Short Heath Farm

Short Heath Farm came to us as a rural property that had been added to over decades and never resolved. The owners wanted a single contractor to take the whole estate on, work through it building by building, and hand back a finished home rather than a sequence of separate jobs. We were appointed as main contractor in April 2024 and remained on site, in one form or another, until June 2026.

The work divided naturally into three stages. A detached guest house was built from the ground up, with a padel court alongside it. The main farmhouse was then structurally remodelled and fully fitted out. The grounds followed, closing with a petanque court, a new patio and renewed estate lighting. Each stage was certified in its own right, and the whole programme ran under architect certified contracts with staged valuations, weekly written progress reports and a client portal the owners could follow at any time.

The guest house was constructed from groundworks through to handover between May and December 2024. It holds two bedrooms, a lounge with a kitchenette and a dedicated golf simulator room, and it is built around a steel structure that carries a significant part of the building on a cantilever. The simulator room sits partly below ground level, which called for careful engineering and close control of levels on site.

Extensive glazing ties the building into the woodland around it. Inside, the floors and ceilings are laid in full oak with bespoke joinery throughout, the staircases carry integrated LED lighting, and a single aluminium entrance door stands 2.4 metres tall. A glass link joins the main volume to the simulator space, an element that carried real logistical and installation risk and was delivered without compromise to the detail.

The building runs on an air source heat pump with full underfloor heating and a centralised ventilation system. Its flat roof was finished over a liquid applied waterproofing system carrying a twenty five year material warranty, with a green roof blanket, irrigation and a two year maintenance regime of twice yearly visits handed to the owners on completion. The approved inspector signed the building off and the architect issued the final certificate in July 2025.

The interior was specified and built as one piece of work. Oak runs across the floors and the ceilings, the joinery was made for the building rather than bought into it, and the openings were set out so that the glazing reads as a continuous edge rather than a series of windows. The kitchenette, the bathrooms and the bedrooms were detailed to the same standard as the main living space.

The main house ran alongside the guest house and beyond it, under a letter of intent and then a JCT contract with a collateral warranty, with a structural engineer and a services engineer appointed from the outset. The scope was substantial: structural steel and new openings, a complete mechanical and electrical replacement, two bespoke kitchens with stone worktops, tiling and stone throughout, joinery and ironmongery, external patio works, security and CCTV, blinds and a specified furniture package.

Payment ran on a published schedule of nine valuations, each issued with a request for payment and a running balance statement, so the account position was never in question. Practical completion was reached in the winter of 2025 and the defects period ran its full course to June 2026, when the defect list was completed and closed.

Air source heat pump systems were designed, installed and commissioned across the property, with full underfloor heating and centralised ventilation. We carried the energy performance assessment, made the distribution network operator application for the additional electrical load, and managed the Boiler Upgrade Scheme applications and voucher redemptions on the owners' behalf.

When a certification issue outside our control threatened to delay a grant claim, we went directly to the certifying body, set a deadline and escalated until the position was resolved. None of this work is visible in a photograph, and all of it is the reason the buildings perform.