I will say that I wasn't speaking to a friend of mine who is a local Building Inspector, they like to have total impartiality, so I was talking to a different guy.)
Anyway, after coming out of that meeting (that lasted an hour and a half!), I knew everything that I wanted to know, I knew fully where I stood, with respect to what I want to do.
I was to be honest, bloody amazed, local builders here like to paint Inspectors like some idiot that has no idea of "how the builder of today feels".
It's all BS!.
Most Inspectors here (like Electrical Inspectors) come from an extensive background of practical Trade knowledge.

How these things ought to be done:

Last year an old farmer turned up on the doorstep, cap in hand. Please would I come and translate for him with a local English couple, as he wanted to sell them a "bit of land". This turned out to be well over an acre of beautiful flat meadow hedged in with cherry trees and old oaks alongside their existing house. The old boy wanted 200,000 [ancient] franks, which is about US$3500 dollars. There are two barns on it, piped water and an electricity pole. They bought it of course! When I went with them to the Mairie to translate about planning permission for a new house on the plot, M. le Maire bloody near jumped over his desk at them in sheer happiness! "Oui! Quelle bon idée! Gerard!! [assistant] le Calvados [local rocket fuel], tout suite!!"
Planning granted in just 8 weeks with some pics and drawings for the prefecture and a design for the sewage system from an engineer.

There is no Building Control or Inspectors; as on old Maire told me many years ago-
"You build a house and it falls over- What's that got to do with me?!"

It will be only the second house built in our commune since the 1830'S.

Alan

I can't imagine that happening at the North Norfolk District Council offices!


My sentiments exactly.

Next installment of this long-running saga.....

The planning application at the local council is still pending with not a word from them as yet.

The old mobile home was just about at the point of disintegrating and the owner has a young lady arriving from the Philippines soon to become his wife, so he decided an urgent interim plan was needed.

He's set a new concrete pad, large enough to hold a double-wide unit eventually, but for the moment has acquired a good used 36 ft. single unit -- A vast improvement on the old one!

We got the power and telephone all hooked up yesterday, still on the battery/inverter system. I did lay in a 4-core SWA cable to the unit so that we can provide a separate sub-feed direct from the generator supply should he want it later for the washer, heating, etc.

He's planning on extending the PV system when money permits.

As an update Paul,
Gordon uses an extra 2 panels in addition to what he already has to help heat his water.
With wood and coal being looked upon as just not used these days, he uses the 2 panels to pre-heat the water.
Anyone that says that Solar energy is a waste of time hasn't tried it.

You might have seen the photo in the recent thread about the bad weather, but the wind turbine on this project suffered considerable damage when the mast came down in the storm a few weeks ago:



As well as a new set of blades, I had to replace the main bearings and the complete rotor assembly (shaft and permanent magnet in one) which took a pounding.

It cost about £450 just for the parts!


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 03-02-2007).]

Here we are over a year since the last post in this thread, with another chapter of the long-running saga.

The owner (pushed by his wife, I understand) has finally paid out the £90 survey fee and had EDF come out to provide a firm quote for laying on mains power. They arranged the visit for the day I went over there to rewire the lighting on an old tractor (I get all the good jobs! ) so I could chat with the assessor.

For anyone who has forgotten, there is a very rough sketch of the situation further up the thread.

We've just received the quotes back:

Option 1. Upgrade the 1-ph xfmr (which I found out from the EDF guy is 15kVA) feeding the house behind the pond, then run 240V down the pole and underground across the woods to the rear boundary fence, where we would have built a meter enclosure. Price = £9,400 including VAT. Expensive enough, and then more money for us to get power to the other end of the land, but it's a non-starter because despite further bargaining the owner of that other house refuses to grant permission for the cable to be buried all of 25 ft. on his land, alongside a fence to a paddock.

Option 2. Go back to where the 3-ph xfmr is located beyond the poultry farm. Too far to run LV says EDF, so 11kV down the pole from there, along the side of the road, but got to be underground because of local planning rules. Then build a small enclosure for a xfmr on the corner of his plot. Price = A not-so-cool £52,875.

Whoa!!!
53K??.
Some lifestyle block owners over here are getting shocks like that when they go to get the power reticulated to their block out in the sticks here.
I don't think a lot of people realise that the power isn't at your gate like it is in town.
Having your house a long way off of the road is just asking for it too, the further the run is, the bigger the cable will be and cable isn't exactly getting any cheaper these days.

Wow, I have really enjoyed reading this entire thread from the beginning. It's hard to believe that in this day and age that a customer can't get electric power without such complications.

Here, we order electric service and we get it. Unless it's way out of the ordinary, we get it for a minimum connection fee (a few hundred dollars in EXTREMELY unusual cases, usually free). Most, if not all property boundaries include utility easements for at least ten feet on all sides and the property owner has absolutely NO say in what is buried there. If I want a 600 amp 3 phase service to my storage shed, the POCO has the right to bury whatever it takes even if it's along my neighbor's property line the whole way.

I know this because my front yard contains 7,200V, 120/240 LV distribution, three telephone cables and CATV, all in this easement area. When utilities are marked for digging, my yard looks like the American Flag with all of the painted stripes!

Indeed, but the issue is that the utility has to cross someone else's property, not just follow a property line. They probably have similar easements across the pond, i'd imagine.

What I can't believe is that you can't have overhead lines in front of a poultry farm!

Settle down, son, what I had the idea of was a braced angle pole taking the 11kV lines across the road on a 45 degree angle then another braced angle pole on the other side of the road, then to a straight run to the transformer pole, DDO's, etc.
You have to have done this work before you can call it out.

Do what? He says in the post above that the PoCo says overhead lines are not allowed and both options involve UG.

I have no idea what you are trying to communicate.

The pond wouldn't be a problem in this case anyway, as it's within the boundaries of the piece of land in question and under the same ownership.



That's our local "planners" for you. They've become almost obsessed with the idea that no new cables should go overhead, at least not any for local 11kV and 240/415V distribution. Of course, we have all those people who constantly complain about "ugly power lines" who agree with this, but I don't think many of them realize just how much more expensive it becomes to run everything underground.

haha, i meant the atlantic ocean!

Ah, gotcha!

Yes, there are some sort of easements and rights-of-way over here for various things, but to be honest that legal side of things is something I've never studied too closely.

I think some legalities may have changed slightly too in more recent years, since the former semi-state-owned "Electricity Boards" have now all become fully private companies.