Purchasing a Victorian House - New buyers tips?

[gitbotv]

Hello everyone,
Just wanted to say I'm very glad to join an interesting and informative community. I enjoyed reading this post:
//www.diynot.com/forums/building/victorian-house-movement.367099/

I am interested in purchasing a Victorian property on the North Circular Road in Dublin, Ireland.

I would welcome the idea of rescuing one of Victorian Dublin's few remaining town house's in near original condition before it is carved up into bedsits.
What is the reality of such a purchasing such a property?
What challenges can we expect?

At the moment the original sash windows are installed and there is no central heating system bar a few electrical storage heaters. What are the experience's in keeping these houses at a comfortable temperature?

I note some cracking in the outside render shown by the red lines in the attached picture. Obviously we would have this assessed by a surveyor but how does one know what is serious when taking a first look?

Image attached below:
Many thanks!

Untitled

• gitbotv
• 17 Jan 2014
• 1

 

[AronSearle]

My own personal experiance of living in a victorian house, and knowing others that do, is that they are cold draughty places, prone to mould with modern heating but old standards of insulation, unless you are happy to just sod your bills and run gas heating on at high levels all the time.

(in ye olde days they kept the places warm and dry with lot's of fireplaces, and these also kept the place dry due to all the air sucked in due to the chimneys).

Oh, and sound proofing was a joke, they have big solid internal walls, but in ours the 1st floor joists were run into the wall, so you could hear noises coming through the floors (like TV's, people speaking). Though this particular issue isnt always that common, we were just particularly unlucky.

I wouldnt consider living in one again unless it had been properly upgraded (insulation backed plasterboard or insulated external rendar), or I had the money to do so.

Better still, bulldoze the lot of em.

 

[conny]

What????? And live in a modern shoebox that is probably going to stand for about 40 or 50 years and quite often look as ugly as sin?

From my experience of modern homes give me a good old solid Victorian/Edwardian house any time and I'll upgrade the insulation and sound proofing any day! Modern homes are like tin cans where you can hear the toilet flush wherever you are in the house.

 

[BigIan]

I second Conny on that about the new builds although there are some that are built to higher standard.

The thng about Victorian housing is they were built before building regs and so there is no set standard fr how a house should be built.

some of the common issues I have come across are:

Timber elements in external walls may have moved / be rotten this can include timber lintols and joist ends.

Has the roof been upgraded? Chances are your roof is a cold roof pop your head up there and make sure there is felt in place and make sure its not damaged.

Gutters, Often the victorian terrace will have a timber gutter that will rot over time causing damp internally, these arent the most expensive things to replace nore are they hard to maintain but worth checking.

Owning an older house does mean that when it comes to improving the insualtion it may require you to bear in mind that the structure will need to breathe and so fixing shees of kingspan to your walls is going to cause you some issues later down the line.

But the biggest thing I would be on the look out for is Previous DIY... what have the previous owners done to the property over the past 150 Years? dodgy wiring, millions of holes drilled through the external walls in stupid places?

Chances are when your going round for every bit of dodgy work you see there will be 20 you dont see...

But provided you look after the house in a way that is sympathetic to the way it was originally built you`ll have a good solid home.