Advice on buying a country property

Francisco64

Hi All,
First post here and apologies if this has already been covered somewhere already but I've tried searching the board with no luck.
My wife and I are considering a move out of Dublin roughly 60 miles to Cavan or Westmeath areas. We're looking for a country house on a couple of acres.
I'm looking for advice regarding the well and septic tanks which a lot of country properties have:
Would a building surveyor/engineer checking a country property normally check the operation of the well and its pump? Is there any way of checking if its run dry in the past or if there is contamination issues?
Would the water normally be tested as part of the survey or would that something you'd get done separately or at all even??
Finally I know septic tanks have to be registered and are subject to Council inspection but would a building surveyor do that as well or again is that another separate check?
Thanks in advance for any help,
Frank

L1011

You would need (and can get) specialists to check the well, water quality and septic tank - a normal surveyor would not give the depth of detail you want.

Metric Tensor

Most of those checks can be done but are rarely done unless you specifically arrange it. It will cost you quite a bit more than the usual survey a house purchaser would undertake.

With regards to the well running dry - this would be almost impossible to check unless you have the house picked and we get a really dry summer over the next few months. You may possibly be able to arrange a pump out test on the well which would give you some idea of the recharge rate but again that would be expensive and challenging - you wouldn't be going around to 10 different houses in Cavan doing it - but if you had agreed a purchase or were very interested the vendor might facilitate it.

Francisco64

Okay. So it's not something that would typically be done but if I want "to be sure to be sure" I can get other specialists to check.
Thanks, Guys.

Its far more likely the house will be connected to a group water scheme rather than have its own well so I wouldn't worry too much about that side of things.

Francisco64

Thanks Teresa Eager Trapeze. A group scheme would be good but the couple we'd like to view are listed as using wells. We might be going a bit too far off the beaten track!

Speedwell

Don't forget about Internet access. (Says the work-from-home IT professional.)

Francisco64

Speedwell: funny you should say that. Broadband is the first dealbreaker on any property as my wife works from home now which is why we are contemplating the move in the first place. We've efibre at the moment in Dublin but even the quality of that varies (supposedly up to 100mbps...) We're looking into getting by on less speed.

MarkAnthony

Fixed lines from Eir, which will be your only option out in the sticks, always depends on the length on the cable from your home to the exchange. 100Mbit is only if you're cabled into the modem internally AND sitting on top of the telephone exchange.

It's likely you'd need to consider satellite or 3/4G or a local scheme. You can expect a maximum of about 10Mbits - which for most people is more than enough.

Francisco64

MarkAnthony: thanks for that. Eir are not very clear about that on their website re the roll out. My wife uses Skype and multiple web based apps. Friends who live in the country tend to prefer Vodafones 24mbps service but I don't think they'd be heavy users anyway or if that'd be sufficient for my wifes needs. Basically we don't know how consistent the quality is for work purposes. We'd go with satellite if that's work for sure but there seems to be issues with that too.
I'm seeing "efibre available in 6 weeks come up" in some areas but i don't know if that's the standard answer.

MarkAnthony

Bear in mind the 24 Mbps service is just ADSL (with fibre being VDSL) all DSL services come from Eir - Vodafone, Sky et al just resell them. Generally rural exchanges are still on the 7Mbit services. Again 24Mbit and 7Mbit is the max assuming you're on top of the telephone exchange.

Francisco64

So a 4G or local service would perhaps be a better option?

MarkAnthony

Francisco64 wrote: »

So a 4G or local service would perhaps be a better option?

It really depends on the property. Ireland has some of the fastest broadband service in the world - believe it or believe it not - I think we rank something like number 6. We're something like number 66 for coverage though.

Don't rely on anything but hard data when looking at your broadband options. The vast majority of country properties have very poor connections.

Francisco64

Yes, I did see that figure recently which surprised me but as you say coverage is the issue. it's looking like we may well be confined to properties which have an efibre enabled or guaranteed to soon be efibre enabled line.

MarkAnthony

Again bear in mind that efibre only comes to an area - there are loads of reasons why a particular house might not be able to avail of it. I've literally had one address out of 100 on an estate of terraced and semi detached houses not be able to get it.

Good to see broadband becoming more of an issue in home buying - it's the only way significant action will be taken on it.

Francisco64

Really? Certainly going to have to nail it down so.

Indeed it should be a huge issue. it'd allow people to work from home in the country or improve/expand existing businesses. It'd help a bit with housing anyway. I recently was on the phone to an estate agent and told her how to check the landline no for efibre. If it exists I'd be putting it in a house advert now as a matter of course.

Metric Tensor

Went through this last year OP. The only way to do it is get the land-line number for the house and get eir to check it for you.

To be honest I'd suggest you have very little chance of getting anything decent at the level of isolation you are talking about. To get decent VDSL (marketed as efibre) you have to be within about 1km of the exchange or local cabinet. In the countryside that's not very far! And also that only counts if the exchange is enabled for VDSL which many aren't. The next step down us ADSL2+ and that tops out at 24MB/s downloads but again decreases rapidly as you move away from the exchange.

Check the line in the house. It's the only way. Many vendors were happy for me to bring my laptop and test their existing connection. Under no circumstances rely on an eir promise that anything is coming soon. Even if it comes it might not come to your house.

Look in to Fixed Wireless providers. It's not ideal and it's more expensive and it might not be fast enough (or jitter free enough) for your wife's needs but depending on location it might be the best you can get.

4G coverage is patchy at best and the download limits can be challenging for heavy users. But again worth looking into/testing.

Metric Tensor

To add: From my own perspective:

1. The jitter evident in VOIP calls
2. The limited upload speeds on the asynchronous packages
3. The monthly download limits

Were more of issue than the headline download rate (up to 100, up to 24, etc etc).

loveisdivine

Would ADSL be sufficient for things like Netflix and occasionally downloading of programmes? We're also looking at a house that doesn't currently have access to fibre.

Francisco64

Metric Tensor: thanks for sharing your own experiences. I'll have to restrict myself to houses with existing landlines that can be checked. Can I just ask: the vendors let you check speeds on their existing broadband packages so if they say only had max 8mbps you might only get a wobbly 2/3 mbps?

Metric Tensor

Correct Francisco - and then proceed to strike that house off the list unless there is some other suitable alternative (e.g. fixed wireless).

We had to rule out a lot of very nice houses because my job is dependant on a certain quality of connection.

It would be very beneficial for you and your wife to visit various friends houses that have different qualities of broadband and run lots of tests to determine exactly what level she needs for what she does. Like I said above - I found for my needs the headline speed wasn't the issue - it was the "robustness" of the connection.

Metric Tensor

loveisdivine wrote: »

Would ADSL be sufficient for things like Netflix and occasionally downloading of programmes? We're also looking at a house that doesn't currently have access to fibre.

Depends on the speed!

If you have ADSL and you are getting a download speed of 5 to 6 that is well above the minimum of 2 recommended by netflix.

However if you are on an ADSL connection and you're 8 miles away from the exchange getting a speed of 1 you might be in trouble!

arctictree

Whatever about broadband, make sure the house has a good mobile signal. A house near me could not sell for years because it was in a reception black spot - literally no reception on the mobile. It sold eventually, probably to someone who forgot to check!

Francisco64

Metric Tensor: good advice, thank you. I know exactly what you mean about the robustness. I suspect we could get away with lower speeds than we have at the moment here in Dublin but even with efibre the connection is bouncing around quite a bit.

Francisco64

artictree: yes, I'm on meteor so that's always goosed in rural areas. My wifes on Vodafone and thats better but can still involve some walking around with the phone in the air!

Lumen

Eir will do the test for you with only the address. You don't need the landline number.

Francisco64

Lumen: they told me on the phone they'd need a landline number for a test. Most of the houses I've looked at only have the townland name as the address not a no and street.

Metric Tensor

The test based on the address could give a spurious result. Particularly in the countryside where two houses a mile apart could have the exact same address. I wouldn't risk it without checking the actual line in question.

If I checked my current address the result would say 24 when in reality I can't even get 5.

Francisco64

Yes, that's kind of what the guy in Eir said. He'd need the number as the rural addresses aren't precise enough.

Lumen

Francisco64 wrote: »

Lumen: they told me on the phone they'd need a landline number for a test. Most of the houses I've looked at only have the townland name as the address not a no and street.

Hmmm. Maybe it depends on the house. The one I'm buying has a unique name which forms part of the Eircode record.

The remote test said 80mbps which is consistent with proximity to exchange (<200m). Fingers crossed, I've signed the contract now!

jinkybhoy

I live in castlerahan/ballyjamesduff area. I'm lucky that I can get a fixed broadband line in - but dont get more than 2mps - My provider when I checked before say you can get up to 20mps as far as I remember!! My friend lives not 1 mile from me and closer to exchange and can't get a landline or broadband!