Why pay more?

Here is the shopping list for a beautiful warm, cheap, off-grid home, as built in Scotland recently by software engineer Steve James.

With straw bale walls, a turf roof, and the rest of the building materials pulled from skips, this is never going to appear on Grand Designs. But the end product is “a warm and watertight cottage which gets its water supplies by gathering rainfall and its electricity from a car battery,” according to a BBC report.

ITEMISED BILL:

£600 snacks and booze for volunteers
£500 sarking
£400 floorboards
£400 pond liner

£300 straw
£200 plumbing
£150 reclaimed joists
£150 plywood
£150 equipment hire
£150 glass
£100 quicklime
£100 wiring
£100 tarpaulin
£100 paint/varnish
£100 batteries
£100 fixings
£100 miscellaneous
£100 fuel for power tools
£70 water pump
£50 water heater
£50 stove chimney
£30 cooker

The project may also help to highlight wider issues of housing space and land availability. Steve believes a three-bedroom family home could be built for £10,000.

“It is something that anybody could easily learn to do most of, with help,” he said.

“The real cost of a house is fairly small. It is always the land that makes about 85% of the cost.

“Adding the compound interest to the final cost of a mortgage reduces the actual house price component of the total to as little as 2%.”

Local forestry like larch, spruce and elm were used to construct much of the property.

Sand, gravel, rock and turf from nearby fields and burns were also a part of the build.

And straight out of other people’s rubbish came a roof velux, shower tray, front window, front door and an oval bedroom window.

The stove chimney for the home cost just £50

Mr James’s favourite pieces of reclamation work include the Tudor-style panelled timber ceiling.

It was made out of solid pine changing cubicle doors salvaged from old Victorian public baths in Govan.

A traditional Belfast sink was constructed out of items from a decommissioned primary school.

And worktops and windowsills came from a Cedar of Lebanon in Pollok Park in Glasgow which was felled by a storm.

They have all been brought together to create a home which aims to be both ecologically and economically friendly.

At last estimate the average house price in Scotland stood at about £158,000.
The Galloway project has taken about 10 man-months of actual building time to complete.