Growing wall building costs.

Scrag_Meister

We recently had a builder around to give us a figure for demolishing our 31m x 2m boundary wall and rebuilding. It had a slight lean, but hadn't moved since we moved in, 3 years ago.

The estimate came back at just shy of £8k, I had budgetted £10k.

So they come in and knock the wall down, and remove a couple of lorry loads of rubble and waste.

They have just come up and said that there is little of no foundation on the wall, it is approx 110 years old, and they want an extra £5250 to dig out and put new foundations in.

I have already been stung by the council levying a £458 hoarding licence fee for the security fencing, for which the builder claimed no knowledge of the licence requirement.

So here I am with no boundary wall, and a builder wanting 66% more than originally esitmated.

At a loss as to what to do,

1. Finding the money. I allowed a 20% contingency but this is a great deal more.

2. What's to stop them just adding other costs.

Thanks in advance.

theGrinch

What were other quotes you got for the work? Did you take up references? What did you sign?

Can you invite other builders to quote?

There are many factors that go into building works.

One of the biggest costs here would be a) the bricks you are using b) access to the site for a mini digger and deliveries.

8k feels a lot for a 62 sq metre wall. I got a 42 sq metre wall built this year and that cost me £1k labour only (I was using my own reclaimed bricks plus some blocks)

Orkatec

I use sites like buildingsheriff.com to give me a rough guide.

To build a 3’ high, 9” thick front garden wall. This will go right across the front, (10 metres), have a gap for a gate, have a concrete foundation and be built of face bricks with a concrete coping on top. With the foundation, this will take 2 men 3 days.

Labour……..£750, concrete and mortar…….£235, bricks and copings…….£300, skip……..£125, ……………..£1400.00

This will vary by where you live

James

ValHaller

Orkatec wrote: »

I use sites like buildingsheriff.com to give me a rough guide.

To build a 3’ high, 9” thick front garden wall.

This one from http://www.buildingsheriff.com/garden-front-walls.html looks a better match

Job 3
Build a 6’ high, 4” thick, side garden wall with piers every 8’. This will be 120’ long have a concrete foundation and be built from face bricks with a concrete coping. This will take 2 men 10 days.

Labour……..£2500, concrete and mortar……..£1225, bricks and copings……..£1600, skips…….£600, ………………..£5925.00

Mojisola

Scrag_Meister wrote: »

We recently had a builder around to give us a figure for demolishing our 31m x 2m boundary wall and rebuilding. It had a slight lean, but hadn't moved since we moved in, 3 years ago.

They have just come up and said that there is little of no foundation on the wall, it is approx 110 years old, and they want an extra £5250 to dig out and put new foundations in.

I would have expected a good builder to realise the approximate age of the wall and also to have had dug around the base to see whether there were good foundations or not before putting a quote in.

Furts

My opinion is to seek quotes from elsewhere, or put in your own foundation.

As previous posters have implied, your wall sounds expensive. It depends on where in the UK you are but a typical cost for ordinary facebricks would be approx £2000, assuming you purchased them. If you double this to allow for labour you still get only £4000. Plus, I am being generous on the labour - this is a dream job for brickies who should bite your hand off on finding such a job.

tony6403

Calculation from website at the foot of this post.

We calculate that given a wall length of 31 m and a choice of one brick thick (225mm) for walls 2m high build then the:

• Cost per unit length - £166 per m
• Total cost - £5,149.

The costs calculated above are based on the following:

• VAT is not included
• the excavation and concrete foundations are included
• the work is carried out by an experienced contractor
• the excavated material can be spread on site
• access is good.

As an example, if your builder IS VAT registered then the price would increase to £6,179 if VAT is at 20%.


Garden Wall Cost Calculator: Estimate the price for building a wall in your garden

cyclonebri1

I finally got round to replacing my boundary wall last year.
It was a retaining wall and I was the low side, bit unusual but heyho.

Mine was 29m x between 1.6 and 1m high, it was over by 3" in the worst place and after the neighbours built a large extension and failed to drain it correctly it was only going 1 way:eek:


Now, I'm not a pro builder but I know my stuff, never in a million years would I have expected the wall to have decent footings, (which it didn't.

They often had no concrete back then, they used what was called a brick spread, the wall simply quickly got wider at the base if that makes sense.

I know that and any self respecting builder should too.

In my case the whole lot came out, it was too narrow to have any lateral resistance, and yes it was labour intensive and cost about 4 skips, (£600) to cart away.

They should at least have dug down close to the wall at some place to determine the footings, incompetent is the word that springs to mind :mad::mad:

Sorry, this doesn't really help you but it simply shouldn't happen:mad::mad:

cyclonebri1

tony6403 wrote: »

Calculation from website at the foot of this post.

We calculate that given a wall length of 31 m and a choice of one brick thick (225mm) for walls 2m high build then the:

• Cost per unit length - £166 per m
• Total cost - £5,149.

The costs calculated above are based on the following:

• VAT is not included
• the excavation and concrete foundations are included
• the work is carried out by an experienced contractor
• the excavated material can be spread on site
• access is good.

As an example, if your builder IS VAT registered then the price would increase to £6,179 if VAT is at 20%.


Garden Wall Cost Calculator: Estimate the price for building a wall in your garden

Tony, that seems very cheap to me, given my post above re sizes.

Mine was done in 2nd quality stone, garden wall stone they call it, but it was comparable with brick cost wise.

4" of stone with a 4"cavity and then 4"block and concrete infill.

Foundation was about 3 cubic meters and in all to get rid of the crap we had 7 skips, about 4 for the old wall alone.

Cost without a penny of labour was over £4k, labour would easily have doubled it.



[*]the excavated material can be spread on site is the bit that kills it

cyclonebri1

tony6403 wrote: »

Calculation from website at the foot of this post.

We calculate that given a wall length of 31 m and a choice of one brick thick (225mm) for walls 2m high build then the:

• Cost per unit length - £166 per m
• Total cost - £5,149.

The costs calculated above are based on the following:

• VAT is not included
• the excavation and concrete foundations are included
• the work is carried out by an experienced contractor
  
• the excavated material can be spread on site
• access is good.

As an example, if your builder IS VAT registered then the price would increase to £6,179 if VAT is at 20%.


Garden Wall Cost Calculator: Estimate the price for building a wall in your garden

Tony, that seems very cheap to me, given my post above re sizes.

Mine was done in 2nd quality stone, garden wall stone they call it, but it was comparable with brick cost wise.

4" of stone with a 4"cavity and then 4"block and concrete infill.

Foundation was about 3 cubic meters and in all to get rid of the crap we had 7 skips, about 4 for the old wall alone.

Cost without a penny of labour was over £4k, labour would easily have doubled it.

The bit about "the excavated material can be spread on site" is what kills it