My house is 1979 brick veneer with a tiled roof, we bought it for the spectacular view, pulling back to the exterior walls we are now insulating and installing the tilt and turn windows, however my partner admitted this week it's now appearing that the previous DIY efforts were the shoddy workmanship and serious cutting corners, and poor maintenance the biggest shame is probably that the 3rd and 4th bedrooms in that era (to me) were always small.

You also need to consider that the frames themselves also might be a cause of the inefficiency, I'm replacing the whole house windows with double glazed PVC windows for 28k product only, but a lot of the sound and inefficiency is also through the frame if you are considering replacing the panes only (if that's possible?)

What I love about South Africa is that almost every home is different. I just hope that as builders/designers and developers we can steer away from the McMansion and steer towards passive design for the running and manufacturing costs and offer our clients something that is uniquely their own.

We do not have basements not because councils won't let us dig below a meter, but because building sub-floor spaces can cost up to three times as much as above the ground construction. Building a basement requires a lot of site work, and taking extra care about the waterproofing (our water table is too high) and ventilation, and that is not cheap. These costs will increase even further if you’re retrofitting an older home, rather than building a new structure. Read more