Building a New Home

  • Thread starter gollmacmorna
  • Start date
G

gollmacmorna

Guest
I am planning to build a new house in the next year or so I am having Plansdrawn up at the moment- probably 4/5 bed in rural location outside of Leinster and not close enough to any of the cities to pay really expensive building costs.

We have decided against building a timber frame house and are going down the Block route. ( although with more of an idea of the costs involved we might go for the styrofoam formwork that you fill with concrete).

Anyway the basic question is how much will the traditional block build cost??
I have heard a number of quotes lately e.g. from €90 to about €130 per sq. ft. depending on finish.

I was wondering if anyone else has built a house in recent years and what were the costs involved?

The house doesn't need to be finished "absolutely perfectly" before we move in i.e. If we have a good kitchen, bedroom living room and bathroom with a sound roof over our heads, we can do the rest of the rooms up as we go along.
Any help, ideas would be appreciated
 
House building costs

We have built a house in the west, block built, u.f.h.,
garage, landscaped outside, fully finished inside. €75 per sq.ft. approx. We were able to keep costs low as it was all done by direct labour over a couple of years.

Hope this helps.
 
Building blocks

If you plan on a block structure, you might also want to consider building with "poroton" blocks rather than the standard concrete.
Poroton blocks are a high-insulation building block (u values as low as 0.11), used all over the continent and available here for the last few years. They are about 365mm deep so that a single-leaf construction still achieves insulation values in excess of concrete double-leaf cavity filled walls.
We built using poroton some time back in a fairly exposed coastal location and have been very satisfied with performance -- very warm house.
They are marketed by Formula Building Technology in Wexford and have a website at [broken link removed] and the people at FBT couldn't have been more helpful.
Can recommend them highly.
 
Price of Building

I would say that your estimate of 90-130 is about right - we are building in Wexford at the moment for 125 per square foot. A lot dearer than I thought and that does not include kitchen, wardrobes, painting etc as we are going to do these ourselves. Also no landscaping.
It does have underfloor heating though and a block wall upstairs. Also i should say that it is stone which is adding 25K to the price so without the stone you would be talking about just over 100 per square foot.
 
Building a house

Thanks for all your helpful advic. The Poroton blocks sound like a good idea, I had come across them before last year some time. As we are really still in the planning stage we are open to all options/suggestions re: building materials techniques.

The reason we favour the Block build is for the thermal mass and for sound insulation.
I suppose any good block/brick layer should not have a problem with the Poroton blocks.

I had considered the insulated polystyrene panels that you pour concrete into, but these seem to be a similar price to block build with the added problem of using a method that may not be familiar to most builders.
 
building a house

FBT will send you a video showing how it works,simple, no need for a bricklayer if you have the muscles and the time.The problem with bricklayers and the "new" system might be that they are not used to it and charge you extra for the work-experience.
The method where you cast your own walls into polystyrene moulds is the same ,if they don't know it they charge you extra.Another problem might be the weather,the moulds might get filled with water during the work and that messes up the job,as well the effect that wind has on the empty moulds-they blow away before they are filled.That is of course only when it's windy.
 
Poroton - Laoise

Laoise, when you say "We built wih Poroton blocks" do you mean you did the building yourself or did you organise for a local contractor/ blocklayer to do the job?

How did it work out?
Re: speed of construction? quality of finish? cost?
estimation of quantity of / delivery of blocks?
plastering/ rendering?
 
poroton

Hi Gollmacmorna,
We did the brickwork ourselves. Were in the lucky position that my partner was able to work at it practically full-time for a while & we both put in a lot of evenings & weekends! Fbt showed us how to lay the bricks on the first layer - they have grooved edges which makes it really easy, but that's explained better on their website -and then we just carried on. There are also internal blocks and lintels etc in the poroton range and a special liquid mortar which is really easy to mix & use. With a bit of work and a good engineer to check the work now & again it worked out fine (Engineer had also just built for himself using poroton so that was a plus!). On the outside, my partner plastered using, again, a special plaster suitable to the poroton, and outside that a layer of wood cladding which keeps wind & rain off the walls. On the inside we used plasterboard, skimmed the joints & painted. We mounted the plasterboard sheets on wooden laths fixed to the poroton.
Costs - have it all written down somewhere - will mail that later. Prices may no longer be the same , but will give a rough idea.
Estimations: FBT worked out how many of each type of block we needed & delivered - no problems. Anything extra we wanted came straightaway.
At the time FBT were also building - I think now they only supply the blocks. But they couldn't have been more helpful
Laoise
 
Poroton

Thanks a million for that information Laoise- very helpful Poroton are seem to be still building themselves at the moment. I have been in contact with them through their website to ask for a copy of the video showing the building technique.
They replied by e-mail suggesting I go to look at some of their "projects" in places such as Dublin, Limerick, Longford, Armagh and Down.
They come across as very helpful people.
 
Back
Top