Retrofitting 1960s house

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clownie

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We are sale agreed on a 1960s 3 bed semi with garage in Dublin. It has gas central heating but the windows are single glazed. We would like to retrofit it (at present it is supposed to be a BER rating of F). The house also needs to be rewired.

Ideally we will rent and get the rewiring done before moving in. However, I am wondering about how to go about the retrofit. Should we continue to rent and use a one stop shop to do everything in one go or do the work gradually?

Could we live in the house whilst the retrofit is being done. Also I plan to remodel the kitchen and bathroom and change the window sizes, will whoever doing the windows organise changing the window size for me (block up a doorway in kitchen so only a window) or do I need to do this separately.

Finally how much should I expect to pay to get the house as high a standard as possible and is it worth doing cost wise?

Thanks for any help
 
clownie said:
Should we continue to rent and use a one stop shop to do everything in one go or do the work gradually
Click to expand...
How big is your budget?

It's very easy to live through a window fitting, rewiring less so but tolerable.

Having done it both ways here is my experience. Much easier and a little cheaper to do stuff in bulk before you move in. OTOH there are things you want/need to do to a house that you won't realise until after you've lived in it for a while.
 
Don't underestimate the difficulty of finding somewhere to rent, especially for a short lease of maybe just a few weeks.
 
Is this in Dublin? Your age and circumstances (budget) will also be relevant with regard to it paying off in the long term. Does the house need new plumbing? More than likely that house might be piped with gun barrel, if so it needs kicking out. I would strongly advice you to get one of the registered retro companies in to quote for the full job. You'll have to pay them for the quote, but they'll take that off the final price and they know every grant, etc, you can get. Even if you don't use them, you will know everything that's required from their very detailed quote. My son got a full retro-fit done a couple of years ago, used one of the big boys, it wasn't cheap, but was probably the best money i've seen spent in many years. Strongly, strongly recommend you to do this.
 
If it was my house I would first live in the house for at least all 4 seasons to learn about the house, light, use etc. I would use this time in the house to get a handle on where the issues are, how best to address and how far you want to pursue each one (80/20 rule). Perhaps have a heat loss survey done by an independent surveyor (i.e. somebody not selling something) to help determine where the heat is actually being lost and therefore know where to get best bang for buck, have all the services checked (plumbing including drains, electrical, heating/dhw & distribution system etc). Then come up with a holistic plan based on needs/wants/budget, move out if needed and have the works done. If the budget doesn't allow for all wants then break up the plan to get the basic fabric/services improvements done first such that they will not need to be revisited in the future when doing other works.
 
Thanks for the info everyone. Wrt the professors points, my dad leaves in a similar house to the one we are buying and it is such a cold house. They have double glazed windows, a porch door and the attic is insulated but the walls are breeze block walls (I think this is what they are called, the blocks with the cavities in them). His heating bills with gas central heating are very high. I have been in the house on cold days and the temperature in the room struggles to get up to 18 degrees Celsius. If it is kept on constantly it gets to about 21 degrees but it works out very expensive doing that. We did the bead insulation between the two walls of our current house and it made such a difference. So I think some wall insulation is definitely needed. The heating system in the house we are buying is old and will have to be updated anyway so we are trying to do the job one as best as possible.
 
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