Illegal House hidden in plain sight.. kinda.

[Elgin Clock]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=510161&in_page_id=1770

Interesting story out of England.

No one complained about living next to a huge pile of hay and blue tarps for 4 years, but now they are complaining that they live next to an (in my opinion as a fan of all architectural designs) awesome castle type structure??

What is wrong with some people? :rolleyes:

I applaud the homeowners for thinking outside the box... (or... inside the hay bail box shape so to speak) :p


This reminds me of someone we all know named Dean who had to abide by local zoning laws when putting in a Heliport on top of DEKA (or was it Segway? I'm not sure).

The law was to put a fence up around the area at a given height (I don't recall exactly what that was so let's say it was 6' for argument's sake)

Basically what he did, and I believe "got away with" by thinking outside the box, was by buying a 6' tall fence and laying it down on the ground around the heliport so as not to look like a fence and look like an ugly obstuction to a nice view. lol

All that was documented in the book Code Name Ginger if anyone is interested.
Cool beans!

[Roger]

Things like this happen all the time, but this guy takes the cake for creativity. A "demolition and new build" is different than "remodel". The first is usually two permits and the latter a more lenient permit process. I've heard stories of a house getting add-ons on all four sides plus roof, then once the occupancy permit is given, the innards are "remodeled" and the old house is essentually removed. A house near me was all torn down except for a bathroom (it did look kind of silly) and then rebuilt, probably permitted as a remodel. I'm hoping my garage stays up so I can remodel it instead of getting both a demo and building permits. With my luck you know what is really going to happen.

This guy does have guts trying this (and a lot of hay!), but I don't think he'll get away with it. Building departments don't like getting messed with, and council planners are even worse. And I don't know how close the neighborhood (sorry, neighbourhood - it is in England :) ) is, but you'd think someone would peek in and maybe notice some construction activity?