building a new house this year

D

doyler

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planning on going self build route, please share your experiences and advice?
 
2 storey, open plan, lots of glass to the back and 1 big window in the front, 4000 sqr feet. just looking for tips on what not to trip up on?
 
Don't even think about it if you don't have someone to call at 10.00 at night for those late night questions that come into your head!! Also put plenty of money into the misc section when you are doing up the budget!!
 
open plan with loads of glass sounds great... did you check out the huf haus? loads of glass, open space, cool etc.. Might be worthwhile to see what their cost would be to allow you evaluate approx saving of going direct labour route
 
Buy hair dye and peptic acid XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX in bulk, you'll need them.

Work out all your problems on the drawing board. Good detailed design can make life easier on site. Your design should optimise solar gain, be as compact as possible and eliminate cold bridges. Designing to the passive house concept is a great idea and a good investment, especially with whats coming down the line in fuel prices. Also its a bit classier to have an environmentally friendly house with a constant temperature rather than a celtic tiger era McMansion with loads of fancy sticky-out bits, requiring a massive boiler to heat a leaky badly insulated envelope. Its like filling a bathh with the plug out.

With the 2010 part L likely to make our current methods of building (cavity wall and kingspan) obsolete it is worth while building a house that will be sellable in 10 years and livable in 20. You need a consultant you can ring at 10pm as kristian advises. You need a qualified Architect or technologist who understands insulation and airtightness and can anylise condensation risk and thermal bridging. Its no longer possible just to get a draftsman, a surveyor or an engineer to do some rudimentary planning drawings and build from those. You need to take on board a consultant who will sign off on building reg compliance on completion. It is essential also to have a contract.

With higher standards of building and integration of components, the selfbuilder needs to know more than his subbies and be on site full time to check continuity of insulation and that the airtight barrier is not breeched. If you're building a house to live in for the forseeable future, don't accept the standards of the last decade. Push for passive and get a bright comfortable easy to heat home with fresh clean air and lots of light and views.

Wishin you the best of luck with your build doyler. If you had to take one piece of advise its what my granny told me. Measure twice cut once.
 


excellent, excellent post ...!!!!!
 
Thanks buildright, learning these lessons cost clients of mine a small fortune. I was brought in to fix the problems. If they had to do it all again, they would never go direct labour and would have a clerk of works or architect supervising the build and administering the contract at a €300 to 500 weekly fee. But cheap at that price considering double that is wasted on sites by bad building and errors, and who pays for the extra time and materials to put things right, you guessed it. The home owner.
 

Why are you thanking yourself?

That's a very sweeping statement. Care to back it up?
 
Thanks Guys for the good advice

i will be meeting my architect tomorrow and discuss same with him
 
Hi Doyler,

Building your own home can be very challenging and rewarding, sometimes challenging rewarding upsetting all in the one day! Its a rollercoaster ride, at times when bulding ours there were days when i could not wait to get home to see the place and work done on a given day, there were others when i wished the ground would open up and swallow me, and the phone would stop ringing. Keeping on top of it all can be tough but if you have reliable tradesmen that you know, and a friend in the know who you can ask questions of and this site also is great for that.
By self build i presume you mean getting in the various trades to do each aspect of work, ie Site clearence, FDN'S up to floor level, block work, roof, plastering electrics and so on, as long as these guys are reliable they wont steer yo too far wrong. Set a budget and monitor it constantly things can spiral easily and you will be left going back to try and get an increase on the mortgage or an unfinished house, there are more and more of these appearing in the countryside everyday.
If you have your house design in hand i would if i was you send it out to tender to builders and also price it on a per trade basis and see where the savings are for you, or if the savings are worth the hassle of the managment!!! At the end of the day if i was asked would i build again 6 or 8 months ago i would say deff yes but now umm im not so sure!!!! Ill be posting to my blog soon again summarising the whole experience so keep an eye out.

www.selfbuildardmore.blogspot.com
 
Hi Jolly Man

yes planning on getting the different required people in our sleves.

I will send it out to a few builders and see what there prices are like, i do have someone i can ask a few questions to so hopefully that will help us on our way.

cheers for the advice will be watching your blog
 
baldyman27 said:
Why are you thanking yourself?

That's a very sweeping statement. Care to back it up?
Click to expand...


that was me with my builders hat on thanking me with my project manager hat on. Nothing wrong with being bipolar.

When talking about wastage on site. You don't know whats badly built unless you pressure test, using thermal imaging and fog machines. then you see all manner of air leaks, 5 air changes is like leaving the back door open when heating your house. Thermography and smoke finds HRV ducting problems, incorrretly installed or missing insulation, problems in underfloor plumbing, tears or holes in Vapor control and windtight layers.

This only applies to low energy builds, for your average minimum standard or building regulation standard houses are happy enough to have air leakage paths and cold bridges as the oil boiler system is oversized and oil is cheap now. For them Building performance is not important, for now!.
A good test if you cant afford an air test kit. is to block up all vents and have someone walk around your house blowing a whistle moderatly, you shouldn't hear it with proper window installation and continuity of insulation and airtightness sealing arround services. If sound is not damped by a perceived 45-50db in daytime, then heat will easily escape through those same paths. With no building control in ireland, builders have being getting away with murder. You set out to build a house with an asset energy performance level of 90kwh/m2/an primary energy and following practical completion are left with a building which performs at 160kwh/m2/an if energy bills for a year in use are analysed. (excluding the first 2 months for drying out, and the fabric to absorb some thermal inertia)
 
This still hasn't answered my question. You stated that between E600 and E1000 a week is wasted on sites through errors. Where do you get these figures from? What kind of sites are you referring to? One-offs or large sacle developments? Whatever kind of a site you refer to, can you categorically state that a minimum of E600 is wasted through errors on every one of these sites? I realise that you are promoting your own profession here and that's fair enough, but you shouldn't do so at the expense of others who may be perfectly competent and professional in their work.
 
Look, you only have to correct work if you are trying to achieve a certain standard of performance in the finished building. Thanks for indulging me I happen to have a strong opinion on this. If you have decided to build minimum standrd houses then ignore me. The best investment in building a house after insulating it, is to eliminate cold bridges and get air leakage below 1.5 airchanges. If this isn't designed into the build from the very start, it has to be fixed. On some sites this means taking off the finishes layer to correct the vapor barrier and holes put in by services cables and pipes and plasterboard screws, on 2 sites this has cost between 10,000 to 15,000 to correct and delayed completion by 3 weeks. I'm talking one off, 200-250 meter square houses, where architectural details were not provided. The builder thought a rudimentary knowledge of airtightness and insulation was sufficient and the window guys couldn't install properly. Timber frame House in down the country has the airtightness guy on site for two weeks, taping every stable to get a better sealed house to get passive certification. I really think there is no point building anything less than passive when you consider the our economic future and the price of energy. Talk to those in the know to get the full picture, I had a chat with a fund manager who tells me oil will be $200 in 3 years and the IMF will be brought in to fix our economy. So we're building homes for the 21st certury and mistakes are being made. My point is that the biggest mistake is not to draw every detail before the build starts and employ a clerk of works. I would recommend an architect or technician for contract administration and quality control, but they know bugger all about delivering passive standard housing.
 
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