AliMcLeod

I don't think he had any comeback from the purchase - the legal docs mentioned the pipeline but at no point did it state where it was. The drawings that showed the pipeline location were only shown on the already-approved planning, but these were not specifically part of the plot purchase. I guess he'd have to have shown that he was misled in the plot purchase. He has changed his house and has kept the outlook south (it overlooks the River Forth) but has changed his entrance to the east. But, as i said above, his new plans seem to have the original (wrong) pipeline location and the house now sits on the no build zone. The restriction on the no build zone effectively boils down to nothing with foundations (so that the pipeline owner could access it to perform maintenance) or deep roots or a heavy load , so we could always have used that space, but it is more flexible for us now.

I don't believe he had such a planning condition, but the north-east corner of the building would then be encroaching towards the road, and although there was no planning condition as such, I suspect planning won't have wanted it any closer than it is. As it is, that plot owner encountered issues when they started the dig for the foundation work, with the ground giving away under the pipeline. The proposed solution was sheet piling, but that was adding £10Ks to the cost. They then decided to change the design and go for new planning, but as far as I can tell, those were submitted using the original "wrong" pipeline location. They were approved last week, but, as we've learned, planning don't care about the location of the pipeline. The only condition is that the pipeline owner must sign off the foundation plan before digging can commence. His structural engineer is also using the original pipeline drawings. I've pointed out that his approved plans have the wrong pipeline location and his house is on the no-build zone, but he seems keen to let events unfold...

@Ferdinand Yup, this is what they were going to go for. It's since changed for a number of reasons, but shows the reduction of the usable space without challenging what is allowed on the no build zone. I really feel for them - it could have been us.

Those beyond a certain again will remember Spot The Ball, the competition on the sports pages back in the 80s/90s. It was an action photo from a football match with the ball missing – you had to mark the picture with an X where you thought the ball was and send it in with your entry fee. If the middle of your X aligned with the middle of the ball, you won the prize. Except, it wasn’t quite like that. What actually happened was that judges also guessed where they thought ball was, and if your guess matched their guess, then you won the prize. I now wonder whether a similar process was used to provide documentation to us, and to the purchaser of our neighbouring plot, as to where the oil and gas pipeline ran in relation to both our plots. Here is the location of the pipeline, as shown in the approved plans for the plot we purchased. More importantly, it is also where the purchasing of the neighbouring plot was told the pipeline was. And here is the actual location of the pipeline, updated after the pipeline owners had been out with their magic wand and a subsequent dig to perform a visual inspection of the pipeline: The ball is not where they thought it was! The pipeline owner has a legal responsibility (as defined in the Deed of Servitude) to maintain pipeline markers at boundary points, and you can see two of them at the border of our plot (roughly left of the markers) and our neighbours plot, at the front of the wall. One is the original marker that existed when we bought the plot, and the second was added after the dig for a visual inspection. There is also a marker at the back of the plot, and that is where the discrepancy was - the pipeline was meters from where the approved planning document indicated. I never did find out how this could happen – we don’t know if the marker at the back of the plot was originally in the wrong location (the pipeline owners insists this was never the case) or where the architects who did the original planning permission got their information from, but someone messed up big time. I’d like to have thought the specific location of the pipeline would have come up during the plot purchase process, but whilst the missives etc clearly mentioned the pipeline it did not specifically state where the pipeline was in relation to either plot – that information was only part of the planning drawings, which were independent (from a legal perspective) of the plot purchase. Thankfully for my wife and I, the new location of the pipeline did not impact us in any way, and in some respects would make our life easier, as we were farther from the no-build zone. Our neighbours were not so lucky – they had to change their plans to move their house and shrink it using a stepped design, so as to not have anything on the no build zone. I’m not sure how far he explored any legal routes available to him, but it seemed he had nowhere to go as the purchase of the plot itself did not specify where the pipeline was. My learn from this: Don’t trust something because it is on a plan or a drawing. Ask questions and get confirmation. Caveat Emptor.

So, after a flurry of initial blog posts back in March and April, I went quiet. Real life (home and work) got a bit mental and I just didn't have the time to post more. And, my wife and I have also done a fair bit of reflection on the way forward. I'd gotten about 2/3 of the way through the journey to where we are today. I've covered finding the plot, and the decision whether to buy it, initial view on wayleaves and servitudes, tweaking the design that came with the plot, clearing tons of mud from the site, issues with the design and selecting a new architect, changing the design to correct the flaws with the previous one and the consequences of that and finally, changing the internal floor plan with the new design. I was hoping to have more time to fully bring us up to date - as I said in my original post, I'm finding this post-documentation of the process quite cathartic - but that is looking unlikely, so thought I'd do a few summary posts covering the major events not yet covered (in no particular order): It was found out the 3 foot diameter high pressure oil and gas pipeline that ran through the border of our plot and the neighbouring plot (with a 3.5m No Build zone either side of the centre line) did not actually run through the border of our plot and the neighbouring plot as per the drawings provided by the builder - it turned out that it actually ran more through our neighbours plot, much to their obvious displeasure and to our obvious relief. It still don't understand how this was not identified during the purchases process for either of us. The fun of working with planning and their seemingly arbitrary ability to change their minds and make decisions based on what seems to be purely subjective opinions A restructuring at the company I worked for meant that my role was no longer required in the UK - I had the option of either moving to a similar role in the US or taking redundancy. My wife cares for her seriously ill mother so the former was not an option... The builder we had lined up to perform the build (and who had been contracted by our neighbour to complete their build) went into liquidation, with a significant number of creditors We had (and are still having) great challenges in getting agreement on a foundation design that works for a build on the sloping site, that does not put undue load onto the pipeline and that is not prohibitively expensive. eg. £40K for a proposed sheet piling solution - that was in addition to the costs of foundations The need (or not) for a Principal Designer (this took place before the excellent thread on the subject on this forum) Understanding our responsibilities and, perhaps more importantly, our rights, under the Deed of Servitude that exists over the plot in favour of the pipeline owner And finally, and most pertinently, that we're seriously considering just sitting on the plot for now, and coming back to it in a number of years when life is a little less complex (is it ever?) I'll look to cover the above in the next few days. But before I go, I have had small snatches of time where I've been able to read sections of the forum, and I'd like to reiterate what others have said: this place is a brilliant resource and is frequented by an immense number of people who are willing to help others by sharing their knowledge and experience. I have already learned so much, and for that I thank you.

No problem - thanks again for taking the time to provide your thoughts.

I'm not as familiar with the regs. as I'd like to be - i was leaving that to others, but have had to get more involved. I'll have a read. We tried a NMA with the original design (two dual-pitched roofs) - we requested an increase in the roof ridge. It was kicked out almost immediately. That approach was recommended by the architectural design agency we were using at the time and we were later told it would never have been accepted. £100 wasted and one of the reasons we got a proper architect. I've not gotten to this part in our story yet, but we've been forced to add a 1.8m obscure glass panel to the west end of our balcony, as it looks onto the window next door. That neighbour wrote a letter of relief saying they had no issues but the council kicked that back saying they had to consider future owners too. I've not looked into it for a while, but I thought we could. I might be getting mixed up with extending a warrant though. The original approval letter was 22nd May, so we'd have another 6 weeks if that is the case.

Wow, thanks for this. I figure we've about 2 meters to the west of our plot, with another 2 meters to the house there, but I'd have to do some work to determine the distance based the angels. Here's the house to the west. And the gap on their side (I took this picture as we're not sure if we'll need a retaining wall for our stairs at that side of the house - i think our mud is holding up those steps): And the site plan: It's the vertical planes I need to work out to determine the actual distance. I agree, there's no reason we should not be allowed windows on the east elevation though. The 12 week appeal period has long passed.

We were making good progress with the architect; we had agreed on the new external look and received an updated internal floorplan, which was a big improvement over the layout that came with the plot. We received the first draft from the architect on 7th July 2016, and agreed on the drawings to submit to Planning on 18th August. During those 5-6 weeks, my wife and I sat with the plans, "walking" through the house, working out how we’d use each space, and going back to the architects with suggested changes, questions and tweaks. Looking back through my records, we had 7 revisions of the drawings, though at one of those was solely a request for the addition of dimensions to the drawings. The main changes we made during this process were: Kitchen The original plans had bi-fold doors, but I’ve heard bad things about their long-term air-tightness, particularly in areas where the wind can gust to fairly significant levels, so we replaced this opening with sliding doors. We discussed a number of options here: 2 doors or 3, multi-track or single track, all sliding, or some fixed panes, but ended up with a single fixed glass pane and a single slider, with the overall width aligning with the window in the bedroom above for external aesthetics. Living Room As with the Kitchen, we changed the bi-fold doors to sliding doors. The wall of glass is south facing over the River Forth and will be battered by storms for parts of the year – there was no way I’d have subjected bi-fold doors to that sort of weather. Living Level Bedroom This was the major change we made to the plans. My wife has a joint condition that could cause mobility issues in future years. We didn’t know this when we bought the plot with a fairly steep slope and designed a 3 storey house with a lot of stairs and with our master bedroom suite on the top floor… In partial mitigation of this, we decided to combine the two smaller bedrooms on this floor into a second master bedroom suite. This would give us the option, should the need ever arise, to relocate ourselves to this level. At this point, we also briefly discussed whether we could introduce a lift into the design somewhere, but the cost put us off somewhat. Looking back, I now wonder if we should have at ensured we could accommodate that in future, although it is not necessarily too late to do that. Entrance Hall I’ve not mentioned this so far, but one of the features we did like the original plot plans was a glass floor in the entrance hall, to allow light to flood into the basement. That had disappeared from the plans, so we added that back in. With us combining the two bedrooms, we also manged to address the issue we had of limited storage just inside the front door and added new cupboards there. Here’s the floor plan that was submitted to planning. We also extended the terrace at the front of the house, to allow us to set up a table and chairs to enjoy the view. This seemingly small change would cause us all sorts of problems in future. Master Bedroom Suite We didn’t think the location of the bed in the previous design made the best use of the views over the River Forth, so we moved the bed into the middle of the room, sitting in front of a false wall (probably to be around shoulder height). This provided us with more storage (we envisage a shoe store on the back side of this wall) and also a dressing area of sorts behind that false wall. This change meant we had to change the windows, to accommodate the new location of the built-in wardrobes. Upper Hall I asked the architect to make the double height area above the entrance door a bit deeper, so we moved the door to the Family Room to the north a bit and got rid of the store cupboard at the top of the stairs. Family Bathroom We added a rooflight into the family bathroom, since it had no natural light. Here’s what the upper floor plan looked like The basement area remained largely unchanged: The externals changed a bit to accommodate the new internal layouts: And a sectional view: It was now in the hands of the Planning Officer. Next, I'll share a little bit more on the various other options we discussed during the design process, including the size/position of that north facing window at the stairs.

Thanks @IanR How did the aluminium price compare to the Zinc? Our neigbhour to the west used a membrane, but their roof is around 5 degree so the only place you can really see the roof is from the back of their (and our) garden.

@Dudda Thanks for that - it looks good. Do you know roughly what that cost per m2?

Thanks again @Ferdinand. You've got me thinking on that rear window again - if I wanted to go for full height, I'd hope to get it through as a non-material variation. Kitchen doors - we very quickly moved from bi-fold to sliders, we did consider patio doors, but wanted a bigger opening - you'll see that in future floorplans. I've the same concerns about the long-term air-tightness of bi-fold. Accessibility - some brilliant input here and i'm going to print this out and keep it and discuss with SWMBO. Its actually very pertinent for us as my wife has a joint condition that could affect her mobility in years to come. We've changed the (not yet posted) internal floor layout as a nod to that potential future, but its not the full solution that a lift would provide. Love the ideas for the back garden access. i'll have another think about the lift, though i can't see where we'd carve out space (sounds daft for house of that size) without having to move into the "underbuilding" area on the basement level which I've been told will increases costs.

I said aluminium, didn't I The roof is actually going to be Zinc (I do love the look of that material) - its the downpipes and guttering that might be aluminium. Fixed above. Our roofs are around 10-12 degrees (from memory) - each roof is slightly different

The PC is on the latest version of the design you see above - fundamentally the same exterior, though we've changed the internal layout a bit. The original planning runs out next month (3 years) - we did wonder whether it would be worth extending it. In that plan, all windows on the west elevation are either marked opaque (bathrooms) or frosted (dining room) - you can just about see that on the floor plans in this post. There is no equivalent planning condition though.

We queried that, but that's ok - its just badly worded. The "hereby approved" refers to the house with those window as designed, but we cannot add any more.

Based on our brief, our architect had taken the original designs that came with our plot, utilised the same house footprint, and had come up with a new set of designs and internal floor layouts. We had two choices for the external design - a flat roof or two mono-pitched roofs. After a little discussion between my wife and I, and with to the architect, we agreed on the two mono-pitched roofs design. The house to the west of us had an almost flat roof (they initially submitted plans for a flat roof, but the planners insisted on a 5 degree gradient), and the proposed one to the east had the same plans as those that came with our plot, albeit a little smaller, with a mono-pitched and a dual pitched roof, with dormers. We spoken to the owners of the house to the west, and they said that planners were adamant that they could not have a flat roof. We felt we'd get the same decision if we wanted to go down that route, but we also felt that the two-mono pitched roofs would add a bit more character to the house and fitted in better with the overall streetscape. So, this was our new house design. Now, this seems obvious to me now, but what I hadn't quite realised at the time how much roof layout of the the original design had reduced the internal foor space of the house. After we'd made the decision to go with the two mono-pitched design, we let our builder know and asked for an updated cost plan. As part of our brief to the architect, we'd also reminded him that we lived in Scotland, so probably didn't need there balconies, so this was reduced to one. This was bound to save costs, we thought, and made sure our builder took that into account. However, our builder soon got back to us asking if we'd realised that the new roof design had increased our floorspace from around 250 m² to around 340m² and, even with the simpler roofs, and the removal of the balconies, that would therefore increase the build cost. The change had also increased the ceiling heights from 2.4 meters on each level (from the bottom up) to 2.5m, 2.675m and 2.5 meters. Finally, he pointed out that the change of slope on the roofs to under 20 degrees meant that we could not longer use slate for our roof and would have to either use a membrane or aluminium zinc, with the resulting additional costs. Overall, the above increased our build estimated cost by around 20%, including a doubling of the cost of the roof (it would also mean changing soffits, fascia, downpipes etc). That amount was starting to eat into our contingency, but was something we could afford, even if it eventually meant a little bit more on the mortgage. Looking back, I do wonder whether we could/should have shrunk the house a bit at that time, saving some costs but still having a house that would still be big enough for our needs - we don't need that space day-on-day but do have family visiting from London and Dublin a few times a year. And, more space is good, right? I've been happy with our architect, but the changes to the house design, and in particular the reduction in the roof gradient precluding us from using slate, has taught me to always think about, or ask about, the potential consequences of any other proposed changes.

Thanks once again @Ferdinand for your thoughtful input. You're right that some of this is coming next, but I'll answer here too. 1st floor back bedroom and shower - with this plan, they'd have to go upstairs to the family bathroom, or use the en-suite on that floor - neither ideal, but a future change mitigates this. E/W elevations - we've houses either side (one existing, one in planning) and we have a Planning Condition relating to that "No windows or openings shall be formed in the east or west elevations of the dwelling hereby approved" We also had to change the the Dining Room window to a high height narrow window - it was either that or obscure glass. Dustbins - probably not enough space (we already have 4) so we'll likely use the space outside the marked area (with a screen at the front, in line with the garage) and then use the bin space for tools/bikes (behind a lockable door). Placement of rear window - good spot, and you're right that the avatar on the drawing is misleading. Here's the section from a later drawing: I wanted full height glass here (the original design had this), but our architect was adamant it would cause overheating and he liked the drama of the window placement with the landing - I'm still not convinced. There's not a view as such out the north elevation (occasional train and school playing field) but if we're going to change something (and we'd have to go back to planning) this would be near the top of the list. Kitchen doors - the original plans had exactly what you've suggested, with the sink on the north wall in front of a window and a side door leading around to the garden, but we made a conscious effort to change that as we like to BBQ and wanted direct access to the back garden. We also very rarely stand in front of the sink for anything other than a minute or so. Rear garden access - this is a bit of a concern of mine - not so much for smaller items, but for during the build, particularly due to the slope. Re. Wheelchairs, we've been advised by our architect that we're passing accessibility regs (we'll see) but i accept its not easy to get someone in a wheelchair up to the living level. We did briefly talk about incorporating a lift (as per a previous comment) but the cost...

@Tennentslager Correct. But you could have stopped at 1

The first decision to be made with the new architect was how to change the external house design to remove the lack of head height in the roofspace, but stay within the existing footprint. In the napkin sketches, the architect had suggested two mono-pitched roofs to replace the existing dual-pitched roofs and we immediately liked that design. However, he didn’t immediately just go with that design and at the start of July 2016, he sent us through a couple of options, one with a flat roof and one with a sloped roof. Before giving his preference, he wanted our opinion: Option 1: Option 2: I initially preferred the flat roof option, whereas my wife preferred the sloping roof. I'd be interested to hear what others think and I'll share what we went for in the next post. Our brief to the architect had let him know that we liked the open plan living/dining area of the original house design, and the location of the kitchen – although north facing, we like a kitchen that opens onto our back garden as we like to barbecue - yes, even in Scotland! Here were the revised floorplans at that time: We liked what the architect had done, but, as is often the case, its not until you see something in front of you that you realise you want it changed, so we did go back and make some further alterations to the internal floorplan. I'll cover those in a future post.

Its nearing the end of May 2016, and we’d owned our plot for 10 months. In that time we had: Pretty much decided on a builder, although we’d not signed anything contractually Cleared around 1000 tonnes of soil off the site Found out that the approved plans that came with the house were unworkable for anyone whose ancestors originated from somewhere other than The Shire, Middle Earth Come to the conclusion that while architectural technicians are great at CAD, but they are not necessarily thinking of your project as a place where someone has to live Even ignoring the usability issues with the house design, we realised that us not having an opportunity to present a brief in the process meant that the house did not really work for us Self-building (or not, as is our case) is stressful We were sat at a talk the Homebuilding and Renovating show in Glasgow and has just decided that we needed to find a new architect. And, what better time was there to do that was there than at that show? So, we spent the next few hours speaking to some of the architects that were there, with differing impressions. The one major constraint we were imposing was that, because of the existence of the pipeline along the edge of our plot, and the assurance from our builder that the foundation plan was close to being approved by the pipeline owner, we were very reluctant to change the footprint of the house. Doing so would have meant coming up with a new foundation design which would have meant significant rework for the structural engineer, and extra cost for us - it wasn’t just redoing the drawings, but pages and pages of retaining wall calculations. I’ve always been pretty good at maths, but this stuff is gobbledygook to me! We didn’t limit ourselves to architects at the show though – for the following few weeks after the show we also researched architects in the local area, looked at websites and asked people we knew for recommendations (although we didn’t know any self-builders so accepted this would not necessarily provide a rich vein of options). We spoke to quite a few architects during that time – some were put off by the constraint to use the existing footprint, some by the complexity of the site. Some didn't even bother to respond, which in my mind was Darwin's natural selection at play. We eventually had a short-list of three architects, all of whom we met on site. We had put together a high level brief detailing what we liked about the current house plans, what we didn’t like so much, and also what other requirements we had, and shared that with the architects. In reality, we would have been happy with either one of the short-listed architects – all had good ideas about how the house and the plot - but in the end we chose based on a mix of cost, flexibility and relationship One of the architects wanted to charge based on 6% of the build cost and would not shift from that. I am strongly against such a charging structure and it effectively ruled him out. Whilst our brief was to use the existing footprint, one of the other architects spent a lot of time suggesting alternative layouts for the site – he had some were great ideas, and I wish we could have had the flexibility to do so, but it put a concern in my mind about his ability to follow the brief. He worked on a fixed fee per stage, but his costs were also a fair bit more than the architect we finally chose. We got on really well with the architect we finally chose. After meeting on site, we sat for a coffee and he actually spent some time sketching alternate designs on some napkins (I wish I’d kept those) and he also fully bought into our need to keep the same house footprint. A week or so later, we got his fee proposal through and confirmed that we’d be going ahead. The whole process from first contacting various architects and instructing our selected one took around 6 weeks and after a period of feeling low about the whole process, we were re-invigorated and looking forward to things finally starting to move forward. Next up: The first designs from the new architect

@Rossek9 We're still in the process of speaking to local builders, though I'm amazed how many just do not bother to respond.

@ProDave This PDF gives some background: https://www.lawscot.org.uk/media/583299/prop-servitudes-without-benefited-property-law-society-of-scotland.pdf If you want some bedtime reading, have a search for William Rennie v BP. In particular, this ruling: http://www.cnarb.com/Item/3881.aspx In that case, planning was declined, which is not the case with us. However, prevention of development clause also kicks in if there is "conditional grant of planning permission" which is what we have. There's also quite a few newspaper articles about the legal fight after T-in-the-Park was forced to move.

@ProDave That's the path we're on. I'd ideally rather work with the pipeline owner than serve the notice (6 months in our case) so I'm trying to determine what the existence of pipeline is costing us in development value. To do that, I ideally get additional sets of foundation drawings. I have the ones that were previously approved by the pipeline owner, but those are onerous expensive to implement, so i'd like to get drawings that cover our responsibilities (solid foundations for our house, no load on pipeline) and drawings for the house on the plot in a mythical no-pipeline world. I'd then need to get prices based on the same. But, we're having great difficulty in getting our structural engineer to engage, and even getting builders to quote is proving difficult. Can anyone recommend a good SE in the Fife area?

@Rossek9 It sounds like a different plot - the one we viewed was in the last couple of weeks and was near Newton. Have you had a good read of your servitude? Ours has a clause that stipulates that if the existence of the pipeline causes loss of development value on the site, then we can either ask for it to be moved, or receive compensation for that loss of development value. We're only just starting on that journey...

@Rossek9 Do you have a complicated plot? And what is the requirement for the servitude? Is it a pipeline too, or overhead cables? Or something else? Linlithgow is not far from us, In fact, a few weeks ago, we were so fed up with the complexity of our current plot that we actually looked at another (much simpler) plot out that way. We thought about sitting on the current one until we both had more time to dedicate to it. It sold before we even had a chance to investigate further though.