Hello! I would like to give you the warmest welcome to my blog. My name is Pete and last year, I decided to carry out some home improvements. Somewhat foolishly, I decided to try and carry out the work myself. As you can imagine, it was a bit of a disaster as I do not have many skills. Thankfully, I have a friend who works in the construction and contracting service. He called in some of his friends who were able to come in and fix up the mess I had made. I am really pleased with the results so I thought I would write about it here.
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If you intend to build a home, here are two tips which should help to ensure that you end up with a high-quality, robust house.
Cut down any trees on your plot before you begin
Many people dream of having a home that is surrounded by large, beautiful trees. However, whilst they can certainly enhance the appearance of a property, trees can also inflict serious damage on a house. As such, if there are any trees on the plot where you will be building your home, it would be sensible to have them cut down.
The reason for this is as follows; a tree's root system can be several metres' long. These roots continually seek out and absorb water from the soil through which they grow.
When a tree's roots extract moisture from the soil, the soil then contracts. If this soil contraction occurs in the land directly underneath your house, the foundation of the property will slowly begin to cave in.
This problem is referred to as 'subsidence'. Subsidence can lead to serious structural issues that can cost an enormous amount of money to fix. It can, for example, create major cracks in a house's interior and exterior walls and cause its doorframes and window frames to become severely warped (potentially to the point where it becomes impossible to fully close the affected doors and windows).
Given this, any trees which are located within a few metres of the area where you intend to build your home should be cut down before your contractor begins the construction process.
Beware of false economies
Building a house can be extremely expensive. Because of this, you will probably find yourself looking for ways to reduce your expenses.
Whilst this is a sensible thing to do, it is important to understand that certain methods of lowering your costs could result in you incurring much larger expenses later down the line.
Using cheaper construction materials, for example, will significantly reduce the overall cost of your project. However, these items could end up being a false economy, as cheap, low-quality building materials are likely to deteriorate far faster than their more expensive counterparts. As such, you could end up having to replace or repair them in just a couple of years' time.
Likewise, doing some of the building work yourself might reduce your labour costs. However, a poorly-constructed house is likely to develop serious problems in the future.
If for example, you lay the foundation yourself but fail to properly waterproof it, you could end up dealing with major damp issues throughout the entire house in a few year's time. Dampness could result in your wallpaper peeling off, mould developing on your walls and wet rot growing on your home's timber framework.
The cost of repairing these issues would almost certainly be far much higher than the cost of hiring a professional tradesperson to properly lay and waterproof your home's foundation.
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