Hello all, just dipping my toe in the water...

[Reiver]

I'm Trevor and hail from Cumbria - where for once it's not raining ??? I've been looking for a property to buy round these parts or up into Scotland for a couple of years (currently renting) but finding somewhere with the facilities I need (which include at least 800 ft2 of outbuildings for workshop space and a bit of land) at an affordable price in the right location is proving problematical - the pressures of 2nd home ownership and planners seemingly giving permission willynilly to convert any outbuilding into residential do not help. So a pal of mine said "why don't you build summat yerself? - you're a bright lad" That was immediately discounted and stuffed to the back of the cupboard as it sounded like like a lot of hassle, but now partly out of necessity and partly out of curiosity I'm sort of coming round to the idea; at the very least I'm going to investigate it as an option. First of all I looked at the straightforward option: buy a wee croft with PP, put up a "kit" house + a steel framed garage/workshop/store for the farming bits, pretty straightforward, could start on that tomorrow as I know a suitable plot that's up for grabs. Then the inevitable happened as words like "normal" "easy" and "straightforward" don't seem to sit well in my life. It kind of started subconsciously a year or two back when I looked at buying Inverneill House down on the Kintyre peninsula, rather liked the idea of living in a tower. Tower house life may well be in my blood as my mother's family were Carruthers, well known Border reivers back in the day and of course living in those times such a spot was kind of a necessity. Then more recently I came across Kilmartin castle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilmartin_Castle) a very pretty little spot but lacking in the outbuildings. Then purely by chance  seeing a little thumbnail down the bottom of a page I came across this spot:  (https://www.struttandparker.com/application/files/9014/6350/7107/INV160039.pdf) - it had sold a while previously but showed that building a tower house with modern materials was well feasible. And instead of having the big hall with the fancy flags, that'll be the workshop/man cave (I have a large CNC router to accomodate, so it needs to be big!). So I'm looking at costing up something like the RH 2/3 of that spot only biased towards sustainable, low CO2 living, so there'd be solar and maybe a vertical axis turbine on the tower? And I'd like it to be maybe a bit more true to the historical precedent with the groundfloor windows a bit higher up and everything a bit more irregular. It'll be fun looking at it anyway!

 

edit: sorry the links aren't linking - doesn't seem to work.

 

Edited May 31, 2020 by Reiver

[Crofter]

Welcome aboard- sounds a bit different!

I sort of see the appeal of a tower, although it obviously won't be the easiest or most cost effective way to go.

Maybe think about a big utilitarian shed with your PV on top, and keep the tower house separate?

[Reiver]

Aye, well it might have to be that if funds won't stretch, it would also be quicker and easier to put up that way too I guess; build the shed first, then you have a store/shelter/welfare unit to work from for rest of the the project. It all depends on the cost which is my task for spare time over the next month or so, as well as learning about the various methods that could be used to build it. Blockwork with an old fashioned render is an obvious one for the tower, but are there other options I wonder?