Re: Lucky me
I don't think I could buy a new house unless I could buy it at the stage where they've built the shell and fitted the roof (and I have enough visibility to see that they've not f***ed any of that up) - and then I can do the rest properly, rather than paying for them to do it then paying to rip it all back to bare block and doing it again.
We're about to do something similar - demolish our 1960s bungalow and rebuild. One of the builders we've spoken to wants us to walk offsite and come back 6 months (yeah, right) later to a house completed for £1,000/sqm but I want what you do - a secure, weatherproof shell that I can fit out internally to my own requirements, and data is definitely one of those.
And WTF is this modern determination to build all new houses with cold slabs of concrete for the floor ?
If it's built to regulations then (on the ground floor) there will be oodles of insulation either under the slab or between the slab and the floor base. 250mm of expanded polystyrene is common.
There is an interesting argument about where best to put the insulation - a "lightweight" design (insulation on top of the slab) heats up quicker, but also cools down quicker while a "heavyweight" design (insulation under the slab) takes a lot of initial heating, but has a lot of "thermal inertia" which makes it much easier to maintain steady environmental conditions.
In very, very broad terms, "lightweight" constructions are better for irregularly-occupied houses, for example where a small number of occupants are out at work all day and may return at varied times; the house can be left to cool when unoccupied and heats up quickly when residents return.
Likewise "heavyweight" constructions may be better where the occupants are either mostly in the house during the day, or have regular hours away. It's worth noting that once heated, insulation regulations mean that all construction methods will have a similar rate of static heat loss.
Concrete slabs for upper floors are often an easy way to meet sound-transmission regulations, but also contribute to the thermal inertia of a building.
There's a similar argument to be made about partition walls; personally I won't have plasterboard anywhere in my house but the trend with spec. builders these days seems to be bent-tin studwork lined with 9.5mm plasterboard.
M.