Building new house-questions

larrymo

Hi all

I'm currently waiting on my architect to come back to me with plans for a detached house on my corner site in Castleknock. However, I have one or two questions for anyone with experience building new homes....hopefully someone can put me right here.

1. Once I have my plans back from the architect, he has indicated he will put them on CAD and forward them to various builders for quotes. I wonder though should I perhaps be looking to employ a quantity surveyor to look at the plans before I send them out or does anyone think this is a good idea. I'm not even really sure what the quantity surveyor does except maybe price materials...however I have heard if you want to do the new house right, you should be getting a quantity surveyor on board.

2. I budgeted on spending approximately Euro 145/square foot to build the house....am I in the ballpark figure for a reasonable standard house?

3. With the new regulations coming out in 2006 regarding insulation standards, does anyone have any preference regarding timber frame as opposed to block build. Seems the timber frame has more going for it in this regard.

Cheers for any feedback.


Larmo

yop

Larmo

Welcome to the world of building

Personally, and I am not a professional, I would let it out to the builders to quote first, the differences could be interesting and if they are going to build it then they will quantify it.

145 Euro - To be honest I could not tell you as we are going direct labour.
At the moment based on the budgets we have in, we are looking at 83 per sq ft.


I am building a timber frame (TF) and my decision to use a TF was based on insulation and heating costs from living in a TF in Galway and the speed of build, It is 44 days since the frame arrived and we are starting electrician, blocklayer and slater this week.
Whether or not TF is cheaper or not, I cannot say.

Best of luck

Villain

larrymo wrote:

Hi all

1. Once I have my plans back from the architect, he has indicated he will put them on CAD and forward them to various builders for quotes. I wonder though should I perhaps be looking to employ a quantity surveyor to look at the plans before I send them out or does anyone think this is a good idea. I'm not even really sure what the quantity surveyor does except maybe price materials...however I have heard if you want to do the new house right, you should be getting a quantity surveyor on board.

I'd find a few builders yourself too, and send them on the plans to see what they come back with.

larrymo wrote:

2. I budgeted on spending approximately Euro 145/square foot to build the house....am I in the ballpark figure for a reasonable standard house?

Sounds a tad steep to me but I know building in Dublin can be a lot more expensive, a relation of mine built a dormer down in carlow but her husband was a Dub and knew a few builders so got a few quotes from builders in Dublin while I got them a quote from a local builder, the local builder was 35k cheaper on a house that cost 150k!!!!!

larrymo wrote:

3. With the new regulations coming out in 2006 regarding insulation standards, does anyone have any preference regarding timber frame as opposed to block build. Seems the timber frame has more going for it in this regard.

I had a discussion about this with an qualified engineer last week and I said I would always go concrete and he said that a quality timber frame house built properly was much better quality over a lifetime because of the insulation.

Hope that helps a little.

kadman

irish1 wrote:

I had a discussion about this with an qualified engineer last week and I said I would always go concrete and he said that a quality timber frame house built properly was much better quality over a lifetime because of the insulation.

Hope that helps a little.

I think the operative words here are " quality and qualified "

It is very hard to get a tf house, that hits the spot in terms of good build quality in all areas, I suppose the same could be said of concrete.

Insulation is definitely the key factor in a build , whether it be tf or concrete. There are some schools of thought that maintain that concrete is more eco friendly , in that concrete can be recycled for further use, whereas some forms of preservatives used in the timber of a tf build, are not eco friendly.

Where a tf build may perform marginally better than a properly insulated concrete build, there may be more areas that will have a negative outcome in years to come, in a tf kit , not apparent at the time of build.

There are pro's and cons to each method of build, but it should not come down to just the insulation levels only. You would have to look at the overall pros and cons of the two.

Irish 1 correctly highlights the need for professional advice, regardless of what route you take.

kadman

slopey

Haven't stated building yet but planning on going Timber Frame, this is down to speed of build and energy efficiency. It seems a combination of good insulation and a timber frame will pay off in the long run with lower heating costs.

I'll be building in Galway but hoping cost per square foot will be a good bit lower than that(budget not carried out yet), although I don't think we'll get down as low as yop (I wish!!).

Villain

As kadman pointed out it really builds on the quality of the services and products being used, a badly built timber frame house will be much worse on every scale than a quality built concrete home and vice versa.

One bit of advice I would give is don't rush it, obviously you want it built quickly, but hopefully you'll only have to build it once so in the long a few months extra for a quality building will pay off.

yop

slopey

best of luck with the build lad, any questions please ask, down the road from you in MAyo so u are welcome to come down to see and ask questions

slopey

Cheers yop,
Found your blog very interesting, would love to be able to do as much hands on stuff as you have, but I've no building knowledge whatsoever apart from what I'm starting to pick up now. Could well take you up on the offer of a visit, very interested to see how you get on with the geothermal, did you end up going with Climate Control to install it?

yop

slopey,

yes that would be no problem at all, I am on site nearly every evening, except when I am off kicking ball..

Climate Control - yes I have chosen these guys to do the install.

larrymo

Thanks for all feedback, lads.

I did notice one thing while I was checking around regarding the insulation qualities of timber frame from concrete build. There's a new building system called M2 Emmedue-panels of reinforced polystyrene, which has been used on a new development in Portarlington, Co. Offaly, called Riverside.

Panels are manufactured in a factory in Portarlington and apparently dramatically cuts heating costs and also insulates well against noise and is fire resistant. System involves joining pairs of polystyrene sheets into which concrete is poured. These can then be faced, plastered or have brick work attached to them. I may go down and have a look at them....I'll report back but it certainly sounds like a viable option also.

Talk to ye all then. Cheers!

P.S. It seems the consensus around the table at the moment is not to get a quantity surveyor....am I right?

Larrymo :

Wobs

Hi Larrymo,

The system your reffering to is commonly known as Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF's). I was also looking at using this system to build my house. The main reasons being the insulation values and speed of build.

I have ended up building the conventional block route, but not because I didn't think ICF was a good way to go. The main reason I didn't go for it was the only company I could find who seemed to have a good system and was good at responding etc wanted all the money up front for materials. I wasn't entirely happy handing over almost 45k to a relatively new company I had only just heard about.

Apart form that I also found it very hard to get any real advice on the system from any other than the people trying to sell it, and any follow on trades people I talked to plasters, carpenters etc had never heard of it or worked with it, so I thought this might cause problems further down the line.

If you are interested other companies who supply it are Polar Wall, their system is being used to rebuild the Fatima Masions in Dublin, www.polarwall.co.uk and the system I liked the best and almost went for is called Euromac their website is www.rbmh.com. I didn't come across the company you refer to, if they have a web site maybe you could post it.

Cost wise I was finding it slightly cheaper than block or timber but there are extras you will need such as a ventilation system as the building will be air tight, so things like these will add up.

Good luck.

yop

Kingspan do something similar in the TEK house I think


I saw that sort of build on grand designs, an amazing way to build a house!
The company I work for here are building their new building using these "styrofoam" blocks