[Mickey]

Hi everyone,
We would love to have a few acres of land somewhere quiet and have been looking at places in the Dumfries and Galloway area plus one in South Ayrshire.  We do not know the area very well so will travel up there a few more times to get more acquainted.  In the meantime I have spent a lot of time looking at Wind Farm applications on the Council website etc.  Whilst in D&G we didn't find the turbines much of a problem but our neighbour who works with them has advised us to watch out not for noise but for 'flicker' from the blades, hence we will need to take another look at how far the flicker reaches etc.

I am wondering if anyone has experience of the wind turbines/farms and thoughts on how much their presence should influence our thoughts about buying a property near them.

Thanks,
Mickey

[ppd]

Hi Mickey
We bought our croft knowing that 2 windfarms were going to be built very close to us.
They are now both up and running and we did loads of research into their impact on day to day life before we bought here.
My OH hears them much more than I do (but we never hear them in the house)
 You can find websites to show, in your area, the main prevailing winds, to work out when noise may be an issue.
They are north of our house and therefore we never suffer from light flicker and I have to say that is the one thing that I could not have coped with. Wind direction changes and if windy trees and the burn running will block the sound - but if they were in a position that caused light flicker then that would be something that you would have forever - the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and it won't change.
Perhaps look for properties that will not be affected by flicker and certainly having trees around the property help with sound issues too.
Hope that helped a bit
and good luck house hunting
Pauline
 

[Womble]

Hey Mickey, 

We live next to a couple of large wind farms, with potentially more on the way.  It depends on your own opinion of them really. It has certainly split our community right down the middle.

We hear them occasionally, but really only when the wind's from a certain direction, which puts them upwind of us, and us in wind shadow of the hill they're on top of.  As PPD says, the rest of the time the noise is blocked out by the wind rustling in trees etc locally.

As for "shadow flicker", this is 100% predictable, so you should be able to check the original planning permission documents to see whether the properties you're interested might be affected. I know of one wind farm where the nearest turbines are actually shut down for certain hours of the day to avoid causing shadow flicker for a couple of nearby houses, so it's an issue that the developers and planners are well aware of.

One other thing to be aware of is that the mock up photos of proposed wind farms don't make the turbines look nearly as imposing as the real ones do once they're built. Of course you can read into that what you will, but that is definitely something I'd be wary of.

HTH!