Property Renovation in France

This website has been born from a series of renovation projects that we have undertaken in the south west of France during the past four years. During the course of our own projects - two house renovations and a barn conversion - we spent a lot of time researching methods and practices, and found several sources of information. These tended to be insufficiently detailed and sometimes inaccurate.

Most of the best guides to good practice in renovating property in France are written in French which makes them inaccessible to many people. UK sourced guides usually follow UK practice rather than French practice, and ignore local techniques and materials. This can cause costly mistakes and result in a property that is out of character with its region, or difficult to sell or get maintained. If for example you are importing plumbing materials or a new kitchen from the UK to install in your French property there is a very high chance that you are not taking the cheapest or the best approach to your renovation project.

During our own renovations I kept a diary of one of our projects on our gite rental website. This eventually attracted more visitors than the rental site itself, and generated a lot of interest and queries. However, the diary was written in a very informal and unstructured manner, making it difficult to navigate and to search for specific information. I drifted away from the subject matter rather often. It was also all in one page, which had become excessively long. In this site I have grouped things in a more structured way, and filled in the gaps in information that I had inevitably left in an informal diary. In principle all aspects of renovation in France either are, or will eventually be, covered here.

The ‘renovation factsheets’ contain a great deal of information about the reality of renovation projects in France. If there is an additional subject that you would like to see covered please let us know.

The property discussed in this site can be found in Lot et Garonne if you choose to come here for a holiday!

I have tried to be as informative and accurate as possible through this site, but items do reflect my personal opinions and experiences. I can not under any circumstances be held responsible for any omissions or errors in the site. If you have any doubts at all about any aspects of your project you must always seek expert advice or employ a professional.

Here I will provide some selected useful contact information. If you have a site that you would like included here (on subject matter related to the content of this website only) please let me know.

Renovation, home improvement and real estate resources

All French Services Advertising portal for agents and private sellers of French properties, rentals, property management, and caretaking services.

Canvas Holiday Homes Canvas Holiday Homes is a Mobile Home dealership. We sell un-sited new and ex-rental mobile homes in France from £2995 - £35,000.

J-C CORDIEZ ARCHITECTE EXPERT French bilingual Building Surveyor in SE France

Buying or renovating property in South Eastern France?
Before jumping in with both feet, talk to us. We will investigate it inside out for you:
- Technical building surveys.
- Real Estate market valuation.
- Overall advice and assistance.
- Project design and site management.

We’re ON YOUR SIDE to secure your purchase.

The Languedoc Page a comprehensive guide to visiting and living in Languedoc, France

Vacation Rental Management, Vacation Rental Services Vacation Rental Management, Vacation Rental Services for vacation rental property owners and vacation rental site owners

Preparing the wall

First you will need to remove any existing pointing or render. This is best done with a pneumatic hammer and an air compressor which is approximately 50 times faster and easier than doing the job manually, and doesn’t leave you with terrible wrist problems. The hammer and air compressor can be hired or bought.

Next, your stone wall will need cleaning. Even if the wall looks clean you should do this, otherwise you will be pointing onto a dusty surface. There are two main methods available to clean a stone wall - sandblasting and high pressure washing.

Sandblasting is very effective, but also time consuming and dirty, requiring a mask and protective gear to be worn because of the large amounts of dust and sand flying around. It is a very good way of removing decades and centuries of grime from the surface of the rock. You will need an air compressor and a sand-blasting attachment, and some ’sand blasting sand’ - your building suppplier will understand if you ask for ’sable pour faire le sablage’.

Sandblasting has the other advantage that it can be used indoors where high-pressure water washing may be impractical. (Read on …)

See also articles on specific techniques for repointing stone walls, and materials - lime, sand etc - to use.

A pointed wall is dry, naturally well insulated, and provides protection against the insects and small animals that will otherwise enter your house through the walls. Old unpointed walls can look nice and rustic, but that doesn’t make them funny to live with when you have an invasion of flies in the house and a heating bill twice as high as it should be. They are also dusty and grimy, and impossible to keep clear of cobwebs etc. So I assume that you will at some point want to tackle the task of pointing them.

Specific techniques will vary according to your location since the type of stone available locally determines the building process used. The broad principles will always be the same however. (Read on …)

The need for a separate utility room is often neglected when redesigning a property or doing a renovation. Yet this is one of the most useful, if least frequented, rooms in the house. Much more than just somewhere to put the washing machine, a well thought out utility room will prove invaluable.

What goes in a utility room / wetroom / mudroom

Every house has lots of things that take up lots of room, are messy or dirty, but need to be part of the house rather than stuck in a shed in the garden. (Read on …)

It is commonly suggested that you should live in a house for six months without making any changes before starting work. That enables you to get a feel for the building, think about how the space could best be organised, and clarify your requirements, and avoids making expensive mistakes.

The principal is the same even if the building is not currently habitable. It is difficult for most people to look at a large empty space and visualise how this space would best be used. (Read on …)

You will already have had a good look around the property yourself. If the walls and roof look straight from all angles and there is no sign that water is entering the house through missing tiles, that eliminates the majority of possible problems straight away. It is also quite hard to conceal ancient electrical and plumbing systems - look at the fuse board and behind the sink for a good idea if these systems are in need of replacing (not at the sockets - it is easy to put a new plug socket on old wiring).

None of these things are necessarily problems that will stop you buying a house, but you need to be aware of them before you buy or agree a price. (Read on …)

All enterprises registered in France will obtain a SIRET number at the time of registration. This is a number that you can check to be sure that an enterprise is correctly registered and authorised to work on your property.

An enterprise must be not just registered, but registered to do the kind of work that you are asking them to do. The SIRET number must appear on the devis as well as the final invoices - so you can check before accepting a devis whether the company is authorised.

Officially it should also appear on any publicity from the enterprise, but I think this happens rather less often.

(Read on …)

A subject that all of us undertaking renovation work come to know and love sooner or later is septic tanks, or ‘fosse septique’ as they are known in France. As someone who has paid for two at the same property, I recommend you budget for this in your initial calculations.

During the last few years the rules about septic tanks in France have been changing alarmingly frequently, and it has been the responsibility of the property owner to ensure compliance. From the end of 2005, in principle it is the local mairie who must ensure that properties comply, although indications are that some are more ready to act than others. The majority of old properties do not currently conform.

This compliance is to ensure that environmental standards are met.

All very interesting, but what does that mean for you the householder. It means that if you do not have a septic tank system that meets current standards and regulations, and most old properties do not, you will almost certainly need to get one sooner or later. More importantly, if you are getting a new septic tank sytem anyway, you should get one that complies with the regulations.

The first stage will be to get a soil test performed on your property. Your mairie will be able to give you the name of the local agency that performs the tests, and it will cost you a few hundred euros. A septic tank should can not be installed without this test being carried out first, since the test will enable the authorities to tell you what size and type of system you need in order to comply.

Previously the most common type of septic tank comprised a large tank, buried in the ground, that collected all toilet waste from the property, and then released it through a series of underground pipes into the surrounding area. Typically 20 - 50 metres of buried pipe were installed.

It depends on how absorbent your soil type is, but you should be aware that this is now almost certainly not a compliant system. The most common system now involves a very large hole being dug, perhaps 30 square metres and 1.5 metres deep, lined with heavy duty plastic, then filled with various layers of sand, gravel, and geotextile membranes. The outflow from the septic tank (which has received ALL waste water from the house, not just toilet waste) then passes into this filtration system, through pipes spread across the top, filters through the sand bed, and is collected by further pipes at the bottom before being released into the environment.

If your property is on very sandy, absorbent soil you might be permitted to have a more simple trench based system; if it is built on rock there are separate specifications again.

Further rules specify, for example, that the filtration bed must be more than 35 metres from a natural water source (spring or well), and that rainwater from nearby roofs etc must not pass into the filtration bed.

This filtration bed costs a lot more than the septic tank itself - 5,000 euros is common for the complete system.

Not surprisingly digging a swimming pool sized hole in your garden involves heavy machinery. This is messy and disruptive, so should usualy be planned for as early in the work program as possible.

The last important aspect of the fitting is a ventilation pipe leading out of the septic tank. Usually this will go up the side of the property to roof level, to keep odours away.

Ongoing use of your septic tank

Usually a new septic tank will need no maintenance, although it should be emptied at least every four years.

Care should be taken that bleach based products are not flushed down toilets or sinks. If these are used too enthusiastically the bacteria in the septic tank will be killed and the tank will cease to function.

A product available in supermarkets called eparcyl will ‘kick-start’ a septic tank. We never need one in our own property, but in a rental property we use it before the season commences (likewise for a holiday house with infrequent use).

We have been told that a dead rabbit thrown in a septic tank will also bring it (the septic tank, not the rabbit) back to life, but I’e never tried it!

Other products are available for dealing with temporary odour problems. Ongoing odour problems should not arise with a new corectly fitted system.

Roofs are big and expensive, but you knew that already. The roof will almost certainly be the largest single expense in a building or renovation project. This is largely simply because of the size - roughly 20 - 50% more than the ‘habitable space’ area of one floor of the interior.

First consideration is - do you need a new roof? Barns and other old buildings usually have a roof of some description, so ideally you would like to retain it.

When we bought our barn we were told it had a ‘new roof’ and, being not very bright, we took that to be a good thing. That should make renovation cheap then, we thought. But a barn roof is not a house roof. It had been tiled with cheap, mechanical type tiles, with no structural work being done on the carpentry beneath. Of course, it had no insulation. End result - all the mechanical tiles had to be removed and disposed of, the woodwork underneath repaired and strengthened, and the roof relaid with insulation and canal tiles. Total cost - more or less the same as if the roof had not been redone at some point.

Before adding a new roof or roof tiles you should always verify that the supporting structure can support any extra weight you are adding.

Traditional roofs usually consist of a solid, heavy wooden structure that supports thin wooden slats on which the tiles are fixed or placed. There may also be a continuous sheet of wood panelling (or even terracotta tiles in some areas) on which the tiles rest. Tiles and roofs vary a lot from region to region so I won’t attempt to describe the different types. Here in the south of France many houses have canal tiles that are placed rather than attached on a roof and manage to hold themselves in place, many areas have tiles hooked or nailed on to the battens.

These traditional systems all work reasonably well at preventing rain from entering a building. There is often a particular wind direction that can blow rain between the tiles but this is not usually a big problem. Keeping rain out is only part of the problem however. We want warm, dry, draught free and mouse free interiors rather than just dry interiors.

Making the roof (and property) comfortable and dry

The simplest and cheapest approach is to keep the existing roof, making repairs as they arise, and put insulation on the attic floor if there is one, and then forget about using the attic. Some properties already have an inaccessible roof so this may be a good solution.

Much the best way to insulate a roof is from above, at the time of replacing the roof. In this way the insulation can form one continuous sheet, and be easy to fit. Sheets of extruded polystyrene are popular in various forms, and the thin ’silver’ insulation materials are also very practical (and seem to work well, in my experience).

Frequently a new roof will have the appearance of the old roof but be constructed differently.

Canal Tile roofs now usually have rigid corrugated sheets placed on the roof first to provide the actual water-proofing, and then canal tiles are placed on top of these corrugations, essentially for aesthetic reasons. This enables old tiles, that may really not be very water-impermeable after years in the rain and frost, to be reused. The roof looks traditional and is also completely dry. A further advantage in cost comes if the corrugated sheeting is the same colour as canal tiles, which is commonly available - you can put canal tiles on the ‘ridges’ of the corrugated sheet and ignore the ‘hollows’. Doing this reduces by half the number of reclaimed tiles neded, saves a lot of money, and looks more or less identical unless you inspect it closely.

Other Tiles - most other tile types either hook onto the thin wooden battens or are nailed on (e.g. slate) As described in the insulation section, products are available that combine support for the tiles with superior insulating properties. Specific products vary with region and tile type, but a quick look around your local DIY store should help you identify the products for your region.

General

If you replace a light roof with a heavy roof you need to ensure the beams can support the additional weight.

The best time to clean and treat the carpentry in the roof is after the old roof has come off and before the new one goes on. Hydrosablage is a good way to clean the wood (high pressure water with sand in it) since it does a very good job at removing some of the rotten wood and ancient dirt without the potentially damaging effects that sandblasting alone can cause.

If any parts of the roof look weak, they can often be reinforced by fixing a length of good timber along the whole length of the existing beam, without removing the existing beam. this is much easier and cheaper than taking half the roof off to replace a beam. Whether it is suitable depends on the condition of the existing wood, accessibility, and whether the ends of the new piece of wood can be adequately supported on the existing structure.

You will find that your local carpenter does not charge too much to do minor roof repairs and will have the necessary equipment to do it quickly and safely. This is often preferable to climbing around on a roof yourself.

If the need arises for you to fix a roof in place don’t forget to buy a nail-gun. This will speed up your progress substantially.

Almost all new roofs, regardless of the method chosen, if well constructed and insulated, will cost towards 100 euros per square metre. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less, but I never found a quick, attractive cheap way of replacing a roof properly. Let me know if you know of one.