Our Upside Down Home

Wow, it's been a while since the last post. A lot has happened but suffice to say for now that serious progress has been made. I'll try and get more posts online soon, but for now a quick taster of what the last week has witnessed. …

When we started seriously considering building a Passivhaus we felt as if we were taking a leap into the unknown. Reading around the subject online gave us a lot of information, much of it contradictory. Attending self build shows brought us into contact with experts in a lot of fields …

After christmas and hogmany, we had a few outstanding tasks to take care of on our site. Having spent a couple of days taking care of most of these, we had almost finished when the snow arrived! This has stopped us doing much for now, but we did feel we …

When we started clearing the Hawthorn and Blackthorn from the site we soon get to the fence that ran along the top of the dell. The area on the other side of the fence was obscured by a large number of older, wilder bushes. They were the origins of the …

Our land has character. It's an interesting mix of open field, woodland and wetland. Some of it is flat and level, much of it has a slope in one direction or many. Rather than needing to choose where to build our property, we would simply be using the existing area …

We've been very keen to document our journey and have been trying hard to take plenty of pictures of what we've been doing. Recently we've also started experimenting with videos to try and record in more detail what we actually do. It's still early days but we're keen to try …

Having bought our plot, appointed an architect and started designing our house, our thoughts started turning to the actual plot. While some areas of the plot had been regularly maintained and needed very little work, others had seen little attention and nature had started to take over. The big question …

When the consultation went back to SEPA the initial reaction was not encouraging. With hindsight we would have contacted SEPA about our application before this. We had spoken with them quite a few times prior to our CAR licence being issued, but that licence was based on the original planning …

As the days passed by without any news from the planners our daily visits to the planning portal became more frequent. As we entered the final week of the usual decision period our architect contacted the planning department for news. The response was very encouraging and seemed to point to …

Submitting a planning application is just the start of a process. After spending a lot of time refining our design, we submitted on the 1st June 2017. Applications are supposed to be processed within a 2 month period, but that period only starts once the application has been validated. The …

Loch Leven With the old castle sitting on it's isolated island, Loch Leven is an impressive sight. It dominates the area around Kinross and over the centuries has been responsible for shaping the landscape. The surrounding hills provide a large catchment area for rainfall resulting in a constant and plentiful …

One of the things that attracted us to our site was its diverse makeup. It wasn't just 17.5 acres of flat grassland but rather a characterful mix of grass, dell and woodland which also included a well developed house plot. House Plot The immediate highlight of the site was …

When you buy a house one of the first things you learn is the address. Without that vital bit of information you can't visit the property or look up it's location on a map. How the property got that address isn't really something you give much thought to. It just …

By mid January 2017 we had bought our plot, appointed an architect and started writing a brief for what we wanted to build. While this was good progress we had seen little movement on one critical aspect - purchasing the plot - our offer having been accepted on the 15th …

We managed to meet all 3 of the architects on our shortlist at our site and had productive discussions with all of them. Following the last meeting we were faced with a difficult choice as we believed that we could work with all of them! To try and better inform …

Every piece you read about building your own home talks about the importance of your brief. Writing a brief seems like a sensible thing to do while we talked with possible architects - but how do you write a brief? A good resource we found early on in our search …

The plot sits on a sloping site and so one of the first things that we wanted to arrange for was a topographical survey to be carried out. As a survey would be required at some point we felt that getting it done while waiting for the sale to complete …

There are people who can design their own house, but while we have strong ideas and some very limited abilities with CAD programs we didn't think we fitted into this category so our next step was to find an architect. We always like recommendations but almost nobody we know has …

When we first talked about the possibility of building a passive house, Rosies initial reaction was the same as mine - "why would we build an airtight box that would be stuffy?". The answer according to passive house fans was MVHR - Mechanical Ventilation & Heat Recovery. Having never experienced a …

So we had a plot. Now what? Obviously we want to build a house. Not a house to sell for money, but a house for us to live in for the next 20+ years. Like most people, we've followed the explosion in renewable energy technology over the last few years …

Last October we saw a new listing on a property website that appeared too good to be true. It was a reasonable sized piece of land, not too far from good transport links and with full planning permission for a 4 bedroom property. Tick, tick, tick. Having been looking for …