paddy234

Coming from Ireland i find the standard of housing here to be almost second world quality, do many members here live in modern or New houses and if so what do you think of the standards as we are thinking of building. Cheers

Stormer999

I still remember all of the new house owners back in the UK digging up swathes of buried cavity ties from their back gardens where the lazy brickies had thrown them. Same here Paddy you turn up everyday to inspect your build...we all behave when being watched...

BEVS

You would be better placed to know matey. You'd be working in trade & construction after all.

paddy234

I'm in commercial building which has very different standards. As for standards of residential, from people I know I've heard mixed reports from project managers etc. Irish tradies seem to be quite negative (sometimes too negative) of the standard of New Zealand homes so I wanted some Brits opinions aswell

MrsFychan

I have read reports that in 10years time their is going to be another leaky home situation as the new builds are going up with substandard practices, just to fill the gap of housing needs so lots of short cuts being made.

I suppose if you are building your own and not a new development site you can take as long as needed and the standard should be better but I'm not a builder so not sure if that would apply on own home builds

LauraNotts

I have moved into a brand new (rented) unit and it is heaps warmer than my old place and double glazed too. I feel happy with it.

jmh

As in the UK you get what you pay for. Go for a budget builder you will get poor quality. The problem Brits have is the perception that if it's not made of brick or stone it's not a real house. I spent some time over on the Canadian forum a while back and there were the same complaints about poor house quality there too.

There may be good reasons why houses are different - you probably need to rent for a while to work out what those are. I hear that wooden houses are safer in an earthquake, for example.

My advice would be to get advice and opinion from NZ builders to get the local picture. Go with a recommendation if you can.

Justcol

Not another kiwi houses are sub standard thread
It gets tiring after a while

Has anyone got any stats of all the new houses in the UK
that are currently subject to warranty issues or insurance claims
due to substandard building.
How many cowboy builders has the program Cowboy Builders highlighted now
You could argue that it shows the standard of building in a country when they make a program about shonky tradies

Hazelnut

I wouldn't buy a new build house in the UK any more. Every single one I've encountered has needed new windows in under five years, had problems with heating, wiring and plumbing as standard of workmanship is so low and some have damp issues where whole foundations and membranes haven't been installed at all or done so badly they might as well not have been there. We have a building site just down the road and have regularly seen the builders urinating up the walls on the building site, can just imagine the puzzled new owners trying to work out why the damp patches in their kitchen smell so bad!

We had work done two years ago and it was only because MrH is qualified to do electrician work that he picked up on the substandard work that was building a high fire risk hazard into our house walls! He ended up taking two weeks unpaid leave to supervise the work. Poor trade electrician on site had been told to do it a certain way by his manager to save 2p on each wire join even though the method had been thrown out as unsafe for the specific installation we were having done. We ended up only paying half the bill and reporting them to trading standards. They were subsequently removed from the approved registers but we have no idea how many houses they worked on before we caught them.

It's not just an NZ issue. We've already said our next house move will be to a similar age property as to what we have now (250yrs plus) as they were built properly then or to a new build that we are on site every day for.

LittleGreyCat

Only buying houses 250 years or more old may not be a viable strategy for NZ, though.

A new build where you pick the contractors and keep an eye on them is probably the way to go; the main problem is finding your reliable contractors.

We had an extension built and it was a nightmare getting a builder, an electrician and a plumber together as a team.

The new windows is not good; we bought from a local small manufacturer and they are still going strong. To fail within 5 years should be under warranty, of course.

Bo-Jangles

Exactly what I thought, good luck with that

SSky

Just don't buy an old NZ property unless it's been renovated and stuffed full of insulation or you are prepared to rip down the exterior cladding and insulate it yourselves. I can put up with anything but cold and I nearly froze to death the first year or so we lived here. Build your own or buy newer than a 5yr old home I would suggest, something with double glazing.
We built our own ... well we paid someone else obviously to build it. We asked for more insulation when they put it in and we did our own brickwork as the hubby is a bricklayer and we're as snug as bugs now with no streaming condensation or damp problems.

Hazelnut

As you've all jumped to the assumption that I haven't done my research I know full well we couldn't do this in NZ. I have a picture of me at MOTAT next to the relocated, oldest house in NZ. It's decades younger than our current house! If we ever manage to obtain visas for NZ I suspect it will be buy something as new as possible and do major renovations or, hopefully, self build.

If we don't ever get visas it will be a very old house elsewhere in the UK from where we are now or self build.

Hazelnut

Thanks for a constructive reply. I was wondering how more insulation was added. In the UK it's insulating cladding panels added to the existing exterior or interior walls but that obviously can't be done on timber cladding and not much can be added within the walls as they're so thin.

SSky

Yes and also some houses are on stilts so the floors often aren't insulated so check any property you are thinking of buying has insulation there too. Friends of ours bought an old villa and it had no insulation which is usual for that age of most villa properties here, they ripped off all the exterior timber cladding to install insulation, it's a big job!
you can get different R values so choose the highest you can afford. Also the internal walls don't have any sound proofing to speak of, you can buy sound proofing insulation for internal walls. We put it in all our internal walls.
New house builds don't usually include the garage insulating but we also put it in all the garage walls and roof space just in case we wanted to convert it to an extra living space in the house later on.
Good luck with your visa applications.