To request access to garden to check sun levels when buying a house

[howmuchsun]

Basically a sunny garden is very important to me. I absolutely love the sun and if a garden doesn’t get any, or much sun, it’s a deal breaker when looking at houses.

We’re viewing a house today and we’ve already fallen in love with it. It’s perfect, other than not knowing how much sun the garden gets. The house is on a corner plot in a cul de sac and the garden goes around the side of the house and around to the back. The garden backs on to a brook which we LOVE and there are a lot of really big high trees on the other side of the brook. Because these trees are so tall, I’m worried that they’ll block out all the sun. The pictures online show a sunny garden but these were taken a couple of months ago when the trees were bare and you can see the shadows of their branches go up to the house. I’m thinking when the trees are full in the summer, there won’t be any sun in the garden. Or, hopefully, the sun will be high enough in the summer that the garden will be sunny.

We’ve asked the estate agent to ask the owner how much sun the garden gets but they’re surely going to lie and say it’s sunny even if it’s not. So here’s my AIBU - could I ask to go and visit the garden periodically tomorrow? There’s an entrance around the side of the house I could just walk though and peek into the garden so wouldn’t need to go through the house. Or is that totally unreasonable?

The current owner is an 85 year old lady if that makes any difference. It’ll just me be (30y/o female) and my baby checking out the garden.

It's such a huge purchase and life impacting that of course it should be reasonable to request that.

@nevertrustaherdofcows

Elderly ladies love a baby. Just saying.

What a massive generalisation , I will be an elderly lady at some point and I’m not sure I’m suddenly going to start loving other people’s babies . Just ask OP , she can always say no if it bothers her that much, it’s not like you are asking to camp out in it for a week . .

I really don't understand how, if you know the orientation of the house and how tall the trees are, that you don't already know if is a sunny garden. The sun doesn't just randomly change directions every day, it always rises in the east and sets in the west . It's just the angle that very slowly changes.

I saw my last two houses and one full week that the last one was going to have a miserable garden and dark living room due to the size of the trees. I knew that in the dark the first time I saw it. But it was all I could afford. The house I'm in now, I knew that the garden would be a total sun trap despite me seeing only the front of it on a dark gloomy November morning. And I was right. Maybe I've just got a talent though, because I always know which direction I'm facing too without having to check the sun etc and can tell the time by the sun too.

Remember that the sun is very low in winter and rises at about SE and sets at about SW. But in summer it rises more around NE and swings super high in the sky and all the way around to about NW. We have a south facing garden and actually in the summer the sun is almost too much, but it's lovely in winter on cloudless days, but it's so low in the sky that it could be easily blocked by tall trees. So just because the sun looks good now in May remember it will be much lower in the sky in Dec.

This is very odd @GreyhoundG1rl, op was asking an opinion. You thought it was a good idea, and I said it would be stressful to my similarly aged grandmother. I didn't tag you directly. Why are you determined to have an argument with me specifically?

What are you on about??