Grump of the day

[Zebra]

Good grump, Doug. None of us can have any helpful suggestions to get around that one...

 

[Penners]

Good grump, Doug. None of us can have any helpful suggestions to get around that one...

...particularly those of us with the same problem.

I spent most of my childhood having combined birthday and Christmas presents.

 

[DJH]

Me too...another grump is my birthday present (yes, present) wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper... :roll:

Doug

 

[xanthe]

On the insurance stuff...

Talked to a specialist insurance company the other day for Listed Buildings - who we are going with as their deal was significantly better (and cheaper) and they didn't get stressed when I said that yes, the house had had movement in the past 400 years - and frankly timber-framed buildings are built to move and there is something wrong if they haven't moved.

Discussing rebuild prices, he recommended that for listed buildings you should calculate at around £2.5k for each square METRE (not foot) of building and then round up to the nearest £50k. Apparently for new build it's more like £1.5k for each square metre and you can also alter things a bit if you have very large rooms - a sq metre in the middle of a room is a lot cheaper than a sq metre at the edge that has walls and windows attached to it.

The calculation for ours was almost exactly the same as our purchase price. I could pay for a proper valuation, but I'd rather add a bit extra to the insurance premium for more cover. As a specialist insurer, they allow for conservation builders and following the COs plans not trying to do everything on the cheap with Bob the Builder round the corner.

Don't know if that is helpful to anyone.

Grump - ish... picking up darling offspring from school in an hour and realising that I can't palm her off on anyone for another two weeks. Off to check the gin stocks.

 

[Penners]

Sympathy, Doug.

And happy birthday (whenever it is/was)!

 

[Flyfisher]

On the insurance stuff...

Talked to a specialist insurance company the other day for Listed Buildings - who we are going with as their deal was significantly better (and cheaper) and they didn't get stressed when I said that yes, the house had had movement in the past 400 years - and frankly timber-framed buildings are built to move and there is something wrong if they haven't moved.

Discussing rebuild prices, he recommended that for listed buildings you should calculate at around £2.5k for each square foot of building and then round up to the nearest £50k. Apparently for new build it's more like £1.5k for each square foot and you can also alter things a bit if you have very large rooms - a sq ft in the middle of a room is a lot cheaper than a sq ft at the edge that has walls and windows attached to it.

The calculation for ours was almost exactly the same as our purchase price. I could pay for a proper valuation, but I'd rather add a bit extra to the insurance premium for more cover. As a specialist insurer, they allow for conservation builders and following the COs plans not trying to do everything on the cheap with Bob the Builder round the corner.

Don't know if that is helpful to anyone.

Are you sure that those rebuild figures are per square foot?

Our surveyor gave us a figure of £1400/m2 back in 2008, which is about £130/ft2, though I think that was for total floor area not just the ground footprint.

If I use £2500/ft2, I get a figure that is well over 10x our market value,

 

[Flyfisher]

Good grump, Doug. None of us can have any helpful suggestions to get around that one...

Unbirthdays?

 

[angrybird]

...and a Very Merry Unbirthday to You! (yes you) X

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdsZT7WKjW8

 

[CliffordPope]

As for CliffordPope's suggestion of just buying insurance 'up to £2m' well, yes, that would probably work - if it was affordable by the home owner.

Lots of insurers do that, recognising the difficulty of estimating rebuilding costs. It doesn't necessariuly cost any more. I halved my premium when i changed company and went to one with this kind of open-ended value.


The analogy with life insurance would be valid if you were say an actress insuring only your legs. But with a house you are expecting the company to cover the risk of all or any portion of the house being damaged.
You could perhaps insure only the downstairs, or just the roof, and then your argument would apply. But you would be uninsured for other portions of the house.
Or you could omit flood cover.

But in general a £1m house represents twice the risk of a £500,000 house. By only insuring for £500,000 you are trying to get your insurance at half-price, so obviously as you are underinsured they halve any claim you make.

 

[DJH]

Thanks Penners. It's on Tuesday (23rd). I still think I'm 30 years old but my body says otherwise which is another grump of course.

Someone once said that you're only as old as the woman you feel... :shock: :shock:

Doug

 

[Keithj]

£2.5k per square foot sounds a tad expensive.

Our house is 20 feet wide by about 50 feet long, so 1000 square feet. I don't think it would cost £2½ million to rebuild.

 

[DJH]

Another grump...why do leaks mainly happen in the most inaccessible places and invariably behind/underneath finished surfaces. I have one in a pre-plumbed shower connection manifold in a new house I'm helping my neighbour to install the domestic plumbing and underfloor heating. Grrr... :evil:

Doug

 

[Flyfisher]

As for CliffordPope's suggestion of just buying insurance 'up to £2m' well, yes, that would probably work - if it was affordable by the home owner.

Lots of insurers do that, recognising the difficulty of estimating rebuilding costs. It doesn't necessariuly cost any more. I halved my premium when i changed company and went to one with this kind of open-ended value.


The analogy with life insurance would be valid if you were say an actress insuring only your legs. But with a house you are expecting the company to cover the risk of all or any portion of the house being damaged.
You could perhaps insure only the downstairs, or just the roof, and then your argument would apply. But you would be uninsured for other portions of the house.
Or you could omit flood cover.

But in general a £1m house represents twice the risk of a £500,000 house. By only insuring for £500,000 you are trying to get your insurance at half-price, so obviously as you are underinsured they halve any claim you make.

That's interesting about 'over-valuing', I may ask my insurer about than when I renew.

However, it's still rather unsatisfactory because you are then paying a premium for a maximum payout that will likely never be needed, even in the case of a total loss. Would the insurance company pay out MORE than a total loss claim on the basis that you were over-insured? (no need to answer that! :lol: ).

I'm not convinced that a £1m house represents twice the risk (of a claim) compared to a £500k house. I would guess that the risk of a fire is about the same but the risk of a total loss may actually be less because a larger house will take longer to burn down, giving more time for the emergency services to arrive, meaning a total loss is less likely. Perhaps - it's just a guess.

But however the industry calculates its premiums, I surprised there is no option to just insure for a fixed maximum amount. Tell them the market value of the house, maybe the number of bedrooms as a rough guide to its size, choose a maximum claim amount and let them decide the premium. Or, perhaps just tell them the ground area footprint, the basic form of construction and let them work from that. After all, THEY are supposed to be the experts, not the home owners.

 

[Penners]

why do leaks mainly happen in the most inaccessible places and invariably behind/underneath finished surfaces.

Surely you, of all people, should be familiar with Murphy's Law.

Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.

Murphy was an optimist.

 

[DJH]

Yea...I suppose I should be familiar with that law with the addition of 'in the most awkward place possible'

I didn't know he tested peoples eyesight as well...

 

[Feltwell]

Not quite sure what I've started here - I can see "Grump of the Day" becoming longer than "Graham's Top Tips".

My Grump for today - why does plumbing have to be such a pain in the @rse. Today's job was threading 22mm pipe down the inside of a built-in cupboard past numerous obstructions, then diagonally down through a solid floor and an internal wall, to emerge under a suspended floor. A job that admittedly would have been 100 times easier with flexible plastic pipe, but because I don't trust the fittings (little O-rings to rot, I foresee future problems....) I do it all in copper as usual. Plus my back hurts from using a heavy SDS drill with a 1" diameter drill bit that is over 3' long, at arms length inside the frame for drawers that is at the bottom of said cupboard, to drill under & through this internal wall.

Okay, more of a whinge than a grump. :wink:

 

[DJH]

Grump...plumbing. Why is it that the Republic of Ireland still use imperial size pipes and fittings :twisted: meaning that all the metric valves,fittings, clips. inserts, olives etc that I brought over from the UK are useless here. Grrr.

I spent years getting used to calling pipes and fittings by their metric sizes when they switched from imperial in the seventies and now I have to get used to calling them by their imperial sizes again. :roll: :roll: :roll:

Grump...why is it that whenever you want to browse channels on Sky the adverts are always showing on on the channel you want to look at to see if the programme is worth watching even when the channel you are currently watching is not showing adverts??

Doug

 

[Feltwell]

Grump...plumbing. Why is it that the Republic of Ireland still use imperial size pipes and fittings :twisted: meaning that all the metric valves,fittings, clips. inserts, olives etc that I brought over from the UK are useless here. Grrr.

Ahh yes, but in typical Irish fashion I believe they've decided to go metric on road signs for both distances and speed limits, is that right Doug? Despite the fact that the car speedometers are principally in miles as in the UK, with the usual tiny font km/h scale, and of course the mileometer is in - well - miles. Last time I was out in Ireland, a while ago admittedly, the signs were a fairly random mix of imperial and metric, just to add to the confusion. Good job no one really cared and the roads were too twisty and bumpy to speed much on anyway!

 

[angrybird]

The price of real christmas trees :shock: £95 for a 9-10 ft tree!!! I want to buy a tree not the whole damn forest.

 

[Flyfisher]

That's good to hear. We got ours last week - 9 feet off the top of a tree in the garden, though I did have to send FF junior up to cut it off :lol: