Building work - use of services

[M05EY]

I am soon to start a four month building project to build a two story side extension (standard construction) and the budget is extremely tight.

The builders will be using our water and electricity during the build.

Does anyone have any experience of this? is it likely to cost me £100s over a £1000??

I currently do not have anything in the budget for these amounts and I am worried about having a huge bill to pay off at the end of the project, when we have run out of money!!!!

I don't know OP, I'm afraid its one of those how long is a piece of string questions.
I take it you are a water metre? Could you not collect rain water in a butt and ask them to use this for jobs that don't need fresh water.
Electricity, will be more, but not sure how much more.
I would imagine that the tools they use will only actually be used when necessary.
Maybe watch things like radios and if they have their own ask if they will use batteries as this will eat up electric if on all day.

We have always allowed a builder to use power and water. We are metered for both. What else can you do??? We did not notice any difference to the bills. It is not as if the water is running all day or you are running a tumble dryer all day. Evenrunning a radio all day is a few pence. I appreciate money is tight, but you really will not see much of a difference! You will have far more to worry about when the project goes over budget - they always do!

Agree with Milly. You've just got to take on the cost of the extra elec. It's a drop in the ocean. We didn't notice much of a difference, possibly as we had cut down on our own usage through having much of the house out of bounds. Swings and roundabouts.

We had a two-storey extension built over the autum/winter. Our electric usage for the last six months was exactly the same as for the same period during the previous year.

I don't know about water as we're not on a meter.