Great Extensions Appeal Fulfilled!

 

Arthur's Impression

Arthur's Impression

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Building completed.

Kitchen-diner extension = ~£45,000.00
This is now completed. The eventual cost was £38,000 c. Fittings added another £7,000 c.

Building the Kitchen-Diner Extension


Extension to Vihara
This is now completed. The eventual cost was ~£200,000/ €245,000

Building the Vihara Extension

Accommodation Block

This is now completed. The eventual cost £250,000 plus/ €280,000

Extension of Kitchen-Diner

This was completed by May 2012 at a cost of £45,000

https://picasaweb.google.com/114796630846059182487/05KitchenDinerExtensionDecember2011

Cooking and Dining Facilities

Dining area
The cooking facilities are ample, but the small dining area is uncomfortable.
The extension of the kitchen-diner outward would allow a much more spacious area.

Retreatants ought not to enter the kitchen area where food is stored.

A sink for washing their pots and a table for tea making facilities in the extension would obviate the need for retreatants to wander into the kitchen.
This also means that food hygiene can be more strictly controlled.

Meeting area
All the rooms in both properties are bedrooms, save the ones used for specific purposes i.e. meditation room, small office, store room, toilets and kitchen-diner.

So this extension would also give us a meeting place where we could sit in comfy chairs for meetings, discussions and conversation. This is sorely needed.

Finally, this would allow the extra large room in the bungalow to be used for another resident teacher. This is important for at present we cannot offer a continual programme for the resident teacher travels for three months of the year and the visiting teacher comes for two. Should we be able to accommodate two teachers, our offering, especially to the local community in the form of evening classes, would be much more satisfactory.

 

Extensions to Vihara

This was completed by February 2014 at a cost of ~£200,000

Designer Drawing of Extensions to Bungalow

 Extension to Meditation Room

Again this is one of space. Even with eight retreatants, plus teacher and facilitator, there is little sense of a comfortable area separating them.
There are times when we have to accommodate as many as 20 people on day retreats and feast days.
This extension would give us the space we need.

Extension to bedroom of Annexe/Vihara

This room was formerly the kitchen of this ‘granny flat’. It is now a small cramped bedroom.

It would fulfil two purposes:

It would now become the resident teacher’s room. The small bedroom would be left in tact and the extension would be a sitting room.

The sitting room is large enough to be turned into a bedroom to accommodate a visiting teacher when the resident teacher is away. The former small bedroom would be locked for it would contain the personal affects of the present resident teacher.

Extension of Annexe into a ‘sun room’

There are two main types of meditation practice – sitting and walking.

The meditation room should be used only for sitting meditation, but since there is no indoor facility when the weather is bad, it needs to used for walking meditation. This is quite a drawback because it means that those who would wish to continue sitting meditation are now disturbed.

The sun room would be mainly to fulfil this need for a walking meditation area.
(We already have a large area with decking, but this is unsuitable for all weathers.)
In a good meditation centre, the two areas for sitting and walking are close to each other. This fulfils that criteria.

It would also offer a larger meeting room, should that be needed for one annual major feast day in May – Buddha Day.

Interview Room

Personal interviews are carried out in the meditation room. This has been most inconvenient. It is an interruption to the meditation sitting. This will be one of the most welcome additions.

Peaked gable over the Shrine Room and bay window.

This building will be the spiritual centre of Satipanya and it would be appropriate to manifest that in the design.

Normally a religious building will move to some sort of peak, whether a peaked roof or tower and so on. Unfortunately, the Planners would not allow this since it was out of sync with the other part of the building.

The Shrine Room at the centre of the sacred space would be highlighted by the small peaked gable and bay window.

This was the accompanying letter to the Planning Department outlining the different extensions:

"Satipanya Buddhist Trust was granted full planning permission to establish a religious training centre (C2 Use – application number: M2006 1039) on 18th January 2006. The premises were subsequently bought on April 2nd, 2007. We began offering courses from July 2007. From the very start the courses were generally full and over the past four years this has continued.

On June 26th this year, there will be a ceremony to bless the Stupa. Permission to erect a stupa was given on 20th January, 2009. For the Trust and members alike this is the grounding of the establishment and expresses our commitment to Satipanya as retreat centre. We have now reached a financial position where extensions are possible.

Although we limit the number of retreatants to eight, very early on we realised that the facilities would in time need to be enlarged if the centre was to give a premium service to retreatants. Basically it was too small, a little cramped and has definite short comings, which are explained below. Last but not least, this will give full and easy access to wheelchairs. We have had only three applications so far all of which we have had to turn down. Once the centre is known to be wheelchair accessible, more will apply. The following extensions will develop Satipanya into a premier meditation centre."

 

 Accommodation Block

This was completed by June 2018 at a cost of ~£250,000

New Septic Tank and Clearing the Site completed in May.

The build started mid-July  2017 and completed by June 2018

The process of building in photos.

It comprises eight single Rooms and Disabled Toilet  Annex elevations   Annex layouts

Reasons for extensions to Accomodation Build

We aim to make the property self-sufficient in energy needs.
An array of solar panels has been installed, generating 8000 KwH per annum.

An air-source heater has yet to be installed.

Eight Extra Rooms

Again this is a question of space.

Retreatants almost always ask for their own room. At this time we only have two single rooms. This extension would allow us to give single rooms to everyone.

It is also a question of privacy. For instance, many elderly people come who have ‘nightly calls’ that disturb the other person.

And there are the needs for spiritual practice.

We have retreatants who stay with us especially in the summer and winter for various lengths of time form one to twelve weeks. Only a few stay more that two weeks, but these retreatants are disturbed by new arrivals into a double bedroom.

For the type of spiritual practice we offer, the greater the solitude the better. It is occasionally the case that a retreatant will meditate entirely within their rooms. These rooms would be dedicated meditator rooms.

Wheel Chair Access

As yet we do not have the facilities for wheel chair access. And we have had enquiries.
One of the rooms will be a dedicated disabled room with access to a disabled toilet.
This means that there will be easy access to all necessary rooms by wheel chair: the dining room, the meditation room and ‘sun room’.

 

PV Cells and Air Source Heating

Cost of  ~£45,000

Completed in May 2019.  Photos