Seen a house we like but there is a sewage pumping station and an electricity transformer on the land....

[loopsngeorge]

sounds awful when I write it, but the pumping station is completely unobtrusive. The electricity transformer however is very visible - a high pole on one side of the garden.

I can only get limited info so far from the estate agents but mostly I'm concerned about how likely these things are to go wrong, insurance issues and a vague unease about transformers - weren't they linked to neurological problems?

Does anyone have any experience of buying a property with utility companies' equipment on the land?

Thanks!

No, it's a tall pole and about three quarters of the way up is a grey metal box with overhead power lines running to and from it. I'd never seen one before but apparently its the same equipment as what's inside those square things on the street - they just put them up poles in more rural areas instead!

How far is the transformer from the house?

Those pole transformrs are quiet common in country areas and are not like the huge transformers you see behind chainlink fencing in your local electric board switching yard.

The pole transformers are a bit unsightly but as long as it is not too near the house it should be fine.

The pumping station I would be more worried about out again depends how close to the house it is.

We are very rural and have a shit pole (about as high as the house) in the garden with a little cage on the top. I half expect to see a little puff of stinky gas come out the top when DH is on the loo - but i never have.

I'd say the pole is about 75ft from the house, maybe a bit more. The pumping station is at the side of the house but fenced off and screened by trees. It has it's own access for the water board but i can just imagine if anything did go wrong with it it wouldn't be pleasant!

dh suggests a visit at night to see how noisy these items are - if at all.

One point is not whether or not you can live with noise/smells etc but whether the presence of these things affects the marketability of your property and thus its future value.

If, when you come to sell, a significant number of buyers would not consider purchasing the house this will have a big impact on the ability to find a buyer.

If, on the other hand, you are going to live there forever and never sell you are getting a cheaper house than an equivalent one without the nasties in the garden

I agree with snice that marketability is the major problem. In a falling or soft housing market a house like this will be virtually unsaleable.

IMO it needs to have a huge discount. The proximity of the pumping station is the major problem here though not the transformer.

Thanks for the replies. It's meant to be our 'forever house' so future marketability is not so much of a problem for us. It's been on the market quite a while although someone has just made an offer on it. They've got a property to sell though, hence people are still being shown round.

BeenBeta, is there a particular reason you think the pumping station would be the main problem? To be honest I don't think the price has been discounted that much.
thanks again

Is the property selling at a preium rate or cheaper because of these issues. The sewage punp bit could be an absolute stinker in the summer. You need to ask around the neighbours if poss.

loops - I think it is the fear of a serious leak or a blockage in the pumping system that would put people off.

If it happened it would be horrendous. I base this on my own recent personal experience of having to remove 2 tonnes of raw sewage from our garden manhole which had also backed up into all the drains surrounding our house.

The pumping station is not under your control and you are the complete mercy of the local water company to keep it maintained. My parents live about a mile away from a small sewerage facility in the countryside and in winter it backs up because over Xmas the men who maintain and empty it are away.

In my view, the people selling here have not really discounted it enough hence they have had no other firm bids. I think you should hang tough and get a bigger discount if you are a cash buyer. I now that banks and building societies are increasingly unwilling to lend on houses that are near any kind of commercial property as they know it is more difficult to sell.

Not reasons you should not buy it but if you did ever need to sell it in a hurry (eg illness, loss of jobs, etc) then you might be forced to take a discount.

I used to maintain sewage pumping stations for a job, it wouldn't bother me too much about buying a house near one. They shouldn't smell, the wet well is deep and will be sealed with covers, so not like a sewage treatment works.

All pumping stations have telemetry in them, so there are little sensors that will alert the control room if levels are rising or one of the pumps has failed, etc. Someone is then sent to fix it. Worst case scenario is they can't fix it and need to order tankers to tanker the well out until the problem is fixed. I've never in 4 years known a wet well overflow but have known a couple where the problem couldn't be fixed for a few days so there was a steady stream of tankers emptying it, inc through the night. Obviously this would be noisy but a temporary problem.

I would be more concerned with the the possibility of the pumps been noisy. Just visiting at night isn't really enough. The pumps may only work for 20 minutes every 5 hours. So it could all be quiet but you have no idea if the pumps are working or not. Talk to the neighbours and also ring up the local water board and ask them if they can tell you if any complaints have been made about that pumping station. They should be able to access the records and tell you, if they can't ask the call centre operator to get one of the local operational (not call centre manager) managers to ring you back. You may need someone who personally knows that pumping station to talk to.

One very rare problem that can sometimes occur is the rising main from the pumping station to the sewage treatment works may burst. Like I say its rare but can cause problems with loads of roadworks, etc as they have to dog down to the pipe and fix it. There could well be some sewage flooding in the short term until someone gets there and turns the pumps off. I'd want to see some plans of where on your land the rising main runs. But it wouldn't put me off.

I used to work for a utility company and customers did not really have any issues with transformers on land.
iirc you actually get a payment too for having it on your land. Small but better than nothing!
Contact the Wayleave department for your local electricity company.

Thanks so much for the detailed replies which are really helpful. There aren't any residential neighbours really to ask but there is a tenant in the property who has been there for several years and I was wondering about ringing them to ask about it. They don't really want to leave apparently so I don't know how truthful their answers might be! Or whether it's not the done thing to speak to the tenant??
There is yet another issue which is a stream bordering the property that floods a small part of the garden in winter (nowhere near the house) - aaagh, if only there weren't so many good points as well we'd just leave it!

The flooding stream could be even more serious. I would get your solicitor to ask formal legally binding questions of the seller about that. You may find that the house is uninsurable against flood damage even if it only the garden that has flooded before.

So tell us about the good points then.

I lived next to a water pumping station for 5 years and it was a PITA.

On several occasions we had lorries sucking the crap out because there was a problem with the pump as another poster described. Worst still was the two years we suffered noise nuisance from the pump going off...but the water board had to access the pump from out land and the pump house was adjoined to our garage.

We had to disclose all this when we sold and were worried it put buyers off.

The stream flooding the garden would bother me too.

I would think carefully about this...my mum lives about 20 minutes walk from a Sewage treatment plant and in theory, should not be able to smell anything etc etc

Yet, all throughout my childhood - and even now when I visit, you can still smell it on certain days and certain wind directions - it is even worse when the weather is hot. Nothing worse than having the windows open on a lovely summers evening and then the smell of crap floating in. Its awful.

The residents nearby have been campaigning for YEARS to stop the stink but to no avail - and this is supposedly with all the modern treatments available