A good fence does a lot of quiet work. It keeps children and dogs in, keeps prying eyes out, marks the boundary and takes a battering from the wind every winter. When one blows down or rots through, most people want it replaced quickly, and the first question is what it will cost. ...
A garden room gives you an extra room without the cost, mess and planning headaches of an extension. It can be a quiet office away from the kitchen table, a gym, a studio, a place for teenagers to hang out, or simply somewhere to sit and look at the garden in winter. ...
Many older UK homes were built with solid walls, with no cavity to fill. Heat passes straight through them, which is why older terraces and Victorian semis can feel cold and cost a fortune to heat. External wall insulation (often shortened to EWI) wraps the outside of the house in a layer of ...
Heat rises, and in an uninsulated home a large share of it goes straight through the ceiling and out of the roof. Loft insulation is one of the cheapest and simplest ways to stop that. It is a quick job, it lasts for decades, and on a home with no insulation at all, it can pay for itself within ...
A home battery stores electricity so you can use it later. If you have solar panels, it soaks up the power you generate during the day and releases it in the evening, when you would otherwise be buying from the grid. Without solar, a battery can still save money by charging on a cheap overnight ...
A home charger is the single biggest quality of life upgrade for anyone running an electric car. Instead of hunting for a public charger and paying public prices, you plug in on the drive at night and wake up to a full battery. The question most people ask first is simple: how much does it cost ...
Concrete is cheap until you get the quantity wrong. Order too little and you end up with a cold joint where the second pour meets the first. Order too much and you are paying to get rid of it. This calculator works out the volume you need for a slab, a strip footing or a set of fence posts, then ...
Running out of plaster halfway across a ceiling is a disaster, because the first section starts to set while you wait for someone to fetch another bag. Buying ten bags too many is just money in the skip. This calculator helps you get the number right first time, whether you are skimming a single ...
Most self employed tradespeople set their day rate by asking a mate what he charges, then knocking a bit off to win work. It feels safe, but it is the quickest way to end up busy and broke. A day rate has to pay you, pay the taxman, run the van, replace the tools and cover every day you are not ...
Before you ring round for quotes, it helps to know roughly what a job should cost. This estimator brings together the price ranges from our own cost guides for 40 of the most common trade jobs in UK homes, from a fuse box swap to a full extension, and shows you how a builder or installer turns a ...
