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Help with Budgeting for Electrics, Heating system & Hot water


Erica
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Hello all,

I'm aware this question is a bit tricky to help with without actually seeing the property involved but I'm hoping I will be able to find out if my budgeting is completely unrealistic or not.

We are considering buying an old property which consists of multiple houses and barns. We want to initially restore 2 of the houses. One to live in, and one as a gite.

The houses are joined and the square footage is 144 metres in total for both houses. There are two floors. The roof and carpentry and walls etc are all in very good nick.

So I have budgeted -

£4000 per house for complete rewiring. (£8000 in total)

£3300 per house for a heating system, probably wood and some way of heating water (£6'600 in total).

Does anyone have any experience that I can compare with?

Again, I know it's impossible to put an exact figure on this but I'd be interested to know what costs other people have encountered so I can at least make some sort of "guesstimate" before making an offer on the property. Thank-you in advance, Erica.
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Wow - sounds as if you are embarking on an exciting project. Given that you joined several years ago you must be aware that there a multitude of variables which make answering you question very difficult.

A bit like the estimated costs for renovations on daytime TV in the Uk I would suggest at least doubling those figures to be realistic unless excluding labour costs.

Our house in France (Dordogne)was described as only requiring a little tender loving care. Was a bit of a money pit but that was to OHs standards.

Others may help more with more specific information.

Don't get me wrong - it can be a very rewarding experience if well planned.
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1500-3000 euros per sq metre for a renovation in France.

Don't let anyone tell you different.

Some will come along soon and tell you their life story and bore you to death but at the end of the day that is the true cost of a renovation in France.

So deduct that estimated budget from the asking price and you are soughted.
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Thanks for the replies, folks.

We would need the rewiring, heating system & hot water sorted by artisans but everything else we would be doing ourselves. (Plastering, flooring, fitting kitchens, bathroom, plumbing etc etc) so were hoping to keep costs less than a "full renovation" by artisans. £300'000 would not be possible for us at all...I've got a figure of around £80'000 for everything. Would a french electrician really charge more than £4000 to rewire a three/four bedroom old property?
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Would a french electrician really charge more than £4000 to rewire a three/four bedroom old property?

Quite probably yes. I had a 2 bed barn conversion plus a two bed house completely rewired - and at the same time interior insulation and plasterboarding (so no problems of getting the wires to where they were required) and the rewiring cost 10k€ some years ago.

Are your square metre numbers the floor area or the footprint?

ALBF's numbers for a full refurb are not far off the mark. When we started it was 1000 - 1500€/sq metre. We ended up at the top end with a good but not luxurious finish.

Edited to add that the plumbing was much more than the electrics.
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Thanks Andy, the footprint is 144 square metres. Do you mind me asking how big the square footage you have is? If it's similar to mine then I guess my £8000 isn't a million miles away but I'm beginning t realise I might need to add a bit more to my budget, perhaps a lot more!
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I seem to remember spending around 1k on one smallish woodburning stove including chimney liner etc (professionally installed so as to get the tax credit) to heat just the living room. On that basis, 3k for a whole house heating and hot water system sounds a tad optimistic maybe.

You could buy a job lot of electric radiators for a lot less but then the running costs would be huge.
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Erica

footprint is the wrong way to do your calculations. My footprint was 105sq m, but because the house is on quite a number of levels, the floor area is around 250 sq m - which is quite possibly close to yours.

Do also remember that my work was done more than 10 years ago - so add in 10 years worth of inflation.

I understand your desire to be optimistic about your likely costs, but it is better to take a pessimistic view and be pleasantly surprised, than to take a too optimistic view and be bankrupt.

Your numbers are IMHO well below any realistic level.
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I really appreciate the figures being mentioned here. It is exactly what I needed to hear as it's impossible to try and suck figures out of my thumb, no matter how much research I do online or articles I read. It's great hear it from people who have experienced it. As gutting as it is I think I may need to find somewhere a bit smaller, or have a complete re-think altogether...
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Remember that artisans pay HUGE social charges plus all the other things they need to run their businesses, like insurances etc etc, means that they have no choice but to appear / be expensive.

I realise that you realise that you are asking how long a piece of string is with this post, and no one can tell you, other than it will probably be a LOT more than you imagine
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[quote user="Erica"] Would a french electrician really charge more than £4000 to rewire a three/four bedroom old property?[/quote]

 

He would charge massively more, unless you have good language skills, good negotiating skills, and it takes a decade to understand the mentality/motivation to be able to negotiate effectively, you will be lucky to even get just the tableau replaced with a conforming one  with coffret de communications for €3K, they will insist on supplying all materials and the French manufacturers love producing hugely expensive solutions to problems that dont exist, the electricians love fitting them because they get such a huge discount after the kickbacks which dont show on the invoices that they pay.

 

Unless you know the regs intimately and can communicate they will insist that you have everything to the latest normes which is a lie but when they all tell the same story and probably believe it themselves.

 

When the requirement for a coffret de comms came in the cheapest offering was a few hundred Euros, the prix publique of the Legrand one that all the electricians were quoting was €1300 TTC [:-))] I have done the electrics on 6 appartements and create a conforming C.D.C. for €8 [blink]

 

They have to split the parts and labour on the devi so the material has fantasy land prix publiques so that the labour cost looks reasonable.

 

My pal has built and restored scores of houses, his full time career has been as a sales/site manager for local construction compaanies so he is an excellent negotiator but also knows all the trades and their rates to the constructors, they rely on him for work so he gets the best prices from them for his-self.

 

Nonetheless when his sister had a pavilion built (approx 170m2) he got quotes for the electrical installation, remember this is a new build not a renovation so could not be easier, the cheapest was €15K TTC [:-))]

 

He was disgusted and did the job his-self with my guidance and has done them all ever since, he used a pieuvre an Octopus which is a prefabricated wiring loom made from the CAD house drawings, every gaine was pre_cut and labelled it was like Meccano, it came with everything to the last juction box and cost him €2K, I spend a lot less than that but have to do all the design and a lot more work, the only thing that was not included in the €2K compared to the €15K plus quotes were tha panel heaters which I pay €60-80 for each.

 

So multiply the above by all the trades and you get some idea of what awaits you, TBH the biggest problem you will have is ever getting a single trade to quote for you, once you turn down the first quote you will never see another trade again as they have more than enough pigeons who will not question their prices.

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Hi there Chancer,

Would you mind giving me a bit more info about a pieuvre? My husband is not an electrician but he isn't inexperienced either having done rewiring on our house we renovated here in the UK, (to fund this venture). I think this might be something that could possibly work for us. Is there a thread/website you know of that you could point me towards?
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Remember that artisans pay HUGE social charges plus all the other things they need to run their businesses, like insurances etc etc, means that they have no choice but to appear / be expensive.

-------- I realise that you realise that you are asking how long a piece of string is with this post, and no one can tell you, other than it will probably be a LOT more than you imagine

Hi Idun,

I know, I'm realising that it is simply the going rate and that's that. Maybe I should jack in the children's books and become a French electrician...
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You could easily double your turnover but would probably at least halve your take-home pay.

Much of what artisans take ends up being paid into various social funds and insurances, leaving them with a lot less than you might think.
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I know quite a lot of artisans in France and none are well off, just from work, some have gone bankrupt, but the good ones, manage. The way they have made some money is by buying old property and doing it up themselves as their own labour costs are free and they know where and how to buy. Then they rent the properties out usually, their pension plan really.

France is a hard country to make a good living.

And lest it be forgotten, when one works for someone else, without income tax, one pays about 20% of income in social security charges of various sorts, and this is all done separately, making the pay slips about an A4 and a half long quite often.  AND then the employer pays at least the same amount again towards these costs.

What happens is that someone working for themselves, has to pay both the employer and employee social security costs, hence it costs loads, before they even start making a wage.

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[quote user="Erica"]Hi there Chancer, Would you mind giving me a bit more info about a pieuvre? My husband is not an electrician but he isn't inexperienced either having done rewiring on our house we renovated here in the UK, (to fund this venture). I think this might be something that could possibly work for us. Is there a thread/website you know of that you could point me towards?[/quote]

 

Sorry, I have nothing to offer you, its a specialist company that supplies the big multiple plot constructors, they would not deal with a particulier (welcome to France) and they are completely automated, they take the 3D CAD files of the building design which have to be of whatever theis standard format is and so detailed that they can pull of all the switch and socket positional dimensions in 3 dimensions wherupon their computer system designs and manufactures all the individual elements, the only reason that they deal with my friend is that they go back décades and he has brought them several major contracts and that he still uses a CAD designer for all his builds and rénovations. 

 

You could have a basse consommation pavilion built around here for comfortably less than €100K, asking the same sub contractors to do the same work for yourselves will cost at least 5 times more, maybe 10 times, your major problem wont be the prices but just getting someone to even quote you for any work and dont expect to find anyone to take on multi-trades, you will need at least 3 guys to do a job that even an inexperienced  bathroom or kitchen fitter would do in the UK.

 

Another pricing example, taping and jointing plasterboard, at first i found a guy who did it all week long to work on the black at weekends, my first flat cost me €550 and he did it comfortably but very well in 2 days, an English guy doing a gîte conversion with the same surface area paid a couple of totally unskilled cowboys €1900 cash for the worst job I have ever seen and it took them 2 months of week-ends, they were unskilled factory workersn he told me he had no choice as the only company that turned up to quote wanted €2900 [:-))]

 

With the help of my pal I found guys to do the later flats at the going rate of €3 per m2 and the last few I used a fully skilled guy that is out of work and he charged me €140 for the last apartment, there is a big difference between €140 and €1900 or €2900  the €140 was this February and the latter figures were 10 years ago [:(]

 

Do as much as you can yourselves, dont rely on tradesman but if you do then use the m2 figures that you have been given as a starting point.

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