Rebuilding outer leaf

[Jilly]

I’m guessing external insulation wouldn’t work?

[BotusBuild]

11 minutes ago, Jilly said:

I’m guessing external insulation wouldn’t work?

I can't see why not. I think it's been suggested already. 

[Gus Potter]

3 hours ago, Iceverge said:

I'll reiterate my point buried in my earlier post. 

 

The worse thing that any self builder can do is value their time at zero. 

 

You need to put a £ figure on every hour you spend on site. Say £20. 

 

 

Re taking down the leaf of a cavity wall. @Gus Potter and @saveasteading might be along to discuss why this is a bad idea. 

 

As far as I understand the two leafs when ties together act more like a wide solid wall, like a "H" rugby goals. 

 

When you take away half almost all of the lateral strength disappears.

Good advice.

 

In a standard cavity wall (say 50-75mm cavity) the two leaves act together. When doing calculations we derive an effective thickness of the wall. A bit like this bit from the the BS code. But the strength of the wall as @Iceverge say rapidly decreases exponentially the thinner the effective thickness.

 

There are other kinds of masonry walls. Solid walls are say built with English Garden bond. These you can't really take down the inner skin in any practical way. There is  a wall called a collar jointed wall. Here the cavity is no more than 25mm and fully filled with mortar. One key thing here (collar wall) is that the wall ties are much thicker and more robust. Ancon do a wall tie for collar jointed walls. A collar wall tied with the right ties acts like a solid wall so you get more bang for your buck.

 

 

It's a good idea to value you time. £20.00 per hour seems reasonable. That's £160 a day. A trade rate up near Glasgow can vary from say £100-120 a day for an inexperienced labourer up to say 220 - 250 a day for a good experienced joiner( chippie)... more for a spark and techy folk. Now if that is all through the books and you are doing an extension there may be vat and an extra contractor profit / overheads to go on top of that.

 

When you look at it this way it can be good or bad! If your time spent on site is doing some work then you win a watch. You efforts are tax free and not subject to contractor profit for example. Any time spent keeping an eye on the builder is still worth while as it can head off disputes and extra claims for cost later on. It can help keep the quality of workmanship up too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mike]

7 hours ago, allthatpebbledash said:

Hardly makes sense to knock it down to save further 5% on the tax considering cost of JCB and new foundations. My only issue is the pebbledash, maybe I should just own it? Paint it white, dash showing and all?

It's not just the VAT. I've undertaken several deep renovations myself, as well as having managed & priced them commercially, and they always turns out to be more expensive than rebuilding would have been - unless you're doing much of the work & discounting the cost of your labour.

 

In addition to strip-out costs, many things just take more time and/or cost more. For example, building a doorway into a new internal wall is more-or-less 'free' - the extra costs are roughly balanced out by saving 1.5m² of blockwork. On the other hand, knocking a hole through an existing wall, well that's a couple of days work + additional materials. Then there are things you find that you didn't expect that need fixing - walls, floors & ceilings out of level; botched DIY; sagging rafters; dry-rot; lead water mains; cracked sewers, whatever - which also takes more time to fix than fitting from new. And making an old house properly airtight - which is highly recommended - is almost always more complex because it wasn't considered as part of the original design.

 

There are good reasons for not demolishing. Maybe you just want to tart it up & flip it. Maybe you need to live in it because you have nowhere else and a caravan is out. Maybe the building has a particular heritage value (whether listed or not). Or, as with my current project, maybe it's an apartment - which kind of rules out demolition!

 

But if you do decide to renovate then do make sure that includes a thermal upgrade to at least Building Regs standards. Better than that if you're concerned about future energy costs and / the future additional value that it's likely to provide.

[Iceverge]

I cannot emphasis this enough. There'll always be more work to do than one person can manage and you need a metric to value your time. £ or € or $ is a pretty good one. 

 

Let me give you some examples. 

 

I stupidly chased our walls with a 9" grinder ( because I had it) rather than pay €120 for a days rental of the proper tools. 

 

It took me about 20 hrs of pure torture. 

 

My mate rented the machine and did his house in an afternoon. At €20/hr it stupidly cost me double what his did. 

 

I can lay blocks, but I'm slow and I don't like doing it for more than a couple of hours as I'm too soft. I reckon about 10/hr would be average. That come to about €2/block. Maybe that makes some sense for small projects but no way for a large house. 

 

Gains can be made where you do the donkey work of someone who's more highly skilled. Like UFH pipe laying or pulling cables for wiring. Plumbers and sparkles are expensive laborers. 

 

Another example, my mate, extended a cottage. 4 men took 2 days to crowbar and sledge down an old stone chimney. All unpaid, family, mates etc. then they took the same again to break out the old floor. Then the same to take off the roof. 

 

Had they hired a digger and demoed the house their mate time could probably have saved them multiples of the cost later in the build. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Iceverge]

4 minutes ago, Iceverge said:

I cannot emphasis this enough. There'll always be more work to do than one person can manage and you need a metric to value your time. £ or € or $ is a pretty good one. 

 

Let me give you some examples. 

 

I stupidly chased our walls with a 9" grinder ( because I had it) rather than pay €120 for a days rental of the proper tools. 

 

It took me about 20 hrs of pure torture. 

 

My mate rented the machine and did his house in an afternoon. At €20/hr it stupidly cost me double what his did. 

 

I can lay blocks, but I'm slow and I don't like doing it for more than a couple of hours as I'm too soft. I reckon about 10/hr would be average. That come to about €2/block. Maybe that makes some sense for small projects but no way for a large house. 

 

Gains can be made where you do the donkey work of someone who's more highly skilled. Like UFH pipe laying or pulling cables for wiring. Plumbers and sparkles are expensive laborers. 

 

Another example, my mate, extended a cottage. 4 men took 2 days to crowbar and sledge down an old stone chimney. All unpaid, family, mates etc. then they took the same again to break out the old floor. Then the same to take off the roof. 

 

Had they hired a digger and demoed the house their mate time could probably have saved them multiples of the cost later in the build. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I helped my mate for free with the build, pouring concrete, groundworks, airtighess and some basic carpentry. 

 

I didn't do any of the fooling with the manual demolition though. I've learned the long way my time isn't worthless. 

 

I did offer to drive my digger straight through it though. 

Edited 4 hours ago by Iceverge