John Ward: the ups & downs of buying a new build house

I haven’t seen a new house with larger than 8mm pipework to the radiators for some time. Houses built from about 1990 onwards have generally had the small-bore pipework. I doubt it would be possible to specify 12mm radiator pipework unless you were commisionning a bespoke property. Personally, I find the output from the radiators in our house more than sufficient even in the coldest weather and we usually have the room thermostat set at 17 degrees and the TRV’s at mid-point settings. I expect the higher insulation value of the house and the correct number and capacity of the radiators make up for any possible radiator output deficiency. It’s possible that over time, after the NHBC warranty has expired no doubt, it will be found that the small bore pipework is not up to the job if it is more prone to becoming clogged with sludge.

A high proportion of houses on new developments these days are arranged over three storeys with the top floor in the roof space where traditionally a vacant loft or attic would be. Modern unvented mains-pressure water systems mean that it is no longer necessary to have the cold water tank and central heating header tank at the highest level in the house. This frees up space for bedrooms. Houses can therefore be narrower and have a smaller plot-size meaning a higher density. Sometimes the top floor is designated the ‘master bedroom’ with an en suite toilet & shower room [plus a dressing room in some designs] or alternatively as a children’s space with two small bedrooms and a toilet & shower. The drawbacks with three-storey houses are that there are twice as many stairs to climb [and clean], rooms with sloping ceilings making the disposition of furniture and the placement of mirrors, pictures, etc, dificult, and usually sloping windows in the roof which could be noisy when it rains and dark if covered in snow. It’s hard to say whether such designs are more economical in energy use; the extra habitable volume requires heating and lighting but the availability of heat rising from the lower floors might compensate for that [except that the ground floor master thermostat might then call for more output as heat escapes upstairs]. Zoned heating systems are often provided and they might be helpful depending on the occupants’ lifestyle: they seem to be predicated on the assumption that the bedrooms will be unoccupied during the daytimes but a good programmable control system can override that. Some new estates have three-storey terraced town house types [with integral garage] under a conventional pitched roof. This makes it effectively a four-storey building [with maintenance complications]; while they avoid the sloping ceiling problem on the top floor, they can look out-of-place in suburban and country areas and are not loved by the planning authorities.

It is important that the room thermostat is not in conflict with thermostatic radiator valves [TRV’s] so placing it in the hall is recommended and the hall radiator is then not fitted with a TRV. If the room thermostat is fitted in the lounge then it would not be advisable to fit TRV’s to any radiator(s) in that room so there would be a lack of fine tuning of the heat output. A television can add one or two degrees to the temperature in a sitting room so turning down a room thermostat to compensate would lower the heat in the rest of the property. The one thing nearly all new houses do seem to have is quite sophisticated heating controls that allow for a completely customised comfort setting in every room. Heat loss is reduced in most new houses by having much smaller windows than became common in the second half of the twentieth century and today’s double glazing standards are superior to those of even ten years ago. Obviously, cavity wall insulation and loft insulation are standard but where the roof space is used for bedrooms the opportunity to put deep insulation under the roof covering is significantly reduced; in order to maintain compliance with building regulations on heat loss values such rooms generally have even smaller windows than rooms on the ground and middle floors.

The larger new houses tend to have condensing system-boilers installed supplying a large hot water tank also fitted with an immersion heater. The smaller properties might have a combination boiler which supplies hot water direct to the taps so no hot tank and therefore no immersion heater.

A few years ago it was not unusual for small and medium-sized new houses to have a mains pressure system with a thermal store/heat exchanger unit. They had an electric element for summertime use. I have not seen such a system installed in new houses for some time as I think advances in combination gas boiler technology and control systems have made them seem relatively bulky and complicated.

Something I have noticed with new houses generally is that where they have a hot water tank in a cupboard [usually on the landing] it is described in the diagrams as an ‘airing cupboard’ but it is never fitted with any racking and in many cases there is very little space in which to do so because there is a maze of complicated pipework, motorised valves and pressure vessels. At least the latest system boilers have an integral pump so that is one less piece of apparatus to go in the airing cupboard.

The house builders get very uncomfortable with any mention of the location and types of homes that they are effectively forced to build by the planning authorities in order to secure planning consent for the overall development. It is a contentious issue among prospective purchasers, recent buyers, and the settled community in whose midst a new estate is being built.

Curious euphemisms are employed like “affordable homes” – whatever that might mean -and “social housing”. One upmarket developer describes them on their site layout plans as “homes for the community” as though the rest are for aliens from outer space. The reality is that they are houses built (a) generally to a lower specification in terms of room sizes and finishes, fixtures and fittings, but (b) sometimes to a higher specification in terms of energy efficiency and economy of operation. They are usually built in sets or terraces [but occasionally as blocks of flats], have quite small gardens, and don’t normally have garages but can use a shared parking area. The local authority’s intention is that they will contribute to the reduction of the housing waiting list so it is almost certain that they will be occupied by tenants of either the LA itself or of a social housing organisation like a housing association or trust to whom the LA nominates tenants. I believe that some might be acquired by private landlords for letting to nominated tenants where the LA guarantees the rent. A secondary objective in some areas of the country where ‘second home’ ownership has become popular – and driven up local housing prices – is to ensure the supply of a number of affordable properties for local people to enable them to remain in their own locality when they reach adulthood or have a growing family. The local planning authorities are free to set the target levels of provision and for some it is as high as 40% of a new development. The developers usually try to beat this down because they claim their scheme would be unprofitable at that level, and during the recent recession they have been quite succesful in getting a reduction. There is an element of “gun at their heads” diplomacy in this and the LA responds by seeking ever greater sweeteners in the form of a “Section 106 agreement” under the Town & Country Planning Acts in order to secure various amenities not just for the specific estate but for the entire district.

The local authorities usually require the “affordable” homes to be built first [so the developers are committed to doing it before getting on with the open-market houses and cannot resile from their obligations]. This upsets the develoers who would prefer to hide these properties away in some godforsaken corner of the site next to the railway line or the flood retention lagoon and the electricity sub-station.

Unfortunately, it is a distinctly British characteristic that property occupation is never far removed from status-symbolism, one-upmanship, snobbery, envy, condescension and outright despicion. I might write more on this a bit later if the Conversation develops in that direction but at the moment I feel it is too subjective to suit the purpose of this topic.