One count of the indictment: "Mr Hoyle was using a wood burning stove"

A few years ago I showed an exchange student around suburban Boston and she was amazed by all the wooden houses. Are the English really that freaked out by trees and the things that can be done with trees?

IRL: Man insures house for assload of cash. Wood burning stove cashes the check.

I'm having a hard time figuring this one out...

The start of the article makes it seem like he can't live in the home because it can't be classified as eco-friendly (mainly because he drives to work). But that doesn't make sense. Why would he have to move out just because the house isn't classified as being eco-friendly?

The rest of the article doesn't really talk a whole lot about the problem. The scarce details make it appear that this guy is some kind of squatter that made improvements to an abandoned dwelling, and now is being told to GTFO.

ZAZ: One count of the indictment: "Mr Hoyle was using a wood burning stove"

A few years ago I showed an exchange student around suburban Boston and she was amazed by all the wooden houses. Are the English really that freaked out by trees and the things that can be done with trees?


It amazes me to no end the absolute waste and horrendous build quality shown in the McMansion plywood palaces that dot the suburban landscape in America. Everything is so short-term in thinking, and then they wonder why the roof leaks after a year and the garage collapsed after a heavy snowfall.

Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: McMansion plywood palaces

What kind of house have you seen constructed with plywood? How is this is even an option?

atpgod: Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: McMansion plywood palaces

What kind of house have you seen constructed with plywood? How is this is even an option?

Sometimes when referencing something sarcastically, made up terms do not reflect the actual object being made fun of.

I know, it's bizarre

nacker: The start of the article makes it seem like he can't live in the home because it can't be classified as eco-friendly (mainly because he drives to work). But that doesn't make sense. Why would he have to move out just because the house isn't classified as being eco-friendly?

Thank you. Glad I'm not the only one.

I want an adobe house.

tallguywithglasseson: nacker: The start of the article makes it seem like he can't live in the home because it can't be classified as eco-friendly (mainly because he drives to work). But that doesn't make sense. Why would he have to move out just because the house isn't classified as being eco-friendly?

Thank you. Glad I'm not the only one.

Ditto. Reading a bit more, it seems more that the house uses a gas bottle stove and a wood-burning stove. So, because of that, they want him to destroy all of the ecofriendly improvements he added, rendering the house uninhabitable???? Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot.

:-/

nacker: The start of the article makes it seem like he can't live in the home because it can't be classified as eco-friendly (mainly because he drives to work). But that doesn't make sense. Why would he have to move out just because the house isn't classified as being eco-friendly?

The rest of the article doesn't really talk a whole lot about the problem. The scarce details make it appear that this guy is some kind of squatter that made improvements to an abandoned dwelling, and now is being told to GTFO.

As far as I can determine from TFA, this, and a degree of knowledge of planning law (IANAL):

- He bought a derelict former dwelling in a National Park and sought clarification that it could be repaired
- He believed, wrongly, that this gave permission to rebuild it into a dwelling
- A planning notice was enforced in 2006 as he did not have planning permission to use it as a dwelling
- He claims that he's had 4 years continuous occupation, negating the need for permission, the council disagree

If I were being judgemental (and this is Fark), I do not believe that he honestly believed that the building could be brought back into use without planning permission, and I think that the 'greenwashing' is his attempt to make him look like a hero of the sustainable movement rather than either a complete fool or, arguably more likely, a property developer trying to pull a fast one.

Just to add - 'green' credentials can add to the likelihood of a development gaining planning permission during the initial application.

In this case, the council refused to accept that the development fulfilled the criteria necessary for them to be taken into account. While that may have been an incorrect judgement, gaining retrospective permission for a development in a National Park is vanishingly unlikely, without four years' continuous occupation, irrespective of the supposed ecological benefits.

FTFA: Having failed to reverse the council decision, Hoyle has a few days to try and affect its new Core Strategy Development Plan.

effect, tr.v.: To produce as a result.

Thanks for the translation, FarkinNortherner.

The website link matches the title perfectly. It's definitely off the grid. maybe some day I'll see the article. heh

Dang link's farked already. Can anybody paste the text here?

ZAZ: Are the English really that freaked out by trees and the things that can be done with trees?

No. We just have more room to make new trees.
When in England, I lived in a house made of rocks and mortar. Not bricks or similar...actual rocks. Weird.

Yep. It's down at the moment.

So lemmie guess- he didn't pay his protection money to the government so he'd be "permitted" to do work on his own property... ("Its for yous own safety. We wouldn't want you to get hurt now...")

No permits, all work is declared illegal, you tear it down or they'll send in men with guns to have you forcibly removed.

ZAZ: One count of the indictment: "Mr Hoyle was using a wood burning stove"

A few years ago I showed an exchange student around suburban Boston and she was amazed by all the wooden houses. Are the English really that freaked out by trees and the things that can be done with trees?

Uh...look what they did to Ireland...

/Also, didn't RTFA because TFLink wouldn't load.

LordOfThePings: FTFA: Having failed to reverse the council decision, Hoyle has a few days to try and affect its new Core Strategy Development Plan.

effect, tr.v.: To produce as a result.

affect -verb (used with object): to act on; produce an effect or change in: Cold weather affected the crops.

effect -noun: something that is produced by an agency or cause; result; consequence: Exposure to the sun had the effect of toughening his skin.

Affect is the proper word to use in the sentence quoted.

man what a great article that was! Oh wait the site is farked. Nice job submitard.

ZAZ: Are the English really that freaked out by trees and the things that can be done with trees?

You'd be surprised, I've been in America for over 7 years (Maine and Alabama). I still can't get used to the idea that i'm staying inside a wooden house. I'm convinced it won't melt from getting damp and chances of it burning down is less likely than i thought now, but i still find it easier to relax in a brick building.

Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: McMansion plywood palaces

What kind of house have you seen constructed with plywood? How is this is even an option?

most newer construction is plywood clad, steel stud construction all slapped with a 1/2 drywall inside and vinyl outside

I live in a crack house with no electricity. I'm going to stop them from evicting me by saying I'm "green".

SchlingFocker: I want an adobe house.

I drive an adobe.

/old SNL bit

Wow, confusing! There're obviously a number of missing elements from the article that FarkinNortherner seems to have supplied. Thanks! As I was reading through it without that aid, I was starting to wonder if the dude was squatting on the property or something. :D "Well, haven't inhabited it for four years consecutive, so we have a right to evict your butt."

Building permits are a big pain in the rump, but they're also necessary. If he'd knocked over someone else's home in the process of creating his "eco dream", that home owner would indubitably go after the city.

Begoggle: I live in a crack house with no electricity. I'm going to stop them from evicting me by saying I'm "green".

And how long before the battery on your laptop gives out...?

And who's WAP are you stealing your 'net connection from...?

/ sarcasm.. I get it...

nacker 2008-11-16 07:02:51 PM I'm having a hard time figuring this one out... The start of the article makes it seem like he can't live in the home because it can't be classified as eco-friendly (mainly because he drives to work). But that doesn't make sense. Why would he have to move out just because the house isn't classified as being eco-friendly?
==========================

Read more carefully.

'has been refused classification as a dwelling after tens of thousands were spent installing an off-grid system.'

Note the word DWELLING. It's actually lost its qualification as a house. And they're forcing him to tear it all down.


However... I do have qualms with this sentence: 'He will then have up to 12 months to remove the building's roof and the repairs to the outside walls rendering it uninhabitable' Were the original modifications that were done to the walls actually made it uninhabitable or will fixing the outside walls make it ubinhabitable? Either way, it sounds really weird.

Obama will save him for us.

Yeah_Right: Begoggle: I live in a crack house with no electricity. I'm going to stop them from evicting me by saying I'm "green".

And how long before the battery on your laptop gives out...?

And who's WAP are you stealing your 'net connection from...?

/ sarcasm.. I get it...

I'm at work, I just live in the crack house.

anyone else find it ironic that off-grid.net is currently off-line?

SchlingFocker: I want an adobe house.


Hope you're rich then.

That was like the journalistic equivalent of trepanning.

Link's not dead, just shuffling around, zombie-like.

An historic 18th century house on the edge of a National park in north-west England, has been refused classification as a dwelling after tens of thousands were spent installing an off-grid system.

Although people have lived there off and on for 300 years, the eco-home's owner has been told he must demolish the improvements and move out. The local council planning department in Mallerstang, Cumbria deny that the owner Adam Hoyle, has created an eco-dwelling there - because he drives 3.5 miles to work.

Neighbour Annie Gregory told the local paper "He has won such a high level of support not out of misguided friendship but because people who previously scarcely knew him think the council's actions verge on the brainless."

Having failed to reverse the council decision, Hoyle has a few days to try and affect its new Core Strategy Development Plan. He will then have up to 12 months to remove the building's roof and the repairs to the outside walls rendering it uninhabitable, and this in an area where many homes are owned by weekenders, driving prices up to levels locals cannot afford.

He added that although Mr Hoyle considered Carr House ecologically sound, the council had found this not to be the case.

He said: "Mr Hoyle was using a wood burning stove and a cooker powered by bottled gas."


"It is virtually incredible that any sane organisation could order the destruction of an attractive building, hidden from view, that has been part of the local settlement pattern for generations," said Ms Gregory. "It is actually beyond belief that it could do so to one that sets a template for sustainable development in an area where homes for local people are in such miserably short supply," she said.

Electricity at the house is generated by a wind turbine and a water turbine powered by the neighbouring stream. It also has an outside composting toilet which extracts foul air via solar power. There are no electricity bills as the house is completely off-grid.

The wind and water turbines each produce 24 volts DC which is then stored in a battery bank before being converted, via an inverter, into the 240 volts AC needed to run electrical appliances.

Mr. Hoyle said the house was not ahead of its time, and he was just utilising ideas which everybody had access to. He said it was a sustainable affordable home from which he would like to start a family with his girlfriend.

"In the future every house is going to need a means of sustainability. We have all got to think more about our actions and our carbon usage as global warming becomes more and more important, and we've all got a duty to leave a clean environment for our children," said Mr. Hoyle.

Kirkby Stephen-based planning consultant Tom Woof, of Development Planning Solutions Limited, said the situation was very regrettable, but was not over yet.

"There are a number of avenues still to pursue," said Mr. Woof. "We are asking the council to look again at its decision."

Mr. Woof said Mr. Hoyle contacted him about the potential enforcement action earlier this year. "Adam has restored this old building as a zero carbon development which is the way the Government wants us to be. There is a lot of planning merit in the development and it also provides an affordable house for a local person," he said.

However, planning officers at Eden Council, who received 23 letters of support for the application and no objections, said that for a certificate of lawful use to be granted, the property had to have been completed and lived in for a period of four years. They produced photographs to show that in 2004 the property still did not have a roof, meaning it could not have been completed in 2003.

Planning officer Gwyn Clark told a meeting of the council's planning applications committee that Mr. Hoyle himself only claimed to be sleeping in a sleeping bag within a structure, covered with a tarpaulin, on the site, rather than the main building, which Mr. Clark said did not constitute continuous residential use.

He said letters which had been sent to the council confirming Mr. Hoyle's residence there since 2003 were irrelevant if he had not been living in the substantially completed main building, and the evidence suggested that this was the case.

Henry Sawrey-Cookson (Ind., Kirkby Thore) said Mr. Hoyle had effectively created an affordable house, while Margaret Wilcox (Lib. Dem., Orton with Tebay) commended the zero carbon footprint of the property.

However, councillors agreed there was no evidence to support an application for a certificate of lawful use and refused the application.

As a result of the planning applications committee's decision, Mr. Hoyle was told that enforcement action will be taken to undo the renovation work.

Mr. Hoyle, who has an engineering background, has been based at his waste transfer station in Station Yard, Kirkby Stephen, since 1992. He has been working on Carr House, which was last inhabited in the 1920s by a plate layer working on the Settle-Carlisle rail line, for the past five years.

"I would concede that Mr. Hoyle had gone about this in an ill-advised way but I think it is a measure of the desperation felt by many people in Eden that they will never be able to get a home by conventional means," said Ms Gregory.

I trust we will all remember what has happened to Mr. Hoyle the next time developers are granted retrospective planning consent when they, too, have broken the rules. Equally, I hope we, the voters, will remember what our elected representatives clearly think about us next time they canvass our votes. Yours etc," she said.

ZAZ: One count of the indictment: "Mr Hoyle was using a wood burning stove"

A few years ago I showed an exchange student around suburban Boston and she was amazed by all the wooden houses. Are the English really that freaked out by trees and the things that can be done with trees?

They cut them all down for the Royal navy quite some time ago, and all the trees left were on some lord's hunting preserve, preventing their use?

/yes, I am slightly informed and overly-opinionated!

Frantic Freddie: SchlingFocker: I want an adobe house.


Hope you're rich then.

I can only afford an MS Paint house

/The welcome mat is in Aerial

midway_the_great: LordOfThePings: FTFA: Having failed to reverse the council decision, Hoyle has a few days to try and affect its new Core Strategy Development Plan.

effect, tr.v.: To produce as a result.

affect -verb (used with object): to act on; produce an effect or change in: Cold weather affected the crops.

effect -noun: something that is produced by an agency or cause; result; consequence: Exposure to the sun had the effect of toughening his skin.

Affect is the proper word to use in the sentence quoted.

Wrong. "Effect" is also a verb, meaning to bring something into existence. LordOfThePings is correct.

Barakku: Frantic Freddie: SchlingFocker: I want an adobe house.


Hope you're rich then.

I can only afford an MS Paint house

/The welcome mat is in Aerial

Pfft, whatever. It's all about Comic Sans, baby!

/in combination with Papyrus, of course.

jake3988:

Read more carefully.

'has been refused classification as a dwelling after tens of thousands were spent installing an off-grid system.'

Note the word DWELLING. It's actually lost its qualification as a house. And they're forcing him to tear it all down.

I understood the issue with it being a dwelling or not. What I don't get is why do they care so much?

Schadenfreude ist die schoenste Freude: ZAZ: One count of the indictment: "Mr Hoyle was using a wood burning stove"

A few years ago I showed an exchange student around suburban Boston and she was amazed by all the wooden houses. Are the English really that freaked out by trees and the things that can be done with trees?


It amazes me to no end the absolute waste and horrendous build quality shown in the McMansion plywood palaces that dot the suburban landscape in America. Everything is so short-term in thinking, and then they wonder why the roof leaks after a year and the garage collapsed after a heavy snowfall.


American construction the past 10 to 15 years sucks in quality AND is expensive unless you get a foreclosure, or a house in Memphis or Detroit. People were paying $150k to $200k for exurban McMansion shiate up until 2006 on easy credit.

On the other hand, homes in England tend to be RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE because those upper class limey fudgepackers that control their government have artificially elevated prices by limiting the supply of new home contruction by declaring a multitude of worthless "green spaces" especially around the larger cities... AND ESPECIALLY AROUND LONDON.

xen271: Obama will save him for us.

Good lord, get over it already.

"However, councillors agreed there was no evidence to support an application for a certificate of lawful use and refused the application."

Ultimate translation: This guy peed in someone's coffee, and they're using some bureaucratese to screw him over because he didn't conform to some kind of regulations that are in place to give bureaucrats their reason for existence.

It sounds like this guy didn't file Form 132312A, with Attachment Z-43084, Application to Reside While Making Improvements. Now they're being dicks because they can, legally, and really this guy has no leg to stand on. Technically, he broke the law, and unless some legislator decides to butt in where really he or she has no right to, the council is correct.

Which sucks, but that's what the taxpayers pay for to have a smoothly-running bureaucracy. You no play-a de game, you no make-a de rules. Next time, read the ballot before you vote.

bicentennialman: ZAZ: One count of the indictment: "Mr Hoyle was using a wood burning stove"

A few years ago I showed an exchange student around suburban Boston and she was amazed by all the wooden houses. Are the English really that freaked out by trees and the things that can be done with trees?

They cut them all down for the Royal navy quite some time ago, and all the trees left were on some lord's hunting preserve, preventing their use?

/yes, I am slightly informed and overly-opinionated!


bicentennialman neglects to mention that the reason the Royal Navy cut all the trees in England down was to invade North America and much of the rest of the world! The Empire strikes back.......

SchlingFocker: I want an adobe house.

Pedro is working on an adobe. Can you say that with me?
Adobe.

JakeParlay: anyone else find it ironic that off-grid.net is currently off-line?

Maybe their internet server is powered by a wood burning generator?

It seems that a very similar article, based on IXI Jim IXI's post, can be found here(p) if you're still having trouble with the link.

Solar powered internet sucks at night...

Adobe houses are wicked annoying with their constantly telling you there is an upgrade available that's faster and better but when you download them you don't notice any difference at all.

Wait... what?

He installed a gas cooker without an R16, what ever shall Mrs Pinnet do?!

dasc: Adobe houses are wicked annoying with their constantly telling you there is an upgrade available that's faster and better but when you download them you don't notice any difference at all.

What you did... I seed it...
/lol