Renovating and extension

fire_man

We are hoping to renovate and extend a property .Who should we approach first to get advice on design ,what work is needed, information on retro grants etc?Would an engineer be able advise us?We don't want to be paying a number of professional initially incase we don't go ahead with project?

herbalplants

Do your own homework regarding grants.

Regarding design, you could approach an architect.

zg3409

Ideally get a builder friend to give a quote based on rough hand drawn.plans if what you might like. Architects tend to inflate the price by 20-40% but they might add wow features and ordinary builder might not consider. Beware delays of 1 year before any work starts are common. I suggest you look up photos of similar completed jobs to get an idea of what you want. For example is it a separate extra room to the rear, what will it do,will it be a sitting room, a kitchen, open plan knocked into say existing kitchen? What is budget, are you loan approved?. Grants typically don't impact the total price much, it's often based on the square foot if extra space and things like kitchen choice, bathrooms and fancy folding doors or high ceilings that impact the price.

Calahonda52

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058287016/renovating-and-extension

Re this, don't be surprised if you get asked for an advance on these services as there are a lot of folk asking for advice/ some tech work/design etc and then the client doesn't go ahead.

Take a simple example : grant related tech assessment for a heat pump.

Normally 3 steps

1: Pre BER

2: Scope, (and sometimes roughly price) the work need to meet grant

3: Final BER once works are done.

In normal circumstances there would be one figure for all this work, paid at the end.

However if the indicative costs are too high, then project gets abandoned at step 2.

Not much fun if client refuses to pay for 1 and 2 as they think they have got nothing, in many cases no longer has any interest in the pre BER

endofrainbow

Check out planning requirements (if any) .

spaceHopper

We did a renovation and extension in 2018. Before that we had a guy who used to work for the council do drawings. We wanted to keep it under 40M so we didn't need planning. When we looked at getting builders and quotes for a kitchen.. we realised it was simply to small. We ask them to make it bigger but they then said we were at 42 sq meters already. They had advised us badly we should have gone for planning all along.

I'd a lot going my father was dying. We parked it and got an architect a year later. The difference in the plans was night and day. We go a much better result. Their fees are high but you don't have to get them project manage it. We did and it was worth it.

For an initial consolation it was about 200 and we got some quick and simple ideas. If you don't need planning you could just go to builder at that point. But there will be changes and having an architect one board helps a lot.

Renovation and extension wise.

Get the basics right, you need to take some ownership of the spec. Think about wiring and adding network and HDMI in some areas...

Airtightness and insulation, properly installed windows is key to this, so many renovations fail because the windows were badly installed.

We went from E to B3 and it makes a huge difference to quality of life.

I'm not convinced heat pumps work in all houses, you need under floor heating very good insulation and draft proofing. They aren't cheaper than gas, they cost about the same. Right now we have gas.