Curtis

We are at the point where we may pull out of purchasing the land that the the designs in this thread relates to, the whole process with the solicitors has been infuriating, I don't understand why things are taking so long. The solicitors are both blaming eachother for sub-standard work and delays, we made the verbal offer at the end of July and we seem no closer to completing on the land. But also my partner is now really concerned that the cost of building the house despite it only being 115m2 is going to be way beyond what we hope to build it for which is £250k and with delays getting materials and even electric which has a 7 month wait here in Scotland we might not even get into the house until end of 2023. What's peoples thoughts on material prices and material delays, do you see any improvements or do you think things will get worse? If anyone has built recently especially in Scotland and can give an idea to the current average price per sqm that would be appreciated. Thanks

Thanks for the reply. Yea i believe everyone is committed to the sale and the plot has planning which is one of the reasons we made an offer. Our solicitor has said that it would cost about 2.5k to prepare the document but she has said that the seller should have done this before they even advertised the plots for sale and it's their responsibility and she can't prepare a document that covers all the plots as we are only buying one plot and not the whole area, their solicitor disagrees and so we have a stand off. I would probably offer to pay half or even just suck up all the cost rather than let the deal fall through but i just wondered if there was a general rule that this document should be prepared by the selling solicitor. Thanks for the reply. That's my solicitors argument, she claims that it is not appropriate for her to prepare the document as it covers more than the plot that we are buying and also the Deed of Conditions needs to be completed and registered agains the title deeds before we can complete on the land in case for whatever reason the paperwork was never filed and the other plots were sold with no reference to the access rights then we would find ourselves with a legally landlocked plot which would give us a headache if we ever came to sell. Thanks for the reply. The area is a large piece of farmland and so the legal right of access is the old farm gate entrance which is on plot 1 and you would then access plot 2 via another old farmgate but this is within the boundry of plot 1. Although in recent years (not sure how long ago) the fence was removed on a section of plot 2 to allow users to access plot 2 direct from the farm track so in reality this won't be a physical issue it's obviously a legal one and a right pain in the neck.

Hi folks, Looking for some advice, i appreciate you guys are not solicitors but i wondered if anyone else had experienced this issue or had any advice. I'm in the process of buying a piece of land (Scotland) which i was hoping to have completed by now but it seems like my solicitor and the selling solicitor have been butting heads for weeks on who is responsible for drafting a Deed of Conditions. To give some context the slice of land i am buying is part of a big area of land where all the plots for sale (3 plots) have their legal right of access via plot 1 , they do not individually have their own legal access although in reality they all have physical access points they're just not legal ones. So my solicitor has asked the selling solicitor to draft a Deed of Conditions relating to all the plots covering the right of access via plot 1 to legally cover ourselves in case we're ever refused legal right of access direct to our property (plot 2) via the actual physical access that we use. For the last few weeks our solicitors have been going back and forward arguing about who is responsible for drafting the document. Our solicitor says "The Deed of Conditions specifies the title conditions and rights that should affect the entire area consisting of all the plots therefore it is the sellers responsibility to draft the document to ensure that all the plots contain identical rights and title conditions." The selling solicitor says "I disagree with you on this. As you are acting for the purchasers, please go ahead and draft the Deed of Conditions, and I will revise it." I think my solicitor is right but i wondered if anyone has been in a similar position and has any advice? Ta

Sorry i missed your message, no meaningful water on the plot unfortunately, there is a dribble of a stream along the boundry but when i say dribble i mean dribble, barely enough water for the birds!

I did see that on the canopy, we want the roof to be in metal so we would just extend the roofline for that section and that will work well. Yea i will do i'll keep everyone updated, really appreciate all the posts from everyone on the forum!!

Thanks for reply, we were thinking about triple glazed windows but thanks for the info regarding the frames, makes sense now you have said that. On the south side of the kitchen i definately want more glazing, at least 3 windows for symmetry. Thanks for the reply. I think we will have a canopy, basically just an extension of the roofline with a couple of timber posts holding it up, i really dislike porches. Yea that is a concern that the overhang stops the light coming in the gable end even with all the glass we are planning but we definately want an overhang, we really like them and like you say in Scotland you can sit out in all weather and enjoy the views but not get wet. The kitchen needs a rejig, we just want units, cooker etc. on the gable end and then a island in front of this but i want to be able to walk around the island, the whole living / kitchen area we want to be able to walk around things, give that sense of space and we really do not have that much stuff that we need a pantry and so many units, less is more. The garage we wanted away from the house up at the boundry of the plot so when i'm fxxxing about playing builder making shit that's useless then i won't annoy anyone, plus i'll be able to see the wife coming looking for me and hide the beer! It's not really the architects fault with the shape or orientation of the house this has been led by the initial crude drawings we gave him so it's our fault, it's all about the North East facing view and capturing that from as many windows as possible. This is a great design, thanks for all the effort you have put in!!! There's honestly not anything that i can think of with your design that i don't like, it's quite close to the original design we had skected out on Excel for the architect but i prefer the main bedroom you have done with the wardrobes on either side of the en-suite door, the kitchen layout is good as we definately want a walk around island and we want the units etc. along the gable end so that there's more of an open feel, plus we really do not need that much kitchen units at all. The hall cloak room and the water heater make much more sense with this design although we do loose a bit of room with the 3rd bedroom / office, we'd need to make sure that was ok but all in all this is really good! Thanks again!!!

We were thinking about just going for a straight design not a T but it would still have the same issue of the main glass in the house facing North East, we wanted a gable end looking out onto the views so opted for the T design. Below is a very crude mock-up of the site, the land slightly slopes down from house to trees so the house is elevated above the trees at the bottom of the plot so we can see over the top of them to the forrest across the way and that's the whole reason for the orientation of the house as the views to the forrest we think are great. Thanks!! We don't want a porch the most we would maybe have is maybe a roof overhang to protect from weather when answering the door rather than an actual porch. We've been round measuring the house we're in just now an old council house and have dimensions from other houses we have lived in to so make sure we are happy with sizes, to be fair we had the house at 100m2 but the architect thought this was too small so we're up to 117m2. We think the rooms are ample for what we need, the main bedroom is bigger than we have now, the spare room is for guests and well they can slum it with a bed and a cupboard, they might get a night stand if they are lucky and the office is based off the office size we are in just now which is perfect for the both of us, couple of laptops and screens on a table, that's all we need. We did actually ask for a cupboard in the office to put the printer and some stationery in but architect has missed this, i did think we could maybe half the hallway cupboard so one half is for the hallway and the other half is for the office but not sure how small they would end up being to potentially the point of being unusable. There will be a seperate double garage on the front door side of the house up beside the boundry so we'll have more storage in there for things that can be stored for parts of the year. The future proof element was why we didn't go up another floor and kept it single story but i didn't think about wheelchairs but it's hard to cater for every possible future outcome

We are deliberately going for a smaller scale house, we don't have a lot of stuff and no kids and we don't buy crap just for the sake of filling up our cupboards, we're not quite minamilists but we are of the mindset less is more. Might seem boring to a lot of people but we have spent the last few years getting rid of all our debt, saving every penny we can and selling anything that moves so we can build a modest house hopefully with no debt on a nice plot and semi retire in our 40's with the dream of travelling but covid looks to have fxxxed that so i'll just wander round the plot instead haha Yea you are right there is and the house direction is a genuine concern but the views to the North East are really good so we want to point that way and we want to be able to see the views from the rooms so other than making a glass box (council will neverl allow) so the sun still comes in from the South i'm not sure how to overcome the house / sun issue. Thanks for the mock-up! I like the main bedroom, putting his and hers wardrobes at either side of the en-suite door. I prefer the kitchen units as well although we don't want a larder, we will have more than enough kitchen storage space for the things we have with just the kitchen units and whatever storage we can squeeze into the kitchen island. So that still leaves the HW in an akward position. The whole 5 acres is a plot available to build on so no issues with definition of the rest of the 5 acres. Yea like i said above the house orientation is a concern in regards of the sun but the views are so nice to the North East we want the house to face that way and we want views from all the rooms hence the shape. The overhang is something the Mrs wants, so when as often happens in Scotland it's warm but pishing rain at the same time we can sit outside and not get wet. When we were on holiday in Norway and Iceland this was a typical thing so you could sit out in the rain and snow and we used that a lot so Mrs wants it and I quite like the overhang but would maybe ask for glass in the roof section to allow more sun to come in as i'm concerned it will be darker than we think

Yea i realise that this is the starting point with the Architect, we had actually given him a pretty good start with what we were thinking with this rough mock up the house is inspired by this design we found: https://trendsideas.com/gallery/stories/country-chic-6/167432-te-arai-farm-estate-mangawhai The house sits on a 5 acre plot, the area around the house and garden is grass, trees etc. but i only want to have to cut a small area of grass all the time so have done a small grass section which will be manacured and the rest of the plot will be left to the wilderness, but there is much more of the plot that we can pull into being a manacured garden if we want, we get a lot of deer and wildlife crossing the plot as there is a massive woods to the North of the plot so want to keep a lot of it wild. There are no other buildings or neighbours in close proximity so even though the plot is North East facing we hope the small grass area i have done will still get a good bit of sun although i do realise that even though the house is only 1 story the builing roofline will block a seciton of the garden but when we have been up to the plot thinking about the sun, we hope that the afternoon / evening sun will cover a good chunk iof the grass area as due to the L shape where the west end is open but like i say because the plot is 5 acres i can just make the garden bigger so we can sit further out from the house on a nice day if need be

The concept design is only one page and i've copied all the images from it, that's all we have received so far

I've updated the image below with a very crude representation of house direction facing. Front door is on the side with the car and the reason the house is facing that way is because we want the windows in all the rooms facing out onto the garden and then the views past this

Some more design images

Hmmm yea that might work actually, will have a further look at that, thanks! There is no attic it's a single story house with vaulted ceilings. Yea that was one of my thoughts but i think Architect did it like that so the cupboard in the hall which has in reality been stolen from the office is up beside the entrance door. There's not actually a compass on the design but i do know the property is facing North East and the reason for that is becuase there are nice views that direction, i realise that normally you would face the house south for the sun but the views are the other way. I'll try and upload the file, i kept on getting a file size error before

My architect has just given me our concept design for our build and there's a couple of things that i don't like and the biggest of which is the water heater and cupboard in the kitchen, i want that moved to the utility but i'm not sure there is the space for it. I thought about scaling down the size of the entrace lobby and also remove the door and or wall that from the lobby into the kitchn living area. I also want 3 windows on the kitchen gable end wall for better symmetry but any other ideas / thoughts etc would be appreciated. Layout image extract below

I'm with you on this, i prefer the cardboard towels, towel fluffing is a fine balance too much fluffing and you can't actually dry yourself with the blooming thing!!

Yea i think you are right, we are now hopeful we can get the electric connection down somewhere closer to 20k so a combo effort of grid electric and solar is the current thinking, thanks very much for the info much appreciated

Thanks for the links and the in depth info, much appreciated. I've been speaking to the locals over the weekend and there may be a closer pole that we can connect to and the local farmer has said that he would be willing to dig the trench through his field so we are now hopeful that we can lower the 30k estimate to somewhere closer to 20k so current thinking is that we go ahead with the grid connection and we also install a solar array and battery bank so rather than use wind as a back up to the solar we will use the grid as a back up to solar. One of the locals we visited had a wood burning stove which had a back boiler which fed a large holding boiler which gave them hot running water and also hot water for their radiators to heat the whole house so this is something we are going to look into as well at least for hot water but i'm not sure whether this would also service our underfloor heating as well but something for us to look into.

Thanks for the info ?

Cheers will reach out to him and maybe go for a jolly to see the turbine

Thanks i haven't looked much into Proven turbines yet, I have looked at the R9000 from Britwind but it's 5kw and the best part of 25k to install but based on my average wind speed of 6m/s per year i'd get around 13,000 kwh of energy from the R9000, so even if that was high and i only got about 60% ish of that so around 8,000 kwh and i then have a solar array and battery bank in my simple head i should be able to do this but it's hard to find proper case studies of peopole doing this so thanks for the link.

Thanks for all the responses, much appreciated!! I am hopeful my usuage will be around the 10,000 kWh mark but my thinking was if i size the system for 15,000 kWh then i should never have blackouts unless obviously something goes wrong with the equipment. I haven't spoke to planning yet as there's no point in doing that if a hybrid system isn't a good idea, my architect seems to think planning would be fine under existing planning rules for Moray council and also due to the fact i have the space for the equipment with no immediate neighbours and there are others within a few miles radius. The estimate of 30k is due to the fact i have to upgrade the initial pole i am coming off as this needs a transformer upgrade, i then have to pay for 2 additional poles for part of the way and then i have to lay the rest of the cable underground to cross a neighbours piece of land and then cross under the farm track road which leads down to my plot and 2 other plots past mine, so the entire 700m ish route is part overground and part underground.

Hi folks, new to the forum. I'm in the process of purchasing a remote 5 acre plot of land in the north east of Scotland, the cost of getting electricity to the plot is at least £30k so before i commit to that I want to find out whether a hybrid off grid system of solar and a wind turbine with a backup battery bank is actually practical and would actually service the energy demand of the house power & heat. We are planning to build a relatively modest 3 bedroom 110sqm house which we intend to make as energy efficient as possible, added insulation, triple glazed windows etc. so we are estimating our energy demand would be up to 15,000 kWh per year, hopefully closer to 12,000 kWh. The heating would be either electric radiators or underfloor heating but would be supplemented by a wood burning stove in the living area. From what I’ve read on Solar (not an expert) we could potentially service most of our energy for 8 to 9 months of the year but come winter time especially but also at other times throughout the year we would need an alternative source, because the plot is 700ft above sea level and we are in the North East of Scotland I hoped that a wind turbine could make up the difference that solar couldn't provide but I am not sure if this is realistic or not. From what I’ve read on here and other forums getting a good reliable and efficient wind turbine is not easy. So basically I am just looking for some guidance as to whether a hybrid system is even a practical solution or whether I’m wasting my time and i should just suck up the £30k electricity connection.