optimisticbiker reborn

cyclingprop

Glad to hear you're still doing well, despite the heat and having the strings tugged this weekend.

jimmypippa

I'd been wondering how you were getting on too.

optimisticbiker

Heat & humidity was a problem, but got a 3.2kW ex-rental a/c unit that made it bearable - managed to get it down to 25 when it was 32 outside.

Still in flat in Islington, getting planning permission for home adaptations is still an ongoing battle. Went for a pre-planning consultation meeting at council offices in home borough - the idea being that planners give informal advice on what they might object to and suggest options. In this case it was just a string of 'no' with no attempt at discussion/negotiation. And in a twist you couldn't make up they'd arranged to hold the meeting in a room that wasnt wheelchair accessible (their lifts are too small to get an electric wheelchair in)!

Design and build of a hand exercise 'bike' is well advanced, drawings all done and out for manufacture and starting on writing the software shortly.

rjsterry

OptimisticBiker wrote:

Heat & humidity was a problem, but got a 3.2kW ex-rental a/c unit that made it bearable - managed to get it down to 25 when it was 32 outside.

Still in flat in Islington, getting planning permission for home adaptations is still an ongoing battle. Went for a pre-planning consultation meeting at council offices in home borough - the idea being that planners give informal advice on what they might object to and suggest options. In this case it was just a string of 'no' with no attempt at discussion/negotiation. And in a twist you couldn't make up they'd arranged to hold the meeting in a room that wasnt wheelchair accessible (their lifts are too small to get an electric wheelchair in)!

Design and build of a hand exercise 'bike' is well advanced, drawings all done and out for manufacture and starting on writing the software shortly.

I feel for you. Pre-Apps were intended to make things easier by ironing out any problems before applications were submitted, but they now seem to be seen as just another way to bill someone for a few hundred quid (plus the waste of 8 weeks of life and paying someone to put together some drawings) for some 'advice' that isn't even binding on any future application. Despite their uselessness, there is also an implication that you will be 'marked down' if you don't bother with the whole charade.

optimisticbiker

rjsterry wrote:

I feel for you. Pre-Apps were intended to make things easier by ironing out any problems before applications were submitted, but they now seem to be seen as just another way to bill someone for a few hundred quid (plus the waste of 8 weeks of life and paying someone to put together some drawings) for some 'advice' that isn't even binding on any future application. Despite their uselessness, there is also an implication that you will be 'marked down' if you don't bother with the whole charade.

Yes, I agree, just another 'cash cow'. To even get this pre-app meeting (which cost me £150) I had to pay £100 outstanding from a previous 'consultation' which I knew nothing about. Turned out the 'consultation' was a short email from the previous planning officer to my previous architect confirming something discussed on the phone; since they'd put it in writing they decided it was chargeable.

To add insult to injury, what we are proposing is virtually identical to something that was approved only 6mo ago for a house round the corner! Anyway, got local ward councillors on the case to force it to go to committee if need be so that it can't be refused by some junior planner and got a planning consultant looking at it as well...

rjsterry

OptimisticBiker wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

I feel for you. Pre-Apps were intended to make things easier by ironing out any problems before applications were submitted, but they now seem to be seen as just another way to bill someone for a few hundred quid (plus the waste of 8 weeks of life and paying someone to put together some drawings) for some 'advice' that isn't even binding on any future application. Despite their uselessness, there is also an implication that you will be 'marked down' if you don't bother with the whole charade.

Yes, I agree, just another 'cash cow'. To even get this pre-app meeting (which cost me £150) I had to pay £100 outstanding from a previous 'consultation' which I knew nothing about. Turned out the 'consultation' was a short email from the previous planning officer to my previous architect confirming something discussed on the phone; since they'd put it in writing they decided it was chargeable.

To add insult to injury, what we are proposing is virtually identical to something that was approved only 6mo ago for a house round the corner! Anyway, got local ward councillors on the case to force it to go to committee if need be so that it can't be refused by some junior planner and got a planning consultant looking at it as well...

Good. If you/he can force it to committee and your councillor is influential within the planning committee, you stand a good chance.

walkingbootweather

Sorry to hear about your problems with your local Planning Office OB. Pre-app advice used to be free in most areas, the logic being that everyone wants good sustainable development in accordance with local planning policy and providing advice of what might or might not be approved would save everyone time and money. Many Local Authorities do now charge for this service, but if it doesn't offer value for money there is no obligation to use it.

Free resources include Planning Portal and Planning Aid. Your local authority ought to have guidance on their web site too.

For minor works in accordance with local policy you shouldn't need to jump through too many hoops and decision may be taken by Planning Officer under delegated powers. It is always useful to have a local Councillor on board but I doubt if they can influence what does or does not go to committee.

Planning Officers have to justify their decisions so cannot make decisions on a whim. If you are unhappy with the service that they provide you can contact the Local Government Ombudsman.

Planning Consultants will add cost but they are likely to know what is likely to get passed, how best to present your application, how to manage objections, and may get you to the finish line a little quicker.

Good Luck

rjsterry

Don't know from what perspective you are writing WBW, but that's quite some way from my experience with the London boroughs (and some outside London) I've had dealings with. To be fair to them, a few years ago, I heard a statistic that planning departments nationally were understaffed by 25%, and this can only have got worse with the cuts in council budgets.

walkingbootweather

Not at all surprised that others may have different perspectives to me, and in my experience Planning Departments vary greatly - I believe that Birmingham City Council for instance continue to offer pre-application advice for free. To be clear, I am not a planner but have worked closely with Planning Functions in local authorities and National Parks over the past 17 years. I have a number of close friends who are Planners or Planning Consultants, but most of their (and my more recent) experience has been in the North of England. I am currently in the middle of some rather extensive modifications to my home (to include a new bike cave ) so have had to re-acquaint myself with development and building control processes.

It is certainly true than staff numbers in planning departments have been reduced significantly, though to be fair much investment was made on systems and e-government over the past decade which ought to mean things are more efficient :? , and typically the numbers of planning applications have been down (at least in my region) over the past 2 or 3 years.

Good planning departments should be process driven, and will conform to tight performance monitoring - you should for instance expect a minor planning application like OB's to be decided inside 8 weeks. Good planners will try to deliver the development demanded by national government and local demands in a sympathetic way - balancing the aspirations of the developer with the impact on neighbours and wider environment.

In my view, some of the processes remain overly bureaucratic but despite what we may read in some of our papers, most planners do their very best to apply local policy fairly. It is when Councillors sitting on Planning Committee make a decision at odds to officer recommendation that problems are more likely to arise.

Back to OB’s problem. A decent architect ought to be able to come up with a scheme that complies with local planning policy. Neighbours and other interested parties would normally be consulted but unless any objection was valid in accordance with a fairly narrow set of criteria, I would expect the application to be passed. If the scheme was not appropriate we might hope that the Planner would refuse the proposal otherwise any one of us my have our homes blighted by inappropriate development.

The purpose of the pre-application, or the engagement of a consultant would be to reduce the risk of refusal or the imposition of onerous conditions..

optimisticbiker

@WBW My requirements are not minor, if they were it could have been done under permitted development. But we can't get the space needed in the loft conversion within the limits of PD. Putting in a 3 floor lift and keeping it inside the roof line entails raising the whole roof about 1/2 a metre as well as removing a catslide roof and squareing off the structure at the first floor, extending the new roof across the new structure and across an existing flat roofed extension at the other end. This adds about 80sqm of floor space. One of the many nonsensical objections is that the property becomes 'more substantial' compared to those either side (but still smaller than one two doors down, or one opposite - go figure).

davis

OptimisticBiker wrote:

Design and build of a hand exercise 'bike' is well advanced, drawings all done and out for manufacture and starting on writing the software shortly.

Are you writing the software for your own hand exercise bike? What do you have planned?

optimisticbiker

davis wrote:

OptimisticBiker wrote:

Design and build of a hand exercise 'bike' is well advanced, drawings all done and out for manufacture and starting on writing the software shortly.

Are you writing the software for your own hand exercise bike? What do you have planned?

Initially just going to be an Arduino single-board computer with small TFT screen and some big push buttons for menu selection. Will show rpm, time, distance travelled (based on 'gear'), gear (i.e. resistance) selected, and approx power output (= rpm x torque). Torque is measured by load cell and resistance is set electro-magnetically with the Arduino using its A-D and D-A input/outputs. Later will have ability to set up interval training (sequences of time in given 'gear').

davis

OptimisticBiker wrote:

davis wrote:

OptimisticBiker wrote:

Design and build of a hand exercise 'bike' is well advanced, drawings all done and out for manufacture and starting on writing the software shortly.

Are you writing the software for your own hand exercise bike? What do you have planned?

Initially just going to be an Arduino single-board computer with small TFT screen and some big push buttons for menu selection. Will show rpm, time, distance travelled (based on 'gear'), gear (i.e. resistance) selected, and approx power output (= rpm x torque). Torque is measured by load cell and resistance is set electro-magnetically with the Arduino using its A-D and D-A input/outputs. Later will have ability to set up interval training (sequences of time in given 'gear').

Sounds great! I've been wondering about an Arduino/RasPi project for this kind of stuff -- actually modifying a "normal" turbo trainer to estimate power etc while generating electricity. I'd not thought (or heard) of the load cell idea though. *Please* let me know how this works out!

walkingbootweather

OptimisticBiker wrote:

@WBW My requirements are not minor

OB, didn't mean to suggest that your proposed development wasn't significant, I was just differentiating between strict planning definitions and therefore the process used to decide. Others can perhaps explain this better than I (e.g. Waverley Borough Council. Most likely your Local Authority will classify your application as a Householder Development, not even a Minor development. Depending upon size and nature some Householder Developments may be classed as permitted development (i.e. you don't need to jump through all of the formal hoops), but more significant development like you describe clearly will need to be assessed. There will be rules that the Authority needs to follow in deciding whether or not to approve, and what neighbours have done will set a precedent. Grounds for objection are limited and there are guides available on how to object, and by inference how to counter objections. Whilst I would hope people would be sympathetic to your situation, it is your job to satisfy the Planners that your development does not have an adverse affect on the character of your neighbourhood, or the residential amenity of your neighbours.

Sorry to have got bogged down in Planning stuff, hearing about your hand exercise bike is much more interesting. If I can provide any useful contributions around planning, or run stuff past friends who are much more expert on this stuff than I, I'd be happy to take this off-line.

optimisticbiker

Just got back from a meeting with planning consultant and architects. He reckons we'll get this through but it all takes time, another 10 weeks at least By the time building work is done its going to be a year before I get back in my own home His view & experience is that with all government changes to make more 'permitted development' possible, senior planning dept staff dealing with householder applications are struggling to justify their existence or have been let go in favour of junior staff who dont have the experience to see where 'planning policy' can reasonably be relaxed. End result is more refusals on seemingly spurious grounds...

walkingbootweather

Glad to hear you are making progress even if it is taking longer that you might hope. Recent changes to planning legislation were designed to make the process simpler and to speed everything up, though how successful this has been is debatable. It is true that Planning numbers have been reduced and that more experienced (and expensive) staff have accepted early retirement and redundancy leaving less experienced staff to make decisions. in my experience this has resulted in applications getting through that might have been previously refused rather than an increase in refusals because the local authority can't afford to deal with appeals and an unsuccessful developer is more likely to put forward a strong challenge than an unsatisfied objector. Either way I wish you luck, and hope you can get back home soon.

optimisticbiker

davis wrote:

OptimisticBiker wrote:

davis wrote:

OptimisticBiker wrote:

Design and build of a hand exercise 'bike' is well advanced, drawings all done and out for manufacture and starting on writing the software shortly.

Are you writing the software for your own hand exercise bike? What do you have planned?

Initially just going to be an Arduino single-board computer with small TFT screen and some big push buttons for menu selection. Will show rpm, time, distance travelled (based on 'gear'), gear (i.e. resistance) selected, and approx power output (= rpm x torque). Torque is measured by load cell and resistance is set electro-magnetically with the Arduino using its A-D and D-A input/outputs. Later will have ability to set up interval training (sequences of time in given 'gear').

Sounds great! I've been wondering about an Arduino/RasPi project for this kind of stuff -- actually modifying a "normal" turbo trainer to estimate power etc while generating electricity. I'd not thought (or heard) of the load cell idea though. *Please* let me know how this works out!

Was originally going to use a RasPi as I have 2 of them, but no easy way to add small TFT screen economically (unless you know differently?) Can get Arduino board with screen for about £50 on eBay.

Normal bike trainer based on magnetic 'eddy-current' braking no good for compact hand design, gearing all wrong (small rotor spun at around 400rpm using gearing between 700C tyre and typically 3cm rotor axle). Also uses rare earth magnets on fixed carrier adjusted in/out mechanically. My solution uses bigger rotor spun slower but stll geared up from hand cranks, electromagnets to allow resistance to be adjusted electronically and the torque on the magnet carrier measured using load cell liberated from cheap electronic scales. The clever bit is keeping it compact enough to fit in unit that can sit over wheelchair while still handling power output of 150W @ 60rpm on handles. Not interested in generating electricity.

Thanks for PM, will respond shortly.

davis

OptimisticBiker wrote:

Was originally going to use a RasPi as I have 2 of them, but no easy way to add small TFT screen economically (unless you know differently?) Can get Arduino board with screen for about £50 on eBay.

Good point. I suppose I'd forgotten about the screen display aspect. Depending on the amount of data you'd want to supply then this might do it for the RasPi. I'd hazard a guess that an LCD screen would be more visible in different lighting conditions than a "normal" laptop-style TFT, which might give you more freedom in placing the hand-cycle unit.

Normal bike trainer based on magnetic 'eddy-current' braking no good for compact hand design, gearing all wrong (small rotor spun at around 400rpm using gearing between 700C tyre and typically 3cm rotor axle). Also uses rare earth magnets on fixed carrier adjusted in/out mechanically. My solution uses bigger rotor spun slower but stll geared up from hand cranks, electromagnets to allow resistance to be adjusted electronically and the torque on the magnet carrier measured using load cell liberated from cheap electronic scales. The clever bit is keeping it compact enough to fit in unit that can sit over wheelchair while still handling power output of 150W @ 60rpm on handles. Not interested in generating electricity.

Nod, understood. 150W just from your arms! :shock:

rjsterry

OptimisticBiker wrote:

Just got back from a meeting with planning consultant and architects. He reckons we'll get this through but it all takes time, another 10 weeks at least By the time building work is done its going to be a year before I get back in my own home His view & experience is that with all government changes to make more 'permitted development' possible, senior planning dept staff dealing with householder applications are struggling to justify their existence or have been let go in favour of junior staff who dont have the experience to see where 'planning policy' can reasonably be relaxed. End result is more refusals on seemingly spurious grounds...

Sounds about right. I'd have a bit more time for the whole system if it didn't seem so keen to allow so much unmitigated crap to be built, but that's another thread. Anyway this hand bike trainer does sound interesting. The RasPi stuff is a bit over my head, but constructing a frame that is stiff enough and small enough to be practical to use sounds like quite a challenge.

optimisticbiker

rjsterry wrote:

... Anyway this hand bike trainer does sound interesting. The RasPi stuff is a bit over my head, but constructing a frame that is stiff enough and small enough to be practical to use sounds like quite a challenge.

Basically aiming to replicate cheaply the arm part of this:



The support mechanicals/frame is relatively easy; the variable resistance trainer element is the clever bit. The 'pod' on top is the screen & control unit.

optimisticbiker

davis wrote:

OptimisticBiker wrote:

Was originally going to use a RasPi as I have 2 of them, but no easy way to add small TFT screen economically (unless you know differently?) Can get Arduino board with screen for about £50 on eBay.

Good point. I suppose I'd forgotten about the screen display aspect. Depending on the amount of data you'd want to supply then this might do it for the RasPi. I'd hazard a guess that an LCD screen would be more visible in different lighting conditions than a "normal" laptop-style TFT, which might give you more freedom in placing the hand-cycle unit.

Already got a 20 x 4 line display on RasPi but need more display capability plus colour is useful. Won't be laptop size, more like 4 - 5 inch.

150W just from your arms! :shock:

Its a design parameter arms typically 25% of legs (was 280w for me) so 75w plus some leeway. I'd bet David Weir does better than 150w tho.

optimisticbiker

Just a little update, life continues much in same vein, been up n down last couple of months but getting out n about more and making best of the end of summer. Still trying to build upper body strengh but plateau'd a bit on that and struggling a bit to make progress.

Had a little wobbly at 7:05am yesterday - 1 year to the minute....

Still fighting Harrow on getting planning permission for house adaptations, hopefully we'll have won that battle before the end of the year, but will probably be June before work is complete.

Still, keeping positive....

msmancunia

Was only thinking about you the other day. Has it really been a year?

The only point worth looking back on is how much you've achieved in the past year, and it sounds as if you've achieved loads. You've had a life changing event, and it will take time to get used to your new life, and that won't happen overnight, but will happen eventually. PM me if you need advice on the fitness thing - I may be able to pick some brains at work.

Headhuunter

It's always going to be tough when anniversaries like this come round but it sounds like you've made progress. I hope things continue to stay positive...

rubertoe

Thanks for the update OB, its always nice to hear from you.

Good luck and best wishes.

walkingbootweather

rubertoe wrote:

Thanks for the update OB, its always nice to hear from you.

Good luck and best wishes.

+ lots

bails87

Good to hear from you, glad you're staying positive.

Stay strong!

jimmypippa

I was wondering how you were too.

KBO.

Wrath Rob

OptimisticBiker wrote:

Still trying to build upper body strengh but plateau'd a bit on that and struggling a bit to make progress.

London Marathon?

velohutts

Chin up and all that, fingers crossed on the planning solutions and it all sorts itself out.

Good to hear from you , hard to believe it's a year gone by.

VH