Electricity wires crossing property - what would you think?

[velveteer]

DP and I are about to convert a barn in the middle of the countryside. It's got beautiful views in one direction - but OF COURSE - that's where the wires cross. We're not talking pylons - wooden poles, one thick wire. The quote from the power company is an eyewatering £30k to bury them (ARGH - although we knew before we bought it, it would be expensive...) We do have the money, but obviously would rather spend it on almost anything else. What would you do? The poles aren't on our land, but they cross what will be the garden (the landowners are fine about us working on their land). We plan to be there long term, but obvs need to think about whether it is a decent investment. If we do do it, it makes sense to do it straightaway as we will be doing groundworks anyway. How much would electricity wires put you off? Am I being silly and will barely notice them long-term? Or will they irritate me forever? And also does anyone have any sense of whether it's worth going back to the utility company and saying, err, try again on this quote?

Anyone?

We've got one like that over our garden. Also a sort-of barn conversion. One of the poles is on our neighbour's land, the other one in front of our house. It's never bothered us or anyone we've spoken to. It mostly annoys our dog because birds like to sit on the cable (how dare they). Then again, we don't have beautiful views, so the cable doesn't make the view any worse. And the whole neighbourhood is basically one big in-fill project, so the utilities are all sorts of weird and crossing boundaries. Personally, for £30k I'd prefer to learn to live with it.

For £30k I'd live with it too.

Think of it as retro

The grid can charge whatever they like for this kind of elective work, they just guess a figure and add a 0 to the end, your choice.

I think you're probably all right... I just can't work out whether it is something I will never notice again - or whether I will notice it every single day. And because it makes sense to get the work done straight away, it's really hard to know. I think I'll leave it for now, and see down the line. It is a batshit amount of money for what must be about 50 meters of undergrounding. It would have to go under a lane too, so I think that is what is jacking the price up so much.

Also worth considering is how much ground damage they'd do if the wires needed to be replaced for any reason. No matter what they say, they never put things right or give you fair compensation for damage caused when accessing.

I'm less worried about that, @OneDayAtATimePlease just because we'll be ripping the place apart ourselves! But that's why it would make more sense to do it straight away...

We've got them, really not a problem for us, we don't notice them.

The electricity board cut the trees if they get too close.

We get an annual payment for having the poles on our land

Entirely depends on your personality type

it would drive me insane and I would spend the £30k if I had it

If your house had been £30k more to buy, would you have still bought it?

That is a really good point, @TooMuchToDoTooLittleInclination - yes, we would have spent more to buy the place. Hmmm. So much to think about. And absolutely, @Hindsightin I think it def depends on personality. At the moment, when I visit the site, it's all I can see! But again don't know if that's because I'm stressing about the massive amount of work ahead anyway. We're expecting to spend about £400k on the conversion - it'll be five bedrooms at the end, so it's not a massive %age of the overall spend. Oh argh, I don't know. I know I would spend £20k on it - which is what we orig thought it would be. But for whatever mad reason, £30k seems too much.

OP I'm sure you are lovely but also sounds as though you have more money than sense! You sound grumpy with the electricity company. I don't see why burying electric cables for purely aesthetic reasons shouldn't be expensive. Its a big task and has to be done safely. I'd rather the money I spend on electric bills goes to things that NEED to be done. Not on giving you a discount on having a nice view tbh.

If I had a sort of spare £30k I would spend it on something better than getting cables buried.

We have poles and wires in our garden that supply or house and 1 neighbour but we have a wayleave which you may not. We were extending the house at the back and there was a question about whether there would be sufficient height above the extension. They offered to bury the wires for £500 if we dug the trench. It would have been around 30m long. Do you have a wayleave to be able to negotiate on price a bit?

In the end, there was sufficient height so we didn’t bother and I barely notice the wires as they are near the boundary that has lots of trees. I wouldn’t have entertained the idea for £30k.

*our house

It's hard to say without seeing a photo to see how intrusive they are

I meant in the future. You get your land all sorted the way you want, 10 years later there's a need to replace the cabling and they rip up your garden to do so.

I would pay it and consider it the price to pay for sucking up the fact that I’m being ridiculous but I am what I am 🤷‍♀️

We have a few poles crossing the garden, I don't really notice them and the electric company pay me a few quid a year.

Worth asking what the current life expectancy of the pole and wire arrangements are and if the supply company would replace them with underground ones.
I got a quote for a much shorter section of wire to be sunk below ground and it wasn't worth doing but, if the current set up fails, the replacement would be sunk underground - not at my expense.

I can't ever imagine that if you wanted to sell these lines would be a deal breaker so you will never get your money back for the work so it's a cost, not an investment. And as another has said if anything goes wrong underground they would have to dig up your land to fix it. That said when I have seen houses with huge pylons next to their gardens I have thought who the hell would ever want to live next door to one?

That's interesting @Beamur . Do you mind me asking where you are? The wayleave agreement goes back to the early eighties, so I'm guessing the current poles have been up for roughly 40 years. Not entirely clear from my googling how long they would expect them to last. We're in the south west of the UK.

West Yorkshire.
The arrangement I have is rather odd. The power supply emerges from the road but the cable then runs through an outhouse before entering the house. I investigated having it sunk, as I was a bit worried by this but was told it's safe and will just stop working if it fails. But if this happens then the supply company will mend it.
Whilst your situation is different, these structures will have a maintenance schedule and I imagine, an anticipated replacement date.

50 to 100 years if well maintained and apparently need checking every 10 years.

www.telegraphpoleappreciationsociety.org/faq/

I live in a residential street in a small market town and the whole of our street, plus the next street, have overhead power.
The only issues we have had were needing to get Western Power out to sleeve the cables when we needed roofing work done in close proximity to the point where the supply comes into the house.
We get the occasional dip in power in very high winds but nothing serious.
Coincidentally we have had a letter from them today saying that they will have to turn the power off for 8 hours whilst some tree surgery is done.

@velveteer If I would have paid more for the house and I was paying £400 for the conversion, I'd do it because the wire would drive me batshit.

BUT I'd be trying to get them to drop the price!!