So you have a strangely-sloped site, down an awkward lane, with the river at the bottom - oh, and no mobile signal.
Not a problem!
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The problem
Because this is Cornwall, there is not always a nice, wide road, with plenty of parking leading to your house or plot. And the plot itself might not be level, or even next to the road.
So how do we build a home on a sloping piece of land, that has a river at the foot of the garden, and is only accessed down a narrow, windy lane? Oh, and managing without a mobile signal… and keeping our vehicles, equipment and supplies secure and to hand… while keeping your new neighboursAnyone who resides near to a project or can pass by and can be affected in any way by the project, for example walkers on a track which runs along the boundary of the construction site. on side?
There are a number of solutions that we can use here – let’s run you through some of them.
Rivers
If your site is on a river, or an estuary, and has only limited road access, then that can really be a solution, rather than a problem. See our Waterside home for a video of our team working with one of the local working boats to bring all our materialsBricks, concrete, timber, cement, nails, screws, and everything else that makes up the building. to the site by river, unloading onto what would become the deck, and keeping almost all of the equipment off the road altogether. This particular site was accessed via a narrow windy lane that carried a lot of foot traffic, and wasn’t really suitable for unloading builders’ lorries, as it would have completely blocked access to other properties. Hence the river.
It also has the benefit of being a lot more eco-friendly than the road-based alternative.
Tight sites and narrow roads
In an ideal world, your site would be nice and large, with a good wide road to it, so we can store all our equipment and materialsBricks, concrete, timber, cement, nails, screws, and everything else that makes up the building. there, taking deliveries of things that we need in time to use them, and tidying our waste into skips as necessary. However, in the real world, not every site has that luxury.
We are used to operating with satellite sites, where we hire a plot of land close by, and use that as our base of operations. We’ll keep the equipment there when we’re not using it, and have materialsBricks, concrete, timber, cement, nails, screws, and everything else that makes up the building. delivered there by lorry, only bringing them to your site when we need them, and using smaller vehicles. The waste, and management will be operated there too, and we’ll have separate site security in place to ensure everything is kept safe.
We’ve also run generators and pumps with extra-long connections, even doubling up to have a half-way point along the route, to ensure that access isn’t impeded for others, and we can get power in, and water out, within the constraints that exist.
Slopes and hills
It’s not quite the case that we’ve never worked on a flat site in Cornwall, but there’s not a lot of this county that isn’t uneven at least, if not properly hilly. We’re used to designing and building on sites that require special treatment. We’ve created several variants on an up-side-down layout, that has the main rooms at the top, accessed from street level and overlooking the fabulous views, and then bedrooms below, opening on to the garden. Also, terraced gardens, utilising various heights of decking or patios, to create a wonderful effect and maximise the useful space.
We’re also experienced with creating solid groundworks, including cutting into slopes and cliffs, to ensure that your home remains where we put it, and the surrounding ground also stays where it ought to be.
Connectivity
A modern building site requires good connectivity, surprising though that may seem, to ensure that our complex scheduling software can be accessed by the team, orders can be placed with suppliers, and video calls can be held with clients who aren’t local. In the past we have set up our own mobile signal repeaters, and more recently, we use Starlink where the mobile signal was inadequate.
Neighbours
Everybody needs good neighboursAnyone who resides near to a project or can pass by and can be affected in any way by the project, for example walkers on a track which runs along the boundary of the construction site., as they say, and we will do our best to be good neighboursAnyone who resides near to a project or can pass by and can be affected in any way by the project, for example walkers on a track which runs along the boundary of the construction site. to the people you’re about to live next to. We will keep them informed about site activities, for example when there’s going to be a crane delivery, or something particularly noisy taking place. We have offered in the past to repaint an end wall that had been freshly painted right before we began demolition at our project Copper Door. We will bend over backwards to avoid blocking or limiting access, damaging their property or gardens, or otherwise annoying them – and we have delivered groceries and post to neighboursAnyone who resides near to a project or can pass by and can be affected in any way by the project, for example walkers on a track which runs along the boundary of the construction site. in the past, when we’ve blocked the access to their home for a while.
Our crews are encouraged to be thoughtful in their actions, both while working and in general around the site, so that we limit noise-nuisance as well. (Building is never going to be a silent activity, but we try to keep noise down where we can!)
As experienced local builders, we have dealt with most of the challenges that rural Cornwall has to offer, and are more than happy to discuss your difficult site with you.
