Builder in Rochdale

Rochdale sits in a valley with a river through the middle of it, and the low ground behaves differently from the hillsides above. Water does not drain away from the bottom of a bowl, it collects there, and that shows up in buildings as damp at the base of walls, wet cellars and gardens that stay soft weeks after rain.

So on the valley floor the first questions on a job are about water rather than about the room somebody wants. Where are the ground levels outside relative to the floor inside. Is there a cellar, and is it wet, and has anybody been in it this year. Where does the surface water from the roof and the yard actually go, because on the older streets it often goes into a combined drain that was never sized for a patio and a driveway as well.

An extension on low ground has to answer those before it answers anything about glazing. Build a new floor slab against a wall that is already wet, with no thought about where the water that used to sit in that garden is going instead, and you have moved the problem rather than solved it.

The centre and the valley floor are the oldest part: dense terraces, a lot of them with cellars, many with the original single skin back additions that were never built to hold heat or keep weather out. Those back additions are the single most common thing we are asked to deal with here, because they are where the kitchen and the bathroom usually are and they are the coldest, wettest part of the house. Where the bathroom is the one in there, a bathroom fitter has to deal with the wall and the floor before the suite.

Climb out towards Bamford, Norden or Castleton and it changes to interwar and post war semis with gardens, side access and a driveway, and up towards the moor edge it goes to stone again. Three different kinds of job in one postcode district, and a price that assumes the wrong one is wrong by a lot.

That is why there is no such thing as a Rochdale price for an extension. There is a price for an extension on a terrace with a cellar and no side access, and a different one for the same floor area on a semi with a drive, and they are not close.

A back addition on an older Rochdale terrace is frequently one brick thick, with no cavity, no insulation, a roof that was rebuilt cheaply at some point and a floor laid straight onto the ground. People ask for it to be plastered and decorated. That is rarely the job.

The honest options are to take it down and rebuild it properly, which costs more and gives you a room you can use all year, or to line and insulate it internally and accept that you lose some floor area and that the detailing at the junctions has to be right or you will get condensation behind the lining instead of damp on the face of it. Skimming over the top of a cold single skin wall is the third option and it is the one that comes back.

Which of those is right depends on what the wall and the roof are actually doing, and that is a visit rather than a phone call.

The town centre terraces and the streets off the main roads out are tight, with permit parking in places and back entries that take a barrow and not a machine. The same logistics line applies here as anywhere dense: material in and muck out either comes down the entry or through the house, protection goes down, and the dig that would take a day on an open plot takes longer.

On the estates up the valley sides it is the opposite, and the quote should say so rather than charging everybody for the hardest version of the job.