Bathrooms in Banbury, priced in writing before anything starts.
A bathroom in a Banbury stone building raises a question that a bathroom in a brick house does not: what a sealed, wet room does to a wall that needs to breathe.
Solid stone construction handles moisture by letting it move through and evaporate. A bathroom is the wettest room in a house, and lining a solid stone external wall with an impermeable tanking membrane and porcelain traps moisture inside the wall with nowhere to go. On an internal wall that is fine. On a solid external wall it needs thinking about, and the answer is usually a breathable build up on the external wall with full tanking confined to the wet area itself.
Routing waste is the second constraint. Cutting a large penetration through a thick stone wall is not something to do casually or repeatedly, so a bathroom layout here should be planned around a minimum number of penetrations rather than moved freely.
Floors bring the usual older building considerations: joists sized for a bedroom, not for a filled bath on a tiled floor, and permitted zones for any notching or drilling. We will move a fitting a foot rather than cut a joist where it must not be cut.
Ventilation matters more in a solid walled building than a modern one, because the fabric is less tolerant of trapped moisture. Our bathroom installations page sets out what a full refit involves.
Four things we commit to on every job, rather than four things we say about ourselves.
Permitted development is not an exemption from Building Regulations. We arrange the Cherwell District Council inspections, meet the inspector on site at each stage and see the work through to sign off. We do not make the application itself, and we will tell you what is needed and when.
Free, and you get it before you commit to us. Party walls and skip licences are raised at quotation stage, not three weeks into the dig.
The same people do the groundworks, the brickwork and the fit out. Nobody hands your job to a subcontractor you have never met.
You get a straight answer rather than a padded price. It costs us a job occasionally and saves you a great deal more.
Process, specification and what moves the price are set out on our bathrooms page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Banbury street to the next.
In a cottage with one bathroom the whole household is affected for the duration, so we plan the strip out and first fix inside the same week and leave the existing toilet connected as long as the plumbing allows.
Water in this area is hard, which shortens the life of a shower valve and furs a rainfall head until the spray pattern goes patchy. Fittings that can be descaled and serviced are worth more over ten years than the difference in purchase price.
Cast iron waste and lead supply pipe both turn up in the older properties around Banbury, and both change the day if they appear unexpectedly. We would rather find them at the survey.
Part of our wider building work in Banbury.
Send photographs and a rough brief, or call and talk it through. We will tell you if a job is not right for us.
Southfield Construction (Rugby) Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company 14209138.
