Building in the Scottish Borders with Dan-Wood

[LegoHead]

Hi everyone.  I’m hoping to build in the Scottish Borders with Dan-Wood.

 

We have a fifth of an acre which we already own, technically the garden of our property but fully separate to it and not usable as a garden.

 

We’ve been speaking with Dan-Wood for a year, and have finally come up with a design that we love, and which echoes local features while not having a negative impact on neighbours.  (We did pre-planning last year.). We have engaged a planning consultant who doesn’t see any major issues with the design, and has assessed things like building group expansion etc.

 

BUT I am starting to get worried about all the things that aren’t covered.  I really wanted a turnkey solution, and assumed it was as simple as picking the house builder and then picking a ground-works contractor, but I am now worried about all the things that fall through the gaps.  

e.g. drainage - we will need a septic tank / treatment plant, but I have just been reading all the restrictions about where they can and can’t be situated.  Ours is a long thin plot (14m x 45m) with access only from one of the short ends, and the house fills a lot of that plot.  Who specifies what we need and where it goes, and when?

 

Another example, mains water connection. We know where it needs to connect, but it is approx 100-130m away and will involve digging a trench along a shared single track (hardcored) road.  Fortunately we know there is permission in the deeds to dig the road so long as it is restored, but how do we get a cost for that?  From the groundwork’s contractor?

 

So many questions!

[ProDave]

You raise a lot of questions there, but I would suggest the biggest one to solve is the drainage.

 

Basically the treatment plant and soakaway must be 5 metres from a boundary and a building, and 10 metres from a highway or watercourse.  Time to sketch some site layout ideas and see if you actually have enough room.  and you won't know how much space you need for a soakaway until you do a percolation test.

 

Are there any alternatives, like a watercourse that you could get a pipe to?  or an adjacent farmers field you could put a soakaway under.

 

This issue is so critical to the viability of the project that I suggest you start a thread on this and start by posting a site plan etc.

[LegoHead]

Thanks Dave.

 

Fortunately there is a farmer’s field just across the track (but of course I’d have to negotiate a solution with the farmer) and there is a watercourse nearby at the other side, but to get to it we would need to go uphill before coming back down, which of course wouldn’t really work.

 

I’ll start a thread.

[Bozza]

Dan-wood don’t do that side of things as you know, but this is not their first rodeo.  Suggest you speak with them to put you in touch with a contractor or perhaps a prior client, to see how they did things.  Sounds like for you the groundworks will take much longer than the actual build.  

 

I’ve always said for self building, allow for price of plot + house build cost + circa £50k for other stuff.

 

Though the actual house construction should be easy with Danwood, you’ve got a lot to do beforehand.  And afterwards.

 

I had my heart set in building with Dan-wood,  until I visited one of their nearly completed houses.  Finish wasn’t good I’m afraid.  Quite poor actually.  And communication from them wasn’t great.  Very slow.   But in balance they have got quite a decent reputation so perhaps I visited a lemon and my experience was unusual.  

Suggest you look through recent local planning application for new builds.  This will create a list of things you will need.  Eg tree surveys, perc tests and pp docs will give you name of consultants surveyors etc that you can speak to.  

 

[CharlieKLP]

I was a bit disappointed with Dan-wood at Graven Hill, the same white box for everyone. Glad to see they have a new design service.

[saveasteading]

Uphill isn't a problem. The volume of a sewage outlet is not great and you can pump it. It has a cost of course.

[LegoHead]

Thanks all for the replies.  I found the local (Scottish) building regulations and had a good read through the relevent parts.  Then I had to refresh my primary-school trigonomatry and found out that, through pure luck, there is a spot under the turning area at the front of the property which fits all of the criteria in terms of distance from boundaries and buildings.  It's possible that we might have to move the house 1 meter back in the plot depending on tolerances, but that is much better than what I had feared.

 

It was good advice to take a look at recent local planning applications too.  I had forgotten that the conversion around the corner, done a couple of years ago, had had a similar issue.  While we already knew we were going to have to dig a long trench for our water supply, it hadn't occured to me that we could use the same trench for a pipe to the nearby watercourse (this being what the neighbours did with their conversion instead of using a soakaway).

 

I have found so far Dan-wood to be good but very slow.  It's taken a year of iterating plans to get to something that would work, and I feel like we have pushed the boundaries for them.  That said, they have been helpful and patient, proactively honest about timescales, and (assuming it gets through planning) we have a design that we love for a tricky plot without spending thousands on an architect.

 

And @Bozza you are making me think I have over-budgeted!  I remember many years ago being told "a third of the cost for the plot, a third for the groundworks, and a third for the house".  We already had the plot (but estimate it would have cost £100-150k with planning), the house is costing about £350k, so I have budgeted £200k for everything else, plus £100k contingency.  Here's hoping it comes in at £50k!!!

[saveasteading]

39 minutes ago, LegoHead said:

a third of the cost for the plot,

with a plot being £60,000 in the remoter parts of the Highlands or £300k in SE England, the formula doesn't work everywhere.

 

40 minutes ago, LegoHead said:

£100k contingency. 

You can easily spend that if you don't think the project through, and leave the decisions, and especially resolving problems, to others.

In business I never allowed more than 5% for contingencies, and then  designed my way out of changes and problems, rather than spending money on it.

Careful thought like your current discussion is a good example of avoiding overspend.

45 minutes ago, LegoHead said:

we might have to move the house 1 meter back

If anybody knew what the 5m 'rule' applied to.  Is it the excavation, wall of the tank, or where the water is? Or even the centre?

Depending on circumstances* you might even get formal approval of 4m.

* ground permeability, amount of flow, options to change shape of chamber, slope of ground.

[Bozza]

You won’t need to spend anywhere near £300k on the other stuff against a £350k turnkey house and plot cost zero.  Or shouldn’t be if I can’t put it that way.

 

Obviously if the founds costs (20-30k maybes)  are not included in my £50k other stuff estimate then that will increase, but £50k ought to cover anything else, driveway, fees, upgrades, services, surveys, insurance, bats, trees, fencing, more fees,  landscaping etc etc.  certainly closer to 50k than 300k.

 

I was deffo under £50k for all that stuff. 

 

you’ll have a lot of change from your £300k which is good news unless your doing silly stuff

 

 

[JohnMo]

Not sure if you have done the percolation test yet, but it make a huge difference to the size of the soakaway. So that is the first thing to get hold of.  Also remember that SEPA has to approve the treatment plant and soakaway design to issue you with a permit to operate it.  They wanted the full results of the test and the qualified the person completing the test from us.