Convincing my wife that a static caravan makes sense

[flanagaj]

So we are hopefully due to exchange / complete on our building plot in the next couple of weeks.  The vendors have been able to relocate their sewage treatment plant and drainage field so that it is 15 metres away from our proposed house / garage and building control are happy with the proposed location (proof to be provided before exchange).   Now the building plot is ~ 1 hour drive from where we are currently renting, and the plan is to self manage trades and do as much as I can myself.  Personally, I only think the self manage approach will work if you are actually living on site.   I think if you went architect managed then you could live further away, as you are not involved that much.

The wife is no too keen, and I think this is partly down to us viewing a few static homes over the weekend, which if I am honest were ex Park Dean and very shabby for the 10k price tag. 

Does anyone have any pearls of wisdom regarding this, or first hand experience of the pitfalls of trying to manage a self build remotely? 

[ProDave]

I think the market of static vans depends a lot on where you are.  Up here, there are very few residential park homes (which I think is what you looked at) and most that are for sale here are built as holiday caravans for holiday parks.  Different interior layout and fit out and probably more basic / less well built.  but that is all available up here.

 

Ours cost us £4K (8 years or so ago) and at the time was just coming up to 20 years old and coming to end of life for most holiday parks.  It is still in pretty good condition now and still on our plot.

 

A winter in a static 'van (especially up here ) can be "challenging" you have to both want to do it and both be prepared for some hardship or at least very large heating bills.  But the savings vs renting are massive and you really cannot beat the convenience of being on site all the time.

[SteamyTea]

There are a lot of things you can do to a static park home to make them comfortable.

Ebay has loads below 5k.

Spend 2k on one and it will be brilliant.

I lived in one in 1982, was lovely.

[Kelvin]

Find somewhere to rent that’s much closer. 

[nod]

Good luck with that one 

[Dave Jones]

dont do it. cheapest 1 bed renter you can find is infinitely better.

[Russell griffiths]

Buy a cabin, ours is 7m x6m, far more comfortable than a static, they are thin and pokey, tiny corridors, I couldn’t live in one. 
I’ve been in our cabin 2 years and I could actually carry on a lot longer. 

[Bozza]

You’re about to embark on an exhausting, demanding and stressful period in your life.  Last thing you’ll need is having what would be an unhappy wife within a crappy caravan on a muddy building site and putting you under additional stress.      Happy wife = happy life.

 

Agree 100% with @Dave Jones, rent a property close to plot.  Downsize if necessary.  
 

We went into a tiny flat for our build, and I remain happily married.  
 

Agree 1 drive hour each way after a long hard day on site wouldn’t be fun & potentially dangerous and fuel costs would eat into your budget.  
 

totally different if your wife was happy to live in a caravan on site of course, but she clearly isn’t.

 

 

[twice round the block]

Done the static caravan bit, frozen water, frozen gas, snowed in for 3 days, fire up the JCB to clear the roads to get to the village. Slumming it on the extreme.

Only good point is that in the summer you can carry on working for hours and don't have far to go to crash out.

 

Self building is stressful don't add to it.

 

 

[Roundtuit]

My wife imposed a 'No caravan' condition on our self build, so we rented a bungalow for 18 months.  There was certainly an additional cost implication, but on balance she was right. To be fair, we also had 2 young kids and a dog to consider.  Maybe if it had just been two of us I might have pushed the caravan route a bit more, but as above, there's the potential for plenty of stress on a relationship without adding to it unnecessarily.

[SimonD]

I think it depends on your budget and overall context of rental market. We already owned a 6 berth touring caravan to which I added a 4 season awning and thanks to Covid, we ended up living in it for 3 years! It's doable and saved us an absolute fortune as local rents are ridiculous around us. We all survived fine.

[Jilly]

Getting a container or two to store everything would help, if you can, one for house stuff the other for building stuff. You are coming up to summer, why not get a static/ cabin and try it? Lots of good reasons: You will need some kind of rest room for trades for H&S) (tho in reality most use their van) and a site office for yourself, you’ll need a break and loo hire is expensive. It helps with security if the site looks occupied.

 

Also there may be some resale value whereas rent is dead money: annoying when you go over budget (most people do). It’s very sexiest of me to mention that 2 years of rent could be £30k, equating to a very nice kitchen and bathroom. 
 

Maybe a short term rental over the winter if the weather is bad? 

Everything to do with self build is stressful, so pick your poison. Two hour’s return journey to wait for a delivery is not practical.

If you both start to think of your patch as ‘home’ it might help. 

Edited May 20 by Jilly

[saveasteading]

Remember that an end of life static can be cheap but transport is expensive. 

I rather like the idea of knocking up a 'portacabin' to live in, and an office. Put it up on plinths and insulate it well. Snowcem in green to get that utilitarian look. 

 

[ToughButterCup]

15 hours ago, flanagaj said:

...
The wife is no too keen, and I think this is partly down to 

....

 

"Well        ...     (hands on hips - first intimations of the potential for a full-on glare )      ....I would have thought that was obvious

Accept her preference, and suck up the disadvantages and inconvenience . Bank the Brownies.

Ball is now in her court to compensate for what to you  ( hands on hips first intimations of the potential for a full-on glare ) was obvious

 

Happy wife Happy life.

[Pocster]

Oh this is easy to solve !!

 

A caravan for you . A caravan for SWMBO .

 

No need to thank me .

[Pocster]

15 hours ago, flanagaj said:

Now the building plot is ~ 1 hour drive from where we are currently renting, and the plan is to self manage trades and do as much as I can myself.

Seriously . My ‘commute’ to my site was around 1 hour depending on the traffic . It is do-able - but is a pita . I did this for 4 yrs . Effectively I was just ‘ going to work ‘ - if though you have a real day job it might be tricky .

Edited May 20 by Pocster

[Pocster]

What you *should* do ( don’t know the timescale for your build or budget ) . Is buy a property nearish to your build . Then you aren’t spending on rent and can sell on tax free once new build complete - that’s what I did 👍

[kandgmitchell]

Two of us and we've been in a static on site for 9 months now. I won't say it's been easy but we got into a routine with some electric heaters on timers and others on remote switches so we could warm up the bedroom without getting out of bed. Only one day of frozen water but that was really my fault as our excavations had exposed our temporary water supply and I hadn't dealt with it.

 

The advantages - on site all the time so it became more like home. It allowed us to do some landscaping/hedging/tree planting and lots of thinking about how we should lay out the exterior whilst sitting in the sun. We could control deliveries and sub-contractors easier as we were there - no commute. We have two cats so we could get then used to the site and settle them in. Cheaper than renting in some town centre with no parking and we'll sell on the static when we're done.

 

Disadvantages - the mud. Make sure you have plenty of hardstanding laid because walking from car to caravan and back was a nightmare during this really wet winter! Also my wife moans about having the washing machine in a shed behind the caravan. Why any woman should complain about having their own laundry room I don't know. 

 

Finally, being on site gets you embedded into the community. We now know loads of faces because people stop and ask you how you are getting on. You find out all the gossip and some useful contacts, we had two offers of a house sit in the village over Christmas whilst the owners were away. I'd be on site. Would I do it again ? No but with the end in sight now I'm glad we did. 

[flanagaj]

Thanks for all the posts.  Primary motivation, is that even if you go with a very cheap rental in Hampshire, you are looking at a minimum of £1200/month.  I just personally, don't see the point of renting a small flat, which will require you to also shell out on storage, when you can rent put a static on the plot.  

I think I've made my mind up on this one, and the wife will come around to it 🙂

Plus, it's just the two of us, no kids, no pets.  That makes it a lot simpler.

[flanagaj]

7 hours ago, kandgmitchell said:

Why any woman should complain about having their own laundry room I don't know. 

They are so ungrateful 😂

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, flanagaj said:

wife will come around to it

[Jenki]

We lived in a very end of life static, North Highlands, and coastal. 

It was sh*te- 2 floods, frozen water 3 times, -5 inside, ice on the inside of the windows ... But I would have only done it this way. Ours was a self build in its truest sense, all work carried out by us with little help.

The accomodation provided all the motivation needed when times were tough. A lot of the time in winter it was warmer in the build than the caravan.

We both signed up for the "experience" so never argued about it, we moaned a lot..now it's just a fleeting memory a part of the project.

Hopefully we will bid a fond farewell (good riddance) to the static this summer.

 

[flanagaj]

8 hours ago, Jenki said:

Ours was a self build in its truest sense, all work carried out by us with little help.

The accomodation provided all the motivation needed when times were tough. 

We both signed up for the "experience" so never argued about it.

 

These points apply to us too.  We don't have loads of money to be spent on rented and building at the same time.  Plus I am intending to do a lot of the work myself and I suspect that living in a static caravan on site, really does focus the mind to the task in hand.
 

[joe90]

I was in a similar position but living on my own mid week on the “building site facilities” (28’ static) but when my (then) wife got a job locally we decided to rent a holiday lodge fir a year till the build was finished. I didn’t mind slumming it but felt it was a step to far fir someone who felt the cold, worked in an office and the site was very muddy 

[Jenki]

1 hour ago, flanagaj said:

These points apply to us too.  We don't have loads of money to be spent on rented and building at the same time.  Plus I am intending to do a lot of the work myself and I suspect that living in a static caravan on site, really does focus the mind to the task in hand.
 

Being on site is a must to keep an eye on quality, timekeeping and being around to solve issues that occur can ensure the specification, quality and financial implications are all weighed correctly.

We went full immersion as this was also a lifestyle change, wife leaving work, setting up a holiday rental, livestock etc

Our budget was tiny, so the cheapest option for 'living' was essential and a fixed cost of accommodation (static) helped with the budget. Good luck whichever way you go.