Dave Hogan, a retired carpenter, had two dreams in life: building his own house and opening his own fishing lodge. Now, at the age of 55, he has done both.
Just over a year ago he and his wife, Lisa, 52, moved into their new, architect-designed timber home overlooking a lake and 44 acres of woodland near West Grimstead, Wiltshire. And while Dave manages their angling business, the Walden Estate Fishery, Lisa looks after the on-site Airbnb, a converted goat-milking parlour that they lived in while they were building their dream home.
A sleek blond-wood modernist structure, designed by the Winchester-based Adam Knibb Architects, their three-bedroom house gives off sophisticated Architectural Digest vibes, but it cost only £360,000 and took Dave just six days to erect. That’s because it’s made of Sips (structural insulated panels), a form of prefab architecture whose interlocking pieces are manufactured off site, delivered on a lorry and slotted together on site.
It’s a far cry from their old house, a mile up the road: a period cottage they’d lived in for seven years, which had dark, poky rooms and was shaded by tall ash trees — not the ideal setting for Lisa, who is prone to depression and grew up using seasonal affective disorder (SAD) lamps to get through Britain’s dark winters.
The couple were looking to move but didn’t want to leave the area. Their son, Harry, 23, is a competitive angler and used to fish regularly at the Walden Estate Fishery next door. When its owner decided to sell up, Dave and Lisa’s ears pricked up. “We’ve always wanted to have a business where we live,” Dave says.
In 2019 they paid £1.26 million for the 44-acre site, which came with four lakes, the old milking parlour and a 1960s bungalow. “The bungalow was mouldy and not very efficient,” Lisa says. “We decided it would be more eco-friendly and make more economic sense to build a new house, as you get the VAT back on new-builds [which you don’t on renovations]. We wanted to do something completely different than where we lived before.”
Their brief to Knibb was that all the bedrooms had to have a view of the lake, and the design had to maximise light to boost Lisa’s mood. So Knibb created a sloped, single-pitched skillion roof, with floor-to-ceiling sliding windows that maximise the light that comes in and are so high on one side (3.7m), the family can see the tops of the trees from their living space.
The increased light is especially helpful because their lake view faces north (the south-facing windows are shaded by a 1.2m overhang). The sloping roof also allows enough extra height for mezzanine platforms (236 sq ft) in two of the bedrooms.
The Hogans also requested a future-proof house — they want to spend their dotage here. So it’s all built on one level: an open-plan kitchen/living space in the middle, sandwiched by a master suite and study on one side, and two more bedrooms on the other side, along with a family bathroom, boot room and utility room — 2,023 sq ft in total. “We had enough land to spread out,” Lisa says.
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It’s low-maintenance too. Knibb clad the house in Accoya wood, a high-tech processed blend of sustainably sourced softwood that is known for longevity and zero upkeep — the same is true of their zinc roof. Rugged Purbeck stone on exterior and interior walls adds a rustic cosiness to the zen interiors.
A selling point of Sips is their strong insulating properties. Lisa says the house is almost Passivhaus standard, which enabled them to get a ground source heat pump to power the underfloor heating — the hardy floors are Egyptian limestone to help to withstand the wear and tear of their two constantly muddy German short-haired pointers, Wilson and Sully.
An experienced builder, Dave was curious to try building with Sips to save time and hassle. “I’ve built timber-framed houses before, but when you build a timber frame, you have to add the insulation afterwards,” he says. “And Sips are structurally quite good [almost no steel was required].”
Dave reckons he probably saved about six weeks of building time using Sips rather than the traditional bricks and mortar. For a typical two-storey house you’d save eight weeks using Sips, according to Kingspan, which manufactures the panels. Knibb says that building with Sips is simpler, with fewer building trades required and a quicker route to being wind and watertight. Although the frame of the Hogans’ house was put up in six days, the building still took a year to complete during Covid, with Dave aided by three friends.
Now the couple are enjoying the fruits of their labour. They’re renting out one of their lakes in three-night blocks for £400 to anglers who catch and release carp: the site has a kitchen, showers and lavatories, and anglers bring their own tents.
“When people rent it they have the lake all to themselves,” Dave says. “The fishing circuit can be really busy. There are lakes around Oxford where 300 people queue up on a daily basis, they get there at 5am, and have overflow car parks. So we’re selling the exclusivity.”
Although he’s concerned about the state of Britain’s rivers, Dave reckons angling has a good future, not least because of the popularity of Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse’s BBC2 show Gone Fishing. “Fishing is what people do in their childhood, then they get married and have a life, but they come back to it,” Lisa says.
“If you put a little five-year-old with a fishing rod and he hooks his first fish, he’s addicted for life,” Dave says.
The couple are busy building another holiday let, an A-frame designed by Knibb, on the property’s other lakes. They hope the income from their businesses will see them through retirement.
It hasn’t been all smooth sailing. The Sips have made such an airtight house the couple are now putting in a positive input ventilation system to freshen up the air; experts say proper ventilation systems are key when building with Sips to avoid condensation. The Hogans’ house is too warm for a real fire, so they put in a bioethanol one instead. They also found it difficult to get building insurance on a Sips house, so had to use a broker to find specialist insurance.
Tim Phillips, a senior quantity surveyor with Quantiv, says that the initial outlay for building with Sips can be 25 per cent more expensive than traditional bricks and mortar construction, but by the end of the project you could make about 20 per cent of your money back through savings on build time and trades, and in the long term save up to 50 per cent on energy bills.
The Hogans have no regrets. “It feels really good living here,” says Lisa, who hired the interior designer Cigdem Baker from Wink Gallery to design the calming minimalist interiors, and has planted a Mediterranean gravel garden that requires minimum watering. “We are living the dream. We wanted a light-filled house with a view. When I have Zoom calls with friends they say, ‘Wow, where are you?’
“I do suffer from depression quite a lot. My mood has definitely improved since we moved in. My sister was here and she noticed we don’t have to switch the lights on till quite late in the day. At 4pm we still don’t have the lights on.
“When I was growing up I had SAD therapy lamps to help me through the winter. Now Dave and Adam have created the most beautiful SAD lamp for us to live in.”
