Buildhub member in Swindon

[Dannyboy]

Hi,

 

New member from Swindon here. Many thanks for granting me access to the forum.

 

I'm likely to pay off the mortgage on my current property in North Swindon this year and have some additional cash behind me. My wife and I are looking to step up to a bigger property in the region but the quality and value of new developments by speculative builders hasn't inspired us a great deal (e.g. - 400k for a property with nowhere to store an ironing board and a garden you couldn't swing a cat in). Perhaps a little unimaginatively, my wife and I like the idea of kit designs rather than a bespoke bricks and mortar development.

 

I'm keen to learn more about the basics: costing, project planning, legal aspects, land acquisition (including local council provision for self build) - as well as hearing recommendations regarding kit home manufacturers (timber frame). If you've gone through the kit build process and have experiences or a blog to share, I'm keen to hear.

 

Although there are few benefits to living in Swindon, we do have the National Self-Build and Renovation Centre!

 

p.s. - will do my best to use the search function to look for answers.

 

[Russell griffiths]

Hi welcome, we are in Cirencester. 

We brought and renovated 2 houses to try and get what we wanted. 

Now on our second new build ( if we get permission) 

look at older stuff usually better sized rooms than the new shite, and larger plots

[Crofter]

Welcome to the forum.

You mention kit vs brick/block. Two issues here- build type, which is a major decision affected by budget, preference, and availability of trades; and the question of bespoke vs ready-drawn design.

On the latter, I would say half the point of building a house is getting exactly what you want, and getting something that fits the site well (views, sun, how it relates to the garden, the parking, etc).

[MikeSharp01]

Welcome - look forward to hearing more about your plans.

 

[Nickfromwales]

? Oh dannyeeeeeeeeboyyyyyyyyy  ?

Sorry, been a long day

Check out the blogs by members here, @TerryE, @JSHarris, @Bitpipe and more have oodles to say on the 'package build' journey in various guises. The blogs in general are gold dust, as their actual accounts from real,builds, and they're warts n all and you just can't buy that info ?

There is a HELL of a lot to read here, so open a cold beer and start going through the library. Feel free to resurrect any older threads or indeed start a few of your own. . 

Welcome aboard, and enjoy

 

[ToughButterCup]

Welcome.

The Management group are thinking of hiding  @Nickfromwales' emoticons. He should have been a painter not a plumber

[Stones]

Hi and welcome. Are you fixed on the Swindon area or are you considering further afield?

[Jeremy Harris]

Welcome.  We're about 45 minutes or so South of you. just to the West of Salisbury.  I'd echo the above comments about the kit houses, they generally aren't good value, or particularly great in terms of performance, and there are also two other major snags with them.

 

Firstly, the design and style of the house, externally, will be dictated very much by the plot, usually.  Considerations like lighjt and shade, the view of the main elevation, the location of the site access and the shape and orientation of the plot all have a major bearing on the design, so much so that it would be unusual if a kit house would just fit well on the majority of single plots that are available to self-builders, without a fair few compromises.

 

Secondly, I'd echo the point that @Crofter has made.  If you are going to the hassle of building your own home, then you may as well get one that exactly meets your needs.  It doesn't cost really any more to get exactly what you need now, and for the years ahead, than it does to accept the inevitable compromises from a kit build, especially given the relatively high cost of some of the more complete "turn key" kit suppliers.

[dpmiller]

And if funds are tight for the design portion, you could look in the same direction that we did- there are a number of architects in the South of Ireland (possibly elsewhere too but that's what we found) with long lists of modifiable "book plans"

 

I'll not link them directly but a google search for Irish House Plans/ plan-a-home/Blueprint might give food for thought.

[Nickfromwales]

2 hours ago, recoveringacademic said:

Welcome.

The Management group are thinking of hiding  @Nickfromwales' emoticons. He should have been a painter not a plumber

?✌️️??✌️️✌️️✌️️✌️️??

[vivienz]

OH and I started off looking at kit type houses - everything from DanWood to Huf.  Huf was just to horrify ourselves with what we would never be able to afford!

 

Eventually, though, we decided that none of them really offered what we wanted and by the time you had altered them enough to what you had in mind, you might as well go down the individual route.  One of the particular things that put me off the kit houses was the insistence on the foundations being laid to an incredibly tight tolerance but giving very little in the way of help and guidance as to who to use (apart from one company).

 

We bought a plot in north Dorset, near Sturminster Newton, with an old pre-fab bungalow on it that will be demolished and replaced with the new house.  I found the plot by keeping a keen eye on Rightmove and property sites.

 

Re. the design, I 'interviewed' several architect/architectural technicians firms as well as seeing a couple at self build shows. Some I really didn't like and so wouldn't use, some were way over the top on their fees but there was still a good selection of reasonably priced, personable individuals that we felt we could work with and who were relatively local to us.

 

It's hard to be open minded and not be overwhelmed at the beginning, but don't be afraid to change your mind - it's your own money you will be spending!

[MikeSharp01]

5 hours ago, vivienz said:

It's hard to be open minded and not be overwhelmed at the beginning, but don't be afraid to change your mind - it's your own money you will be spending!

+1 to that, you need to stay in control and not be browbeaten. Once we had a shortlist of Architects I took up references for each of them, then sat down with my other half and made the final choice - which has not turned out badly and although there are some slight issues they are always helpful. After some initial pushing back they have stopped treating us like we know nothing! (Interestingly we were warned bout this in the refs of several of the shortlisted practices.) In the end we chose the architects who had done two local, to where we are now rather then the new place, new builds because we felt we could work with them, liked their work and the fees were not outrageous. 

.

 

[TerryE]

The first challenge is finding a suitable plot, and the second obtaining planning permission followed closely by your  financing strategy.  All of this can be a total bastard or a source of heartbreak, as one of our leading members is currently experiencing.  Actually the build technology is fairly late in the list off issues that you need to tick off. 

 

As the the technology, there are lots of choices, but what you are trading off is flexibility and the ability to plan your house down to the last detail vs risk and skills-gap with the trades that you rely on.  The active members here have between them picked pretty much every possible one you might consider. 

 

In our case we split our existing large plot to get our new build site, and took out a mortgage on our existing property to top up our savings to finance the build.  We also used one of the specialist Timberframe manufacturers and designed to our own requirements.  They put in the slab and errected the frame 3 weeks later; the windows went in on the last day of the erection so we went from hole in the ground to lockable weather tight shell in just over 5 weeks.   A good local builder did the external stone skin, slate roof and external groundworks.  Two years later and we are almost finished second-fix.

[Dannyboy]

Some great advice in here already. Thanks for the responses.

 

Although I (we) like the idea of a kit home, I appreciate that there are pitfalls and as pointed out by @JSHarris , finding a plot to fit the kit could make things extraordinarily difficult. I'm not going to get fixated on it and will see how things pan out. Huge amounts to learn in the meantime.

 

@Stones I'd happily move away from Swindon (preferably in to the Wiltshire countryside) but I'm under orders from She who must be obeyed.