How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

@skinny ?

Thanks but not viable given I'm in Spain. Shame

Anyone able to give me a really rough ballpark figure for a builder to knock down a load-bearing wall, add whatever metalwork is needed, and then make good? It's roughly 4.5 metres of wall that would need removing, and we're not in London if that makes a different.

My wife's google searching suggests about £2k, but I really feel like it would cost a lot more than that.

Not just because I'm trying to sell some, but our cork also comes up to kitchen door with lots of grit and no scratching/marking whatsoever in first year. Really impressed with how it's wearing to be honest. Welcome to come look if you're local to SE23.

She’s miles off I’d say with 2k. I mean depending on the metal needed you’d need to price that first, probs need a structural engineer too. At a guess I’d say between 5-8

Depending on what needs doing you could be in for £10k+ at least.

Structural surveyor
Party wall surveyor (maybe not but probably needed)
Cost of steel/other supports
Cost of fitting supports
Cost of making good (cost of bricks/blocks, labour, plastering, painting, skirting etc) including potential electrical/plumbing work

Best bet is to chat to a structural surveyor first, then a builder for a quote cause there are too many variables

We paid the best part of 10k in london two years ago. Structural engineer, steel, reinforcement in the basement, building control and replastering. I painted it afterwards. Did have a few other jobs done so hard to totally split it up. Not a cheap builder but we know/trust him and he was available.

Don’t forget waste collection, think we have done over £500 in 3 lots and that’s just ripping out a bathroom and old skirting and a small stud wall removal.
and paint? have you seen how much decent paint is?

nothing is cheap now.

I’m after some plumbing advice, something I have zero experience with.

Our main bathroom doesn’t get much use because the hot water that feeds the bath is really slow, being fed from a hot water tank housed in an airing cupboard on the floor above. There’s also an electric shower in there that we’re too scared to use as it was installed by the previous owner who fancied himself an electrician, but who’s work is often dangerous. I’d like to convert this to a standard shower, not electric.

We have a couple of en-suite showers that are powered by a pump at the hot water tank and they are great, so I’m wondering about upgrading that pump to something that could feed the shower in the main bathroom too (so three showers in total) and provide decent pressure to the bath as well.

If that’s feasible, we’d also need to plumb in a hot water feed to the shower, but is there anything I’m not considering? Or is there a better solution to all of this?

Many thanks

Big thanks to @cjr @Mr_Smyth @punkture @konastab01

That's really helpful! We're thinking about this for a house we're potentially gonna put an offer in on, so I think we'll bear in mind £10k worth of costs to be safe.

Or is there a better solution to all of this?

On the off chance you have really great water pressure, an unvented cylinder is far simpler and smaller.

Otherwise, if you have the set up for it, pump away.

Fuck the pumps off and fit unvented if you have got decent cold mains pressure.

Our cold water pressure for the mains is good. I have no idea what an unvented system is, but will start reading up. Thanks

A similar knock through cost me 2k ish 6 years ago as part of a bigger job.

Id imagine if you use a moderately expensive builder it would be about 4.5-5k now.

You'll need a registered engineer to install it, but its basically a pressured hot water tank.

Ive got one in my house, really good.

👍

Thanks, I was very tempted but got no immediate plans yet so don't really want to store them for years either... Good to hear they are hard-wearing though.

What are the advantages to this, over just having a suitably powerful combi boiler?

I’m scratching my head trying to convince myself that a ~40KW combi will suffice for our new family bathroom, downstairs toilet and 35m2 wet underfloor heating…

It’ll be overkill I suspect. You actually want a combi to be condensing and running at capacity rather than over size. The actual limiter is the flow rate for cold supply when looking at multiple showers etc

This, 100% this.
We had one fitted 2 years ago and has given us reliable pressure hot water and heating ever since.
Ours sounded like yours with a mixture of shitty boiler, pumps and there was even a mystery mains heated cylinder previously there for the loft bathroom water tap.
Have never looked back after having an unvented system fitted.

Worst case scenario in our case:

Filling bath, showering, washing up and whole-home heating running full blast simultaneously. ~150m2 4-bed over 3 floors with 9x rads and 35m2 underfloor heating. 1x family bathroom, 1x small toilet room.

Which advantages would having a system with tank bring, over and above just an appropriately-specced combi?

So I have a combi in my house which does downstairs and the unvented upstairs that does all the showers.

You can generally get a better flow rate with a unvented if you’ve got multiple draw offs at one time, if you’ve got say one bathroom and you put in a big combi you’ll probs be ok and unvented is maybe a bit over kill.

I’d say your heating specs will be decent for that place, unvented makes no diffrnece to the heating needs it’s water only.

What are the advantages to this, over just having a suitably powerful combi boiler?

Combis tend to be put in the dumbest place in the house. So even if it can meet multiple demands the placement will not flatter it. Unventeds less so.

There is also the max gas flow into the property to consider if you are looking at powerful combi boilers.