Like many people I talk to I'm a great watcher of Grand Designs and in part it was Grand Designs that gave me the confidence to start this project. The one thing that always makes Jo and I cringe however is when people embark on projects without suitable professional help.
There are occasions and projects where I can see that you can 'wing it and do without some professional help (if you wanted to build a basic box of a home and had a nice flat plot perhaps), but more often than not you see people on Grand Designs running in to extra costs and immense worry when things go wrong and over budget.
Being of a semi-cautious nature I would rather pay for help up front and be able to sleep at night and I can't recommend this too much based on our experience so far. That said, the bills do wrack up, but think of that as paying earlier rather than paying later on when things go awry.
Because of the site we quickly agreed with RRA Architects that we would have a full Site Survey. The site is sloped and sits tight between to other properties so there is no margin for error. Getting a clear indication of the the gradient was also critical.
We also decided early on to get a full Ground Survey done - which considering the amount of excavation necessary and the fact that the building would be partially earth sheltered seemed a no-brainer. Other than the architects this has been the most expensive cost so far. Although not a complete guarantee of what we will find when we excavate we are reasonably confident of what is down there....
On the back of this info the architects and the structural engineer can start to design the kind of foundations and retaining walls we will need and we can start to get some idea of cost.
The choice of architect is obviously key. Without a trusting relationship things can get very messy as we found very early on. I engaged an architect in mid Jan but soon got cold feet. Contract and terms were muddled and too vague. That could have been sorted out but the alarm bells really began to ring when they started getting unpleasant when I queried these concerns. It was on the one hand a difficult decision to terminate that relationship as we had already invested a good deal emotionally in coming to the decision to use them. Conversely, however, it was an very easy decision to terminate the relationship as it was clear that we had lost confidence in them and there was zero prospect in being able to work with them.
That's how we ended up working with RRA Architects and were very pleased that it ended up that way.
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