Getting a home onto a hard site: what to check before you buy

A finished home arriving on a truck is the whole advantage of building this way. It is also the whole constraint. Everything about the delivery day comes down to whether a long, wide, heavy load can physically get where it needs to be, and then whether something can lift it off.

Most sites are fine. The ones that are not tend to be identifiable from a walk around with your eyes open.

Five things worth checking

• The last two hundred metres. Not the road — the driveway, the gateway, the corner into the paddock. Width, camber, overhead branches and the turning circle at the end.
• Power lines. Overhead lines across an access route are one of the most common reasons a delivery becomes a much bigger operation.
• Ground conditions on the day. A truck and a crane are heavy. A paddock that is fine in February is a different proposition in August.
• Where the crane can stand. It needs firm, level ground within reach of the final position, and that is often the constraint rather than the road in.
• Services and their route. Where power, water and wastewater come from, and whether the trench between them and the home crosses anything expensive.

What "hard" actually costs

Difficult access does not usually make a project impossible. It makes it a bigger day. A site that needs a larger crane, a traffic management plan, or temporary ground protection is a site with a bigger delivery line on the quote — and that is much better known in advance than discovered in the week of.

On genuinely remote or steep sites, arriving finished is worth more, not less. Two years of trades driving up a metal road in the weather is the alternative, and it is not the cheaper one.