Afternoon All,

 

I’m after a bit of advice! We had initially planned to release equity from our home prior to beginning our extension project. However, the whole COVID crisis & subsequent lockdown stalled our application, and the impressions which we had received from our mortgage advisor seemed to suggest that it was not going to be an issue if works had begun on site in terms of surveyor visit / valuation. Long story short, they deemed the house uninhabitable (as the kitchen / bathroom were in the extension which we demolished!). We’ve got a fully plumbed in outdoor WC and still have electricity to the house and what not (however are living in a static caravan on site).

 

Despite not having enough to finish the extension, we decided to push on with it to the point where we run out of money, afterwhich point we were hoping to attempt to make a portion of the house liveable and go again with a residential mortgage. We’re quite confident that the house should hit the value we need it to in order to pull the money we need to finish the house, however, are less sure on what standard of liveable the surveyor would accept. Something along the lines of a sink and cabinet in one corner (with electric powered hot water) and a WC in the other is quite do-able with minimal effort, but is this likely to be accepted? The house will essentially be a single room self-contained dwelling in order to satisfy their watertight criteria as the adjacent room has had the wall knocked through which will link to the new 2 storey extension.

 

We’ve investigated going down the self-build mortgage route, but fees and rates have encouraged us to push harder with a standard mortgage. We have not started trying to max out personal loans / credit cards as of yet, however if we were to I think we would still be hard pushed in getting the extension weather tight (windows on a listed building cost a small fortune, together with the roof!)

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks

 

Julian

It's a tough one, and really only the particular surveyor for the mortgage company would be able to confirm exactly what they need before declaring it habitable - although if it's not weather tight I think you'd struggle to convince them?

Usually they will want a completion certificate to release any funds but yours is slightly more complicated by fact it's an extension, I would just go back to the surveyor and ask what they want to see...

32 minutes ago, the_r_sole said:

It's a tough one, and really only the particular surveyor for the mortgage company would be able to confirm exactly what they need before declaring it habitable - although if it's not weather tight I think you'd struggle to convince them?

Usually they will want a completion certificate to release any funds but yours is slightly more complicated by fact it's an extension, I would just go back to the surveyor and ask what they want to see...

 

Thanks for the advice; I have been thinking to put the question to the mortgage surveyor but how would I go about getting his details? The mortgage advisor I used seems to think it is an impossible task and to be honest I haven't even seen any paperwork on the application to formally indicate his thoughts of it being uninhabitable (as I'd hope that way I could pin a name to the face!)

 

As you mentioned, I'm hoping I won't have to worry about building control certification etc seeing as it is in the old part of the house...would that be a wise assumption? With regards to the weather tight issue. I could put up a temporary frame around the opening we've made in the wall in the adjacent room and ply board it? The room I intend on making liveable is partitioned off from this space witha  2 skin wall and I was hoping to simply board up the door which creates an access route across rooms?

 

 

How much do you need? Would a personal loan be a possibility rather than a mortgage? Think rates are as low as 3%. Remortgage and pay off loan when completed?

2 minutes ago, Temp said:

How much do you need? Would a personal loan be a possibility rather than a mortgage? Think rates are as low as 3%. Remortgage and pay off loan when completed?

 

That's the tricky bit; we're hoping once we're above DPC next week we'll be in a better situation to gauge cost to get us to watertight - the roof is still a slight unknown as we've been locked into using reclaimed slate tiles, and a traditional exposed oak truss style in keeping with the listed building and conservation area. The other issue is the windows; another planning condition specifying that they ultimately have the final say on which window design, which is proving an open ended book (likely to be an aluminium crittal style reporduction, quotes coming in vary quite significantly). A very rough guess from where I stand would suggest around 50k might get us over the line to a wateritght shell? The majority of internal works such as plumbing, floors etc I intend on embarking on myself really...and we will be keeping things fairly simple!

On 12/08/2020 at 07:07, JulianB said:

likely to be an aluminium crittal style reporduction, quotes coming in vary quite significantly

These are the types of windows I’m looking for (for similar reasons). Which companies were most competitive for the slimmest framing profiles?

Morning!

 

From our extensive searches, we found 3 main groups for this style of window.

 

The first is the extruded (thermally broken) aluminium profiles; the 3 manufacturerswhich purch themselves at the top of the market (we felt) are Raynaers SL38, Smart system's Alitherm Heritage, and the Aluk 58BWST. Quite a number of companies then simply assembly these profiles, some even add their custom design bead profiles and re-brand (eg. Cherwell windows which originate from Alitherm Heritage). We were very keen on the Alitherm Heritage and the Raynaers options, and found Bedford Bi folds provided pretty competitive quotes, together with CMC Aluminium ltd. 

 

The next group is the traditional steel hot rolled W20 range - they look absolutely beautiful with hand made quality and as slim as you can go, however bring with them the thermal bridging issues / condensation which we weren't terribly keen on. We also weren't keen on installing secondary glazing as a sticking plaster. Companies we found to be most competitive were Hawkscroft Ltd and Mike Honour windows.

 

The last group which is the one we went for in the end is a half way house, providing thermally broken hand made windows, with pretty impressive sightlines. The two companies we found were MetThem (which we went with) and Architectural Bronze casements. The main aspect of these windows which put them ahead of the rest IMO were the small details such as the corrners and hinges being welded to give the traditional / authentic look; whilst the first group just felt alittle too 'mass produced' for our application. We're hoping to receive ours in April as there is a 4-5 month lead time; can report back on the whole experience / quality after that (fingers crossed!)

 

Hope that helps!
 

Julian

@JulianB that is helpful, thank you. I actually got a quote from Mettherm last year. For four windows, (two largish and two small) totalling about 9m2 in glazing in all, it came to about £11,500 all in, which I thought was a bit pricy. The price, and the fact that their maximum width on openings was only 580mm put me off. But I’m not sure I’ve found anything much better and I have since realised I could make the 580mm limit work.

Why did you go for MetTherm over Architectural Bronze?

Yes I must admit they weren't the cheapest - probably 30% more expensive than the Alitherm heritage / Aluk / Raynaers options. The sticking point for Architectural Bronze was their Bi fold door selection, which we felt were too chunky in their thermally broken range. Their window profiles looked great on the other hand, however since one of our glazed gable ends will incorporate bi folds, felt that it would compromise the overall look. MetTherm were in the top bracket in terms of prices we had received (together with FABCO and alot of the hand made steel options), however after we saw the hand made stuff, found it difficult to go back to the Alitherm / Raynaers options. We did go over budget quite a bit unfortunately, but we're hoping this will be one of the talking points of the extension and help the blend between old and new.  

Don't rule out picking and mixing from different window and door manufacturers.  As long as the colour is the same it will not normally be noticeable.

 

That way, you can get the window aesthetic you are after from one firm and the function / dimension of a sliding / folding door from another.

Agreed! We did look into that but in our particular case our bi folds were incorporated into the glazed end and we opted to avoid another layer of complexity co-ordinating two parties given that there wasn't much gain in terms of cost / aesthetics.