New Houses

Hi,

I was chatting about the old house versus new house pros and cons yesterday. A friend commented that new houses, being of timber construction, are at a bigger risk to things like dry rot in the frame and, because of this, their longevity is in question.

Any comments on this and what is the perceived lifetime of a modern home built by the likes of Wimpey, Barratt and Co.? Is the housing stock in the UK simply too old and should be replaced on a more regular basis - of course, that would mean new homes costing alot less?

John.

Reply to
John Smith
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Timber frame is not, in itself, a problem. You will find that most houses more than 300 years old in this country are timber framed. Provided ventilation and maintenance is good, timber framed houses can last a very long time.

Christian.

Reply to
Christian McArdle

Indeed. The one over the road is mentioned in the Domesday book. Shame some plumber left a stripper plugged in and burnt half of it away a few years back. They still have not sorted out insurance claims on that one...

Rot and fire are the two enemies. Wheeras subsidence gets the block and brick ones.

Privded timber is kept dry, old oak, or treated softwood should be good for at least a hundred years. Morte like 300 typically. The BIG danger is leaking rooves gutters and bargeboards etc.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Thanks, but with regard to newly built houses... are they build to standards as good as, say, 30, 50, or 70 years ago? Or are they built better? I mean, some new houses look old after only 5 - 10 years and I can't help wondering what they will look like in 20, 30, etc, years?

John.

Reply to
John Smith

I have heard tell, that a new build only has to have a guarantee of habitability for thirty years after completion, to be able to obtain a mortgage on it. So it is not surprising that they can throw up these timber framed houses with weak floors and tiny windows and still make money from them.

I say weak floors because, after reading a contract for a Barrat homes property, I noticed that is said "We can not guarantee the structural integrity of any flooring construction if the occupancy on the bearing loaders is more than twenty persons. " That kinda' put me off buying a brand new house for good.

Reply to
BigWallop

Do you think a similar guarantee is available for older properties? From what I can tell, joist sizes required now seem frequently to be larger than that used 100 years ago.

Christian.

Reply to
Christian McArdle

Really ? You ain't seen the joists in this 100 year old tenement we now live in. They're almost like someone has just slightly squared off the trunk of the trees and laid floor boards over them. Comparing these to the ones used now and you'd definitely notice the difference in build quality.

Reply to
BigWallop

I'm not familiar with tenement houses. However, round here, Victorian and Edwardian terraces are common. The joists certainly don't look substantially thicker than that used in modern construction.

Christian.

Reply to
Christian McArdle

I'd say the insulation is better, but teh stenght is worse, and the sound insulation - apart from double glazed windows - far worse.

Longevity? Not much different really. Old hopuses tend to be solid, but cold.

New houses sound like living in a wooden drum, but are warm :)

YMMV.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Yes, but smaller than used 50-70 years ago.

There is a tyendency to e.g. use smaller joists with herringbone bracing to get a stiffer floor, but it won't carry as much load.

And use of multiply braced prefab roof trusses that again are stiff, but don't have the ultimate strength.

Foundations are MUCH better - they have to be. So is wiring, insulation, plumbing and general use of the space and fitout quality. Its teh structure where the building regs are bent till they creak that sometimes gets a bit naff. I.e. use of chipboard floors that creak if no glue is used, and stud walls instead of block. A block house is a quieter house IME.

Also use of plasticky windows and doors is a bit naff in anything other than ultra modern styled places. However if the owner doesn't do window frame painting, they outlast softwood.

Modern houses are nice 30-100 year and then tear em down places. Low maintenance then replace.

Since the STRUCTURE house cost these days probably represents on many sites less than 50% of the 'value' I would expect many of them to be torn down and replaced anyway in due course.

A friend of mine who was a bit of an industrial and heritage archaologist, reckons that a house gets a major refurb (up to 60% of rebuild cost roughly every 60 years - usually after someone has died in it. Average life is I think around 150-200 years. Most stuff older than that gets torn down, or catches fire. That fits in well with the pre-victorian properties being in the minority here.

A LOT of e.g. victorian terraces also - with no loos, baths or decent insulation, arguably could be demolished and rebuilt at less cost than a total refirnb anyway, and gain decent foundations as a result. Lost were in the 'slum clearances' of the 50's and 60's.

I am not sure about planning issues, but you can rebuild a house for betrween 60 and 120 quid a square foot, depending on final quality. Apply that to many houses for sale in the south east at least, and it really becomes a matter of 'buying a plot, with a crap house attached'

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Round my way, and I suppose this is increasingly common, I look at houses and think "That has a nice bit of land but the house is crap - why can't I knock it down and build a new one but a quality new one!" How difficult is it to get permission to do this? Doesn't the new house have to reflect the old house to such an extent that it defeats the purpose?

John.

Reply to
John Smith

Depends entirely on the local planners, and whether or not its a 'conservation area'

Andf as far as I can tell from the bloke up teh road who turned a 400k listed cottage into at 2.5M something resembling a cross between tescos car park and a hitech california log cabin, how much you bribe the borough council.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I'm not familiar enough with construction north of the border but I'm told it a fair better than down south historically at least.

I would say there is a huge range of build qualities over in the C19 and early C20 houses with the better housing being a good as any within the limitations of the technology (no cavity walls etc.). but the rough end is abysmal, e g door frames that consist only of the lining wood.

The best built housing AFAIK and IMHO is the inter world war stuff that was built for owner-occupiers. The lower end of the market was less worse relatively at that time.

Since then it seems that house are being built less well to cleverer designs so that they are OKish I would not expect the joists to fail on a modern home even if built by B*rr*tt etc. However you have to go a long way up the market spectrum to find houses with wooden flooring rather than chip-board.

All modern pitched lofts are built with a high strength 'forest of matchwood' which means the space is less useable and less easily converted.

Reply to
Ed Sirett

In message , John Smith writes

I don't know how difficult it is, but certainly this is one way that selfbuilders get a decent plot nowadays. There were a couple of examples on Grand Designs IIRC. The house knocked down were nothing like the ones they built.

Though I guess this very much depends on the area and on the other houses, planning guidelines etc.

Reply to
chris French

These posts seem to contain a lot of errors from the first down. Any house is a constantly ongoing refurbishment. Look how long a roof would last if it was diligently inspected and repaired. I don't think there have been many houses built without a wooden roof have there?

As for the occupancy exceeding 20 people in a Barratt Home.... Can you get 20 people in a Barratt Home?

I don't think there is a country with more rigorous building codes than Britain. The quality, as ever, depends on the architect, the buider and the customer. If the customer cuts corners on quality control, saving the cost of a good survey for instance, or overlooking faults, just to get into the property.....

Unscrupulous builders may well keep the buyer hanging on knowing their bridging loan and/or temporary residential circumstances will mellow them into accepting what ever the builder is doing.

Then they move in and expect the cowboy to put it all right in 6 months. He kept them waiting a lot longer than that before they got the key.

In feudal times if you got the roof on and the doors closed with smoke coming out of the chimney by nigh time, you could live anywhere in the land. It was a mark of either the total absence of building codes or the organisation of a village with all the necessary skills and planning clearance for them to want you living there.

Basically if the house is still there in 70 years despite the absences of diy forums, B&Q warehouses and TV make-overs; somebody must have done something right.

Today building relies on the fact that you have to give total strangers vast amounts of money for quite some considerable time (with very little say about what he does with it) and almost no chance of getting it back and walking away.

Which leaves me wondering what builder in what part of the country is offering 30 year guarrantees.

Reply to
Michael McNeil

What you want is a house that does not fit in with its neighbours. A few years back a 1950's infill bungalow (in a street of Victorian houses) two doors from me went for £130K. The buyer got pp for a 2.5 storey pseudo-Victorian house which probably cost £200K tops to build. Resulting house worth £4-500K. And far from the planners putting ever obstacle in the way, as is the norm, they were only too happy to see the replacement.

Having said this, round here developers have cottoned on to the fact that bungalows generally occupy fairly generous sites so they sell on their redevelopment rather than intrinsic value.

Reply to
Tony Bryer

substantially

Having installed heating in many types of houses, new homes I find have better timbers than Victorian houses. Many Victorian houses were Jerry built, as the recent Grand Designs TV programme highlighted.

Reply to
IMM
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What, in America, is charmingly referred to as a "scraper", since you buy the site and scrape the bungalow off it with a bulldozer.

Reply to
Huge

I would not say so. partition walls can be quite quiet. It depends on the wall construction.

The average is 1/3 the value of the structure, the rest is the land value. RThat does not mean the house is cheap.

The Japanese now have larger homes on average than in the UK. They had a continual re-build policy that ensured a pretty newish housing stock. These new homes also emit less CO2.

Reply to
IMM

Our Stalinist planning system may stand in your way. The planners act as the style police, insisting a house be mock something, when no such regulation exists. In the vast majority of the UK a house can look like you want it to be in theory. The style police stand in the way, you can appeal, it takes time and money, and you will probably win, but most people cave in and go with the style police. Hence you don't see advanced house designs in the UK.

In many other countries it is common to see a superb looking modern house, say on the side of a hill, which will grab your attention, with both complimenting each other. In the UK you only see a hill which you ignore.

Reply to
IMM

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