CHAPTER XXXVI.
VARYING BUILDING VALUES.—COST OF APPURTENANCES.—PRICES OF LABOR AND MATERIAL ON WHICH ESTIMATES ARE BASED.
The cost of building varies in different sections. At the end of this chapter will be found a list of prices upon which the building estimates of this book are based.
The plumbing schedule is formed so that one may see about what the different items of a completed plumbing outfit cost. Figuring sixty feet of service and seventy feet of drain, the plumbing outfit would cost, as indicated, $328. It has been furnished for less. The figures given in connection with plumbing work are not necessarily accurate. They are approximately so in detail. As no two plumbers or other mechanics will figure exactly the same on the same fixtures, or the same material and labor, it is not to be expected that an architect could form a thumb-rule schedule which would be satisfactory to plumbers and all others. In the class of work contemplated in this specification, the tendency of these figures is in the right direction. They are as nearly correct as general statements can be. It is known that a single bath-tub can be fitted up to cost more than the entire plumbing outfit here mentioned. It would afford no more conveniences to the occupant of the house, and would be no safer from a sanitary standpoint; and it probably would require more labor to care for than the one contemplated. The estimates are on the basis of a specification which would meet with the approval of the public sanitary inspectors in any of the large cities.
Where there is a material reduction in the number of fixtures and connections from the list given, the percentage for other piping and connections will have to be increased.
There are various ways of reducing the cost of the outfit. The best way is to have less of it; for instance, only city water may be used, or, possibly, only the cistern water. The completed plumbing outfit mentioned in schedule “B,” with the exception of cistern-water connections, including hot and cold city water for sink, wash-stand, and bath-tub, has been put in, in plan [No. 30], for $245.
The natural-gas-piping figure, like the others, is liable to vary. Piping for five fires has been put in for $20, for $15, and for $30. The burners, the burner valves and mixers, usually cost from four to five dollars a fire.
The gas-fixture schedule is priced by the burner, not by the connection. Each burner of each fixture is counted. Of course one may get a single fixture which will cost as much as the above rule would figure on a whole outfit, but that is unusual in moderate-cost houses. Some of the second-story brackets will cost from ninety cents to one dollar and a quarter apiece. This will increase the price of burner margin for the first floor, and allow more elaborate fixtures.
The mantels are priced to include grate, hearth, facings, and everything that may go there, excepting fender and blower. One may get a mantel for $25 or $30, or he may use a grate setting without a mantel, or may go as far into the hundreds as his inclination and means will lead him. Very expensive mantels in moderate-cost houses are not in good taste. A $100 or $150 mantel in a room all of the other wood-work of which did not cost over half that sum, is in exceedingly bad form. The mantel appears like a monument; everything around it is insignificant. In buying mantels from stock in mantel stores, the cheaper ones are generally the best designed from an artistic standpoint.
The furnace price is necessarily arbitrary. The owner of a house will be told that the price here given is too high and too low. A moderate-sized, two-story, eight-room house, which, counting the bath-room, would have nine connections, could be provided with a furnace of wrought-iron or steel, riveted joints, double galvanized-iron jacket, for $240. The same furnace brick-set will cost from fifteen to twenty dollars more. The owner of such a house can get a cheaper furnace, or he can get one which will be much more expensive. Oftentimes when an architect estimates the price of a furnace to the owner, the latter will respond with the statement that he has been offered a furnace complete for ninety dollars. Upon investigation it generally proves that the furnace is in some one’s store ready for delivery; that it will cost extra to set it, and for all connections, fittings, registers, etc.; and that the furnace itself is of such a kind that ninety dollars is a high price for it. There is no doubt that the statement as to furnace prices will meet with general disapproval from manufacturers. Many will say that the prices given are ridiculously high, and others, ridiculously low. Other general statements as to heating apparatus may be found in a chapter given to that subject in that section of the book devoted to the Journey through the House.