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 but again we found much of the advice was contradictory and confused. Finding our way through the maze was proving difficult.
Feeling that while we understood the basic principles, the implications of our decisions remained less clear.
While looking for help we kept coming back to one book recommendation - The Passivhaus Handbook.

The book turned out to be a true treasure trove of information and helped answer a lot of our questions. It was never going to answer 100% of our questions but it did answer a lot more than any other source we had found. The writing style is very accessible and covers the information in small, relevant chunks. The detail level does vary and some of the more technical aspects won't be for everyone, but it does an excellent job of describing the topic in some depth.
If you find yourself in a similar situation and struggling to decide whether a passivhaus may be for you, we would recommend getting a copy.

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 should visit and refill the various animal feeders we had put around our site.

We're still finding our feet with videos, so feedback is welcome :-)

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 bushes we had just spent days clearing and some were quite large. With such little spacing between them they had blocked virtually all light from reaching the ground.

Our first step was to try and remove as much of the overhanging branches as we could from the cleared side of the fence. This took a while but did allow us to get a better view of the task awaiting us on the other side of the fence.


After clearing enough to see the fence clearly, we started looking for a site to start clearing the other side of the fence. We wanted somewhere we could easily cross the fence and provided enough room to start working, which narrowed it down to one spot.
Using just our amazing Jardin de France loppers and a bow saw we managed to clear enough of the area to be able to work easily.


As the bushes had grown so close to each other, their bases were largely bare and covered in moss and lichens. The amount of lichen growing was encouraging given its need for clean air, but it was also a good indicator of how little light was reaching those areas.

Looking back towards the house plot from our newly cleared area provided another great view :-)

Our basic idea was to open up the top of the ridge so we could walk along under the canopies of the trees, but that was going to take a lot more work.

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 that had been prepared by the previous owner. One less decision to make :-)


Soon after appointing our architect, Ewan, we had a meeting on site to discuss possible designs of our new property. He arrived with no preconceptions whereas we arrived with a lot following our many discussions about the plot. We did, however, try and remain open minded to all ideas he had :-)
Given the slope of the site and the views we had available, we were sure we wanted to have our living space on the upper floor - an "upside down house" :-)

While at the plot with Ewan we discussed this and realised that while the levels favoured this layout we may not have enough of a height difference to make it work properly. Other options were discussed to try and make it work as we wanted visitors to enter on the upper level.

As we want the property to be a full Passivhaus we also need it to face south, allowing us to benefit from the maximum amount of solar gain. This meant looking at several possible designs and locations within the plot.

Externally ideas came thick and fast but Ewan managed to keep the discussions moving and steered us away from some our preconceived notions.

The other discussion we had was around vehicular access. We wanted a large double garage to be attached to the property but wanted to change the access from traveling right through our "garden".

The meeting was very productive. Waiting for the initial proposal to arrive from Ewan wasn't easy.

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 and continue this and will be publishing anything that we think may interest people in our YouTube channel.

Our first video was published a few days ago.

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 though, where do we start with such a large area?
After completing the purchase we visited the site one glorious spring day and walked around all the fences with a measuring wheel.

During all the discussions around the title deeds for the land and the hours spent looking at maps we felt it would be good to actually look at the entire boundry, measure the fences and get an idea of their state of repair. The results were mixed with some fencing in a good state and some in need of replacement. Another consideration was the amount of fence with barbed wire as this could be a problem for horses.

Once completed, our quick survey revealed a total of 1.6km of fence that we were now responsible for! Gulp





While walking around we started identifying areas that needed attention. One of the main areas was close to the intended house location where a lot of hawthorn or blackthorn bushes had self seeded from within a fenced area to cover a large area. We felt that leaving this area would simply result in more spread toward the house plot, so immediate action was needed.


A couple of days later we started removing the bushes, though with only basic hand tools we couldn't remove the roots. Initial estimates of the number of bushes proved to be on the low side and eventually we removed in the region of 200 bushes - varying in size from spindly to large and bushy. We collected the bushes into large piles to burn them later.



It took a couple of days for us to clear the entire area, but the difference was apparent.


At the same time we started moving a lot of the farm equipment that was scattered around the plot to one area to make it easier for the farmer that sold us the land to collect, making the plot feel somehow larger.

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 appplication - not our current, revised application. The confusion was easily resolved by talking to them but this then raised the question of the proposed phosphate mitigation. As we had submitted a full planning application it had to be assessed on its own merits (having an existing, extant, planning permission answered the question of whether a property could be constructed, but everything else was viewed with fresh eyes).

The original evidence and calculations concerning the phosphate mitigation for the original planning application was filed in 2010. Sadly, after all these years the paperwork was no longer available at SEPA. The original applicant no longer had copies available so we sat down and replicated the calculations and submitted them to SEPA. We hoped this would be sufficient, but they were initially rejected.

The rejection was due to a change in the rules surrounding the mitigation calculations. In 2010 a single upgraded property could be used to provide mitigation for several properties but in 2017 this was no longer acceptable. After making some enquiries we discovered there was a property which could be upgraded in order to provide our mitigation, but before committing ourselves to this route we decided to argue our case with SEPA. We spoke with the person and argued that had we simply decided to build the property in the existing planning there would have been no additional mitigation required and the current CAR licence would have been sufficient.

Thankfully, SEPA proved to be very pargmatic and accepted our argument. Shortly after the planning group at SEPA issued a positive response to their consultation removing the final roadblock to approval.
Having been told by SEPA that they had responded positively we waited for news from our planning officer. When this came it was very positive and after the final approval and paperwork was prcessed we had our planning approval.

Should we ever do this again, we'll ensure we engage with the various regulatory bodies that will have a say at a much earlier point in the process.

Finally, we'd like to thank the staff at the Glenrothes SEPA office for their support and pragmatism through this process. Without them we would likely not have got to this point.

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 imminent granting of approval. Our spirits were certainly lifted by this news, but until it was approved we didn't want to get too excited. Sadly, our caution was appropriate as the issue of phosphate mitigation and SEPA approval of the application were raised.
Our initial reaction was surprise that SEPA had not been included on the consultees during the formal consultation period. Regardless, a consultation was now issued to SEPA with a positive response required before any approval could be considered.

This was not the news we wanted.

Our planning officer offered to "stop the clock" on our application to provide additionaal time. We gave this some consideration but our feeling was that we would rather keep the application live in order to keep things moving. We weren't sure that an application that was "stopped" would ever feature on the top of a todo list and given the volume of applications being considered...

Our next step was to try and find out what information was needed. This proved to be difficult until we found someone at SEPA who was able to explain what was needed.

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 validation is simply a check that all required documents and information is present to permit the application to be considered. It's not always obvious what information will be requested and our architect needed to produce a few revised documents before they were ready to proceed. There is a 3 week deadline for validation to be achieved and due to time constraints and some confusion about what was needed, our application was finally validated on 22nd June 2017.

Normally applications result in neighbours being notified, but as we have a rural plot and no direct neighbours, notification was made via the local newspaper (once we had paid the additional small advertising fee).

While we didn't expect any comments, you never know and so after the public consultation period opened we checked daily. The ability to check via the council planning portal was very useful even if it wasn't always updated as often as we would have liked.

Ultimately all we could do was wait...

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 water supply with fertile land surrounding it.
This mixture of a large catchment area and fertile soil led to serious problems during the 19070's, 80's and 90's with blue-green algal blooms a common occurrence. June 1992 saw a serious episode that led to a health scare and questions being asked in parliament.

The primary culprit of the blooms was the volume of phosphate entering the loch. While naturally occurring phosphate would result in approximately 5,000kg entering on an annual basis the loch was often receiving nearer 20,000kg annually. The increase was due to farming practises and both public and private sewage systems that lacked the ability to remove phosphate from their output.
The Loch Leven Catchment Management Plan was created in the late 1990's with a view to restoring the loch to it's former glory. The plan encompassed many different aspects with phosphate mitigation being one of them. By 2015 the annual phosphate intake to the loch was nearing 8,000kg and the quality of water in the loch was greatly improved (slides from a talk about Loch Leven given in June 2017).
It's a great success story but why am I writing about it? Well, the property we bought falls within this catchment zone and that has various implications for our application.

Phosphate Mitigation

In order to reduce the overall levels of phosphate being contributed from private properties, a planning requirement for phosphate mitigation was introduced. The problem with private sewage treatment is explained in more detail in this document. Planning guidance is contained in this document. In essence in order to gain planning permission, a new property that requires private drainage, the applicant must

1. find an existing sewage treatment facility that can be improved
2. determine the decrease in phosphate generation an upgraded system will produce
3. demonstrate that they will install a treatment facility that generates less than the reduction after factoring it by 1.25

Using the example in the document above,

1. an existing system is calculated to generate 12,600mg/day of phosphate
2. once a newer system is installed the generated phosphate will reduce to 6,300mg/day i.e. a reduction of 6,300mg/day
3. a new property would therefore only be granted planning permission if the calculated phosphate generation was less than 6,300 / 1.25 , i.e. 5,040mg/day

The plot we bought had planning permission for a property and so this had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the planners. Sadly that was in 2010 and the supporting evidence isn't available now so we may have to go through the exercise again.

Private Sewage Treatment

The plot isn't able to be connected to the mains sewerage so will require it's own treatment plant. The septic tanks installed in years gone by are no longer allowed and so a full treatment system is required. Not only is a treatment system required, but the system installed must also have the ability to remove phosphate from it's output. Removing 100% of phosphate isn't possible but the reduction required is large with no more than 2mg/litre being permitted.
Meeting these targets requires a modern solution and we were happy to find that the BioRock system, with an additional chemical treatment element, can meet the targets.

A Licenced Activity?

However, you can't just say you will install a particular system and move on, you actually need to be issued a licence as the discharge of treated waste is considered a Controlled Activity within the Loch Leven Catchment Area! Once your planning is approved you can apply for a licence under the SEPA Controlled Activities Register (CAR) legislation. The required forms are daunting to say the least and quite technical in nature.
Once issued the licence requires that the system be maintained and grants SEPA the right to inspect it and check the output for compliance, so it's not merely a rubber stamp.
In our case, we have a CAR licence that was issued on the basis of the existing planning permission, but this is not, in itself, sufficient basis for the granting of planning permission.

SEPA

We have had a few contacts with SEPA and have found their staff to be friendly and knowledgeable. Their processes and forms on the other hand seem designed to confuse. For simple matters such as change of name or address the requirement for 2 different forms, each many pages long, completed in duplicate and submitted via mail (not email, mail) strikes us as very 1980's :-(

Waiting

We're presently waiting to see what else needs to be provided to meet the mitigation requirements. Watch this space!

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 obviously the serviced plot with full planning permission, compromising around 2 acres in total. This includes an already flattened area with a bank that provides the backdrop for any house to be built.

The top of the bank has a number of mature trees already in situ in order to comply with a planning condition that any property should not be overly visible.

Presently the boundary of the plot is marked by fences and hedges (some overrun by invasive Hawthorn bushes), but we intend to "soften" the boundaries by removing the fences and taming the Hawthorn invasion.

Paddocks

A large part of the desire to move was to have sufficient land for Angus to be stabled at home. This means we want to build a stable block and need grazing for him (and any potential friends who may come to live with us). This is provided by 2 paddocks that together total around 9 acres. These fields have never been used for arable crops and have been regularly used for sheep and cattle grazing making them ideal for horses. One paddock is directly attached to the house plot but the other is only currently accessible via a crossing over the dell.

The Dell

Without the dell the site would have been ideal and very attractive, but with the dell it was amazing. It totals around 6.5 acres in area, with steep sides largely covered in mature trees. A stream flows through, fed from a spring and pond on a neighbouring field. There are several other streams that flow into the dell resulting in a varied wetland environment for much of the area. There is a slightly overgrown pond at the "bottom" end which we are hoping to rejuvenate and a small copse of willow trees at the "top" that bookend the wetlands.



Being slightly lower than the surrounding terrain it is wonderfully sheltered, adding to its charm.

The sides of the dell are steep enough to make descending difficult so we have created some simple steps to permit direct access from the house plot to a shaded spot next to the pond.

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 happens.

However when you buy a plot of land that's not the case. Occasionally there will be an existing property which will have an address, but normally this isn't the case. The sales listing will describe the location of the plot and try to show it on a map (not always as accurately as they could do!), but there won't be an address listed. This was the case with the plot we bought and so we found ourselves wondering, how do you get an address?

Thinking about the question more we came to realise we didn't even know what the address should be. Our entrance is from an unnamed - and unadopted - road so the usual format of "29 Acacia Ave" wouldn't work for our plot. Our property would need a name. So, how do you name a house?

While trying to decide on a name, we were struck by how hard it must be for parents to name children. The name matters. It's permanent. There were no obvious "rules" or conventions that we needed to follow which didn't help narrow things down. We started by looking at the physical site but every combination of the landscape that we came up sounded wrong. Many sounded like retirement homes. Some sounded far too pompous. We struggled for a several weeks and every time we thought we were getting close we found new reasons to discount our ideas. Finally, we settled on a name that we liked and had a meaning for us.

Now how do we get an address?

When you stop to consider the number of houses built every year, it should come as no surprise that there is a council department who's job is to handle such things. The Street Naming and Numbering Department (SNN). As our council is Perth & Kinross, their website provided the information we needed. As it turns out, you fill in a form, submit it and pay a fee (£46). What could be simpler?

We duly completed the form and emailed it to them in April 2017. Several days passed with no response so we decided we would hand the form to the council in person - surely the chances of them loosing a piece of paper were lower than them ignoring an email? One midweek afternoon Rosie was in town with her mum and so visited the council offices to hand in the form and pay the owed amount. Rosie takes up the story.

"After handing the form in at reception I was directed to the payment booths at the back of the building to provide payment. Once I had explained what I was trying to pay for I was rewarded with a blank look. The cashier started muttering and thumbing through pages of payments that could be made, helpfully suggesting several that were totally unrelated. Finally she settled on a payment of £31 exclaiming "this is the one!" I queried the amount with her but she was insistent that the payment due was only £31. After paying I was given a receipt and sent on my way"

Several weeks passed and we heard nothing beyond an email response to our email submission with an apology for the delay as the person who handles the requests was away! Deciding to follow up by phone, David called and was able to talk to someone who found the application and explained that it couldn't be processed as the wrong payment had been made. If we wanted to pay the £15 difference between the £46 fee and the £31 we had paid it could be processed! After explaining why we had paid the wrong amount he replied he wasn't surprised and would forward me to their new payment system and follow up via email once it was complete.

Shortly after paying the outstanding fee, we had an email requesting additional information. This we provided and waited for their response.

And waited.

Finally in mid June 2017 we received a short email with the new address notification and instructions on what to do next.

Our house had a name and an address!

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 November 2016.

Being based near Perth, Scotland we entrusted the legal aspects of the purchase to a local solicitor we trusted, Anderson Beaton Lamond. Having previously dealt with Lizzie McFadzean, we relied on her to guide us through the process and with christmas a memory we hoped things would move quickly.

We were fortunate to have the money for the purchase and the seller was keen to see things progress so surely there shouldn't be too many hold ups? Perhaps in an ideal world, but by the start of March we were only marginally further forward.

It was frustrating (to put it mildly) but we wanted things done correctly with all the i's dotted and t's crossed, so we did what we could to keep things moving along and waited.

This was the first time either of us had purchased land as opposed to a property which meant the complexities involved were a little foreign to us. Rosie has a lot of experience in reading legal documents and the patience of a saint which helped immensely when reviewing titles dating back to the turn of the century! The advances in technology through the last 100 years were also evident in the different plans we reviewed and pored over carefully.

Throughout the discussions Lizzie kept us up to date and at every turn it was apparent she was working to protect our interests. This feeling that she was working hard to protect us (often from ourselves) certainly helped at the times when we wondered if the sale would ever complete. However, the legal profession moves at it's own pace and won't be hurried, so we tried hard to stay patient and waited.

And waited.

By the start of April 2017 things were getting closer. All the indications were that we would complete soon and tidying up the last few loose ends was the order of business. After several months of documents and emails flying back and forth we tried to collate everything together to have a final review. The volume of paper produced was impressive!

After some false starts, an email arrived from Lizzie on April 6th informing us we had completed the purchase. We now owned 17.6 acres of glorious perthshire!

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 our decision we asked to speak with former clients. This was fascinating and helped us to form a fuller picture. Additionally we were able to arrange a site visit for one property that shared some similarities with ours, allowing us an opportunity to talk with another client.

We were very concious that whomever we chose would become part of our lives for the next 18-24 months, so the decision was far from easy. In all we talked with 5 former clients who were invaluable and we were very grateful for them giving up their time to talk with us.

Making the final decision was hard, but perhaps harder was telling the firms we had rejected.

Our final decision was to appoint Ewan Cameron as our architect. The factor that tipped the balance was his evident enthusiasm for our project.