Property with Japanese Knotweed- worth the risk?

Davesnave

ognum wrote: »

My reading suggests the jury is still out as to whether living close to a sub station can cause health issues so I would avoid it, I would also avoid buying a property close to pylons and overhead wires.

It's my preference, it also may be other people's when you come to sell.

I've said this before, but those of us out in the country have our own little sub-stations and no one bats an eylid. The same with lines travelling across the landscape.

Of course, it would be nicer without them, but the alternative of doing without power is a much worse option.

In my old city cul de sac, a couple of houses backed onto the sub-station, but there was no discernable difference in their prices when they were bought & sold. The last person to buy one during my time was a university professor, who immediately built a garden office right next to the electricity board's site.

ognum

Davesnave wrote: »

I've said this before, but those of us out in the country have our own little sub-stations and no one bats an eylid. The same with lines travelling across the landscape.

Of course, it would be nicer without them, but the alternative of doing without power is a much worse option.

In my old city cul de sac, a couple of houses backed onto the sub-station, but there was no discernable difference in their prices when they were bought & sold. The last person to buy one during my time was a university professor, who immediately built a garden office right next to the electricity board's site.

Living in a city full of university professors and having bought my last two properties from them I can assure you few of them have much common sense.

I have read the literature, I am aware that there is no definitive answer but my and some others preference would be not to live within close proximity to electricity substations or pylons.

All I am suggesting is it might limit the saleability and the price.

moneyistooshorttomention

I'll admit to a hollow laugh there at the state of some of the houses of university professors I've been in - I rather think they've usually got "higher" things on their minds.

The worst case I can think of is where one of them bought a house and a substantial chunk of his garden duly fell away in a landslide:eek: not that long afterwards.

wwl

ognum wrote: »

My reading suggests the jury is still out as to whether living close to a sub station can cause health issues so I would avoid it, I would also avoid buying a property close to pylons and overhead wires.

The jury has never been in, never mind out. It is a completely different to overhead lines, for which AIUI there is still no credible evidence of health issues,but some measurable electrostatic and magnetic field.
Unfortunately, the general poor level of understanding of such matters means anything with "electricity" in the title gets lumped together by people who know no better.
A substation contains one or more transformers, and sometimes some switchgear - fuses, circuit breakers, remote monitoring etc.
All the gear is inside steel casings so there is zero electrostatic field outside them, never mind outside the substation. Any similarity to overhead lines is therefore simply wrong.
The transformers are designed to be efficient, and therefore to minimise any stray magnetic field, and any remaining field is attenuated first by the steel case, and any minute remainder by the effect of the inverse square law, so there will be no field of any consequence outside the building.
Your own house wiring contributes many orders of magnitude more electrostatic and magnetic field than a local substation.
There is the "nocebo" effect, whereby people who believe something, however unfounded or ridiculous, will experience genuine symptoms, but the only cure for that is education.
(I'm an electronics engineer BTW)

Rambosmum

As an owner of a house with JK I'd say two things.

1. It doesn't make it unmortgageable. We've had two, from two different companies. It depends on the company and how far from the home, how big the patch is.

2. Our patch, roughly 5m x 3m cost £495 to treat. 3 years have passed and we've been certified JK free.

I'd buy another house with JK without really thinking about it. Unless it was already in the foundations/ very close to house (ours was a meter away, so pretty close but no intrusion on the foundations and it didn't move in the 3 years before we had it treated).

Another point is, that the substation will be owned by national grid? Once purchased you can push them to treat it - letter before action type thing. Especially if it is reasonable to assume that the JK came on to your property from theirs, problem solved! Once notified of it (get a treatment company to confirm in writing that it is JK) they have a duty to do something about it.

Davesnave

ognum wrote: »

Living in a city full of university professors and having bought my last two properties from them I can assure you few of them have much common sense.


All I am suggesting is it might limit the saleability and the price.

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I'll admit to a hollow laugh there at the state of some of the houses of university professors I've been in - I rather think they've usually got "higher" things on their minds.

Sorry, I forgot that academics are bonkers and the rest of us are sane. My bad.

A sub-station might well have some bearing on the saleability of a house, I'm not disagreeing with that. However, I don't think it would be much different from a multitude of other factors which some people take into account and others totally ignore.

For example, about half the houses in the road cited also had north-facing gardens, some of the southerly-facing ones looked over a graveyard, a few backed directly onto terraced lower-priced properties, while others were looking into the gardens of £1m houses. Despite those differences, all sold quickly, depending on condition of course, which also varied tremendously, the road having quite an elderly demographic.

I think it's well proven that having 132 000 volt pylons/lines going over or very close to houses is something few ignore. but a little building that sits there doing very little, except maybe blocking possible other development, is a whole different ball-game.

Davesnave

Rambosmum wrote: »

Another point is, that the substation will be owned by national grid? Once purchased you can push them to treat it - letter before action type thing. Especially if it is reasonable to assume that the JK came on to your property from theirs, problem solved! Once notified of it (get a treatment company to confirm in writing that it is JK) they have a duty to do something about it.

It's the distributors who are responsible for matters like this, like Openreach is responsible for the telephone line network.

Western Power, who are the people responsible in my area, are much easier to contact and deal with than Openreach!

It's usual for the distributors to outsource work like this, and they'll probably have their own preferred contractors, as they do for tree work.