DeeJunFan

I take it the Health and Safety police dont know this place exists.

"Faulty Ireland" as the Yanks call it! http://www.failteireland.ie/

You have to love it. This is a picture of the area around my site. 2 Red circles one is the local pub, and the other our site. We even have pubs when there is nothing else around. He used to keep pigs in the back yard of the pub until the smoking ban and he turned it into the smoking area.

The boom time houses are all dire. The only thing worse are boom time apartments. I'd say a good 75% of the boom time apartments are death traps (No fire safety of any kind). The amount of remedial work required in some of them makes it possibly cheaper to just knock them. A colleague of mine was buying an apartment in Dublin (350K at the time about 4 years ago) And he was handed an engineers report when he went for the viewing outlining how each apartment needed over 100k of remedial work to be carried out and there was a 5 Million euro worth of work required for the shared spaces to bring the place up to standard (They were 5 years old) Priory Hall the first of its kind had to be abandoned by the residents and the Government were left to house the residents in Hotels and other accommodation. This is the reason for the new Design/Build Certification. The Govt are no longer liable for any Dodgy builds. But every apartment complex that has had the same or worse problems since then has been quietly hushed up in the hope that the extent of the issue never gets any headlines. A lot of roads are also in a shambles because the Big developers all went out of business before carrying out works to improve local access roads and the like. And there are so many roundabouts to nowhere

This is Irish politics

Ah Irish roads are great. You can be driving down a 3 lane motorway and the speed limit will be 80KPH and then hit a wee lane with grass in the middle and the speed limit is 100KPH. The Irish government are still trying to "catch up" with EU speed limits. They just gave all the roads in Ireland default figures and as the complaints/accidents happen they are reviewing each road! Crazy! They have also updated the accident blackspot signs. Some now have death toll figures. Something like 87 94 Killed on the Roads in Louth. Town lands are all the rage. Most Irish villages follow a fairly set pattern. Straight road through Mixed commercial/domestic on "Main Street" (Only Street) and a chapel at one end of the road. Perhaps a newish Petrol station just on the outskirts and then a run-down (or closed down) shop with out of commission petrol pumps in the middle of the main street. Footpaths optional and normally never consistent. Depending on the County (if it's tourist orientated or not) There will be a shop with loads of old tat out the front. And Pot Holes are a major election issue in ireland, Pot Holes and Peat Bogs. That's the key to getting elected in Ireland. Pot Hole example, And this was only last year. Yes 2015!

What about this yoke. I'm still trying to find out about Secondary air but looks much better traditional wise! http://www.stovesonline.co.uk/wood_burning_stoves/Stratford-Ecoboiler-Stoves.html D

As Billy Connolly once said the desire to be a politician should prevent you from ever being one!

+1,000,000,000,000,000

Good design is great when all have equal access to it. There are a very small percentage of home builder/buyers who are even aware of the issues apart from "How much does it cost to heat?" or "Oh it's a bit drafty" If there is ever to be an increase in the overall quality of housing stock it will have to be driven by Government. Firstly Government depts need to understand the issues (which I think they do), they need to invest political capital in decision to prioritise better housing above corporate profits (which they don't), and they need to ensure the design work for approved details etc is done at a national level and enforced properly. For example a window cill cannot sit on the internal wall. Bang there should be no cills crossing the cavity easy to inspect and if they started enforcing a bit would be easily adopted. (I'm block building hence the polarised example) There will always be people who strive for more and better designs, they are the people we don't need to worry about. The minimum requirements need to be improved.

There are 3 seperate areas they could work on. Porch 3 sides, Sunroom 3 sides and garage front so could shift around a bit.

Thats not so bad, So that would leave my builders crew doing 2 man laying 1 man doing the muck. About an average of 5m2 per day roughly 3 weeks to finish. 1500 per week = 4500 That i could live with.

Guys (as in more than one?) That's slow going alright. That would leave it 5 weeks to do my 78m2 at their best pace? Jesus wept I would think i could do it quicker myself. I have an offer from my building crew to do it for 350 per day (3 man crew) but i am concerned they will try and take the piss and end up taking 2 months to get it done so i'm looking alternatives.

This is were my thinking was coming from. The stoneer is €55 per m2 and the natural stone €45 per m2 so i was thinking you'd be looking the inverse for labour. Not £125 per m2

I thought the cladding would have been cheaper but who knows

No going with Allstone. They are cheaper for the same stone

Still no word there. Not sure if he will be back or not

The stone guy is from Carlow, I was told this by more than one crowd at the self build show but since I'm not buying off them not sure if they would give details. Got another contact from a local septic tank fella who is also building so hoping they are a bit more sensible about the price. Thankfully it's not only me who thinks it's well over priced. I could understand if they were shaping field stone or that kind of thing but it's Silver Quartzite, shouldn't be much harder than laying soap bars

Just posted this topic RE stonework. Has anyone here had any decent quotes for stone or are they all looking telephone numbers just to show up? £125 per m2!

Hi, I'm looking for natural stone on a few parts of my house and was wondering if anyone had an idea of cost? There are roughly 78m2 to be covered and i've only had one quote which seems outrageous to me. So the stone itself is costing me about £38 per m2 which is fairly reasonable. I was told by stone company to expect to pay around the same again for getting it fitted. But my only quote thus far has been for over 10K which works out at a stonking £125 per m2 Surely it's not that expensive? Thanks Damian

Yeah i would say just have a good walk around and check for any patches etc. If he is coming back tomorrow then you could give him a chance to sort any issues. Optimistic to get it all sorted in 1 day? How many guys are with him?

Its a fairly quick job

Its the coverage you are wanted to make sure of. Does it look fully covered and consistent. With spay paint you can get small areas were the spray was not as fully covered as it goes on in a mist. Should dry quickly and i'm sure thats why there are multiple coats to allow full and consistent coverage.

Now I'm curious

I use Revolut Card. Its an app you get on your phone and they give you a Virtual Multi-currency debit card. You can also request a physical card (Free of Charge) You can then add Euros/Stg/Dollars etc to the card and exchange them between currencies and no charge I've mainly been using it to bring Euro savings up and convert to Sterling. Can top it up from Euro Debit card, Convert and transfer into Sterling bank account. Its a great card and fee free for the moment. You get the spot rates from xe.com/ucc which really can't be beaten. You can also use it at ATMs to withdraw whichever currency you need at that time. If you shop on-line they use the local currency and convert using spot rate at the time of purchase. Only issue for a self builder is you are limited to 30K per annum. But you can have one per person so should cover most eventualities. They dont support over the phone transactions so thats a fair limitation for bulk orders.