National Power Easements on demolish and rebuild, has anyone found moving overhead lines easy?

[Fallowfields]

Ive had a good read of some of the issues of delays and high costs involved in moving poles, or cables. Has anyone had any positive outcomes with little delay and at reasonable expense.  This Rooky self builder is having second thoughts about a perfectly placed plot which because of its perfection wasnt cheap. Now I know because of possible soil issues caused by historical trees that we maybe in for some robust foundations which will sting, but to now find the woman who lived in the rikkety house had signed a deal with the devil for a few quid to have a pole in the garden and comes with an easement. 

 

I can live with the pole, its the line feeding just one neighbour (who has a pole of her own at the front of her property btw) that runs diagonally across the front garden.  NPower regs needs to be 5 M away from buildings, construction. Its crushed the idea of what we would really want as the budget is tight and reading the nightmares of costs and timescales is worrying.

 

If anyone has had good experiences, please share your tricks of the trade for speed and savings. TIA 

[Blooda]

Welcome.  lots of advise one here.

 

We were where you were 3 1/2 years ago, with a quote for £40k for electric supply. Said it before on here, but it was almost stopping point, as that was the contingency gone, before we'd started.  In the end we couldn't bear someone else building "our house" and us having to start again.  Moved in last July.

 

The important thing about the foundations is to plan for the extra, Our take off from the original drawing the SE provided was 28m³ concrete and by the time we'd finished due to finding old tree stumps in the ground clearance we ended putting in 69m³  So that cost us about £6k because we had the correct agreement in place with the ground worker.  With out that agreement in place, there would have been lots of "more work" "more concrete" "15 - 20k".

 

Worth popping up a redacted / anonymised sketch of your plot, there may be some contestable works you can do to move the cable underground. 

 

Is this an easement or wayleave and who with?  Did your solicitor not pick this up in the searches ?

[Alan Ambrose]

A ballpark for you - a new pole and stays, de-rigging a single phase overhead about 50m long, and replacing with about the same length of underground including digging was £16.2K. It's less if you organise the trench digging yourself.

 

This was UKPN, but I think they're all similar - although there are some tales on BH of people getting sympathetic treatment from their DNO.

 

>>> NPower regs needs to be 5 M away from buildings

 

I think there are some provisions for temporary moves and also temporary protection of cables during the build process if that helps any.

 

>>> the woman who lived in the rikkety house had signed a deal with the devil for a few quid to have a pole in the garden and comes with an easement. 

 

It's worth double checking whether this binds you to this same arrangement. My understanding is that if it's a simple contract (rather a deed registered with the Land Registry) it probably doesn't. However, making the DNO aware of their lack of rights and then getting them to do something about it may take years. OTOH if you have a sympathetic DNO, it may not.

 

I guess in all circumstances, asking the DNO for costs and timescale (and the best way to reduce both) won't hurt any.