Tell me about semi rural house purchasing please

[Countrylifeornot]

I'm viewing a semi rural house on the weekend and looking for some tips.

The house was stand alone but has sort of been built around, so not really rural now but has the rural issues such as septic tank, oil heating etc. Having always been suburban until now I'm not completely sure what issues I should look for. Does anyone have any tips?

Thanks in advance

We live semi rural and you definitely need to be able to drive. We are on a bus route but very limited.
I love being away from the hustle and bustle but it is just a hassle when you do want to go anywhere further afield

Ditto about having a car especially if you have a few years of ferrying children around to various events and activities. Our village has a bus every three hours but the service stops at 7pm.

It's so rubbish foe teens - you can't drink at the weekend either as someone needs to be able to drive them

Thanks ladies!
I've not worded my post correctly at all, the location is grand, I've more queries about being not connected to main services like sewerage and gas, how is it living so close to a farm etc, are there ratsthe size of horses, that sort of thing.
Just reading that back makes me realise how naive I am!

Hi OP,

I live (and grew up) semi rurally. Old farming village that has become popular due to school catchments, pretty surroundings etc

A Facebook group for the village was set up and these are the things that have been complained about by people who have moved here:

Animal noises. Happening too early/too late (this extends to both farm animals and wild animals)
Mud on roads
Over grown verges
Potholes
Postman not keeping to a regular schedule
Deliveries have trouble finding addresses/keeping to time slots
The village doesn’t have a kitch little fete
Virtually no public transport
Farm dogs (working dogs that don’t understand collars or fences)
The village doesn’t have street parties
The pub shuts on Mondays
Farmers bonfires
The churchyard bonfires
Limited 3G and 4G
Broadband is a bit flakey
Hedges and trees that overhang roads
There’s no playpark (kids used to play on the school field, but then someone complained and that stopped)
The roads that approach the village are National Speed limit (wanted them reduced to 50)
People who drive at the speed limit
People who drive tractors too slowly
Cyclists
People having parties (it’s a picturesque valley, but being a valley means that every party can be heard by everyone in the village)

And that’s before any of the “village politics” is started on.

And yes, the cat caught a rat almost as big as it was the other day. And spiders. They’re almost as big as the rats!

I, however, love it

I forgot to mention the smells!

How many litres does the oil tank hold?

When you say septic tank, how old is it, how big is it?

What do they farm? Cows are annoyingly noisy. Sheep, less so.

Wi-fi. I wouldn't live anywhere that is patchy with good wi-fi.

There has not been a bus service here for over 25 years.
Yeah a lot of ferrying around of children.

No pub,
lots of tractors,
narrow lanes with pull ins, visitors cannot reverse into them which is annoying.
Hedges that overhang, when cut, the thorns get into tyres which puncture.
No-one can find you.
Broadband poor
Gossip runs rife
No rats because no mains drainage.
Sheep, cows, cockerels, waking you up early in the morning in the summer.

I loved it too.

Is the septic tank shared? What are the annual costs, who's responsible. Check wifi. Ours is bloomin awful. Rarely able to stream anything. What neighbours are like if you're living very close to them.

Rats don’t need sewers!

Plenty of rats due to chickens, barns, animal feed etc.

@Iris1654, we had chickens, ducks, geese, guinea fowl, around 100 at one time, plus animal feed, never saw a rat in 20 years, we did have mice who would try to pinch the chicken feed though.

I live semi rural but thankfully on mains services so ok there. I guess one of the most annoying things are liking a nice garden and flowers, only to have the farm opposite, their sheep getting out into ours and eating all the heads from the flowers.
Also having to travel to get anything. I.e a decent Sainsbury's is a 60 mile round trip and no Waitrose at all in the county.

also mains services and decent WIfi

My Dsis has a sceptic tank and she has only had it emptied once in ten years. She is on oil heating which does cost a bomb, it is usually cold in her house in the winter even with the log burner.
A lot of people from suburbs have moved here recently and love it except for the Dawn chorus!

With oil, remember that you have to think about your levels and order on time, especially if there is one oil delivery a week to your area as it gets really pricey for an emergency delivery.

Depending on farm type, you need to be prepared for the smell when they fertilise the fields, noise at odd times (coming in for milking, or during harvesting, large machinery moving, sound from livestock. I live in a predominantly horticultural area and I rather enjoy the rhythm of the year with the smell of spring onions all over town for weeks and so on, but some incomers get really funny about it

We are semi rural, have decent Wi-fi and mains services but crap transport links, no post office/doctors/secondary schools/supermarkets etc for miles around.

Our house is built on old farming land and neighbours a current farm, we don’t get rats but have accepted that we will forever share the loft with mice (and probably other bits of the house).

Be very very clear on who owns what boundary. Semi rural people (and yes, I am one) can be right funny about boundaries.
If your desired property is on marshy land, or has drainage ditches, make darn sure that responsibilities for keeping them clear are laid down. People abandoning maintenance further down the line leads to flooding further up.
What happens in the snow? Supposedly, the local farmer receives a retainer from the council each year to plough our lane. Not seen him since we moved in. We had lane lock ins during 2010, 2013 and 2018. Luckily we have a stockpile shed. Also calor gas fires, battery lanterns and power inverters stashed away for those inconvenient power line outages. Always have a Trimphone handy as modern phones won't work without electricity and the mobile signal is temperamental.
I rarely see my neighbours. I had to go to their properties a couple of weeks ago regarding some tree work being done on the boundaries. For one neighbour it was the first time we'd spoken in 3 years, for the other about 2 years.
Agree about the farm noises, ours will be harvesting up till 11pm soon enough.

From my past forays into rural living, I'd be really hot on checking out;

• the cost of heating oil
• costs of emptying septic tank (from memory, I had to apportion around £75 a month to cover the quarterly costs of emptying the tank where I used to live, which was shared with two neighbours)
• whilst I'm not necessarily the most social person in the world, I found living in an isolated hamlet would have been unbearable for me without the pub within a couple of minutes walking distance
• not being able to get to work during heavy snow (definitely not a downside, in my view)

We have no sewerage or gas, I don't find oil too expensive (especially if you join an oil club and buy at the right time of year), we share a septic tank with three other houses and the costs of emptying are minimal. We don't get rats either but do have mice in the chicken shed.

Just asking, you were lucky.
We get
Rats ( never see them, just find the runs in the garden) the neighbour saw a few and two terriers kills hundreds in the barn!
Mice
Moles
A bloody cuckoo
Woodpeckers
Escaping sheep.
Deer, they eat the plants.

POor WiFi

The minor roads are never gritted.

I love living here despite that.

I think if you are on oil, it can often get stolen and it’s thousands per year.

Thank you all so very much for taking the time to reply, it's certainly raised some things to think about.
I can't bear the thought of rats so I'd probably need to get a dog to keep them at bay if we did move .

Flies. We have lots of flies in the kitchen. I blame it on the farm next door.

If you have poor Wi-fi you need a better router or configuration in your home.

Instead check the broadband speed via the postcode, but also good to ask the home owner if there is broadband at the property.

We are on the edge of a village, and issues that people around tend to struggle with when leaving towns include:
Young cows being in fields with footpaths
Tractors operating early-late during summer
It can take a long time to get anywhere is you get stuck behind a tractor
Cows are often herded across roads
Rats and mice are part and parcel, although tend to be brown rats
Village shops stock limited supplies at high prices. You need to become organised with shopping/ stocking up
You can be cut-off during snow (and we are in the SE
There are lots of flies and fly pop in the house
Rural smells can be very strong and linger