Mobile and modular homes

People are told all sorts of things in the pub about parking a unit in the garden and living in it. Some of it was true once, most of it was never true, and councils in Kerry, Cork and Limerick do not all read the rules the same way. Here is the shape of it. Putting a structure in your garden and using it as a separate dwelling is development, and development normally needs permission. A garden room used as part of your own house, a home office, a gym, a room for a teenager who eats in the main house, is a different thing and can fall under the exemptions for domestic structures, which cap the floor area, the height and how much garden is left behind. The moment it gets its own kitchen, its own front door and someone sleeping there permanently, it starts to look like a dwelling to a planner, whatever it says on the invoice. There are routes that work. Permission for a granny flat or annex tied to the main house is granted regularly where there is a genuine family need, a sensible site and a proper wastewater arrangement. Some councils are open to converting an existing outbuilding, which can be a faster path than a new structure. What we will not do is tell you it is grand and let you spend a fortune on something you may have to take away again. We look at the site, tell you which of the three routes you are on, and where it is close, we send you to pre planning with the drawings rather than guessing for you. Two other things get overlooked. Your existing wastewater system has a design capacity in persons, and adding a household to it may mean upgrading it. And a unit sited near a boundary has to be far enough from it for fire spread, which quietly decides where in the garden it can actually go.

Modular, or an extension?

If the space has to be joined to the house and used every day, an extension is usually the better investment and adds more to the value of the property. A modular unit wins when the site is awkward, when you want the people living in it to have their own front door, or when you need it finished in half the time and with almost nothing happening inside your house while it is built.