Renovate or Build a New Home?
Deciding whether to keep your old home or demolish and build a new one is a difficult decision. There are many benefits to designing new – including total design flexibility – but there are significant drawbacks as well. These can include loss of community character, emotional connection to the old home, and waste of serviceable material. The perceived cost of a renovation in the minds of most owners will be lower than the cost to build new, but that equation is not as simple as it may first appear. In this article we will cover many of the considerations you may have when trying to make this momentous decision.
Firstly, I’d like to address sustainability. In a world where sustainability is a significant design consideration: renovating is always the more carbon sensitive choice. Some materials have far more embodied carbon than others, and in new builds designers may shy away from them in an attempt to bring down the carbon impact of the building. Materials like Brick, concrete, steel, and aluminum top the list of offenders. However, some materials when installed correctly and maintained well can last hundreds or even thousands of years. Many examples of bricks that were originally fired during the Roman empire are still in use in buildings across the Mediterranean. For this reason, if you have a building that is in good condition there should be significant consideration given to finding a way to reuse the building with minimal intervention so that the impact of the materials used in its construction can continue to be spread across many more years of use. In cases where the building cannot be kept consider reclaiming some materials used in its construction for use in the new build. Brick is an excellent example of a material that can be carefully taken down to be reused in a new wall.
The next consideration is how far your renovation needs to go to accomplish your design goals. Seemingly simple modifications can cost many thousands of dollars, and you can quickly find yourself at a point where the cost of the renovation eclipses the cost of the new build. Here are some high impact items that will quickly balloon your costs:
-Foundation changes
-Full new mechanical systems
-Replacing floorboards to eliminate creaking
-Adding insulation
-Moving structural walls (not all walls are structurally significant, consult a structural engineer for guidance)
-Adding windows/enlarging openings (contact structural engineer as above)
-Removing and completely redoing cabinetry/countertops/appliances – kitchens/bathrooms
-Adding another level to the building (ie, adding a second story to a one-story house) as the elements below would not have been engineered to accept this additional load this may require significant structural work down to the foundations.
Any one of these items by itself can likely cost more than what it may cost in a new build. Complexities of the careful demolition process, piecemeal removal, custom installs for uniquely sized spaces etc, can increase costs beyond expectations.
For the reasons above it is recommended to embrace plan constraints and plan out your renovation carefully to ensure you can keep the cost to within your budget. One of the essential elements of good design is restraint. Often, what may initially be considered a challenge in terms of space planning or usability may actually be an opportunity in disguise, one that may end up being the very element that gives a building character and charm. Of significant concern to the final product and whether you would be happy with a renovation are your design goals. What is most important to accomplish during the project? Can those goals be accomplished within a renovation or is a new build required? If a new build is required for those goals then consider whether the goals should be altered or if a new site could be selected that would allow you to save the current building.
Third, natural light is a desire of every homeowner, and it should be. Many studies have linked regular exposure to natural light with improved mood, productivity, and health. Interventions in an existing home to introduce more natural light - like solatubes or skylights – may not give you the light access you desire, or they may be other constraints which make it difficult or impossible to introduce them. Each addition is also a future leak risk as well and should be weighed against their perceived benefit. A new build will allow total design flexibility to plan out the amount of natural light each space will receive from early planning stages to ensure a satisfactory result.
The next thing to consider is what NOT to consider as part of the decision. If you have done some work to your home previously, do not include those costs as part of the decision making process for whether to move forward with demolition. Doing so will let you fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy where costs that are already out the door are used to justify future expenditures and sway decision making. That money has been spent. Do not let what you spent previously prevent you from having the home of your dreams.
Fifth, when making updates to an older home careful consideration of advances in building science must be weighed. Older homes were built with very leaky envelopes such that air passed through them regularly. This would mean that if water does get into a wall cavity, it will have the opportunity to dry out. New homes seek to reduce the air passing through walls to as close to 0 as possible. As such, mixing old and new strategies must be done with care. Adding insulation must be done very carefully on the exterior envelope to limit the potential for mold growth. Careful attention must be paid to the location of the dew point in an existing assembly to ensure that the wall will still be able to effectively dry itself.
With new builds, we can use advanced construction techniques and work with the contractor to ensure they are installed correctly for a high performing home. On renovations, it may be wise to bring in an Envelope Consultant to consider the impact of adding insulation to an otherwise leaky wall structure.
Adapting an older home to modern construction techniques is a particular challenge in making the home air tight, but vapor permeable so that walls dry out properly, but conditioned air does not escape. This is far more easily accomplished in a new home as all details can be taken from modern understanding of building science.
Another consideration is the building code. Some old homes may violate building codes or zoning laws. Many municipalities allow for grandfathering of these violations as long as the building remains. This is done so that the burden of adapting to new codes and laws do not fall to building owners with every 3-year code cycle. The financial burden would be quickly overwhelming. Specific cases have to be considered one-by-one to see if some updates have to be made, but in many cases as long as work does not modify the area of violation then no updates have to occur. If you choose to demolish and rebuild then the full effect of the latest zoning and building code will apply. In most cases this can be seen as a good thing as it would mean greater fire resilience, air quality, and general safety for inhabitants, but you may lose out on some feature that was part of the previous iteration of the home.
In Utah, while updates to the home do not require that the entire home be brought up to full current code, any alteration cannot make the home LESS compliant. The exception to this is IRC Chapter 11: Energy Efficiency, where the current code must apply to any alterations or additions. However, keep in mind that Utah is regressive with this code, and the requirements are not as stringent as other states in the nation. It is very possible that your design goals may exceed code values in this area.
One temptation of any renovation is to attempt to avoid the hassle of getting a city permit if work is not readily visible on the exterior. I caution against this for a few reasons. The cost may be seen as an unnecessary part of renovating that can be skipped, but consider the benefit that city inspectors bring to your project. At a very reasonable cost they will come out to the project site at specified intervals to review the work of the contractor. While we can usually trust that both your contractor and the chosen subcontractors are qualified professionals an extra pair of eyes is always a good investment to ensure that any mistakes are caught and corrected before they are covered up by drywall. Furthermore, if you fail to get a permit and the city becomes aware of the project they can put a halt to works and not allow you to resume until a permit is granted, usually with penalties. This delay in the middle of the process can cause quite a disturbance and end up costing you far more than if you get the permit upfront as part of a professional approach to building work.
If you are interested in committing to a full new build the cost to demolish the existing home is significant and should be accounted for as part of the initial decision. This event will represent cost and time to your project that can be shortcut if you decide to move forward with renovation instead. The demolition will be much more limited in a renovation as most of the foundation and structure will remain, even if all interior finishes are to be demolished. With any older home studies should be done to determine if any toxic substances are present in the home such as asbestos or lead. Of course, if asbestos or lead are found then this cost will apply in both cases as it must be removed if disturbed in any fashion. Both Asbestos and lead are perfectly safe when encapsulated and not disturbed, but best practice would be to remove it when presented with the opportunity.
In all healthy building budgets, a percentage is held aside to deal with unknown conditions, accidents, or surprises. This is known as Contingency. In a renovation, this percentage is often recommended to be higher since we cannot know for sure what is inside the walls or how certain elements were built until we start demolishing targeted portions and find out. Sometimes what we find is unfortunate and we have to do additional work and take additional time to remediate. This represents risk, and it is common that the contingency is twice as high as in a new build. Make sure that money is held aside for these eventualities so that you do not find yourself halfway through the project but unable to continue!
Each designer on the project will see less risk in a new build as the conditions are more easily controlled. As such, the design costs will include less safety factor from each designer. The unknowns of an existing structure (especially when original construction plans are not available) make each designer wary, and so they will inflate their numbers somewhat to account for this risk. So long as the total cost of design and construction is within budget, I would not advise that you allow this to color your decision, but it does bear some consideration. Especially if it is felt that you can meet your design goals in the existing structure for a lower overall cost than a new build, this consideration should be negated. Contractors may behave in a similar way. They will not know what is within the walls or how the foundation is constructed so they will lean towards protecting themselves, or at the very least build in significant unknown conditions contingency to handle the unforeseen.
There is a lot to think about when deciding whether to renovate or demolish and build a new home. From the overall cost, to the state of the current home, to overall timeline, and sustainability. It can be difficult to order all of these concerns into a cohesive path forward for your project. I recommend getting in touch with me so that we can review your specific conditions and help in making an informed decision that will bring confidence in moving forward with your project.