House with land, further advice please!

L

lara b

Well-Known Member
Joined
6 September 2010
Messages
1,234
Location
Buckinghamshire/Northants
Visit site
Hi
Thanks to everyone who responded to my last thread.
Having done a bit more research within the forum I am now starting to wonder if the land will even be ok for what I want.
This is the set up we are looking at buying:
  • semi detatched house (with lots of compromises including being very near a busy road:(, but hacking is from back of land so not on busy road).
  • 2 acres of land, high level so drains reasonably well, on clay loam soil.
  • Field shelter (great condition)
  • 2 stables and hay store area (great condition)
  • NO mains electricity just solar lights
  • Water is from water butts and and dragging of hosepipe from main house!
  • No menage
  • Communal walkway and vehicle access from stables down to lane with hacking from there.
  • Other horses in fields across walkway.
There is currently a livery who rents the land and stables and looks after the maintenance. Ideally I would keep her on (she just has one horse) to help each other out and for company.
Do you think the land will be able to sustain the 2 horses (ideally I would like mine to live out most of the time).
Will the no mains electric be a big issue?
Any thoughts or comments greatly appriciated, would feel awful if I uprooted my poor husband and it didn't work out.
Thought this would be really exciting but am getting so stressed out about it, am wondering if it is the right thing to do!:confused:
Thanks lara:)
 
Personally I wouldn't want to be on any yard without mains water or electric. When I bought my land they were the most expensive additions but in my mind essentials.

I'm not sure what clay loam soil is but clay soil is awful and best avoided if you can.

All the other things are compromises and I could live with.

Also I always think it best to view somewhere in the winter so you can see how bad its gonna get re mud, drainage etc. All fields look like rural idylls in the summer but the winters can be horrific without the basic services imv.
 
Here's my thoughts; our house is up for sale so we can buy somewhere with land, so it's an interesting exercise :)

Get a quote for getting electricity to the stables;
Get a quote for getting water to the stables;
Water butts - are they hooked up to the stable's drainage? I'd exchange the butts for the big white sqaure containers, they hold about a 1,000 gallons;
Get a quote for solar panels in the roof of the stables;
Menage - is there one within hacking distance that you can hire? If you want to keep two horses on two acres you're not really going to be able to lose too much land to building your own;
How secure is the set up? Sorry, trying to imagine what the layout is like.

How far is it from the stables to the house? Is it your land between the two?
 
LHS said:
Personally I wouldn't want to be on any yard without mains water or electric. When I bought my land they were the most expensive additions but in my mind essentials.

I'm not sure what clay loam soil is but clay soil is awful and best avoided if you can.

All the other things are compromises and I could live with.

Also I always think it best to view somewhere in the winter so you can see how bad its gonna get re mud, drainage etc. All fields look like rural idylls in the summer but the winters can be horrific without the basic services imv.
Click to expand...

Hi, Thanks for your comments.

I think the clay loam is a clay and sand mix soil, unfortunately where I live nearly all the soil is clay so it's pretty unavoidable.

I have had the advantage of seeing the photos of the land from March/April time and it was pretty good, but did only have one horse on it over winter.

Would you mind saying how much it cost to put in mains water and electric? I know it will vary depending how far it has to come but any rough idea would be good. (Mine would have to come down a 100ft garden then right down the 2 acres as the stables are the other end!).
:)
 
MrsMozart said:
Here's my thoughts; our house is up for sale so we can buy somewhere with land, so it's an interesting exercise :)

Get a quote for getting electricity to the stables;
Get a quote for getting water to the stables;
Water butts - are they hooked up to the stable's drainage? I'd exchange the butts for the big white sqaure containers, they hold about a 1,000 gallons;
Get a quote for solar panels in the roof of the stables;
Menage - is there one within hacking distance that you can hire? If you want to keep two horses on two acres you're not really going to be able to lose too much land to building your own;
How secure is the set up? Sorry, trying to imagine what the layout is like.

How far is it from the stables to the house? Is it your land between the two?
Click to expand...

Hi
Glad I am not the only one thinking this is a good idea, all my friends keep looking at me as if I am crazy!

Yes think I will get quotes for the work although running the cables is probably something my other half can do and then just use the electrician to connect it up and install the lights.

I agree about the menage, I need to go there and ask around about one to hire.

It is direct access from the garden to the land and the security should be reasonable as you have to go down a private communal track with a padlocked gate and someone's house at the end before you reach the road.

Good luck with your house hunting too.:)

lara
 
Hi I was lucky in that the connections didn't have to come too far. The electric was circa 150 ft and was £10,000 including fixtures and fittings. The water came from over the road literally a road width and was £2,500.

It was hassle though cos they had to dig under the road and give prior notification of the works in the papers etc.

Its quite odd really because I must have spent £100k plus on things you can't really see, drainage being a big one.

Anyway good luck with whatever you decide. And another thing to remember is the maintenance costs on a yard far outweigh anything spent in a house.
 
i think the land is enough to keep 2 horses on, provided you look after it properly. We're on clay and it does get churned up in winter but so do most other places, one of lives little annoyances when you have horses(!) so the ground wouldn't put me off. I think the other person was right in suggesting a big square water holder, they contain a lot of water and are very good, not sure about them freezing up tho...Are there any about that are insulated..? As for electrics, I think if you ( or other half ) do the groundwork i.e the digging of the trench etc, I don't think it will be that expensive.Investigating solar power is a good idea, we have some and it's very effective. As far as the manege is concerned, not being able to build one wouldn't put me off buying the property. I haven't got one and manage to do a bit of schooling here and there on my hacks, mind you I'm not a high level competitor(!). It's true that you probably end up spending more on your yard than your house, but you can do it in dribs and drabs to be able to manage the cost a bit. If you buy the property I'd suggest living with the arrangements as they are for a bit if possible and see how best to address them as you go. Adding and changing your yard is going to be an ongoing thing, but all part of the fun and even if it does take a while to come together you'll enjoy the benfits even more. Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day!
Good luck!!
 
jokadoka said:
i think the land is enough to keep 2 horses on, provided you look after it properly. We're on clay and it does get churned up in winter but so do most other places, one of lives little annoyances when you have horses(!) so the ground wouldn't put me off. I think the other person was right in suggesting a big square water holder, they contain a lot of water and are very good, not sure about them freezing up tho...Are there any about that are insulated..? As for electrics, I think if you ( or other half ) do the groundwork i.e the digging of the trench etc, I don't think it will be that expensive.Investigating solar power is a good idea, we have some and it's very effective. As far as the manege is concerned, not being able to build one wouldn't put me off buying the property. I haven't got one and manage to do a bit of schooling here and there on my hacks, mind you I'm not a high level competitor(!). It's true that you probably end up spending more on your yard than your house, but you can do it in dribs and drabs to be able to manage the cost a bit. If you buy the property I'd suggest living with the arrangements as they are for a bit if possible and see how best to address them as you go. Adding and changing your yard is going to be an ongoing thing, but all part of the fun and even if it does take a while to come together you'll enjoy the benfits even more. Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day!
Good luck!!
Click to expand...

Thanks very much.

Dribs and drabs will be the way to go I think (both financially and to make sure we get it right. I am not wanting to school loads as am mainly a happy hacker, so I think hiring a menage occasionally will be enough and one of my best friends has a yard with a menage where we could always go for 'boot camp' if needed!

Feeling a bit more excited about the whole thing now, got to stop worrying so much, and concentrate on the positives! :D
 
We had to bring electric and water to our yard. One of the big costs is the digger for getting the pipes/cables underground so it's worth doing just the once for both jobs. Water pipes are cheap and suitable for DIY, the electricity armoured cable is extremely expensive and you can't cut corners. We paid 5k just for the electricity but that included the lights, sensors, electical board, etc. I did manage for couple of years with a generator and a really good flash light so it is do-able, while a long hose from the house should sort out the water.

Good luck!
 
We have 2 acres at home and find that really this isn't quite enough for two horses. Yes there are times when it's fine but until we were able to rent more land, we got through a LOT of hay.
Also are you sure you need electicity? These days the camping shops have every powerful LED lights which run off batteries so preparing feeds and grooming could be possible using these.You'd have to spend an awful lot of money on batteries to make a professional installation worthwhile. If you have exterior lights installed you would need to think about how this could affect your neighbours. We built stables behind our neighbours garage so our lights don't interfere with them but their PIR shines in one of our bedroom windows whenever the local cats set it off!!
As for water we ran a pipe across from the house buried in a cable to ensure we didn't ever dig through it by accident. If the house has an outside tap already you're in business. Make sure you lag anything above ground very well otherwise you will regret it. Having an outside tap installed for the house shouldn't cost more than about £200.
Hope that helps. Having your own facilities is really great!
 
i have 2 horses plus a minature on 2 acres but they are in at night all year round and get through a lot of hay.we dug a trench for the elecrics to stable and local electrician put that in .we have hosepipes x 3 joined together to run water from outside tap down to the bottom of field and in depths of winter take buckets.we dont have an arena but daughter competes quite a bit so we box to local one to hire.the benefits often out weigh the negatives
 
The only thing I'd say is be prepared to cart buckets of water about - we've got huge water bowsers which freeze in winter and dry up in summer if the horses are out 24/7 - especially this year with the lack of rain - we've hooked up a pipe from the house which has been a great help! :)

Do the jobs one at a time and don't rush the ideas - we wanted everything done all at once and did things too quickly - in hindsight we'd change a lot of things now we've had chance to think things through and work with things (IYKWIM?)
Kate x
 
You say the house is a semi .Who is in the other half are they country type people?
Be aware 'towny neighbour can be a nightmare if you are attatched to them.
For some years we had country neighbours THEN the townies moved in moaned about everything including the sound of horses being ridden early( 7:00 am!!!) horses neighing if one was taken out without the other, moaned about a very small muck heap well way from them moaned that we encouraged vermin because of hay and feed (kept in steel bins)So be aware being attatched to the wrong people can be difficult.
We moved in the end for lots of reasons and top priority no near neighbours
We had a semi with land (7ACRES) stables barn sand school etc .That also was on a clay subsoil .It did need very careful managing Hard core and hard standing around the field shelter is essential so you are able to stand them off the field if it is very wet if you don't want to stable .Also a hardcore apron can be used to feed hay on,
Building a sand school can be very difficult (it took us 3 years 4 applications and 1 appeal to get ours) You can use the field to school on but if you are on clay then it won't be useable in the winter.
Electricity can be got around with LED torches and lamps and you can get towable huge water tanks to use for field (not cheap but really save time and effort as you can tow them up to the tap to be filled for 2 the big ones could last up to a month,
Think hard it could work.
 
Last edited:
horselib said:
You say the house is a semi .Who is in the other half are they country type people?
Be aware 'towny neighbour can be a nightmare if you are attatched to them.
For some years we had country neighbours THEN the townies moved in moaned about everything including the sound of horses being ridden early( 7:00 am!!!) horses neighing if one was taken out without the other, moaned about a very small muck heap well way from them moaned that we encouraged vermin because of hay and feed (kept in steel bins)So be aware being attatched to the wrong people can be difficult.
We moved in the end for lots of reasons and top priority no near neighbours
We had a semi with land (7ACRES) stables barn sand school etc .That also was on a clay subsoil .It did need very careful managing Hard core and hard standing around the field shelter is essential so you are able to stand them off the field if it is very wet if you don't want to stable .Also a hardcore apron can be used to feed hay on,
Building a sand school can be very difficult (it took us 3 years 4 applications and 1 appeal to get ours) You can use the field to school on but if you are on clay then it won't be useable in the winter.
Electricity can be got around with LED torches and lamps and you can get towable huge water tanks to use for field (not cheap but really save time and effort as you can tow them up to the tap to be filled for 2 the big ones could last up to a month,
Think hard it could work.
Click to expand...

The house is a semi but the stables are right the bottom end of the field so quite far from the neighbours and lots of other horses turned out in surrounding fields so don't think the neighbours could complain really. Hacking is from stables so same applies for noise of riding out etc, good point though.

Thanks very much for everyones replies, your advice has helped loads, and we have decided as long as we get a decent offer on ours we are going to go for the house with land and then just work the rest out as we go along! :eek:
 
lara b said:
The house is a semi but the stables are right the bottom end of the field so quite far from the neighbours and lots of other horses turned out in surrounding fields so don't think the neighbours could complain really. Hacking is from stables so same applies for noise of riding out etc, good point though.

Thanks very much for everyones replies, your advice has helped loads, and we have decided as long as we get a decent offer on ours we are going to go for the house with land and then just work the rest out as we go along! :eek:
Click to expand...

That's great news, congratulations and keep us posted!!!
 
Well I keep my horses at home and sounds like quite a similar set up.

We usually have three horses on 2.5 acres over the winter, but we are mainly on sandy soil, and I do bring them in at night from about November to March to save the field a bit. It never gets deeply poached but is rather bare, and I do have to supplement with hay quite a way into spring/early summer.

We don't have mains water, just use water butts and a hose down from the house and across the road to the yard. Only really a problem in the ice and snow when the hose is frozen and we have to bucket the water down.

We don't have a manege, daughter usually schools in the field, but we have a friend's manege about 10 minutes hack away that she uses about once a week.

We do have mains electricity though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top