Extension quote

I completely agree, it’s awful. If our crew threw that up, they’d be made take it back down and rebuild (well they wouldn’t anyways as they’re professionals). It’s unfortunate but people don’t care about the blockwork at all, it’s cheapest price gets it. More interest in the powder and paint than the structure. Then you hear about cowboys, in construction, doing people out of their money…. Well, as in all things. If it’s too good to be true it probably is.

Random question...I don't actually want to start a thread on it. Builders are asking for a fifty euro fee to just come out and look at my house and submit a quite for the extension I am hoping to build. Is this common in Dublin? I appreciate that there are lots of time wasters...but it seems a bit cheeky.

Tell them to do one. I have 5 construction crews chomping at the bit to come and have a look at an extension I am building there is more competition and less work then they realize it might take another 6 to 12 months for the penny to drop on them. Wait 12 months and I bet they will be ringing you to see if you want the work done this has been my experience from a construction crew who quoted me at the start of the year and his price has come down by 5% when he rang me back.

He reckoned he spent 3-4 hours driving to n fro, meeting customer, pricing stuff n doing quote. Diesel n maybe tolls too.

He had no bother losing out to another lad doing paving but a lot of them never went ahead, or got tarmac, decking etc instead. In which case they were just wasting his time. I think he had a fair point.

For those of you that got extensions done, were you able to stay in the house while the work was been done or was it a case of moving out and renting somewhere?

Seems very reasonable, as there are quite a lot of time waters in the construction game

I know of several Architects/Engineers who also charge the same for a Call out/Quote

I called out to South Dublin last week(I live in Meath), chatted with clients for 2 hours, sent a quotation and answered some questions on email, all in probably 5 hours of my time and I've Not even received a Thank you email!!! Some people!

I wouldn't disagree, it is counter-intuitive to charge for callouts/quotes, as I don't do it myself

But there are quite some amount of time wasters! Which can be soul destroying

It's a 203 x 203 I'd imagine. I don't believe there is a 175 x 175 or anything close to that listed.

Edit, was referring to the end of the beam sticking out in 1st photo.

Not certain what the one over the rear opening is.

Theoretically charging for quotes will reduce the amount of quotes you do, therefore removing people who are not committed and give you a more concentrated pipeline of prospective work.

It could therefore cost less to do actual jobs as your dont have to waste time quoting for jobs that are probably not going to happen.

The other side is you may be losing jobs because some people dont want to pay. personally im looking at extending but i dont want to pay a company to call and give me a ridiculous quote and massive lead time that wont work for me

Maybe there is a role in technology to bridge the gap. Schedule a 30 minute consult by zoom where you can look at the area and give some answers and a rough quote, then for €100 or so you will do detailed quote and plans and use that commitment as a way to move forward.

That's the cost of them doing work if the job is too far away they should just say no to the customer and should only consider going for jobs that are within range if there are no jobs in range then they will have to compete for the business.

Also have you any evidence of a dwindling work force in construction or are you like others on here all mouth and no substance as the recent CSO figures would tell a different story - ye know some actual fact. 40K increase in construction workers in 2022 or an addional 31.4% working in the sector

CSO Data

So instead of you having a thought and spouting absolute garbage try putting some meat on the bones. It is obvious some on here have an agenda behind what they are sh1tting about. What we do know is that with rising interest rates and a cost of living crisis people who were in the market for an extension have been priced out of it and that is reflected in the construction PMIs and construction outputs. So now have more workers in the sector and less extension jobs actually been done what do you think that will do to price ??. The main reason why a lot of people have turned from potential customer to a tyre kicker is the gouging going on and the unbelievable prices some builders are putting on jobs. Sure how can you have a scenario where a builder comes out to price a job while they have work on and cannot possible do the job and they really don't fancy the job and its a small extension and being the hungry fecks they quote "a million to do it there lad, ye know war in Ukraine, price of materials blah blah" and when the potential customer says too expensive the builder can ask for a payment for pricing the job, Your having a laugh aren't you, the gouging going on is disgusting with out this going on.

Ah nothing like has happened Enricoh, I just don't like it when lads here don't like official figures and a site like SCSI stating what prices should be and them trying to dictate a policy of you will pay what we want or else. The guys working in construction and in particular the extension end of things are facing into a serious contraction as can be seen by the figures I put up and with interest rates rising work in this sector will be getting a lot scarcer. I was going to go ahead with my project this year but in all honesty I can only see prices flatlining in the next 12/24 months. Its like property prices no one thought we would see price decreases with the demand out there but when access to cheap credit is limited by the higher and higher rates (next interest rate rise coming tomorrow BTW) this is exactly what is currently happening..

So just for transparency with regards to your question about losing labour during Covid the official CSO data shows that from Q2 2019 to Q2 2021 construction workers were down 13% or down by a little over 18k and then between Q2 2021 and Q2 2022 it went right back up by 31.4% or just over 40k more workers in construction. There has also been an active campaign drive to bring workers in to the sector from abroad from this time last year so I can predict that Q2 2023 will see another substantial increase in workers in the sector (but no proof yet) .

It may happen …… but likely not in the near future. Too much pent up demand and the new government grants on top of the existing ones will keep prices high for the foreseeable future! Quoting overall figures of an increasing construction workforce mean nothing if the additional workers are involved in commercial work rather than small domestic refurbs and extensions.

But increase is not nearly enough ….

https://extra.ie/2023/01/03/news/50000-construction-workers-needed#:~:text='-,A%20new%20report%20analysed%20the%20additional%20labour%20needed%20to%20deliver,and%20bricklayers%2C%20the%20report%20said.

I think the rate of increase has dropped, but property prices are not "dropping".

Thanks, I was under the impression that it was the percentage rises that had dropped.

Will see how it pans out in Q2 alright when traditionally more houses come on stream.

I went to shanette sheds recently & seen they do a steel frame extension. I only briefly spoke to the sales guy about it but they look OK & a lot cheaper than an extension.

I've since noticed some of the garden room companies offering similar.

Has anyone had something like that added instead of a traditional extension?

We've been looking at doing an extension. Very modest c.30m2. Pretty much a square box add on with no fancy finishes or style. A small bit of works to integrate it into the existing house. Got quoted €140k! That's just for the building works and before we furnish it and kit it out with a new kitchen! Unbelievable. That's the end of that dream unfortunately.