Clancutt Lodge

How many metres is up stairs, is it going to be icf or timber. 

I feel for you! We’ve also got a basement and digging it out went from an estimated 4 weeks to 12 weeks. Luckily we have a large sloping site so we were able to loose the excess spoil on site and I did all the labouring so as to keep costs down.

Ouch!! Good luck with reviewing the remaining budgets. I'm sure there are savings to be had across the board and all will come good in the end. I suppose now that you are out of the ground, you can have a bit more control over the budgets as the ground works were always going to be the unknown quantity!

4 hours ago, Russell griffiths said:

How many metres is up stairs, is it going to be icf or timber. 

 

We have 5.1m above ground and 3.3m below ground, all ICF. 

It seems to be always the big unknown is to do with a groundwork....!

Our build will start this year and planning to have a 25m2 basement. How large is your basement? Is there any chance you can share a bit more breakdown of the ground work cost?  There might be some lesson to learn.

Big thanks in advance.

 

It might save some cost to have Ikea kitchen unit with custom design doors.

https://www.reformcph.com/en/

https://www.nakeddoors.com/ikea

https://superfront.com/uk/

 

4 hours ago, Triassic said:

I feel for you! We’ve also got a basement and digging it out went from an estimated 4 weeks to 12 weeks. Luckily we have a large sloping site so we were able to loose the excess spoil on site and I did all the labouring so as to keep costs down.

 

Yeah that'd have been nice... I project managed the groundworks but was only on site 3 days a week so couldn't be a labourer too much... Once we got to the point of building ICF walls, I was much more involved. 

 

The site is almost perfectly flat, so nowhere to put 1440 tonnes of spoil! 

3 hours ago, Redoctober said:

Ouch!! Good luck with reviewing the remaining budgets. I'm sure there are savings to be had across the board and all will come good in the end. I suppose now that you are out of the ground, you can have a bit more control over the budgets as the ground works were always going to be the unknown quantity!

 

Lol, the blog is being written retrospectively, but i am sure it'll all come good in the end... ?

3 minutes ago, Tony C said:

Our build will start this year and planning to have a 25m2 basement. How large is your basement? Is there any chance you can share a bit more breakdown of the ground work cost?  There might be some lesson to learn.

 

Our basement is approx 70m2 across 3 rooms, with 9' ceilings. 

 

Yeah sure. Muck away was £14,000. Steel reinforcement was approx £2,500. Concrete was just over £9,000. Concrete pump hire was £2,160 over 3 sessions. Backfill around the basement was approx £5,000. Drainage for the basement perimeter was £2,000 (terram, dimpled membrane, etc).

 

The rest of the £58k was labour and plant hire, and sheet piling. 

 

I could have saved £2k on the muck away if I had shopped around. I could have saved £500 on the concrete pump hire, because 2 of the 3 sessions didn't need a boom pump, only a line pump. 

Kitchens can always be replaced at a later date, but nothing you can do (or not much) about the groundworks cost.  I had been contemplating upgrading my worksurface and kitchen island surface but have stuck with my cheaper original choice to keep costs down by about £2.5k.  We were also thinking about an underground rainwater tank but I reckon that will cost about £3k all in once muckaway, labour and plant hire are taken into account, and you can buy an awful lot of water for that, so an indulgence for another day.

32 minutes ago, vivienz said:

Kitchens can always be replaced at a later date, but nothing you can do (or not much) about the groundworks cost.  I had been contemplating upgrading my worksurface and kitchen island surface but have stuck with my cheaper original choice to keep costs down by about £2.5k.  We were also thinking about an underground rainwater tank but I reckon that will cost about £3k all in once muckaway, labour and plant hire are taken into account, and you can buy an awful lot of water for that, so an indulgence for another day.

 

Rainwater harvesting doesn't have to be expensive... We had about £2k in the budget to do it, but now think that we an build an entire system for about £350-400 using IBCs... See @Bitpipe's thread on it. 

Yes, indeed, I saw @Bitpipe's thread, but I think we may just use IBCs above ground next to the greenhouses.  It's only for the fruit and vegetable patches, so they can be hidden away easily and no need to connect into the main surface water drainage system then.  We dug a very large hole in the ground in December for a pond and I'm getting to the stage where I don't want to see too many more!

3 hours ago, Nelliekins said:

 

Lol, the blog is being written retrospectively, but i am sure it'll all come good in the end... ?

 

You remember that blog that republished Pepys 300 years later?

 

This is the building version.

 

 

Don't be dishearten. The riskiest part of the build is now behind you.

 

Was the overspent apparent at a certain point or did this phase just creep up as it progressed?

 

And if you were just to put in really deep foundations and no basement what would have been the cost?

12 hours ago, Thedreamer said:

Don't be dishearten. The riskiest part of the build is now behind you.

 

Was the overspent apparent at a certain point or did this phase just creep up as it progressed?

 

The overspend became unavoidable as soon as the banks of the excavation started to break up, so about 3 weeks in. The sheet pulling and additional muck away was nearly £14k of the increase, and that led to much more cautious groundworks (which is entirely understandable but not ideal when paying them on a day rate!) 

 

Maybe that's the lesson here - don't put projects of unknown duration on a day rate! 

 

12 hours ago, Thedreamer said:

And if you were just to put in really deep foundations and no basement what would have been the cost?

 

To be honest, it would still have cost £20k, but we would have wiped £75k or more off the final value of the house. We have a 300m2 back garden, a 150m2 front (Inc driveway) and 300m2 of total floor area that would have been 230m2 without the basement. 

 

Mind you, the build would have been finished in just over half the time too!