Extending your house - advice please

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As well as doing some research myself, I just wondered if I could glean any insider knowledge from anyone who has extended their house. I live in a Victorian terrace house and am am looking to add a single storey extension at the rear to increase the ground floor footprint.

Any help or guidance about the process and hidden costs (i'm thinking party wall etc) that I need to consider or any tips for getting accurate quotes would be really useful for me.

Many thanks in advance.

SHW
 
StrangelyBrown said:
For a small single story extension on my house I thought about £18k. Cheapest quote was £33k.
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The price of building materials these days are astronomical, next time you go to B&Q etc, check out the price they want for plastics, guttering, soil pipes that sort of stuff, it's unbelievable
 
I don't doubt that Harvey.

I thought £18k because that's roughly what the extension would add to the value of the house. The quotes coming in at so much over that meant it was a non starter.
 
Thanks SB and Harvey........Bob....very insightful:p

Under no inpression that this will be a cheap exercise, but in the village we live and want to stay the mid-priced housing (i.e 350k to 500k) is very limited......bloomin South East.

Likely it will be about a 4m x 4m extension just to give us more living space so drainage services should fairly minimal I hope.

SB - what did your quote include for, just as a benchmark?
 
StrangelyBrown said:
I don't doubt that Harvey.

I thought £18k because that's roughly what the extension would add to the value of the house. The quotes coming in at so much over that meant it was a non starter.
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I know one of my mates just done a garage convertion and he went in cheap at 7K to get the work, the owner had 2 other quotes of 11k and 13K.

I've heard from my mates who are builders, that local councils are getting funny over things like footings and making them dig to ridiculous depths

When I converted my garage, the council made me dig up 24 inches of solid concrete floor under the 2 pillers were the window was going, to put in 2x 6 inch concrete lintals, work that on out
 
We recently thought about a similar sized extension to yours. A builder friend said that this sort of thing can be roughly worked out at £1000 per square metre.
That's in Yorkshire though so it would probably be a lot cheaper down there. :p
 
snaphookwedge said:
I am a bit worried about that - one we know is 'onside' but the other could have a moan.......
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I wouldnt worry too much, a lot of local councils are pro extensions these days, because there's not enough new build land, so you should be OK.

At my old house, a house in the next road along, which was close to the end of mine and my neighbours gardens. Put in for planning for a 2 storey side extension, which meant they would basicaly be looking straight into out living room from the first floor. So we moaned, they wrote back to us saying that window was for a bathroom, so it would have that funny patern glass in it, hard luck old chap your screwed
 
PaulE said:
We recently thought about a similar sized extension to yours. A builder friend said that this sort of thing can be roughly worked out at £1000 per square metre.
That's in Yorkshire though so it would probably be a lot cheaper down there. :p
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I'm a QS in Northampton and your friend's rule of thumb is pretty accurate. My starting point for budgets on house extensions is £100 per sq ft (just over 10 sq ft per m2) PLUS the dreaded VAT. Design fees, planning, building regs fees are all additional to this.

The planning process is usually about 8 weeks from the application being made so, allowing a bit of time for drawings being produced to your requirements, 3 months isn't far off. When you've got the drawings done send them out to your contractors and give them 3-4 weeks to price the job.

Best way to find reliable contractors is via word of mouth - ask around and you should get some good recommendations. Even if your friends haven't had any work done there's a good bet that they'll know someone that will.
 
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