engineers fees

T

Tan

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Hi
I am currently planning to build a house which plans have been drawn up for planning. In order to proceed with building we need working plans for contractor and supervision of site for mortgage and certificate of compliance. We have been quoted €3800 plus VAT. it includes updated plans, visits to site, certificate in compliance with Building Regulations and also radiators and sockets maRked and atdditional wall sizes and timber. Is this excessive? Can we not just go with updated working plans and builder organise sockets and rads???
 
Hi Tan, I am doing something similar myself at the moment. I went though the planning process myself and selected a builder. There are couple of threads here on this topic too (do a search under "engineer costs"). Before starting the build I had to select an engineer (required by the bank & builder) to check stages and issue a cert of compliance. The stage payments cost approx €1000 plus VAT and approx €350 for the Cert of Compliance. I presume you are going with a contract build as opposed to Direct Labour? If you are happy with your builder (references checked out etc) then they shouldn't need much supervision. Your engineer will check each stage and if you (or your builder) have any doubts at any point then organise an additional visit (and charge!) but if the builder is reputable and the building is bonded with Homebond you should not need too many (if any) extra visits. Certainly, if you have a relatively straight forward house plan, you should be able to work through things like rads and plug points between yourself and the builder. Good luck with it.
 
Starting out on a self build myself.

What are people's experience of using an engineer to design/draw their house as opposed to using an architect?

I will need an enginner to measure/mark my site for the purposes of the contract and then engineer/architect again for sign off on plans and site to get the site price from the bank when I get planning permission.

What is this likely to set me back?
 
Hi
Yeah we're getting contractor who wil organise rads etc. The engineer has already been named for our first payment for our site cost. Do we have to stick with him for the the rest of the building after his name and supervision cert is given to bank?? We only got this quote now!! As for marking our site the engineer says that its up to the seller to mark the site and our engineer just to okay it! Our site is a 'jungle' so we reckon they are avoiding the marking of it however this is neccessary in case it becomes an issue for contention in later years.
 
Hi Tan, I would ask the engineer to mark the boundary of the site and the front line of the house, the builder will be able to mark out the rest of the site layout. It is important that the boundary matches what's marked on the land registry map, otherwise you could have a problem later if you ever wanted to sell or the site boundary was queried.
 
Hi shoegal
That sounds like the best option, cheers. The boundary to the side is in forestry so I imagine it will mean cutting or marking the trees where the boundary line is. But yeah the builder should be able to help with that, I hope!!!
 
munsterman25 said:
Starting out on a self build myself.

What are people's experience of using an engineer to design/draw their house as opposed to using an architect?

I will need an enginner to measure/mark my site for the purposes of the contract and then engineer/architect again for sign off on plans and site to get the site price from the bank when I get planning permission.

What is this likely to set me back?
Click to expand...

We used an engineer to design our house and draw up the plans. The design wasn't very complicated and with about 50% of the house built we are happy enough with the layout. In my opinion, if you're going for a standard house design an engineer will be sufficient. An architect generally will have a better "feel" for how a 2D house plan will look when it's built so if your design is unusual, an architect will do a better job. However, it will cost you!

Our engineer, so far, has cost us €3376. For this: she drew up both original and revised plans for planning application, drew up construction drawings for the builder, marked out site for land registry and carried out two site visits to inspect construction to date. The final bill should be well under €4K.
 
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