Bought a plot in North Dorset so that we could scratch a self-build itch that started over 30 years ago. We have been promising ourselves that we would do this for that long. Never been able to get ourselves in that position for one reason or another .
We are in the very fortunate position of being retired, having enough capital and now owning a plot in North Dorset.
Planning obtained! Should be able to start in the new year (2025) The plan is for a single-storey house. Flat (green) roof, Woodcrete, timber-clad and as eco as possible. Looking at passive but probably will not get certified.
That document states that the "The service pipe must be clearly labelled at the boundary with the correct plot number/property number"! Obviously this is for housing estate but I cant see anywhere that it states that water meter is on your property?
Presumably this is a UU thing. I thought water meters were generally fitted outside the property boundary. This was certainly the case for us with Wessex Water.
It was always Wessex Water that was the difficulty, the SSE guy was always on board with using the same trench.
When we first had the WW guy out he said that they just wont share the trench.
As I said,it was only due to the fact that the SSE guy was persistent that it was put in one trench.
We had to work very hard to get the electricity and water in the same trench. At first the Water company said no way and it was only a lot of work by a Southern Electricity guy that made it happen in the end.
Be aware that if the utilty supplies (water/gas/electric/drainage) require a road closure then it is usually months (at least 3 in our case) before it can be done.
Also gone the DeWalt route, very happy so far. Didn't buy everything with batteries,so share out the batteries of the ones supplied with batteries. That way was a bit cheaper. The only downside to that at the mo is lack of case for some of the tools.
We were advised to use crushed concrete as a temporary solution. I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole after our experience with it. Full of crap and turned very dusty.
This was said to us when we were looking at getting both water and electricity across the lane to our plot.
We paid £8370 for Electricity and £6840 for water last January (SSE and Wessex Water).
After much toing and froing and discussion and a very helpful SSE guy we eventually got them to utilise the same trench across the road (dug by WW). This didn't happen until July!
At the same time SSE changed their charging scheme and so the £8370 reduced significantly to about £2.5k, and we are still chasing them for more money back as the many iterations of the plan to get to our temporary box were incorrect and they did not use the same length of cable as designed.
Isn't the future the ability to store in car as well as house batteries and then pull back stored power from car if necessary. Cars contain a lot of storage (40-60 kWh according to AI 😁)