When you opt to have your house built by The English Builder in Crete, you have not only guaranteed excellent build quality but also peace of mind. Our aim is to provide you with a home constructed to the highest British Building Standards, ensuring that your roof is water tight, your toilet flushes away paper without blockages and your electrics are safe. We can also be trusted to keep our word on price - when we give you a quotation we stick to it. And if you require any “extras” along the way, we will keep you informed as to the exact cost to you.
Design flexibility: Other companies will gladly build you a house, but it will be THEIR design. We prefer to build YOUR house and give you as much input over the layout as you want. Nothing is too much trouble for our highly adaptable team.
Concrete frame: Being in an earthquake zone need not be a worry… if everything is done correctly. One of our team of experts, together with your architect, is on site whenever this vital stage of the operation is being carried out, ensuring that the reinforced steel has been placed correctly, that the right concrete mix is used and that it has been vibrated with a polka to remove air pockets. It is also important that the concrete dries slowly to increase its strength. And therefore, if necessary, we spray it with water until it sets.
Wall construction: Old Cretan houses had thick walls for two reasons: they kept out the heat in summer and the cold in winter.
Walls of modern concrete constructions, though, are not load bearing so quite often you will find corners being cut at this stage. There are two main methods used: one is a brick cavity with Dow closed-cell expanded polystyrene insulation, while the other is with thermal concrete YTong blocks. The first must have the insulation on the INSIDE skin and the gap must be kept free from builders’ rubbish. The total thickness can vary from 30-45cm depending on the insulation and the cavity depth. YTong blocks come in depths from 11.5 to 36.5cm.
Insulation: This is another stage that many other companies skimp on – some even class it as an extra. We at the English Builder, though, believe that given the huge variants in temperatures here in Crete, insulation is vital to the comfort and cost efficiency of your new home. Done correctly it can reduce inside summer temperatures by up to SEVEN degrees centigrade and thus reduce your reliance on air conditioning as well as keeping your winter heating bills to a minimum. All concrete frames are insulated with 3cm closed-cell expanded polystyrene (concrete is a very effective heat store). We also use 5-10cm Dow insulation in the wall cavities depending on customer preference (3cm, if any, is the norm). We use 10-15cm on the roof instead of the normal 5cm.
Heating: Cretan winters may not be as chilly as those in Northern Europe, but after sunset the temperature can drop to near freezing point and even with high levels of wall and roof insulation, you will need some sort of central heating to keep the house temperature at a constant 21 degrees C. The simplest set-up consists of radiators and an oil-fired boiler, but there are alternatives.
Many of our clients are enjoying the benefits of under-floor heating. Not only does it free the house of radiators, and thus allow you greater scope when arranging your furniture, it is also much cheaper to run. While radiators require the boiler to heat water to approximately 80 degrees C, under-floor heating needs little over 35 degrees to work efficiently, thus providing impressive reductions in fuel consumption. We can even power your under-floor system with an electric heat exchanger (a giant air conditioning unit) that can be boosted by a solar panel that can reduce your fuels bills even further. And there is no need to worry that a power cut could leave you shivering either because, with much of the heat stored in the floor, room temperatures will drop only by a couple of degrees over 24 hours. Another advantage of a heat exchanger is that it can be reversed in the summer to provide under-floor cooling.
Plumbing: The Minoans developed some highly efficient drainage systems. But sometimes it feels as though little in Crete has changed in the last 3,000 years. Thankfully, we have gone to great efforts to ensure our plumbing systems use the latest available materials to cope with all your household appliances, from dishwashers to spa baths. Also, in an effort to avoid that Pompidou Centre look, we try to hide as much exterior pipe work as possible.
Sewage: As the vast majority of our builds don’t have the luxury of being close to a mains sewage system, the sewage has to be dealt with locally on site in a septic tank and soakaway. The local solution is to dig a 3m deep hole, drop in perforated concrete rings and then cap it. You will be told that it can treat toilet paper, but before long the holes will block and the tank will fill up until you eventually have to empty it at about €130 at time and every two months after that. We, however, have developed a British-designed sewage system that is used in Australia, and which can cope with heat and mosquitoes, that allows you to flush away your lavatory paper without causing blockages – still a rarity in Greece. Also, sewer drains require a minimum fall of 2% (we use 2.5%, 1 in 40). Our septic tanks treat the sewage and soak away the liquid, which needs emptying only every four years.
Roofing:The local attitude to rain is that it will stop raining soon, so why worry about a few leaks. True, it rains for only a couple of months in the winter but Crete has the same average rainfall as Wales. So we believe lead flashing and guttering are essential. The local practice is to cement joints between the tiles and chimney stacks and parapet walls. Subsequently, during the heat of the summer, the tiles and the substructure expand at different rates causing cracks to appear after 12 months or so. Then the roof leaks. We lead flash all our roofs to prevent this from happening.
Electrics: On taking over at our offices in Kalives we were shocked (literally) at the state of the electrical wiring. Live leads seemed to have been used instead of earth leads, and many electrical sockets had not been earthed at all. While things are not always this bad, we are not prepared to take any chances where electricity is concerned and wire all of our new builds and renovations to British specification.
Finish: Attention to detail is an obsession for us. When we hand over a house we don’t believe you should spend the following 12 months re-hanging doors, trying to hide exposed wiring and facing bare concrete. We also promise to clean up afterwards, clearing all rubbish as we go.
Administration: The fact that we are not the biggest company in the business means we can look after our customers at every stage of construction, keeping them in touch via email and digital photography. We never go ahead with any alterations to the original plans without your permission and we constantly update you on exactly how much any “extras” will cost. We have heard of some builders presenting their clients with a bill for an extra €30,000 at the end of construction.
