If you don't have about a hundred square metres of sandy soil for your soakaway, though, the Environment Agency will not allow you to discharge your liquor, and you have to have a more expensive sewage treatment plant. Wood-burning stoves or even open fires can be fitted with back boilers and the heat piped up to feed radiators in the bathroom and bedroom. In my view this is more sensible than using them to heat the hot water cylinder. But a slightly more sophisticated system, using motorised valves, can do both.Sewage in the country is interesting. You can also heat food on them during power cuts (see above).

These have improved remarkably in recent years, and the latest ones have thermostats controlling the electricity input as well as the heat output, so you no longer have to phone the neighbours to switch them on the night before you arrive. They run on off-peak electricity, which is a by-product of the nuclear power programme. (Atomic piles have to run all the time, so the generating companies have millions of megawatts going to waste through the night. That's why they sell it cheap.)If you don't approve of nuclear power or fossil fuels, you can always have a wood-burning stove These are a lot of fun and good for roasting chestnuts. You can have your own propane gas tank in the garden, filled by tanker, but it will be expensive and unsightly and has to be some distance from the house in case it, er .. explodes.

Or you can have oil in a tank next to the house, which, again, can be a bit of an eyesore and will always have a slight leak. If you see a country house with a gas or oil tank, it probably belongs to ex-townies who could not conceive of life without central heating. Cynics say the gas and oil suppliers - usually one and the same - are waiting until enough townies have moved to the country to quadruple the cost of these fossil fuels, overnight.The locals heat their homes with electric night storage heaters. Your best bet is to live on a road frequented by milk tankers; they have to get through every day, so the snow plough will keep the road open.Electricity and the old-fashioned telephone are usually available in the countryside, which is just as well, because you will be very dependent on electricity, and your mobile phone is unlikely to work. Both services will probably reach you via overhead cables, which are prone to damage from falling branches, winter gales and stampeding combine harvesters. Think about back-up systems.Country cottages are a lot colder than town houses; this is because cities are warmer and because country cottages have more exposed outside surfaces. (A mid-terraced house loses heat only through two outside walls, front and back; in the country you are more likely to be on your own.) So heating can be a significant expense.Gas in the countryside is rare.

If getting out at all costs is essential, then this means a proper concrete surface And that's just to get you on to the road. We're talking services here - the roads, pipes and wires that connect your dream home to the outside world. First, roads. Naturally, you want to be as far away from a busy road as possible, but what happens in the extremes of winter weather? Your drive should be well drained, frost proof and easy to clear of snow. Local authorities can require each converted flat to have parking for two cars. Where a large house is converted into three flats, this would mean six spaces. If the only available parking is in the street then permission to convert can be refused.The link between housing and transport looks set to enliven this debate, and the threat of direct action against house building will not be one the new Government will enjoy dealing with..

THAT cosy country cottage is a dream for many city dwellers, but before you rush off to the estate agents it is worth considering,that the quality you most seek in a rural retreat - isolation - could be the one that causes you most problems. Now, as though making up for lost time, car parking has come to dominate housing design.Simon Festing is critical of the way parking provision restricts housing associations trying to convert Victorian houses into flats, and so house more people in existing inner-city buildings. Too much icing spoils the cake." Mr Pickard is also scathing about Poundbury's supposed non-reliance on the car; he feels the whole village is designed around its road system, and that the accommodation caters mainly for car-owning families.Car parking has become one of the most important planning factors. Older towns and citieshave been unable to cope with the requirements of millions of parked cars. It was not until the 1970s that developers adopted garages and off-road parking spaces as standard. Quentin Pickard, an architect and conservation specialist, says: "Poundbury is a mockery of traditional village design, with its dinky pitched roofs and gables. And there is far too much variation in materials - most traditional villages have a far more limited range of materials and house types.