Grand Designs

[scottishjohn]

9 minutes ago, Ralph said:

Yeah that one may come back to bite us on the arse. This was the, normally little, burn that runs at the back of our plot on Friday, I also have a new burn running through the middle of the plot.

 

at least you have now seen the worst it could possibly get and design accordingly

[Ralph]

Just now, ProDave said:

The bigger danger for us, is further up the burn passes under the road through a culvert.  In the 2006 flood, the culvert got blocked by debris and the burn spilled onto the road, ran down the road and into the first entrance. My neighbours house was completely encircled by water, but none got into the houses.

 

I really should keep some sand bags handy in case that ever happens again.

You could be describing our plot. The stream backed up at the culvert on Friday and flooded the road. 

[Ralph]

Just now, scottishjohn said:

at least you have now seen the worst it could possibly get and design accordingly

Very true, I mapped out all the flooding on Friday to start sorting out the drainage and landscaping.

[SallyL]

On a positive note i like the idea of being able to Kayak in the garden ?

[Ferdinand]

I had something like that with a Brook at the bottom of a field.

 

Every few years the bottom of the field would be flooded.

 

I was glad it was at the bottom of the field :-).

 

Best of luck.

[mike2016]

I admire the tenacity of the self builders here who have pulled off their builds/dreams. I pulled out of mine this year as the costs far exceeded the value of the house and my ability to bridge the gap. Am considering van life for a few months of the year now but I've a very leaky bucket of outgoings including a mortgage and wonder if it's possible. Very different to what I was envisaging a year ago! For those with no noise of traffic and only nature, that's a gift! 

[AliG]

I just had Kevin's Grandest Designs on in the background.

 

I was very pleased to see that the Huf Haus couple from 2003 were still going strong and living in the house.

[Jeremy Harris]

10 hours ago, AliG said:

I just had Kevin's Grandest Designs on in the background.

 

I was very pleased to see that the Huf Haus couple from 2003 were still going strong and living in the house.

 

 

I saw that programme too, and was similarly pleased to see them still there.  Interesting to see that Kevin McCloud's choice for the best design was the one built from shipping containers in NI.  The architect behind that design seemed to me to be one of the better ones they've had on the show.  It was also a design that I think thoroughly deserved to win.

[Conor]

7 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

I saw that programme too, and was similarly pleased to see them still there.  Interesting to see that Kevin McCloud's choice for the best design was the one built from shipping containers in NI.  The architect behind that design seemed to me to be one of the better ones they've had on the show.  It was also a design that I think thoroughly deserved to win.

Also like the fact that it's a small house built on a reasonable budget. Not the usual multi million  pound gargantuans that are usually revered and win awards (remember that rediculous hotel complex like "home" in Kent that won home of the year a couple years back?)

[Simplysimon]

this episode looks like portpatrick? @JSHarris

[Jeremy Harris]

11 minutes ago, Simplysimon said:

this episode looks like portpatrick? @JSHarris

 

 

Looks like it's on the site of my old GMS at Portpatrick, next to the golf course, just past the radio station.  The GMS was really just a cedar prefab, that had been clad with a rendered block wall, so wasn't very substantial. 

 

They had better watch out for golf balls, as we used to regularly have staff members cars hit by them, from mis-hits, when parked up there.  Gets pretty damned rough up there in winter.

[Simplysimon]

21 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

They had better watch out for golf balls, as we used to regularly have staff members cars hit by them, from mis-hits, when parked up there.  Gets pretty damned rough up there in winter.

yup not much better in spring, summer or autumn, 'and it's so much warmer in the house' than outside , blockwork and shuttered walls with double glazing, no sign of insulation ?

[Jeremy Harris]

We had to evacuate the GMS a fair few times, when the weather just got too damned dangerous to be able to drive back down the track to the radio station.  From the radio station down to the village was OK, as it's out of the wind a bit.  We lived down in the village of Portpatrick, on the site of the old railway line, up the hill behind the church, facing West, like the GMS, and I used to have to hose the salt off the windows two or three times a week in winter.  They will be washing their windows up there two or three times a day, just to see out.  We bricked up most of the original windows in the GMS, leaving just one looking out from the control room and one facing inland to the car park, not because of the cleaning, but because the bending of the glass from the wind used to unsettle the staff up there...

[AliG]

Absolutely beautiful house today.

 

I have said so many times that I don't understand why there are not more houses on the cost in the UK. Clearly in this situation building was hard, but there are lots of less exposed places still with very few houses.

 

As ever it wasn't clear how much effort went into insulation, but it wasn't that big a house and is part buried so probably won't cost too much to heat. I would have thought that 3G windows were warranted in the situation, but there may be issues with installing them at those sizes.

[Jeremy Harris]

It's warm there, even if it's a bit windy.  Logan Gardens are just a few miles down the coast, and have tropical species growing outdoors all year around.

 

One problem they may have is the ravine to the South of the house.  Whilst I was running that place the ravine opened up about 30ft or so during one big storm, making the rocky peninsular that the GMS was on a bit less secure.  We had a survey done, probably around 1995/6, that suggested that the grassy area in front of our old building (now the courtyard at the front of this house) was likely to fall into the sea within the next 30 to 40 years.   In a big storm, waves funnel up that ravine and tend to wash away the access road.  The public footpath that runs up there was moved to the opposite side, alongside the golf course boundary, and safety notices were put up, as there was concern that a large wave might wash someone off the path.

[MrMagic]

A bit monochrome for my liking but it was a nice looking place overall. A lot of concrete but I guess that would be partially offset by the significant mounds of soil piled up against it.

 

Theres a family converting an old underground water reservoir & nuclear bunker near me - they said its very stable temperature wise so minimal heating is going to be required.

[Moira Niedzwiecka]

I quite liked the GD from last night.

Nearly fell about laughing when he said thought it could be built for £250k.

Agree on shipping container house for favourite of past GD.

Couldn't agree with KM on the other 4 on his list.

I did like the cave one & enjoyed watching it at the time.

[LA3222]

I went running past that house a few weeks ago whilst I was staying in Portpatrick with work.  The house looked nice from the outside, a bit too close to the sheer cliffs for my liking!

 

Don't think much of Portpatrick though - seems to be one of those places that is slowly dying.  A local was telling me she had never seen it so quiet - lovely area though. 

[Jeremy Harris]

Portpatrick was always a bit of a retirement village, with loads of people from the North West of England moving there to retire.  Sitting in the bar at the Crown of an evening you could be forgiven for thinking you were in the North of England, from many of the accents.  There were also always lots of B&Bs in the place, that seemed to do reasonably well with holiday business, but I'd guess the single biggest local employer was MoD, with the creamery in Stranraer being a close second.  Places like the Crown, and one or other hotels in the village, probably survived on trials teams staying for a week or two at a time, and when we pulled out all that business would have gone, as well as a lot of local employment.  Last time I went back we stayed in the Fernhill, and it was practically empty, in early summer.

[AliG]

Surprised to hear about the ravine issues, I would have thought the first thing you do before building on the coast is look into how likely it is to be eroded away.

 

Considering this, is the house uninsurable? I guess you might get insurance that excludes some risks, but this would be a pain to organise.

 

When they were building, I knew as soon as his wife came in, she would say it was too small. I had to constantly show my wife room sizes versus our existing house etc. She kept insisting I had not made spaces large enough, even though from the sizes on the plan they demonstrably were fine.

[Jeremy Harris]

Surprised me they were building there, TBH.  When that ravine opened up in the early 1990s it was pretty dramatic, half the village must have walked up there to take a look at it, so it was common knowledge locally.  The golf club would definitely have known about it, as would the radio station, as I know that both were involved when we had it surveyed to assess the risk of further collapse.

[Jeremy Harris]

Just found an old photo taken before the ravine collapsed (sorry for the crap quality, it's about A3, so wouldn't fit in my scanner):

 

 

If you look to the South (right) of the GMS building, alongside the access track, you can see where the ravine was starting to open up, although it was just a grassy depression when this photo was taken.  One night during a winter storm in the early 90's a large section fell into the sea there, allowing big waves to surge in and up to the access track, a bit like a big funnel.

[epsilonGreedy]

Odd camouflage on that plane, what's the background @JSHarris 

[Jeremy Harris]

It's one of our trials Buccaneers, and the paint scheme was designed to show up well on black and white high speed cine film.  For some reason black and yellow gives the best contrast on FP4 film, which is what we used much of the time (usually pushed from 125 ASA to 400 ASA in developing).

[ProDave]

Just watched this one. (I rarely watch commercial tv live)

 

That "ravine"  I'll bet that was not mentioned on the sales particulars, and I wonder if any of the locals have mentioned it to them?

 

However was that solid rock that collapsed?  I think not.  Looking at the picture that bit of coast looks different.  It looks very much like one I know in Wales, where it is a choked glacial valley. Basically a valley carved in the ice age, subsequently filled with (relatively) loose rocks and rubble.  The one I know in Wales, from above you would barely know, apart from a depression in the grass, but viewed from the sea you can see the very different material.

 

What did your survey say about it?