Why are we not building yet?

Many of you may be reading this blog and thinking - so you've got (most of) the money for phase 1, you've got a design and you've had planning permission for a while - what are you waiting for?

We have had a number of blocking issues, and a number of false dawns.  Those of you who have known about this project for some time will have heard things like "the foundations will be going in within weeks" or "just clear this last hurdle and we'll be building" several times.  This has been very frustrating for all involved, so I thought it might be useful to list some of the bigger issues and their current status.

Finance - until September 2010 we were considerably short of the money we needed to build Phase 1.  As I mentioned in a post last week, that all changed when we were found by a charitable trust who have pledged £50,000 to help us, and match funding for the next £20,000 we raise in the coming year.  So finance is not a major issue for Phase 1.  It is an issue we still need to address for Phase 2, but that is not currently preventing us from making progress.

Building Regulations Approval - this process started in the Spring of 2010 and has not yet completed, much to our frustration.  The building and site are not typical, so there have been many complications along the way.  We expect many centre users with disabilities, so meeting all disability access provisions has been a particular concern, but we believe everything is now in place for that.  Foundation design approval has been very drawn out - the approval engineers need to be sure that the building is erected on adequate foundations to avoid sinking, slippage or any other type of movement.  Again we think these concerns have now been fully addressed.  All calculations for building component loadings have been submitted and we are chasing down the final approvals.  So we *think* we have done everything required, but we don't yet have a piece of paper saying that all is approved!  We don't want to risk starting building until we have approval - we might yet get a shock in being told that some fundamental issue is wrong.

Electricity Supply - we need one for heat, light, security, lift etc.  We know there is a high voltage cable running through the site, but don't want the expense of tapping into that and transforming down to the supply we need.  There are 2 existing buildings on the site (wildlife centre and a small toilet block) and they both have electricity, so we knew there was a supply available to them.  After some investigations, we confirmed that they are supplied by a substation owned by Southern Water.  Negotiations are ongoing to get a connection from that - we need confirmation that it has sufficient capacity, that we are allowed to get a connection, that we can establish a metered supply, arrange the price we will pay for the power we use etc.  Next meeting with Southern Water is this Friday.

Water Supply - we need one of those too!  There is a supply to the wildlife centre and toilet block.  The issue now is to confirm the capacity is sufficient to supply the new building too.  We are looking at options like pumps, storage tanks etc. to mitigate the risk of insufficient capacity.  The alternative would be to bring a supply in from off the lakes site - it would be costly and time consuming to bring a new pipe in across multiple landowners' ground and a fairly long distance.  More discussions on Friday with Southern Water.

Waste Water - we need our grey water from showers etc. to be disposed of safely, as well as our waste water from the toilets.  Water recycling systems are a possible option, so long as we can get approval of the discharge site for the cleaned water.  The fallback option is a huge storage tank needing regular emptying, but the cost of purchase, installation and servicing/emptying make this not very attractive.  More discussions on Friday with Southern Water!

Weather - and now it is snowing!  Once the issues above are sufficiently resolved to start with low risk, the first building job is to lay concrete foundations.  We might want to start a day when the ground isn't frozen and under a layer of snow to do that.

This blog was initially intended to tell you about progress rather than excuses for lack of progress, so watch this space - we'll get some progress to report.