Decisions after house fire

[tigger22]

Hi Forum,

Wondering if you could please help us as we have had little advice and this event has been forced upon us. We had a house fire in July 2018 which has severely damaged our bungalow. We are likely to have only the floor slab and internal block wall of the exterior cavity walls left.

We are considering accepting a cash settlement from our insurance company to rebuild and make changes to the property ourselves. I am disabled and use a wheelchair so obviously unable to selfbuild the property myself although fairly capable with the knowledge and experience I have accumulated over the years but although the mind is willing the body is not!

Our original bungalow was adapted to my needs except some rooms which remained inaccessible, my son’s bedroom was far too small and we were flooded 5 years ago because the bungalow sits too low. We'd like to create a dormer style bungalow with 2 large bedrooms, a study and a family bathroom upstairs. And to avoid another flooding occurrence we'd like to raise the floor level by at least 200mm. The ground floor M2 is 175 and we hope to replicate that as close as possible on the first floor.

We were wondering if we could keep the original floor slab and put a raised raft over it to form a new raised floor slab and then build a timber framed property on it in order to avoid the cost of removing and reinstating the foundations. Could we build this VAT free?

The other option is to keep a couple of existing exterior walls and demolish the rest, rebuilding them to almost the original outline using brick and block which will make the pouring and raising of a new floor slab easier without having to cut a new damp course etc into the existing walls. Would you consider this to be the better proposal and would it classify as a new build and be VAT free?

Once the ground floor has been reconfigured then we would build the upper floor using a half wall and timber frame method, hopefully utilising the entire downstairs floor area, although budget may require us to reduce the floorplan upstairs.

Which of the two options would you consider to be less expensive and economic to undertake? We are about to put our ‘Plan A’ into planning in the next couple weeks using our surveyor’s drawings but if they prove too expensive for our budget we could scale back if necessary.

Kind regards,

[ProDave]

Complete knock down and rebuild entitles you to reclaim the VAT so 20% cheaper.

 

If building control will allow re use of the foundations how about a beam and block floor over what is there to raise the floor level?

[newhome]

Sorry to hear your news. I can't comment on the building questions but on the VAT if you retain the walls (other than a single facade that is being retained to meet planning conditions) it counts as a refurb and you can't reclaim the VAT. You can keep the existing slab and build a new house and reclaim the VAT (or have it zero rated as a supply and fit arrangement). 

 

Worth reading the (unofficial) VAT guide on here because there are other restrictions about what counts as a zero rated new build. You can't have specific restrictions in the planning permission for example, and the house can't be used to run a business from. 

 

 

 

You'll need to take advice about the foundations because often when people come to add an additional floor to a bungalow the foundations are found to be inaqequate. 

 

 

 

 

 

[scottishjohn]

I think the first most important part is to get the money right from the insurance co.

I am guessing they think it is cheaper to just give you money and walk away  than rebuild .

 

so you need YOUR OWN quotes to re instate as it was before ,including all  site clearance costs .

 And will SEPA require removal of contaminated ground from fire ? --include those costs 

so you will need a good claims adjuster+ solicitor  that YOU are paying for   to get best deal and if possible and you are going to take the money you want to have the option to sell the site on  as it is 

could be it would be cheaper /better to buy somewhere else and sell that ?.

 

I am aware that normal terms of insurance always say it must be rebuilt --but if they wanting to do a deal --then no reason why you shouldn't have it to suit you 

all insurance is interested in is doing it as cheap as possible

My experience of insurance companies giving payouts rather than actually paying for reinstatement is they are looking  to get it cheaper--so get the money bit sorted --do not be in a hurry to go started ,they will use that to get a better deal 

once they pay you any other problems will be yours !!!.

you get one bite at the cherry 

 

 

 

[vivienz]

Would you also need to factor in the cost of accommodation whilst the rebuild is being done?

[tigger22]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the replies,

At the moment we are living on site in a garden studio/granny flat so no problems with ongoing accommodation.

The 6 billion dollar question is how much will the insurance company offer us (not that we would accept the first offer and we have an agent working for us).

Initially we thought we could demolish most internal walls and build another floor on top of the bungalow but there are a number of exterior walls that will need to come down due to water saturation to brickwork and insulation. We went to the Farnborough Self Build show and had a chat with a few timber framed companies. But the main thing is cost of digging up the original floor and foundations so asked if they could put a raft on top of the original. Most said yes but the original would need checking. Also this would increase the floor level by up to 800mm as we require, which would be great - two birds with one stone but all down to cost and design which at present would total (ground and first floor) around 370m2.

I’m just concerned about the cost of removing the footings etc and then replacing so a reinforced raft may be a better option.

Thanks,

Paul

[newhome]

I imagine the insurance company will only want to pay you out for the floor area you have lost. Did you say that was 175 m2? Optimistically you might get up to 2k per m2 but no doubt they will want to offer you a lot less. As an aside it seems that they've got away lightly so far in that they haven't had to pay your ongoing accommodation costs  ... 

 

Building a house of almost double the floorspace will clearly need a significant amount of extra cash on your part.