Perplexed Planning Green Horn

So you want to build a universally accessible organic house with eco-loft, a reed toilet and somewhere to park your bicycles, you say!

. . . . directions to Cloughjordan, coming up 🙂

The simplest thing to do is to buy a 30 or 40 yr old dreadful large bungalow which is more or less satisfactorily located on its site, and clear of such covenants, (arguably unenforceable) and apply for permisssion to replace it with a smaller more ecologically friendly house. The council may argue that, as blows-in, you are not entitled to a new house, but when you put it to them that you are entitled to replace every element, one-by-one, and increase its size by 40sq m , and throw in a few outbuildings they may realise the weakness of their case. Preferably do all this before actually handing over any money, beacuse some councils may refuse anyway (See another recent thread).

@Noon wrote:

except for one which said that the applicant must not sell the house for a minimum of 7 years after completion….

As ‘blow ins’ would we be able to buy a site with full planning permission and build?

!

your question is answered by what you have already posted….

no you cannot buy this site as there is a condition restricting ‘the applicant’ from selling the house for a minimum of seven years…

i would agree with previous posters… purchase a run down dwelling and renovate it…
its much more sustainable to breath life into existing old buildings than to build new from scratch…..

Kilkenny has areas ‘outside of development pressure’ in which populations are declining. It may be possible to purchase a site and build new in these areas. contact the council to determine how the view these kinds of applications, and what areas are applicable…

Hi Gunter
I was reared in a typical 1970’s “Bungalow Bliss” bungalow – I’d rather live in a new age travellers converted ambulance/bus with outside toilet facilities than do it again!!!!
Seriously though, even if we did want to have a reed bed sewage system a work collegue tells me that we’d have more chance of nailing jelly to a balloon than getting permission for that!
Our needs are simple – underfloor heating, solar panels, decent insulation, lots of light and open plan (user friendly) living space. Anything else would be a bonus.
Are you building in Cloughjordan or were you just extracting the Michael?

Thanks for the prompt reply Henno
I absolutely agree with you regarding renovating/rebuilding an existing ruin/dwelling.
We did look at another site which had a tiny 2/3 bed ‘cottage’ on its 0.5 acre site. It seems like a ‘catch 22’…. A new site is advertised at €x and we can’t get permission to build new because we are blow ins. A site with a ‘cottage’ on it is priced at €x+100k – house would need 10’s of thousands spent on it just to make it watertight and habitable for the duration…..
Our optimism is fading fast.

Hi goneill
Thanks for the prompt reply.
Oh that money were no object……..
We would absolutely love to renovate/rebuild an old house but from what we can gether so far in our dream quest.. if there is even a pile of rubble on the site that can conceivably be sold as a ‘site with building in need of repair’, the price quoted is at least €x+100k.
Our optimism is beginning to fade.
Should we just give up????

@Noon wrote:

. . . . are you building in Cloughjordan or were you just extracting the Michael?

Hi noon!

No, just extracting the Michael 🙂

I think the architects for Cloughjordan are ‘Sole Earth’, or possibly ‘Soul Earth’! . . . . . earthlings anyway, almost certainly.

It does exist though and I did recently encounter one of the residents of one of the apparently *three* completed houses.

Anyway, back to business, it’s an important development, we must persuade someone to post some feedback . . . hopefully with good pictures of the architecture . . . and maybe the community . . . . interacting with nature, . . . yeh, . . . . look forward to that!.