For those of you who haven’t heard the back story leading up to March 2021, here it is. Those who know the journey so far might want to skip to the blogs below!
Here are a few photos from the plot on Coll to set the scene... the arrow on the 1st photo points to our static caravan. The house will be between that and the sea. the atomic explosion is from the Easter Islands in 1947 ... just kidding... its a Coll summer sunset. The other photo is an autumn view from the house site.
After buying the plot, we started the “chin rubbing” era. We considered all sorts of possible Grand Designs. We were a swathe with “home” magazines and we had pages of saved Pinterest ideas. We read architectural books and, with all that, we slowly but surely disappeared up our own arses. Then, after smoking a lot of weed (metaphorical weed of course!), we had a Eureka moment... It wasn’t about the house at all, it was about the place. The house had to be efficient and comfortable but the priority was to engage with the land and the views. We also learned about the eye watering costs and complexities of building on an island and so we settled on a ecologically efficient kit house from Hebridean Homes. We modified it quite extensively to incorporate large windows and semi open plan living. See below the standard kit alongside our design.
Here's an artist's impression of the finished house superimposed on a photo from the plot:
Highlights of the changes are the addition of massive corner windows and the “optional” closed kitchen. Upstairs we added second large star gazing windows in the bedrooms (fully aware that the pounding rain on these will, at times, be sleep depriving).
Planning permission was a challenge. The previous owners (Dougie and Jane, who are also our friends) rubbed their chins a great deal too - for about 15 years and they actually had more that 3 sets of plans approved to build. They put a fence around the plot, built a 5 foot wide bell entrance from the main road to what would be a track up to the plot. This was enough to give them the ‘meaningful start’ status which meant the permits would not lapse. They also drilled several bore holes looking for a water supply without success. Julia managed to locate one of them... and I tripped over the metal sheathing in the long grass and fell flat on my face!
Dougie and Jane, while still intent on building their dream home, stumbled on the opportunity to buy an existing house for a sum of money that would have just about covered the deposit on their build plan. I do jest but at that time, the cost of an existing house was about half that of the cost of building one. It truly is about twice as expensive to build on the island than on the mainland. So they made a good decision and, as a result, they somewhat ruefully agreed to sell their dream to us.
Because the plot is on the sea, and nowadays new planning permission is rarely granted on coastal locations, we knew that the bare minimum we could expect would be to build to the plans Dougie and Jane had started. We did however hope to change them to our own ideas. This was difficult and slow. Bizarrely, the planners insisted that we legally rescind all previous plans before they granted us permission. This was a big risk as it meant that there would be a couple of days when the plot had no permissions at all. We also had to pay for these rescindments - salt in the wound! We trusted the words of the head of Planning for Argyll and Bute however and thankfully our plans were approved, shortly followed by the building warrant. Phew!
We had signed a ‘supply and erect’ contract with Hebridean Homes and we thought we could engage a main contractor for the whole job, asking them to work with Heb Homes but that proved to be not as easy as it sounds - particularly for an island project. There are not many builders interested in a ‘half job’ and the one trusted local main contractor, who has a great reputation, was unfortunately not interested in taking on a project with a Heb Homes kit.
So back to the drawing boards as the clock carried on ticking! We decided to find local contractors to build the foundations, we applied to SSE for an electricity connection and agreed we would then manage locals and trades to do the fit out. We planned to take water from a burn across the road and commissioned the testing of the water to see if it could be used. It could. After waiting for weeks, SSE finally came back with a quote and the cost of the electric connection was going to be in excess of £20k and no commitment would be given on when it could be done. Hopeless! Typical example of what happens when there is a supply monopoly in my view.
We didn’t place the order with SSE immediately as we still needed to find agreement from our farmer neighbour on the routing of the supply. The plot has servitudes for water drainage and all services but it is best to agree a mutually acceptable plan. While we were looking at this, we started looking for someone to build a track into the plot. We found one willing islander, Colin Kennedy and on reflection the advice he gave us (which we ignored) would have saved ££££. Colin organised a barge to deliver 1000 tonnes of materials for building tracks. This volume would cover the needs of 4 islanders and as a result, the cost of the material was about half what it would be if shipped over in lorries on the ferry. Colin suggested we bring over what we needed for the whole build in the barge but we just committed to the minimum needed to install a basic track. He said the first economy is normally the worst and he was bang on. Oh well!
Colin built the track and hard standing and dug a few deep drains to try to dry out the bog a bit. This helped but more drainage is still badly needed. There is still a very real risk of sinking a digger. Eek!
Shortly after the track was finished we installed a static caravan. We bought one from Loch Awe caravan park - a Wetherby ‘2007 Herald Gold’. We didn’t care what we got. It just had to be cheap. As it turns out this caravan is pretty sophisticated and we somehow landed on a very good deal. It’s got gas oven, fridge freezer, 3 electric heaters, shower and proper loo (currently plumbed into a bucket and not to be used for the full scope! ), gas water boiler, gas fire and it has even got double glazing (albeit that some of the panes are permanently misted). We looked at one static caravan for about 10 minutes and just bought it - No regrets.
I anxiously paced the car park at the pier as the lorry drove off the ferry with the caravan. I had measured every gate and cattle grid twice on the 4 miles to the plot to make sure it would fit. The driver was “gung ho!” and agreed to try to drive it all the way up the track in spite of us having a tractor at the ready to tow it up. (There is nothing wrong with the track but it is crazy steep over one short 20m hump). The lorry nearly got stuck but we managed to get it turned and out and Rob (my island pal and the reason we started visiting Coll in the first place) used his tractor to put the caravan in its place. He also pushed a few big rocks up to it so I could use them as anchors.
The caravan is very exposed, particularly to the NW and we made several trips to try to secure it. It was like groundhog day - each time we arrived back on the mainland we realised that the job was not finished. My brother in law is a retired engineer and has been extremely helpful with almost everything to do with this project but I wish I’d spoken to him before the first attempt. Without boring you further, the caravan now has anchors into bedrock where bedrock could be found and where there was none, it’s attached to 4ft deep fence posts. There are also tote bags with 1 tonne of stone holding down 3 straps over the roof. It’s not going anywhere now but if there was an extreme storm it would probably explode into pieces. Fingers crossed we get the house built before that happens! I’m sitting in bed in the static writing this now... and it’s blowing a hooley! Most people in Britain have absolutely no idea how harsh the weather can be here.
As I said before, there is no water on site so I installed water capture to 2 butts from the static roof. This has worked well and I used little 12v marine pumps to pump it up a hillock to give enough head for the kitchen tap to run. It isn’t for drinking but it’s fine to do the washing up! The pressure was not enough to make the boiler fire up so I had to install another pump at the inlet (thus removing the need for a butt up the hill). So now the rainwater pumps into the static when you turn on the tap and we have hot and cold (untreated) water. There is more to that saga but I’ll spare you details...
The pumps were run from either the cigarette lighter in the car or the little 2kw portable generator we bought. That was a pain in the arse so I started looking at power options and, as it turned out, my research changed everything! I learned a bit and realised we could go off grid - not just in the static but for the house too. We also decided that rainwater capture would be better and easier than burn water so turned our attention to that too. So our plan changed to being completely self sufficient on the site. This added a new and much more interesting challenge to the project.
I built and installed a circuit in the static with a 230v AC inverter, 2 marine batteries and a solar panel with a charge controller. This has been brilliant. It provides us with 1kw of stored power and runs the water pumps and a small camping fridge. We use it to charge phones and laptops and from March to October it should give us about 1kw per day. This is a photo of my electronics (work in progress) in the static and the single 320w solar panel.
So that pretty much fills in the gaps except that we decided to get messy and do as much of the build ourselves as we could. This was partly because no one locally would take on the responsibility for the house foundations and partly because we wanted to have a go. I had wound up (or been wound up) from my non executive directorships so time was not a problem. Julia was keen to take on the challenge so we became full time builders and set sail on the 15th March to live on the plot indefinitely and to build our house. And from this point the blog begins! We will publish a blog every day for the first 10 days then every week thereafter.