Transcription
I'm Robin Clever, and in this video, I'm going to talk about costs.
I'm going to discuss how much it has cost to get this new house behind me to the stage we're at, which is basically wind and watertight. The envelope is almost finished.
I will cover the groundworks, the superstructure (that's the brickwork and blockwork up to the wall plate), and the roof structure, including insulating the roof structure. You can see that the tiling is almost complete. So, the envelope, if you like, the outside of the building, is around about 95% complete now.
I want to convey just how much it has cost to get to this point because I get asked this a lot. Building costs vary up and down the country, and this is just a snapshot of what this particular building has cost in late 2024.
Now, a little bit of background: this building is technically a self-build. Callum, who has been building it, is not from the building trade as such, but he's very capable as an individual. He has been overseeing the whole build. I've been guiding him, doing a little bit of project management, and I've been here on site to do the roofs and all kinds of other things with him.
He has kindly agreed to go through what those costs have been, and this video, as I say, is going to detail how much it has cost to get to this point.
Okay, so the first job, of course, was to scrape back the site and get all the spoil out of the way. Most of that, because this is a fairly big site, has been able to be redistributed on site to keep the costs down.
Then it was a matter of getting this great big piled raft put in. So, obviously, there were concrete piles driven into the ground, and then we got the raft here. From there, the brickwork or blockwork started, cavity blockwork insulated all the way up to where the roof starts.
Now, the cost to get to that point, up to the wall plate (this is for materials and labor, excluding VAT, as this is a new build and it's zero-rated), was £43,000. This is for a footprint of around about 80 square meters. The overall floor area of this build, if you include downstairs and upstairs, is around about 147 square meters.
So, that was to get from the ground up to where the roof started. The next stage of the job, once the groundwork was done and the brickwork or blockwork was up to wall plate level, was to put the wall plates around and start the roof off.
We then brought all the material onto site; some of it had been prefabricated. We had a crane on site and started assembling the roof structure. We put the main trusses up, built the gables, and installed our LCE ridge beams, which eliminates the need for steel.
We then cut all of the roof rafters in and formed four dormers—one behind me on the front and three across the back. They're all exactly the same size, and we often do that so we can manufacture all of the parts of the truss and the dormers down on the ground and get them assembled. We try to do some value engineering, especially in the roof construction.
Once we did all that, we put our flooring down, which gives us somewhere really nice to work. Then we put the membrane over the top of the insulation on the outside of the roof, so it's a warm roof. We went all over the rafters with PIR insulation.
Once we got that, we then put a 2x2 timber all the way up to hold the insulation down, and then we put the membrane on. After that, we battened it, ready for the tiles.
Then we went inside and put the insulation with the gap tape in between the rafters to get all of the envelope completely done. The gables, as I mentioned, had our studs up, OSB, and then we went on the outside with 120mm of PIR. We put a 50x50 batten and screwed it all the way through to hold that PIR in, and then we went over with our counter-batten for the vertical thermowood cladding.
We also installed one VUX window up on this main roof.
So, in this cost to get from wall plate all the way up to where you see it now—cladded, built, insulated, and with the tiles 95% finished (we just have the vented ridge to fix down)—the total cost for that part of the work, including all the materials, timber, crane, labor, tiles, insulation, gap tape, cladding, and everything you see behind me, was £52,800.
Next, we did the windows and doors to complete the envelope. There are the windows and doors you see behind me. We have three sets of bi-folds on this job and around about 10 windows. Everything I call a window is not just that; that's a set of bi-folds up there, and that's obviously a window in the dormer.
We have a front door, a back door, and a pair of French doors as well. So that's about 16 or 17 items, and they came to £25,000 supplied and fitted.
Okay, so the total to get to this point, which has been preparing the site, the groundwork, the slab, blockwork up to wall plate, roof construction, all the insulating, all the tiling, the cladding, labor, materials, and everything, is £121,800.
Now, I reckon that's pretty good and exceptional when it comes to ability.
If you're thinking about doing some sort of self-build or building a house or getting a builder, you will hear people talk about square meterage costs. That's based on the finished amount of how many square meters of floor space there is over whatever stories you have.
In the Southeast, the average is said to be between £2,000 and £4,000 per square meter. You can spend a lot more than that depending on specification. This particular build is fairly high spec and is coming in way under that at the moment.
Now, we're about 50% of the way through the job. We are now just about to do what we call the first fix on the inside. We have some stud work to do downstairs. The underfloor heating has gone in or is going in today, and the screed is going in here tomorrow. We have a liquid screed, and then we'll be doing some other partitioning, getting the electrician in to do his first fix, the plumbing first fix, and so on and so forth, getting it all ready for plasterboarding and plastering.
So, up to this point, this is what we're talking about at the moment: £121,800, excluding VAT.
This is a new build, so I will do another video from this point to the end. It might be in six months' time, but I will do another video to see how much the full build came in, and we'll also do a tour of it at that time.
I hope you've enjoyed this. Keep tuned, and I'll catch you all again soon!