The cost of owning a house

[ProbablyaCrazyPerson 2]

Concrete base, then wood?

[stemik 14]

Don't all houses have a concrete base?

[cal 6]

I would guess so, but i know close to nothing about these things. Obviously. And so my question.

[NoFakie 45]

How are 3 story houses built?

Concrete base and the wood?

Presumably the laws are quite strict on specs

 

It sounds like you can build three storeys in wood, but you need to submit structural documents that aren't needed for one or two storey houses. By three storeys I mean having the ground floor in wood too.

The three-storey houses built in Niigata (garage plus two storeys) used to be registered as two storeys (i.e., a normal house), so such documents will not have been submitted and examined.

That loophole has since been closed.

 

http://ja.wikipedia....%BB%BA%E3%81%A6

 

Note that the inspection is only on paper. The government will not come and inspect the actual build.

 

While pretty much all houses are built on a concrete foundation, there is a huge difference between having one that is say 30-60cm high and having one that is the height of one storey.

[cal 6]

Is one 'better' than the other or do they both have their own + and -?

[stemik 14]

Carpet or flooring?

In the UK most of my family's houses are carpeted but here in Japan all have laminated flooring.

We have carpet in our main rooms and bedrooms. The kitchen and bathrooms are flooring.

 

Which do you prefer?

[NoFakie 45]

Carpet or flooring?

Which do you prefer?

 

We have wooden (not laminated) flooring but I do like a nice shag on the floor!

[stemik 14]

Yes, the floors in your house are very nice.

 

Be careful of carpet burns on the knees!

[Tubby Beaver 209]

Partial to a shag on the floor myself.....in fact I rather enjoy a lush shag in every room of the house!

 

Back home, it's fashionable for young people to have laminate flooring instead of carpets. Carpets are much warmer

[RobBright 35]

Carpet or flooring?

In the UK most of my family's houses are carpeted but here in Japan all have laminated flooring.

We have carpet in our main rooms and bedrooms. The kitchen and bathrooms are flooring.

 

Which do you prefer?

 

We went with flooring. Easier to clean than carpets in the case of kiddy accidents.

 

We do have some rugs though for winter which can also be easily cleaned. However, the flooring can be pretty cold in the mornings in winter if we forget to turn on the underfloor heating.

[muikabochi 208]

The thought of nice thick carpets like my family back home here in summer makes me

[grungy-gonads 54]

What sort of additional cost is the heated flooring? Worth it?

[RobBright 35]

Do you mean in the building cost or running costs?

 

I don't know about the first, I would have to check the building details, but the second isn't so bad. Our gas bill shoots up by about 14,000yen in the winter months, but that's due to us having more baths and using the floor, so I would estimate about 7,000yen or so a month for about 4 hours a day during the week, and about 8 hours at the weekend.

[grungy-gonads 54]

Building cost.

 

But running cost is interesting too

[Tubby Beaver 209]

what is the heating element used? Is it similar to central heating back home.....ie small pipes filled with hot water, that run under your floor?

[pie-eater 207]

Carpets in bathrooms are one of the most ridiculous things ever.

Perhaps even the most ridiculous thing.

 

In fact, UK bathrooms especially of a certain age are generally are pretty rubbish, and almost silly.

Funny how you need to live in a foreign country to notice that.

[NoFakie 45]

I read that carpets and humidity aren't such a good mix, esp. if you have the house dust allergy. Mould can be problem too.

 

WIth underfloor heating, laminated flooring might be better because real wood shrinks more when it dries out.

With ours, the gaps between the planks open up in winter and close in summer.

[mina2 6]

Carpets not a good idea in most parts of Japan. I'd say.

[snowdude 44]

We are going for all wood in every room except of course bathroom and toilets.

And we will have a heated carpet in the living room like we have now.

We had thought about heated floors but maintenance is a problem and expensive to fix if one of the pipes break.

 

[DumbStick 13]

Same here wood I think.

 

And still eyeing up a pellet stove.

[NoFakie 45]

We are going for all wood in every room except of course bathroom and toilets.

 

We've got wood in the toilets too and right up to the bathroom door. After five years, there is a little bit of discolouring under where the bath mat goes, i.e., the bit that gets wettest, but not enough to worry about replacing it any time soon or to regret having it.

If you use different floor materials, its tricky to keep the floor perfectly flat where the materials meet because they usually have different thicknesses.Tiles laid on plywood will be much thicker than wooden flooring, for example.

[DumbStick 13]

Anyone with any good ideas to make a 'normal' window look nicer?

Even if it's just something decorative on the outside to make it look better than just a flat window, add a bit of character.

Window sill (how spell that?!?!)

Been advised that decomado (the ones that poke out) might make the room prone to be colder, though don't know if that's true. This is from a friend, not the builder haven't spoken about this to them yet.

[NoFakie 45]

Add a bit of wooden trim around them on the outside. Paint or stain it a colour that goes with the other trim of your house and complements or suitably contrasts with whatever siding you have. This should work on both Japanese and Western style designs, provided you're not using some kind of nasty siding which wood around your windows will only show up. I think the Japanese for this is "keshou-ita"

 

 

They're actually imported windows, hence the nice cross framing (mullions?), but you can get a fairly similar look with the same trim around a Japanese made window. If you can afford them, imported windows are way nicer than anything made by Tostem or YKK. Note also the balance and symmetry in the design. Most Japanese house designs are usually much more higgedly piggedly. Note that if those windows face south or west, they should have eaves at the right angle and length to block summer sun. A draughtproofed, insulated house that lets in summer sun will massively overheat.

 

For a Japanese house, the obvious window treatment is shoji screens (ours slide away into pockets in the wall during the day), but wooden lattices can look great too. It looks like these ones can both be stacked against the wall too when not over the window.

 

[pie-eater 207]

I often notice how awful and character-less lots of Japanese homes windows are.

[DumbStick 13]

Well, after a frankly ridiculous 'contract signing session' today, my lady and I are now landowners!

 

 

You'd think we were signing some kind of complex multinational peace treaty or something, the drama involved.

 

Can't you just take the money, tell me where to sign and give me a piece of paper!?! Things like that really irritate me. I wish they didn't I just can't help it. It's just so over the top.