My Bungalow Bliss

Well I've dealt with a few of these from that era. It's a recipe for disaster as the very bad ones where poor underfloor fill was used have resulted in floor and internal walls sinking in use.

The better ones where the floor is somewhat suitable to build off can fair ok but even so, additional loads from roof etc at certain positions can again lead to heavy cracking and failures.

Even where all has faired ok for 40 years, when you go to open up these houses, you can run into bother as I certainly cannot sign off on building load bearing walls off an unknown slab. If you then cut the slab to install footing under new wall positions, you will have totally broken any load bearing capacity of the slab and may even cause structural failure at nearby walls that were built off it.

You can walk yourself into a situation you have to either carry whole roof from external walls with only stud work inside or alternatively dig out everything inside of external walls and start again.

Houses built with all walls brought up from footings give lots more options re alterations as steel beams can be run from most walls and in general you have multiple options to get to end result.

There are 2 traditional types of foundation.

Raft or strip footings.

Raft is basically where the clay is dug out, stone fill brought in and design concrete slab poured in top. All walls are built off this. Floor insulation plumbing and floor screed later installed inside.

Strip footings are basically where the ground is dug out down to solid under each wall. Concrete foundation poured at solid. Blockwork built up to floor level, concrete sub floor poured and house build up from there with similar insulation' plumbing etc installed later.

These 70s houses had a halfway house type setup. Just the outer rectangle of the house would be dug down to solid. Foundation under outer walls, Floor poured over varying standard of fill material then all internal walls built off floor. This would be an excellent system if the floor slab was supported on outer walls and slab designed to carry all loads from structure over. This was not the case. The floor typically buts up to external walls and is not supported off wall and these slabs were never designed and we're intended to be ground supported. If fill material is sub standard, the whole system falls down.

Hardcore build up topped off with a smaller compacting stone. Sand blinding, radon barrier, concrete raft which is structural slab and subfloor. On top of that you would have insulation and concrete screed.

Insulation could be 150mm or so. Plumbing can be hidden in insulation with under floor heating pipes on top of insulation within the floor screed.

There are alot of newer construction methods now but of the traditional builds, this is how it is.

That was another annoying thing where did this "Boom!" Thing come from, every time they did anything the architects went "Boom" , this must be the new trendy jargon out of Silicon valley, you will hear Varadker and the politicians at it next, except for Sinn Fein they could never go "Boom"

I sold cars for about 2 months in my youth.

Lesson number one in my training was this.

Ask the client what is their budget.

Client says €5000.

You write that down and as you are writing you say "Up to?"

Client 9 times out of 10 will say a higher number when put on the spot like that.

That is now your starting budget.

Pretty sure thats how they all work.

660k+ seems crazy but the views are amazing.

The house felt a bit cold to me but hey guess they will make it more feel like a home when they settle in.

Nice couple I have to say, fair play to the guy for working so hard to try and pay the bills just as well he has the skillset to pickup extra work.

After these two episodes, you can really see the appeal of a new build!

Regarding the appeal of a new build.

I don't think there was much wrong with the bungalows to begin with. Both bungalows ended up costing at least double what they originally paid for, however they made extremely expensive choices.

They don't need full length windows, as windows go, a full length one is the most expensive option. They all had doors too again running up the cost. With children putting external doors in bedrooms is an absolutely bonkers idea but yet that's what they did for both!

Getting bespoke hall doors etc all run up the cost.

How much extra did the internal bathroom window cost instead of just leaving it as a wall.

While underfloor heating is nice to have I don't think I'd be arsed digging up the floor to get it. Is it even necessary if you are putting in triple glaze windows and upgrading insulation. I get that radiators are not the prettiest things in the world there are some nice options on the market now.

There's an awful lot of "frilly extras" that are unnecessary.

Buying an older house you will have some sunk costs, upgrading electrics, plumbing and insulation for example, but you don't need to go down the bespoke route for everything else.

House number three is a 1990s bungalow in Donegal overlooking the sea, which will become a weekend home.

650k for 7 rooms, two being a bathroom/toilet.

Thats 93k per room !🤬

Wheres the utility room, home office, second living room, garage ?

For 650k I'd be expecting a minimum of 14 rooms.

Lunatics

Yeah Id agree it seemed like they were taken advantage of. I found the final scenes with Wallace and the architects going on about what a great house it was a bit uncomfortable when it was set against the 637k it cost for just 7 rooms. Im familiar with that area the house is in (Ballyknockan) and they could have bought a house locally that was almost twice the size for similar money. They actually got royally ripped off here and they had to endure a ton of stress in doing so.

Yeah this one, it is also in the village of Ballyknockan and was put up for sale last summer.

4 bed, 3 baths, 334sqm which includes a granny flat and is sitting on 0.3 of an acre. Completely modernsed and in move in condition. Sold in October this year for 690k. Also has great lake views and is about three times the size of the uninhabitable bungalow that they bought. Compared to them spending 637k on what they got there is no comparison.

If they had of known that the end cost to them was going to be 637k for a small bungalow with no porch, no utility room, no home office and so on they would have been much better just going out and buying something on the market that was much bigger and in move in condition. The above has triple the space, a big garden and doesnt need any significant work and also has the lake views they wanted.

I think what they did was complete folly, they overpaid for the house in the first place, perhaps due to getting sucked into a bidding war. But that was only the start of their problems, the build went way, way beyond their budget. For what they got compared to what they could have got I think they got a very poor deal.

Yeah it is really nice and while 690k is a fair wedge of cash it doesnt need any work and has loads of space.

Just as a comparison I think theirs was 120sqm at 637k so the cost per square metre was 5,309

With the above house it is 344sqm for 690k so the cost per square metre was 2,005. And thats for a finished house you can move into straight away without the 18 months of trouble that they had.