Are self build houses more expensive to buy?

jimpix12

If you Google the boiler make in the listing, it comes in at around £1200, though at trade prices it could be a bit less, I guess. I can't seem to find any mention of the mechanical heat recovery system that doozergirl mentioned, am I missing something?

leveller2911

Triple glazing IMO is a complete white elephant when you compare the extra cost to the benefit.Triple glazing will bring down the U value of a window by around 0.3 but would cost around 30% extra so the benefit is negligable.

I think the market in general for re-newables and energy saving products can be misleading ,for instance go back a couple of years and the new "best product" to buy was wind turbines, thousands were sold before people did the maths and worked out they wouldn't get their investment back for 117 years.
I'm in no doubt insulating a house to the max can save money long term but things like solar panels for instance are far from being a good long term reliable product.

jimpix12

Been speaking to scandia about costs, they supplied and installed the boiler, heating etc so I'll see what they come back with. Also it transpires the owner is a chartered surveyor, which is interesting...

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leveller2911

Oak vaneered interior doors are about £80-00 each from Howdens.If the house was high spec you would expect to have solid oak doors.bespoke made costing a lot more and solid Oak flooring is around £20 per sq metre so not expensive, IMO the house is not high specification.Theres also the 3rd bedroom/dining room so if you do use it as a 3rd bedroom where are you all going to eat as the kitchens not big enough? "space for table and chairs" yes 2 chairs and small table.Its a 2 bedroom house on the market for nearly £400k :eek:

Skandia Hus have a decent reputation and make good quality houses but as they only built the shell you can only say the "House shell" is good quality.The more I look at the photo's the less i'm impressed so beware of the marketing machine.
If I had nearly £400k to spend I would rather buy a cheaper house in need of modernisation and spend money on making my house a home.To be brutally honest the house looks like thousands of other "estate" houses.

Spunko I think given the fact that you have reservations about the house I would go with my gut feeling and keep looking.

Doozergirl

GDB2222 wrote: »

Doozer, I'm trying to work out the extra cost to the developer of putting in the energy saving features:

Band A boiler - £200 ??
Triple-glazed windows - £2,000 ??
Extra insulation in the loft - £200 ??
Mechanical ventilation system - £2000 ??

Am I wildly underestimating the cost here? And have I missed anything out from the spec?

It really depends on the spec of the house. But extra underfloor insulation comes with the added cost of digging deeper. Extra insulation properly designed into a usable loft means having thicker trusses to accomodate the extra thickness. Higher grade insulation costs more etc.

The only MVHR that I've seen costed, was £5200 fitted in a similar sized house. On top of a regular heating system, it's expensive, and this house has a regular boiler and underfloor heating to boot (which would add £2-3000 to the cost of the boiler fitting though arguably no value).

Triple glazing in a super insulated Passivhaus house I have seen costed at £19,000 - some of it is of course cheaper but triple glazing units end up being let down by the insulative properties of their frames, so if you want to ultimate benefit of triple glazing, you need insulated frames as well.

I have no idea what specifications this house is built to, but if it only cost £4,500 extra to super insulate a house and put in triple glazing then we'd all be doing it.

Triple glazing reduces the feel of cold spots in the house. The idea is that ambient warmth throughout the house gives people the better feeling of being warm. Triple glazing comes into play when you're really aiming at little or no bills.

I'd have preferred PVTs or something a little more thoughtful than a regular oil burning system; that would increase value more for me. Then again, they'd cost about £20k so a vendor would be hoping for some of their money back!

Your point on the walls, precisely. There is square footage to be paid for that is in the extra thickness of walls, not on the internal floorplan.

Doozergirl

leveller2911 wrote: »

Oak vaneered interior doors are about £80-00 each from Howdens.If the house was high spec you would expect to have solid oak doors.bespoke made costing a lot more and solid Oak flooring is around £20 per sq metre so not expensive, IMO the house is not high specification.Theres also the 3rd bedroom/dining room so if you do use it as a 3rd bedroom where are you all going to eat as the kitchens not big enough? "space for table and chairs" yes 2 chairs and small table.

Skandia Hus have a decent reputation and make good quality houses but as they only built the shell you can only say the "House shell" is good quality.The more I look at the photo's the less i'm impressed so beware of the marketing machine.
If I had nearly £400k to spend I would rather buy a cheaper house in need of modernisation and spend money on making my house a home.To be brutally honest the house looks like thousands of other "estate" houses.

Spunko I think given the fact that you have reservations about the house I would go with my gut feeling and keep looking.

I'd agree on the quality of fittings; it's a dreadful shame that the house itself is built with at least a pretty high spec but the quality of the finishing is poor - visible appliances and boiler in the kitchen (a particularly big NO for me :eek:). In the shower room, the horrid white towel rail with the piping not channelled into the wall and dreadful boxing in to the ugly wall-hung sink - wall-hungs are supposed to be more attractive. Put a pedestal in if it's going to look that ugly! And why is it off centre to the window?! 16 different colours and varieties of cheap fencing outside. And you shouldn't really have carpet for UFH to work effectively, but it's cheaper to lay, obviously.

The doors are more expensive than £80 though, imo.

leveller2911

Doozergirl wrote: »

The doors are more expensive than £80 though, imo.

Having thought about it your right, if you ordered say 9 they would still be under £100-00 each.

The give away is that they are "vaneered Oak" so they would have a cheap whitewood or mdf laminate core and overlayed with a very thin Oak vaneer. Still very cheap doors.

jimpix12

Thanks for the advice... I will keep researching this to ascertain what Scandia did and did not do, the EA seems to think it was just the shell, but her colleague told me tonight they did everything except the kitchen.

Can you be sure from the photos these are oak-veneered only? They were a big selling point with the EA (made by a Swedish company called Dooria apparently?). Trying to keep an open mind ...:money:

Edit: Sorry, read the description, veneered it is. I will put in an offer way below their asking price (20% probably), and explain my reasons for doing so, of course they won't accept but I feel it is only right and hopefully the EA will understand my reasons for it. Always more helpful imo to say "it's overpriced because X, Y, Z " rather than "just not interested now, sorry". If you take away the eco-marketing, it's not a 'bad' house, just way overpriced especially in this economy.

GDB2222

Doozergirl wrote: »

Triple glazing in a super insulated Passivhaus house I have seen costed at £19,000 - some of it is of course cheaper but triple glazing units end up being let down by the insulative properties of their frames, so if you want to ultimate benefit of triple glazing, you need insulated frames as well.

Is that £19k on top of the cost of ordinary double glazing? How much would ordinary double glazing cost, put in at the time of building the house?