Finding Builders

[thebadger7]

Hi all

What are your experiences of finding builders who are prepared to work using traditional materials?

We're doing a renovation project and finding it very difficult to get a builder that is happy to work with lime/use natural breathable products. Any specialist lime firm seems to have long waiting lists and significantly more expensive.

The only success I've had previously is using products such as breathaplaster that go on like gypsum and getting normal plasterers to use it....takes some coaxing though!

 

[Lacan07]

Hi all

What are your experiences of finding builders who are prepared to work using traditional materials?

We're doing a renovation project and finding it very difficult to get a builder that is happy to work with lime/use natural breathable products. Any specialist lime firm seems to have long waiting lists and significantly more expensive.

The only success I've had previously is using products such as breathaplaster that go on like gypsum and getting normal plasterers to use it....takes some coaxing though!

I feel your pain. My next door number is a young builder who works for a reputable firm and he gave me the number of Lime plasterer they sometimes deal with, I called him one day and the tone I got from the conversation was he was doing me a favour. I think it was the laughing that gave it away! I never heard back. To be honest I probably couldn't afford him anyway.

I've wound up taking on most of the work in my renovation and I started practising lime plastering at the very beginning as I realised I probably wouldn't be able to fund it otherwise

I found an apprentice plasterer who did the gypsum walls on my upper floors, he's been in the trade for 6 years now, likes working weekends, and has a cheap day rate (if you take a day as from 9 - 2.30). He's willing to help me with the lime and I'm hoping I'll be able to call upon him for all the difficult walls. He's quite keen to learn about it all.

I would try and find a standard plasterer willing to give it a go, I've heard many stories about people going down this route and even been to inspect some of the houses. It seems the most common way to go.

 

[a twig]

Ditto, either paid through the nose for “specialists” or had to find young enthusiastic builders who were genuinely interested in learning, and purchase all the materials and teach them

 

[CarolineTheChemist]

We use a bit of a hybrid approach. We have two old buildings; an old timber framed 17thC farmhouse and a slightly less old brick and timber agricultural building that was converted (badly) to a dwelling in the 70s. We have forked out for the (eye wateringly expensive) “heritage experts” for the house, but luckily happened upon a creative modern builder who’s willing to try new (old) techniques in the other building.

This is only working because we’ve done tonnes of research ourselves, insist he uses the materials we specify and luckily he’s happy to do so. We give him installation guides for things he’s not used before (e.g wood wool boards for lime plaster, limecrete floor etc). We do have to keep check on stuff though - he likes to try to make things straight in a v wonky building. We have made him undo some attempts at straightening and he was fine with that. He doesn’t plaster either so we had the heritage plasterers do the lime. Our builder was very pleased with how it looks. Also we’ve had some problems with other tradespeople not being used to lime. Our plumber has been told that limecrete is an acid and will corrode everything it touches - even plastic pipes…so we need to coax him round too but that is a post for another day.

My advice is do your own research so you’re confident in what you’re asking for and then find someone who doesn’t mind taking instruction/suggestions. When you meet them to show them the project, actually ask them how they’d feel about trying heritage techniques that you’d like to suggest.

Some people just don’t like to take opinions from a “lay person”. We currently have deathwatch beetle in our house and I casually mentioned it to our neighbour. A few days later he called in a panic to say he’d mentioned it to his builder and the builder had told him if we didn’t get the house fully fumigated and all the beams promptly sealed with shellac, the whole house would disintegrate within a few years. Luckily I’ve read enough books about managing damp in old buildings to know that’s nonsense (books that our “heritage experts” recommended). I tried explaining this to my neighbour, but his builder was ever so adamant that we were in immediate peril! Maybe he was thinking of termites in the USA?!?! I don’t know… but I do know I would never let that builder loose in my house.

 

[Lacan07]

This is only working because we’ve done tonnes of research ourselves, insist he uses the materials we specify and luckily he’s happy to do so. We give him installation guides for things he’s not used before (e.g wood wool boards for lime plaster, limecrete floor etc). We do have to keep check on stuff though - he likes to try to make things straight in a v wonky building. We have made him undo some attempts at straightening and he was fine with that. He doesn’t plaster either so we had the heritage plasterers do the lime. Our builder was very pleased with how it looks. Also we’ve had some problems with other tradespeople not being used to lime. Our plumber has been told that limecrete is an acid and will corrode everything it touches - even plastic pipes…so we need to coax him round too but that is a post for another day.

You can actually lime plaster over electrical wires if you don't want to use conduit. There's nothing in building code that tells you you can't. The haphazard way my sparky arranged his conduit its apparent he doesn't really care.

 

[CarolineTheChemist]

You can actually lime plaster over electrical wires if you don't want to use conduit. There's nothing in building code that tells you you can't. The haphazard way my sparky arranged his conduit its apparent he doesn't really care.

That’s good to know! Thanks

 

[a twig]

Plastics are fine in lime - metals vary:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334693696_SHORT-TERM_CORROSION_RESPONSE_OF_METALS_IN_LIME_MORTAR

 

[CarolineTheChemist]

Plastics are fine in lime - metals vary:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334693696_SHORT-TERM_CORROSION_RESPONSE_OF_METALS_IN_LIME_MORTAR

Thanks Twig! V helpful!
I just made a separate post about this question as I didn’t want to hijack this thread. And then immediately afterwards saw this reply

 

[MatthewC]

I learned very quickly in doing my house that you need to assess your potential builder: I suggest that even 90% of modern builders will say things like "you don't believe that breathable stuff, do you?" and "I'll put a bit of lime in the mix, that'll fix it for you" etc etc. Some will even agree with you and then do it their way when you aren't looking!

To these people I said at the time "Yes, I do, and that's how I want it done." The result was that on my house I did all the stonework repairs and the limecrete floor myself, but happily I found a plasterer ("the spread") who said "I loved working on lime when I did my training" so he did all the lime plastering. I had individual contractors for other work and we did the slate roof, new gutters and downpipes, two new soakaway drains and lowered the ground around the house to let it all dry out naturally.

I can look at my house now and honestly in eleven years I have not had a single issue with dampness.

 

[Cubist]

What are your experiences of finding builders who are prepared to work using traditional materials?

Amongst many other things, some of them nice, but that's occasionally disputed, I'm a 'control freak'.

Its not that I don't trust others, ok so sometimes I will guild the Lilly. It's just that I usually follow my fathers advice which he articulated as "Why pay others to make the same mistakes you can? At least if you do the work yourself you'll know where the bodies are buried".

As a consequence the only jobs around here not done by my own gnarly hands are those that require a certificate from some trade body to satisfy my insurers, be willing to risk the wrath of the First Lady by making a mess of the thatch or for which I would have to be prepared to swing from a rope on tree with a chainsaw. A variant of the latter being my likely punishment should I vex the FL.

 

[Lacan07]

Amongst many other things, some of them nice, but that's occasionally disputed, I'm a 'control freak'.

Its not that I don't trust others, ok so sometimes I will guild the Lilly. It's just that I usually follow my fathers advice which he articulated as "Why pay others to make the same mistakes you can? At least if you do the work yourself you'll know where the bodies are buried".

As a consequence the only jobs around here not done by my own gnarly hands are those that require a certificate from some trade body to satisfy my insurers, be willing to risk the wrath of the First Lady by making a mess of the thatch or for which I would have to be prepared to swing from a rope on tree with a chainsaw. A variant of the latter being my likely punishment should I vex the FL.

Same here Cubist, my father had a pathological dislike of tradesmen that seemingly rubbed off on to me. And as a bit of a 'fuss pot' I hate having them in to do stuff, sometimes with good reason.