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This weeks was one of the best episodes in a long time. That lad worked so hard and they created an amazing home for themselves. She had such a positive outlook on life. I wish them well
large number of these builds are be architects or “builder” who get lots of free advertising by dint of its being their build.
The programme is no advert for architects. Most episodes seem to involve the architect making some major blunder that can’t be built out doesn’t work for one reason or another
I’m not getting good vibes on this one so far. I’m not sure he’s got the right reasons for doing this or the capabilities to execute on it.
Agreed, seems to be needing to deal with his daddy issues. Surely would have been more eco to retrofit insulation, solar etc and rejig the internals?
This "U" shape house is nice.
£200k over budget…
I wonder how much he would have saved if he had just paid for the drawings and got it done the way the architect envisioned. What did building control have to say about it all ? My mate had nothing but hassle from them about the insulation in his eaves details when he converted a detached garage into a small dwelling.
Fair play to him though if he has done all that finishing by himself , that’s a lot of work. At least it kept him from gluing his hands to the M25 😉
The case was definitely empty!
"Do the drawings" has to be lesson 1 of these projects...
First time in years I’ve watched it - I’ll leave it for another 3 or 4 years to let my blood pressure reduce!!
For the same reason I can no longer watch Location, Location, Location.
And aren’t open tread stairs now banned under building regs?
I cannot fault him for effort.
But was it worth it?
For the same reason I can no longer watch Location, Location, Location
I can't watch that programme because the two presenters are just so bloody irritating, so patronising. But that's probably another thread in itself, or for the Disproportionately Cross one at any rate.
Just weird, and weird over wealthy people, odd relationship.
They essentially built a complex of four 1 bed apartments in the middle of a massive green lawn for at least£1 million build cost. I find it impossible to believe that after the initial basic structure and roof build he did it all himself even given the timescale.
I'm not seeing how it's 'eco', or how either of them are going to run retreats or wellness things.
Such a wasted opportunity. Didn't do anything for me. Tbh I nearly turned it off.
Another water tower conversion next week, could be more interesting.
I liked his approach to life. I've got all this work to do to finish my partner/wife's apartment for the sake of her health but **** it, I'm spending half my day relaxing on the lawn 🙂
Among other things stressing me out about that very weird episode were the shots of him building away with only the barefoot running shoes on his feet.
Sometimes barefoot shoes or sandals and shorts, but a hard hat lol!
Yet again, there's no barriers on the balcony, how do they get away with it?????????????/
Yes, build a house to reduce stress, by getting your wife to lay on her back painting the gutters.
The whole thing was a bit weird and he obviously had father (dis)approval issues that he was trying to resolve.
I can't be the only one who tracks Kevin's jackets throughout the episodes, not sure if he really feels the cold, or if he's always in freezing locations, but that man loves to layer! Decent Patagucci collection.
Mixed feelings about this one. Its the village I grew up in so know the site and especially those woods incredibly well and would love to able to live someday so I took it a bit personally that he built something rather underwhelming on such a lovely site.
Also from a professional perspective have some slight questions about a raft foundation on what's typically a fairly high plastic clay. The wifes an architect and she started rolling her eyes at the lack of drawings.
Had both of them accidentally swallowed The Little Book of Calm, or were they really completely hyper, anger filled people who had to behave weirdly placidly in front of the camera?
Be interesting to see it after 5yrs. Can't help but thinking it'll look tired, especially that 650mm roof border/guttering he fell out with the architect over. Looked pretty poorly finished new.
Kevin’s jackets
He has a Mk1 TNF McMurdo that gets a lot of screen time (I have the same jacket but in brown - jacket buddy's!!!!)
I started watching where the designer and him fell out over the roof capping, and I thought the designer was a stuck up person. I think he was right though, the finished product reminded me of school reports - unfulfilled potential!
Then when she got her Cancer diagnosis and saying that it makes you reflect on the important things in life - I expect starting that bloomin project felt like the least important thing in the world!
The wifes an architect and she started rolling her eyes at the lack of drawings
Oh the irony! 😀
Cripes that was awful, yeah he got it finished but in a sort of 5 years old crayon drawing version of the original design.
I find there's normally only one or two good homes per series and it's the Yorkshire one from last week by a mile so far.
I missed the start and couldn't work out if they were brother and sister or married. Very strange dynamic all round.
I can just imagine the guys on site ripping the piss in the early stages, reminds me of the phase "a bit naive with a shovel" what a self indulgent arsehole - bet you £5 he's an only child.
I’m not sure why as a married couple you would want to live in separate apartments. I can understand e act having a study or room to escape to but not separate homes. I do wonder if this was an excuse to build 4 flats that can be split and sold off separately.
The designer seemed to have done a lot of pretty drawings of the house. Perhaps less of them and some decent drawings of the roof may have been better value
couldn’t work out if they were brother and sister or married. Very strange dynamic all round.
I’m not sure why as a married couple you would want to live in separate apartments.
Modern slavery. That's why they spoke so weirdly to camera as well. I'm assuming he was her slave, but who knows. They didn't show much of the house in the round-up because most of it is a secure dungeon. Kevin may still be there.
Kevin may still be there.
Let's face it, they could breed from him. He seems to be unstoppable given all the gossip on this thread 😀
I didn’t really understand how that worked out, he had an initial budget of 800K, then fell out with the architect over the design details. Then he seemed to complete it himself, but still 200K over budget.
They seemed to miss out a lot of details and didn’t show much of the finished house. I think the original had more character and could have been altered.
Seems as if he wanted to erase his past somehow, very odd episode…
Given the costs reported by others, I really couldn't see where £1m went, especially since he spent years doing it himself. Although those false skylights might have cost a lot - small fusion reactors are really expensive.
The architect was quite right about those fascias (or whatever). Waaay too phat.
I preferred the cool 70s house that his father had built.
Talk about biting off more than you can chew...
I’ve found this water tower pretty uncomfortable to watch to be honest. Think they’ve pushed it a bit far here, and at what cost to them and their kids. The slides will be ready when they’re at uni!
Can’t see how they’re going to finish it.
Agree. I can appreciate their single-minded approach and tenacity but lost all perspective.
I'd love to see it finished on a revisit, but have my doubts if it ever will be tbh (They have been sensible with the money so far though!) Surely it gonna be really dark inside too?
Struggled to see why it was so essential to have concrete when it ended up looking like wood anyway! As far as I could gather it had taken about 2 years just to build the frame for the first pour.
Had the architect actually done any structural integrity work? Would that cut away roof and sides actually stand up?
Huge space inside chopped into lots of small sections.
Not a great site I'd be worried that the open field would be housing in a decade. But also how did the modern houses nearest the substation not have the noise issues if a 200mm concrete wall and the thickness of the actual building walls not reduce it enough? (I know oneoverdsquared but even then).
I worry about the kids in that build. I got to the end and said I hope they budget for the kids therapy at 23.
I don’t usually feel like rooting for the protagonists on this show as they’re usually annoying rich people, but I really wanted these two to succeed. All power to them for trying a bold project.
Yeah; it felt like a ‘proper’ grand design. They have a vision and don’t want to compromise but also don’t have millions to throw at it.
I’ll look forward to a revisit in 7 years time when they might nearly be done (and the kids are too big for the ladders and slides!).
Got to admire the vision and the graft the guy was putting in, but honestly why not build the internal structure out of wood, why dig out the floor? surely an insulated floating floor would have sufficed.
Hugely ambitious plan, and the way they chose to implement made it even more crazy. Wife constantly saying he needed to go faster whilst specifying stuff like geometric designs on the concrete (which looked great, but must have added hundreds of hours to the project)
He seemed to have a thing for concrete!
I'm hoping for a revisited, and I'm hoping they haven't divorced...
The cost of the wood for the concrete pour must have been immense. Why the hell didn't they use wood for the construction.
Shouldn't the architect have shown some kind of duty of care (much as Kevin did) and either advised against it altogether or recommended wood instead of concrete? It struck me as an aesthetic, financial, emotional and time prison that a young family shouldn't have.
Slides to be replaced with Stannah stairlifts!
I quite liked what the architect had drawn up especially with the swimming pool and the rest of that top deck but it was always out of reach for them at this stage of their lives.
Was surprised the architect rolled his sleeves up and did some labouring with him.
Could eclipse the lighthouse that took something like 11yrs, bankrupted him, cost the bloke his family and still isn't sold!
It struck me as an aesthetic, financial, emotional and time prison that a young family shouldn’t have.
Every family is different. My dad was always doing up houses in the 70s and 80s - we never lived in a finished house. We used to climb up ladders to go to bed and for weeks would be walking over open joists! 🙂
Filled me with admiration and horror in equal measure, as above I couldn't work out why they didn't just build in lighter materials and insulate the existing floor - it's not like losing any height would have been an issue. Loved the idea, the form work concrete patterns etc but it was a bit cruel to show them a finished water tower with a bit of here is what you could have had... 🙁
550sqm is effing huge too
...Struggled to see why it was so essential to have concrete when it ended up looking like wood anyway!
...why not build the internal structure out of wood
...The cost of the wood for the concrete pour must have been immense. Why the hell didn’t they use wood for the construction.
Yeah, this ^. When they removed the timber formwork I did wonder whether they'd see the irony of binning a perfectly useable construction material for the sake of making everything out of concrete. But no. Excruciating.
Was surprised the architect rolled his sleeves up and did some labouring with him.
That's got to be a first for GDs shirley?
photo op? Can't imagine he was there for more than a few hours, maybe he was feeling guilty for helping selling a dream that looks like it might break them....
What is it’s with architects. They seem incapable of designing anything their clients can actually afford to build. If I ever get the chance to do a project I think I’m going to tell the architect have have half what I actually expect to spend as the number to design too.
Yes insulate and if really needed reinforce the existing perfectly good ground floor.
At the end of casting the first level, it should really have been a reality check - this is all very nice, but lets build from here in steel / wood / blocks and get something we can live in before the kids leave home.
Don't do anything with the upper tank at this stage. And can you even structurally remove sections of the dome?
Cut any downstairs openings early so no mess later on. And if really needed, cut the central access in the upper tank floor so that mess is done then leave it and revisit next decade if you ever have the funds / need the space. And how impossibly tough will that upper floor be considering the weight of water it once supported....
They probably dug the floor out because they couldn't be certain it would take the weight of all the new concrete added above it.
Could eclipse the lighthouse that took something like 11yrs, bankrupted him, cost the bloke his family and still isn’t sold!
which is now still up for sale for less than the cost of building, had a car (or more likely VW van) drive through the wall and is now apparently suffering quite badly from the foundations moving.
I would have built a steelwork frame inside the structure hugging the walls then spanning across to a central steel core.
From the core samples they drilled , that slab looked pretty chunky. The could put a steel raft frame on top existing floor , bit of rebar to join to existing and pour new floor up to top of beam. Stick your steel columns up , tie them back to main walls, then start up at the top and build down to the bottom ( using the beams above to chain-block lower beams into position) .
Could have put the fancy walls in on the lower floor, and used curved steels in a "core" above to fix formwork. Could have achieved the same look in a fraction of the time. Whether their funds would have covered that would be a different matter, but not as expensive as you might think.
As for the top tank, I would have done the same as the place they visited, and just had the sides cut out for windows all round, with a small (ish) hole in the centre. That looked epic. Then get a 360 ° projector and turn it into your own planetarium.
Utter madness. It was just so evident right from the start that they didn't have anything like the budget it would need to complete a project of that scale, and didn't have jobs that were going to generate it in the forseeable future. And that would have been with a conventional build, let alone one with enormous amounts of poured concrete. Using all their own labour doesn't reduce the raw material costs - the timber for the shuttering alone was going to eat funds. The rooftop pool - WTF? how much? And it was huge - plumbing, electric, heating and insulation - all that stuff multiples stacks up for a 500m2 (?) build.
Finger in the air, but £1m? £1.5? more? and at the end you're next to an ugly modern housing estate, a railway and the hum of an electricity sub station. You might get the hum level down inside the bedrooms with the windows closed but you're surely still going to hear that and train outside...
But the design if ever completed would have be incredible - the concrete work (shapes and surfaces) was absolutely lovely (though the corridors looked a bit narrow?) and the concept of the tank space (though who knows if it would actually be buildable) was super cool. But cutting access into the tank, and removing a quarter of the roof? and huge chunks of the walls? and getting clean edges to the cuts? and doing that, and removing the waste AFTER you've built the inside?
I'm guessing they were going to create an insulated box inside the structure - so you'd have lost the original concrete walls internally but kept the external appearance. It looked like that other water tower they looked at had done the opposite - wrapped the whole original structure in insulation which meant you lost the original appearance externally apart from the shape but they had exposed concrete in the main space ceiling. Other than the very cool curving staircases and odd room shapes a lot of the rest of it ended up looking quite bland.
The whole thing was (is) a waste of time and money.
Awful building in an awful location and the proposed design made lots of small spaces out of a lot of available space (apart from the top floor).
I admire the couple's drive and ambition but think they are allowing their hearts to rule their heads and risking a lot.
Not a show I really watch but might have to check this episode out!
That's the first one we've skipped through this series, massively over ambitious build in a not great location by a couple without the funds or time to waste on this sort of folly.
So five new builds this series with only one of them being any good, although that seems to normal for the recent series.
Talking of follies the Medway Eco-Barge has resurfaced bought by a couple from Essex for a reported £70k in 2021 and then refurbished for (an additional?) £150k.
I apologise for the Daily Mail link but it's the only place I found the final update.
Thought the latest episode was great - was a proper Grand Design.
The architect is clearly media savvy enough to realise most of their type always comes across as knobs so was happy to get involved even if it was for the cameras.
I wish they had done a more recent visit - given it was Oct 23 & we're a year down the line after he'd given up work to concentrate full time on the project - they may've got another floor done?
Didn't really understand why they didn't start by creating a habitable space on one floor that the family could live in and then progress above/below as funds and time permitted. There again I'm not a builder so maybe that wasn't really possible. No escaping being next to a substation either, which I wouldn't want for my family.
As said above it's an interesting project in a horrible location.
I have to admire their ambition and dedication but cannot fathom why they made 90% of their decisions. I'd have made the interior out of wood and supported it off the exostructure (built to support 1000 tonnes of water + all the concrete). I'd have also started at the top, though that may be the pragmatic decision to only do what you can reach. It's going to be very expensive and make a hell of a mess to put any holes in that thing.
Best of luck to them - it was a real grand design. I hope they get it finished.
I wish they had done a more recent visit – given it was Oct 23 & we’re a year down the line after he’d given up work to concentrate full time on the project – they may’ve got another floor done?
That’s unusual. The final visit is normally very close to broadcast (most of the programme is already filmed and maybe even edited. I rather suspect nothing has happened since.
That’s unusual. The final visit is normally very close to broadcast (most of the programme is already filmed and maybe even edited. I rather suspect nothing has happened since.
Last week's final visit was Nov 23 too.
They're not finished but making progress. 1/4 roof cut off, window slots cut out the top dome:
https://www.instagram.com/the_water_tower_conversion/
Good to see!
When viewed from that side the location doesn't look too bad.
wow.
from the pictures on instagram looks like he made the cuttings with a concrete chainsaw (didnt even know there was a thing) said it was done in 3 days! thats thr length of time its taken me to maje a sub base for our patio.....!!! (admittedly Im solo, but still seriously impressive)
and it didnt colapse
I too thought it was a project based on a “because it’s there” mentality overriding the location (awful) or aesthetics of the build, but fair play to him, those pictures suggest his sheer bloody mindness might result in something to admire.
Instagram shows quite a lot more progress. Looks like they have all the concrete floors in the main part of the tower done now. Plus cutting out the hole through for stairs from main tower to water tank. Plus the water tank cutouts. Also some progress made on the ground floor extension (not sure why they could possibly need more space). Maybe they’ll actually pull it off.
It would have been great in the right location, but right next to a sub-station and a modern estate? If I was inclined, I’d have gone with a timber and steel internals and insulate the walls because the cost of heating will be massive.
They probably dug the floor out because they couldn’t be certain it would take the weight of all the new concrete added above it.
Given that the building was designed to take the weight of thousands of litres of water i would doubt that you can out enough in it to overload the structure.
Instagram also shows an incredible lack of Health & Safety precautions...................
Really enjoyed the 25 year revisit. Amazing to see the growth of the trees and the maturing of the house. Felt refreshing that it all hadn't been ripped out and painted white.
We've gone from major disaster, we're 6k over budget on a modest family house, to people putting themselves in 500k of debt for aircraft hangers...