So ours (luckily, does not belong to us) was built in the 60s. The back is South facing and the front North.
Excessive cold / excessive heat
21,000 kwh of gas to heat from Oct to June with no gas cooker, around 4k in electric (my bill: £3060, projected to be just shy of 4k for a full 12 mths) - particularly crappy UFH installed by someone who thinks he knows it all but can't even get thermostats on the right wall for the right zone. North East England.
I have to say, I've looked up the kwh of far more modern bungalows the same size as ours (built 2000s onwards) and the consumption isn't much different.
Absolutely balls off cold in winter due to half the house being North facing, but there can be a 15 degree temp difference between front and back at the same time, so the OH is sitting in his office in his jumper because it's 16 degrees then comes out back and it's almost 30. Bloody impossible to dress appropriately, ever.
Air flow. Very poor design of walls/corridors blocking air flow. No direct route of air flow throughout the house in any one place. Stale air, muggy. Feels like a monsoon in here most of the time.
Yes, there's mould, and it was obviously far worse before we moved in because I've seen the inventory photo of a black roman blind slung in the bath to be washed.
Curiously, almost no-one in our cul de sac has trickle vents on their windows. They're all keeping all that stale air in, and presumably living with mould. I think it's absolutely crucial to have trickle vents in a bungalow because the ceilings are so much lower.
With our cursed, South facing conservatory which opens into the open plan lounge, kitchen and diner, in February, it got to 42 degrees in there. You could smell what appeared to be the UPVC melting. I'm still smelling it often in July, when it regularly gets to 35 degrees. In January I was lucky if I could get that room above 16 - so in order to keep the cold out of the lounge/kitchen, I had to keep thick curtains in between them closed all day. We lived like hobbits. It was getting dark at 2.30pm anyway. Most winter days felt like evening.
On the hottest days, we can only get the bifolds half open where they swell from heat so much.
Noise. OH and I have separate bedrooms approx 20 ft apart separated by a large, open plan space. Sometimes, in the middle of the night through both our closed doors, I can hear him snore himself awake.
You know when your partner has turned a tap on because you can hear it. You know when the washing machine has clicked off, the dishwasher cycle has finished, the boiler has turned itself on because it's so close to your head in the loft. That is to say, it's 1650 sq ft and no matter where you are (L shaped) in the house, you can hear any of those things at all times. You can hear a piece of paper being ripped off a pad. There's almost never a time when the other isn't keenly aware of what the other is doing because of the way noise carries.
Yeah... I'd rather not. Not least because I can hear his corporate work talk no matter where I am. There's no getting away from it. No private conversations are to be had.
Pumps for pipes in cupboard on the same floor as you - again, the noise carries: ping, ping, ping, ping, every 20 seconds or so, all through the day and night when it's cold. They're so audible through one wall that we had to completely abandon the biggest bedroom in the house because it was a major noise irritant that prevented sleep.
Floor noise: wherever he goes, I can hear him.
Floor noise: it makes the same noise even when people aren't moving in the middle of the night (movement/subsidence/possibly a suspended wooden floor issue). There are definitely issues because the noise it makes is alarming. So, imagine that at 4am when you know nobody's up. Takes some getting used to.
Roof noise: you don't learn to develop a passionate dislike for pigeons or even give them a second thought until they're waking you up scrapping on the roof at 4.20am every day through summer, and because the roof is so close to your head, you can't get away from it.
Deeeeeep breath.
19/20 people who deliver things here ring our exceptionally loud doorbell and at the same time, violently wrap their knuckles on the glass door because, presumably, they expect everyone who lives in a bungalow to be deaf. Our doorbell (which I cannot turn down) could wake the dead, you can hear it across the road, and yet, they still do it. Makes me jump out of my skin and swear, almost every time.
OH won't let me put a sign in the window :(
I also just miss going upstairs to get away from the temptation of using the computer or doing kitchen chores, etc. When it's all there in front of you all the time, it's hard to switch off because there's always a 'well, I might as well.' I don't really remember doing washing on weekends before moving here, but now I pass the laundry baskets all day, I seem unable to resist.
We enjoyed our own space and physically getting away from one another previously (we're together 24/7), but now there IS no getting away. We keep trying to interrupt 'don't interrupt me' during the daytime regimes so we can be more productive, and keep repeatedly failing, and I think that's just down to the proximity (and poor discipline, obvs), and we are both more stressed as a result.
And, finally.
Sod all storage space and a loft that an Oompa Loompa could get concussed in.
I think ours is a particularly poor refurb and I hope that not all bungalows are as crap as ours.