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Q&As
Bungalow Loft Conversion and Strengthening Foundations
I am thinking about extending into the loft of our old Woolaway four bed bungalow which is at least thirty years old.
How expensive is it to strengthen the foundations (I believe they are the floating type), and what does this entail?
If I am not intending to use the whole of the loft area, is just strengthening part of them an option if that makes it much cheaper?
One Answer
As you will be aware, Woolaway bungalows are prefabricated homes made of prefabricated reinforced concrete (PRC), a cheap and quick method of post-war construction that later proved to have all sorts of problems.
These days they are hard to sell as virtually all mortgage lenders won’t touch them because they were constructed using a discredited method of construction prone to structural failure, so the usual improvements you might consider worthwhile on a standard home like extensions or loft conversions won’t necessarily add value.
It’s not clear if your home is in its original condition or if it has been upgraded and certificated after having the PRC replaced, which would be a factor as to whether such improvements made sense financially, but it may just be that you want the additional space regardless.
It’s with this in mind that I would suggest that the suitability of the property as a whole should be looked at by a qualified surveyor to see if the structure is capable of taking the additional loads required and to establish what foundations are already there and how they might cope with any additional loading.
To answer your specific question, it is possible to reinforce foundations but traditional underpinning is labour-intensive and therefore expensive. Alternatively, simpler and therefore cheaper solutions exist such as helical screw piling but any scheme you choose will require the services of a specialist company.
Mike Hardwick, Build It expert