Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Money money...

Yesterday I did something I had neglected so far...

With the plans close to being final I did a first cost estimate, just based on the necessary brickwork and almost fainted...

Based on the plans we need close to 20000(!) bricks, that equals roughly 50 pallets. Given a price of 40 Cents each that would be around 7500 Euros... not counting mortar, labor or even plaster.

Roof tiles for roughly 2500 are cheap in comparison ;-)

A huge factor will be wood. The roof framing is inevitable, the roof needs to be replaced or it'll most likely collapse within the next few years, which leaves the two ceilings. I calculated 10 5m long 4x10" beams for each ceiling, that's going to be a lot of wood! Add 35 m2 OSB for each floor and go on... I think 20mm OSB is about 6 Euros/ m2, so that would be roughly 400 Euro, harmless compared to the price of the load bearing timbers...

To give you and idea, the neighbor replaced his roof 10 years ago, and was quoted 400 000 Schilling for the wood alone. He ended up buying it across the border for 100 000. By today's price level that would be something like 40 000/10 000 Euro. So I guess for our small roof + 2 ceilings we can factor another 7,5k.
I just got some figures from lumber stores online, and it seems like I was even too high - something like 3500 worst case for both ceilings seems to be more realistic.

After all, my high figure is 30k for the entire house worst case.

My dad wasn't that shocked after all... so the project might fly.

We briefly considered brick ceilings, but installation seems to be fairly complex and the price difference negligible (one supplier was even slightly cheaper on the wood ceilings).

Another serious downside of brick: no cavity space to install wires. All wires have to be put in conduit before the screed on the floor above is poured, installing wiring after the fact would be pretty tough.

Once I manage to get the plans to the architect we hope for something closer to an estimate rather than a SWAG (scientific wild ass guess).

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