Mulberry View

You've certainly had fun! Hopefully we've endured the worst year, it can only get better from here, right?! Looks like a lovely build though.

Oooooh lovely!! Current plan is to seek to put planning permission in over Christmas, with approval (all being well), coming around March. We would market the current property almost immediately and look to align its sale completion with our planning approval. It's a decent property, in a desirable area, the agent is confident. That would in essence allow us to move into our caravan then. We are already working on the land to clear it and do what we can, so far nothing is detrimental to either outcome (planning approval or not). Hopefully we can start to talk to builders now to understand where they are with their work, it sounds as though that's the key for us and the bit that's largely out of our control.

That is all very insightful. I realise taking on this build will be a deep-dig for anyone and we'll certainly be making sacrifices. For us, this is the path from mortgage to mortgage-free, but not only that, into a modern, well insulated, efficient home to our spec. 12-18 months of 'pain' seems like a small price to pay as being in that position before we reach 50 is a goal we never thought we'd achieve. I do get a little worried when I hear people, you for one, speaking of projects that take several years, so I'm keen to mitigate that risk as well as is possible. I'm hoping that a substantial chunk of cash in the bank to start with will help.

I can't imagine living in one with pets and/or kids. There is just 2 of us. When we did our Bungalow up 15 years ago, we moved into it completely derelict, it'd been empty for 10 years. The single-glazed windows were all broken and there wasn't really a habitable room. Ceilings down, floors out and mostly back to bare brick, whilst trying to live in it. We had a 10-year-old daughter at the time. Could this be worse than that?

Those whose builds have taken longer than 12 months, what was the primary reason for delay? Cash flow?

But why would a 10+ year old Caravan depreciate that much in a year-or-so? Surely it's a bit like a car? They lose all their money early on then level out?

At £15k you appear to be able to get a 'Winterised' model, with Double Glazing and Central Heating. Most of our time in it with be over the Spring/Summer, though we might have to endure a bit of the Autumn/Winter, by which time we'll be a bit more hardened to it?!

We've had a chance to rent a place, but it'd be £600/month, that's just over £7000 for the year, plus removal costs and we'd not be on-site. It's a small house that someone has bought to renovate and we'd have it for a year before they do it up. I can really see the advantage of being on-site, being able to do odd hours here and there without having to travel, being there for deliveries etc. I'm genuinely interested to know what your caravan experience was like and why you found it so bad?

What's your opinion? Spend a little and be miserable or spend a bit more and be a little less miserable? I know it's going to be hard to live in a Caravan, but for so many reasons it makes sense. We are determined not to delve into the very dark places that I know we could if needed, but would rather not as we want to still be fairly sane at the end of it! We have a big plot, so can site it well away from the build to avoid damage. If we spend a bit, say £12-15k for something a bit nicer, perhaps 8-10 years old and look after it, surely it's done most of its depreciation it'll still be worth a similar figure in a year? We're hoping to properly kick our build off in March/April, so hopefully after the Winter and would aim to be able to move into the new house, either finished or not quite, in time for Christmas. I can accept some amount of cost, as our circumstances mean that we'd be paying our mortgage off. My Wife also needs to work from 'home', so we could do with some choice, which you don't seem to get at the £4k price-point.

That was my thought. Someone I know had to indemnify as his deeds granted him enough rights for access, but not for services. Who knows, I certainly don't want to pull the wool over the landowners eyes, that's not my intent, but this feels like a really easy way to get the current house off this Septic Tank!

My thought is that we'll need to tie some legal loose-ends up if we develop, so this will probably form part of that work. I'm debating whether I'm better to grab the opportunity now to put the physical pipe in for what little work it'll take, but wondering if he might think I'm trying to lift his leg if I later announce that I want to develop my property and that's not how I want to be. I think we'll end up having a candid chat with them soon, where we can gauge their feelings on the whole thing.

If I were to feel confident that the current owner will stay in his property for the forseeable, could we potentially look to indemnify the risk after 12 months to protect us from a potential new owner kicking off? It's not a bad driveway situation in all honesty, the part we'd need to connect to is upstream of the landowners property. The 'upper' part of the driveway myself and my neighbour use is of no real interest to the landowner. Of course I know he owns it and I respect that, but he doesn't care much about it. He lives away, this is a second home for him. They spent an absolute fortune converting it, which is why I think they'll own it for many years to come and I know they'd like to move up into the property as their main home one day. Ultimately I guess, we'd have to keep in our minds that in the worst case scenario, we might have to go back to a tank if it all kicked off. The current Septic tank is in dire need of sorting out, it's got a 70ft Swamp Cypress growing (very well I might add) literally right on top of it, so I find it hard to imagine that the roots from that haven't torn right through the current arrangement.

There's no doubt about it, the distance from our desired build position to the place we'd put this initial manhole is significant. In fact, if you refer to the above diagram, we're hoping to build in the South-East corner. With the issue of fall aside (I'll need to investigate that), should I be concerned about a drainage run this long for any other reason? For proportion, the whole plot is about an acre, so I guess the run from the new build to the manhole might be 70m!

Excellent. The good thing here is that everything is downhill, even the theoretical pipe we'd need to serve the new build, so the chamber wouldn't have to be particularly deep. I can see a slight risk that we might need to use a 'backdrop' connection as it's a little steep as it approaches where it would connect to the 'Blue'. Thanks.

Could I just take advantage of his kind offer and run a pipe up to my driveway for now and potentially connect one or both properties to it at my leisure?

Yes.

Our house is on a Private driveway currently used by 3 houses, we are the furthest of the 3 away from the road and our house has been on a Septic Tank since it was built in the 1950's. If we were to develop our plot, as is our intention, we had thought we'd put both the current house and the new build on modern treatment plants and we still might if its advantageous. However, the other 2 houses are connected to the sewer. The owner of the driveway suggested to me that he would be happy for us to connect to the sewer pipe that runs along his driveway. What stops us doing that and not even involving the local water board? Do these types of drainage connections have a capacity limit? Here's a diagram of what is there at the moment. The Blue shows the existing drain, serving 2 properties. The red arrow is the position of our Septic Tank (roughly), the green being the theoretical route for us to connect to the current drain, along with a further branch should we divide our plot. This question is not about the legal access rights that I know we'll need, just about the physical connection at this stage. .

So now we're beginning to gain a little traction with our self-build project, can someone offer a bit of guidance about key stages and actions we need to consider, other than the obvious. We are getting near the point where we should be making steps towards securing the funding and onboarding an architect, so any guidance on how to be tax/cost efficient during this process would be great.

I gather you need a 'business e-services' account in order to use the Land Registry MapSearch service? I want to be able to view an area broken down by title numbers. I have one here that my solicitor did a while ago, but I want to view something that's a little out of the area they covered and I can't ask them to do it now. Any knowledge?

The missus is nagging me to buy books as we consider kicking off our self-build project. Any suggestions?

Not looked in great detail right at this moment, but that looks very promising in terms of usefulness. Thanks!!

Just adding to this, take great care when cleaning your Quooker tanks out. I cleaned my Combi tank this year and decided to go a bit further in removing that tremendous level of scale that was on the inside of the tank. I didn't go at it with a chisel, I was pretty careful. I reinstated the tank and all was well. Seemingly. After a few days, I noticed that it was very hot in the cupboard where the Quooker lives. Then I noticed that the tank was too hot to touch. I thought it had perhaps blown a thermostat, but in fact I had managed to pierce the inner wall of the tank. Quooker wanted £750 for the replacement tank, which, after some persuasion they offered to reduce to £450! I only paid £350 for the whole kit originally! In the end, I opted to go for the smaller 3 Litre tank, which is more than sufficient for us at a cost of £250 as we wouldn't be without it. Expensive mistake though.

The divided plot, as it stands, will be left with a large (70ft) Lime Tree, 2 pairs of quite attractive 60-70ft Scot's Pines, a 50ft Hornbeam (there is a second that might have to go) and a really 'architectural' ancient Red Mulberry, along with mature a Maple and Silver Birch and one or two others. The soil is incredible for gardening, there is lots of wildlife, probably owing largely to the wooded area just seen at the top of the picture, less than 1/4 mile away. But looking at that drone view really does make me think how easy it would be to get 6+ houses on that whole plot!! We could take the money and run!!

Crude drawing, sorry!! This shows where we expect to divide, including the access. Also, our current idea about placement. We're open to suggestions, but that gives us a house at the top of a slight incline with a downhill South/South-West view, depending on final orientation. I expect to face the least amount of objection by building in that part of the plot (the closest 2 neighbours are behind a mature tree/hedge line), plus the new house will be fairly well shielded from the current house by a very tall area of landscaping.

Oh don't!! I've been beating myself up over this. We took this on as we had a vision of a beautiful 'forever' home, in a substantial mature plot, which, although close to amenities, is very private. I also can't get out of my head the idea of splitting it up further and finding another plot for us.