Terreal

I am not sure why these are not popular over here. You seem them all over mainland Europe. I don’t know if it’s fashion / style or if there is a technical reason. -\_/-

prices are unlikley to drop anytime soon. I’m an architect and work in the domestic market with contractors i’ve worked with for a number of years. there may be a recession on the way but other factors (wars/brexit/inflation) will keep material prices high for a good while. factor into this everyone in this sector is phenomenally busy and will be for the next 12mnths at least.

Its been extremely hard to manage clients expectations of cost over the last couple of years, we used to use a rough budget of £2K /sqm to give a guide price for a relatively simple extension this is now anywhere between 2-3K often higher. A recent job cost returned with slightly too high cost, by the time we’d value engineered (omitted stuff, costed alternatives) materials cost rises meant the client is now getting less building for more money.

Any self build project is great and a good way to control cost but you’re definitely better using professionals for certain things or anything that requires certification. Recognise your strengths and use them but know when you will be crap at something. I know joiners who have tried laying bricks as brickies weren’t available …..it had to be rendered it was soo bad. So if oyur strengths are project management then project manage, (caveat-IT/Finance project management is really not the same as managing subcontractors or a building project) if you are decent with joinery do those bits!

I’d self build for sure if I had time but i know whats supposed to happen when and how!

got to say I am nervous about that too. we are fixed price on most stages, but the steels and wall removal is t&m as he said he couldn’t guarantee a price on materials. which I think is fair enough

Just starting to see a slight decrease in steel prices at the moment, but with fabrication costs rising due to electric / gas / consumable increases it balances it out, so should be roughly the same price as you were getting 6 weeks ago.
I notice the prices of ply and timber etc have come down a little bit in the big warehouses, yet merchants have gone up a bit.

After a long hot Summer of ignoring the pile of building materials I’ve found the motovation to continue my lego extension. The lintels proved to be a battle between a 10 stone something weakling and a lot of gravity:

Good call on the clay blocks. 😎

Umm…. If that’s the lintel then it looks like there’s not nearly enough bearing at the ends 😬

(Might not be the lintel though!)

Depends if the bit of wood is staying 🙂

Ahh. I thought the weird was just too hold the lintel up.

Would it be easier just to buy a new house ?

Quite possibly, but DT78’s house is in a pretty good location.

Well little update from me. I found a decent builder in the end. recommend and friend of my boss. I fixed price some phases and t&m others. basically any phase that had a good chance of unforeseen I am on T&M. yes this is risky. however if we didn’t the cost was massive, so it was a choice of take the risk, or offload at a huge cost. the variance between a fully fixed price job and a mixed t&m / fixed was in the region of £50k. yes, that’s not a typo. I figured that is a healthy risk budget.

so far unforeseens have been entire drainage needed rerouting, and we will need a corner of the house underpinned due to it having insufficient foundations for the new steels.

I have 7 of 9 steels in. roof and flooring should be done in the next fortnight. kitchen has been ordered and should be landing in a month.

scope is escalating though. going to need to sort the main guttering of the house which wasn’t in plan. plus the older 2nd story pebbledash looks particularly awful against the new section. Will probably get it redone. also replacing a few original windows on the other part of the house and getting a chimney removed whilst I have the guys on site.

I’m doing a lot of the organising and ordering materials and generally sorting stuff, which you probably wouldn’t expect to do if you were paying a builder to “manage” your build. So far this guy is great. if you can get him on site….downside of him being popular. plus his coms are a bit lacking / vague about when things are happening or turning up. so I get surprise muckaways turning up at 7am for instance. overall I’d take those weak points with the speed and clear experience these guys have.

I am very very glad I didn’t try to tackle putting these steels in. one of the big ones took 4 guys and a genie lift. I’d be confident doing a simple single load bearing wall knock through myself having watched these guys. been picking up loads of stuff you would never think of if you hadn’t done it before.

nearly £5k a week in labour is painful though!

I’m currently trying to make my mind up about heating / ufh and flooring. seems more challenging to decide than I had expected

Sounds good, but you say the flooring should be done within a fortnight and yet you haven’t decided on UFH and flooring 😱

Better get your skates on!

flooring is the slab and insulation. it’s spec’d to be 15mm lower than the current floor to allow for elec ufh. the extension side is done already. internal will be done once the roofs on

had a massive wobble on elec. trying to decide what to do. wet system will add time and cost. I will probably just go for big nice looking rad in a corner and some wet plinth heaters. but then I need to level the floor up which depends on the product we go for.

yep need to get my skates on. plenty of other stuff for the builders to be getting on with so it won’t hold then up

There a 2cms more bearing at each end than the manufactureres minimum spec, Sharkbait. I’ve now added the steel reinforcing to them both and poured the concrete. Here it is just before pourign the concrete. I reinforced the support bricks with mortar which also provided a perfectly flat support.

There a 2cms more bearing at each end than the manufactureres minimum spec

Interesting. The minimum building regs bearing in the UK looks to be a fair bit more than that but obvs you’re not in the UK and the manufacturers must know their stuff!

Also sharkbait, that’s a cast in situ reinforced ring beam. It’s not a lintel.
It’s a solid wall, so load spread and less twisting to worry about.
It’s a totally different system from what we typically use in the uk – but no worse because of that.

Given the terrain (I’m a geologist remember) and climate I decided 50cm deep and just wide enough to accomodate 20×35 reinforcing with the required clearance would do. Raised 5cm so the bricks don’t sit in damp ground

Interesting. We had builder looking at a small conservatory replacement.
They wanted to dig 1m footings for the dwarf wall.
We do have clay soil but it seemed overkill for such a small (3mx3m) construction. With a uPVC structure on top.

In the end we built it ourselves with a steel frame on 50cmx50cmx50cm concrete pads and pretend brick/modular construction.
We built it a more usable size (5mx3m) and cheaper.

Was a lot of work even having everything pre designed/made. Not being a regular builder of such things, when there was an error by the designer, it wasted a lot of time with self doubt and general head scratching.

Interesting. We had builder looking at a small conservatory replacement.
They wanted to dig 1m footings for the dwarf wall.

To be fair – the building control here wouldn’t care what he thought. But he’s fortunate he’s somewhere that unless it’s a listed building they seem to be allowed to build any old thing they want

Here it is with the concrete poured.

Next it’s the final row of bricks which are lentil bricks that take steel reinforcement that ties in with the vertical “chainage” you can see sticking out. It means that there’s a continuous reinforced concrete straucture around the edges of the building and on each side of openings. It’s only single story so doesn’t need quite as much reinforcing as multistorey which requires a continuous reinforcced concrete structure around every opening. Lentil bricks:

They wanted to dig 1m footings for the dwarf wall.
We do have clay soil but it seemed overkill for such a small (3mx3m) construction.

There are many factors when deciding how deep and wide to dig. There’s the minimum temperture, the footings have to be deep enough that the ground isn’t going to suffer freeze and thaw. There’s the slope, its stability and the risk of surface slip, and even deep rotational slip. And then there’s the material, granite bed rock and sand don’t have the same requirements. Clay can be a real problem as it expands and contracts depending on humidity, and moves – in some areas in France houses require a combination of deep footings and a concrete raft to sit on. Happily the biggest problem with the ground around here is digging it out.

Edit: the last few years we’ve had a succesion of droughts leading to clay soils drying out and houses cracking or even collapsing:

https://www.leparisien.fr/economie/secheresse-ces-maisons-fissurees-qui-coutent-des-dizaines-de-milliers-d-euros-19-08-2019-8135778.php

…

Interesting. We had builder looking at a small conservatory replacement.
They wanted to dig 1m footings for the dwarf wall.

To be fair – the building control here wouldn’t care what he thought. But he’s fortunate he’s somewhere that unless it’s a listed building they seem to be allowed to build any old thing they want

I guess one advantage of proper footings would be an easier conversion to a proper extension if required.

We just wanted a fairly basic structure to replace the rotton wooden one (I had to ask the neighbors for the roof back one windy day).
The windows were load bearing near the end of its life.

just wasn’t worth the cost Vs increase in value (at the time) to do an actuall extension.

I was sceptical it’d be useless for most of the year but actually with modern glass it’s pretty good for what it is.

Well. It all looked pretty good last week – roof is on, first fix plumbing done – now plan is out of the window….sparky due this week to do first fix has broken his ankle and brickie who started the underpinning only had a day to do it before the next job…and didn’t finish before he disappeared down a rabbit hole

So bifolds turn up tomorrow, windows the following week and kitchen in 3 weeks…. and currently do not have a water tight shell. Still have uneven floor as the final steel can’t go in till the underpinned corner is finished and there are acrows everywhere. Jobs are starting to knock on to each other.

Builder seems to think we can pull the time back and it’ll be fine

I’m sure it’ll get sorted and in the scheme of things only a small delay. But still stressing!

I have offered my time labouring to pull things back not sure how helpful that would actually be! but tbh its mostly skilled trade needed now

Are builds always this much fun!?

How many times has Kevin been round so far?

Speak to the sparky, collect and sit them on a chair if necessary, and crack on with the first fix

Are builds always this much fun!?

IME, yes.

I too would speak to sparky and get them to sit and tell you what to do!

I would also be VERY firm with person who should be doing underpinning.