THAT, by God .. is functional Art ..
Posted on 08/06/2013 6:16:02 AM PDT by dennisw
Eco-couple told to pull down their 'hobbit home' made entirely out of natural materials . . . but without planning permission
Family of three is made homeless by planning inspector's decision They built their home from scratch, but have been ordered to tear it down The couple admit they built it without first getting planning permission Their labour of love was branded 'harmful' to the countryside
A young couple have been left heartbroken after planners ordered their unique 'hobbit home' to be bulldozed, effectively leaving them homeless.
Charlie Hague and Megan Williams, both 25, built the roundhouse from scratch with their own hands, using only natural materials.
But the couple lost their appeal today against a planning enforcement notice telling them to tear their pride and joy home down.
Charlie and Megan, who have a one-year-old son Eli, built the house on private land in Glandwr, North Pembrokeshire, last summer.
Locals nicknamed it the hobbit home, although most people did not even know it was there because it is so secluded.
But Pembrokeshire County Council ordered the couple to demolish their home because it was built without planning permission.
Charlie and Megan, who live a self-sufficient lifestyle, fought the decision claiming it had a low impact on the environment because of its unique construction.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
What, no thermobaric bombs?
UK Orwell brain dead plodding socialist trough feeding petty bureaucrats you are a disgrace to Great Britain
THAT, by God .. is functional Art ..
This should be retitled: WHEN LIBERALS COLLIDE
First thing that comes to mind is Joel Salatin’s
“Everything I Want to do is Illegal”
Great Britain- an essentially totalitarian state with a few democratic and monarchistic tokens.
There was one section on homes and I swear, these young kids saw that book and copied what a number of those homes (published in the 60's I think) had shown to be rermarkable usage of wood.
Very nice.
I’ve seen things similar to this, though not nearly as nice, in backwoods Vermont and New Hampshire.
Branded 'harmful to the notion of bureaucratic micromanagement of the average person's life', more like.
.. coffee ready .. ?
I agree. That is talent!
The more I look at these pictures ... the more they seem familiar ... I’m gonn’a try to hunt that book up
That’s a work of art.
The City Council is looking at this all wrong.
This beautiful and creative home is already a worldwide news story, and could be a world-wide tourist attraction for the county- bringing people from all over to view it, attend workshops on how to build one, and just celebrate it.
All those people would stay in the town hotels, eat at the local pubs and spend money. Everybody wins !
What’s not to like !
My response to them would be “Nuts!” The council can destroy it but I would not participate in their decision!
Another way to fight this is to get pictures of the homes the council and the inspectors live in and put them out on the web with the question”Do these homes look like they add or subtract to the scenic composition of the surrounding country side?”
The only way to protect the house now is to declare it a mosque.
What’s the name of the tree house builder guy? Get him involved.
BFLR
They should convert to Islam and call their home a Mosque.
No way would they tear down a Mosque.
Thanks for the book tip!
UN Agenda 21 (also Plank #1 of the Communist manifesto); eliminate private property via elimination of private property rights.
There's a picture of a staircase that they said was a piece of driftwood found on the California coast.
The pictures in this article show the same brown and white mottled coloring .
The driftwood became a serpentine handrail for a spiral staircase.
If this is not the same house, these Brit kids found identical wood.
I'm intrigued.
Thou shalt not build without permission from the all mighty planning commission, paying the appropriate fees, inspection rates. Thou shalt build your home not for yourself, but for mythical future residents. Thou shalt build your home so it can later be given to another family, entirely at council expense, to be utterly trashed.
I do feel for the family, but if you’re going to not get building permission from the local government, you have to be willing to stand by that decision, and actually fight such requirements, not later file retroactive building permissions.
The guy could make a living doing that. Very talented to say the least.
Didn't someone watch it be built?
Weren't they offended by the shape THEN?
Were they told, "Just wait until it's done, YOU'LL see .. " ... and they did?
Let's analyze this realistically ...
The entire interior is finished with 4 coats of varnish and furnished.
they pissed someone off.,
Realistically, they didn’t pay off the local council, pay the fees and inspections, didn’t include mandated materials and likely didn’t have a licensed contractor doing the work. I mean, geeze, if they let this couple get away with it, it might imply that anyone could decide to build a home and live in it....
It is entirely about control. And the local council didn’t control it, so therefore, the abomination must be destroyed.
They should legally protest the order to tear down, then hire a professional, licensed architect and structural engineer to analyze the integrity of the building and certify its soundness.
If you REALLY want to see some eyesores, go west of TAOS, NM. In the flat plains west of the Grand Canyon of the Rio Grande, on the north side of the road, someone is building the most god awful “city” of partially underground “earth friendly” homes.
They looked like rejects from a STAR WARS or Hobbit movie!
Farther to the west are lots for sale. People are buying them, putting in a travel trailers and a coyote fence. Both places are eyesores!
The decision should be based on engineering factors, not political “you hurt my feelings because you didn’t ask first” factors.
Have them pay the permit and inspection fees and leave them alone.
Similar thing happened in our county. An elderly man spent years constructing a house for himself to replace the trailer he lived in. Commie inspectors from the planning commission said the ceiling was one-half inch too low, tear it down and start over. He burned it down.
The worst part of it was, nobody appeared at city council meetings to protest their totalitarian rules.
Ok, most of us - I think - recognize that building permits are ok to guarantee the design integrity and safety of a structure, and these people apparently did not go through the process. What to do? They have created a work of art that would be a shame to destroy. Inspect the building retroactively, and if it seems safe, levy a small fine for not getting the permit initially and leave it alone. But, no, the government says to knock it down. This smacks of bully government, government by a**hole, a government of arrogance.
Touche!
I have a similar book of unusual, one-off homes built along the Pacific Coast. They are works of art.
Maybe Peter Jackson could help them to dismantle it and move it to New Zealand.
No. I deny the fundamental premise. I do not acknowledge that building permits are necessary to guarantee the design integrity and safety of a structure. They are a tool to assist government with assessments so that property tax revenues are maximized. They are an invasion of privacy. They are a means of exerting control. Anyone in the building trades can tell horror stories about building departments tormenting homeowners and adding many, many unnecessary dollars to construction costs. Adding to construction costs of course means that fewer people can afford to become homeowners and must remain in rental or government-controlled housing. See how that works? Higher property costs + higher taxes = more people unfree and under rigid control.
I'm enough of a libertarian to believe that if I want to build something stupid on my own property, that is my risk and my concern so long as it does not impinge on the value of or use of my neighbors' properties.
Just might be so!!!
Their home is yurt like and yurts are a big feature at the Glastonbury Festival (in UK) where if you have the $$$ you can bunk in one and enjoy the festival in relative luxury
Now, I know you don't think so, but this type of thinking is what has cost Americans much freedom. Too many people worry about what someone's property looks like. They own it they have the right to do with it as they will. Sadly, in too many cities those rights have long gone away because so many people worry about what others are doing and they worry about their "property values" and not their property rights.
Way to many so called conservatives stand by building codes and onerous laws that serve to sap us of our freedoms and serve no other purpose.
Joel Salatin, Mr Chicken Tractor the man who just about invented it. I would be copying him in a split second if I had the land
Nothing wrong with having limited special exemptions from building codes. Such as this couple could agree to hold classes a few time a year on unique home building. How to do some of what they did.
***They own it they have the right to do with it as they will.***
I had a man, wife and child, buy a lot about 75 yards from my house. He promptly pulled in an old trailer, and started collecting junk.
He had no water, no sewer or septic. His electric came from a long extension cord from another house about 50 yards in the opposite direction. He designated one room of the house for a toilet and used a lounge chair with a hole cut in the seat. The waste was poured in the local creek. The place stunk to high heaven.
After about eight years of this, the county sheriff raided the property and found the largest meth lab in the state there. The owners were arrested and are in prison, the child, then age 14, ran away and has never been seen since.
The state then began to clean up the property and had to place all the contaminated dirt around it in sealed metal containers for disposal. The trailer was dismantled piece by piece, but it was so contaminated they finally left it to “air out” for a few more years. Then the remains disappeared.
We have a pup from their dog that strayed up here. The vet said the pup had liver damage from the contaminated area, but eventually she overcame her liver problems and is a wonderful pet.
Some people are not good neighbors.
Doesn’t really take a lot of land to do permaculture & food production. You just have to have more skill at it than I do! :)
Really, I’ve heard that a 40X20 plot will produce more than you can eat.
I see possibilities for compromise in both your views. If you want to live in a sty, please feel free to buy land in a remote area and have a sty. If you are going to live next door to me, kindly don’t have a sty 20 feet from my property line.
We all have choices. We can elect to live in areas that have covenants to protect our property values but will drive us mad with regulation. Or we can live in less-regulated but more risky areas where we have lower taxes and less government intrusion, but we are not protected from neighbors who burn old tires. Decide where you want to live; we can still do that, fortunately. But generally people should not come into an area where everyone is comfortably slobby and impose middle-class shelter-magazine tastes on them. Don’t come into a middle-income area and keep six dead cars on the front lawn, because that will impinge on the neighbors’ ability to sell their houses. Don’t come into a suburban townhouse community and jack deer off your deck in the evening, because that endangers local kids, especially if you’re drunk when you do it (and yes, I do know folks who do that). If you want to do those things, move someplace where your values will fit in, rather than imposing your values on others.
The problem we in the US are facing is one of expectations. People move from city apartments to townhouses in the suburbs, from townhouses to single-family houses on a quarter of an acre, from a quarter-acre to five acres, and at each step they think they are going to have more freedom and privacy than they actually have. How many friends do I have who have moved to 10 acres and then are shocked when the county shows up to tell them they have to comply with manure disposal regulations? Or that they can’t build an extra bedroom over the barn or garage because the septic system won’t take another toilet?
One, when I said he can do with it as he wants, I meant as long as it was legal(and I don’t consider zoning laws or building codes legal, they are oppressive). Meth labs are illegal, and have nothing to do with my comment. Your neighbors were criminals, period. Zoning laws, laws that require a contractor, etc are all tyrannical and serve only one purpose, control of the people and a way to gouge money from them. There are ways to handle things. Laws that require a seller to disclose that no contractors were used and no codes were followed would serve as protection to the next owners. There are many ways to handle things out side of government interference. I don’t want it or need it. Thanks anyway.
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