Estimator Engine Terms of Use
Real Life Architecture. These terms apply when you buy and use a calculation from the Estimator Engine. Please read sections 3 and 7 before you buy. The version that applies to you is the one published on the Real Life Architecture website on the day you buy.
Version 1.3, 29 September 2026.
1. Who you are dealing with
1.1 The Estimator Engine is provided by RLA Media Ltd, trading as Real Life Architecture ("Real Life Architecture"), a company registered in Scotland, company number SC768354, registered office 18-20 North Street, Glenrothes, KY7 5NA. Its trading address is 14 Albany Street, Edinburgh, EH1 3QB.
1.2 Níall Hedderman is a director of RLA Media Ltd. He is an architect registered with the Architects Registration Board (ARB), registration number 075242H, and is subject to the Architects Code. He built the Estimator Engine and is in control and management of its content.
1.3 The contract is between you (the person named on the purchase form) and RLA Media Ltd.
1.4 These terms are separate from the Terms and Conditions for Video Consultations, which cover a different service.
2. What the Estimator Engine is
2.1 The Estimator Engine is an automated cost estimating tool. You answer questions about your existing house and your proposed extension, and it produces an estimated range of construction costs in a written report ("your report").
2.2 Its cost data is drawn from Níall Hedderman's own completed projects over seventeen years, together with published material prices.
2.3 Every figure is a range, never a single number, and is stated + VAT, with a total including VAT. A contingency is shown separately and is not part of the total.
3. What the Estimator Engine is not
3.1 It is a software tool, not advice on your property. Nobody inspects your property, sees your drawings or reviews your answers. Your report is produced automatically from the answers you give.
3.2 Your report is not a quotation or tender, a valuation, a survey or structural assessment, a design, a specification or a schedule of works.
3.3 It gives no advice on planning permission, a building warrant, building regulations or any other consent. You can get a price for an extension that would not be allowed to be built. You are responsible for finding out what consents your project needs.
3.4 You must not rely on your report for a mortgage, loan, grant or insurance application, as the basis of a contract with a builder, or for any legal, tax or regulatory purpose.
3.5 The estimate is made at the very start of a project, before any design exists. Real costs move with the design, the ground, the market and the builder you choose.
3.6 If you want advice from an architect on your own property, Real Life Architecture offers video consultations with Níall Hedderman under separate terms.
4. What you buy, and the price
4.1 One purchase buys one calculation for one property address, and the report it produces. The address is fixed when you buy and cannot be changed.
4.2 Within your calculation you may change your answers as often as you like until you ask for your report. Issuing your report ends the calculation.
4.3 The price is the price shown on the Real Life Architecture website when you buy. RLA Media Ltd is not VAT registered, so the price you see is the price you pay. Discount codes and vouchers are applied at checkout.
4.4 Before checkout you must type the postcode of the property. If the Estimator Engine does not cover that postcode, you will not be able to buy.
5. How your calculation works
5.1 You have seven days from purchase to complete your calculation and ask for your report. A calculation not completed within seven days expires and cannot be reopened.
5.2 You may edit your report once, within seven days of it being issued, by returning to your calculation as explained in your order confirmation. The edited report replaces the first one.
5.3 The Estimator Engine is updated in numbered releases. Your calculation uses the release in force on the day you started it, including for the one edit, and your report states that release.
5.4 If Real Life Architecture finds a serious error in a release that affects your report, it will tell you and give you a voucher for a free calculation on the corrected release.
6. Your right to cancel
6.1 On the purchase form you ask for access to your calculation to begin immediately, and you acknowledge that you will lose your 14-day right to cancel once you open your calculation.
6.2 If you have paid and have not yet opened your calculation, you may cancel within 14 days of purchase and your fee will be refunded in full.
7. What it will not price
7.1 The Estimator Engine prices house extensions to a single house in the United Kingdom. It does not price flats, commercial or mixed use property, houses in multiple occupation, subdivisions, renovations, conversions, new houses, basements, work inside your existing house other than where the proposed extension joins it, or property on the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands. It prices a proposed extension from about 2m by 2m up to 100 square metres, measured around the outside, with no room wider than 10m inside.
7.2 These limits, and the answers that stop the Estimator Engine giving a price, are listed in plain language in the Before You Start guide, which is free to download without an account from the Estimator Engine page. You should read it before you buy.
7.3 If you pay and then find that one of these limits applies to your project, the fee will not be refunded, because the limits were published before you bought. The Estimator Engine will tell you which limit applies.
8. Your responsibilities
8.1 You must answer accurately and measure where you are asked to measure. Where a question gives you a choice of ranges instead of asking you to type a measurement, you must pick the range that fits your property. An inaccurate answer produces an inaccurate report, and Real Life Architecture is not responsible for that.
8.2 You may price a property you do not own, such as one you are thinking of buying. You must not enter anyone else's personal information.
8.3 You must not use automated tools to access the Estimator Engine, extract its data systematically, or use it or its output to build or supply a competing product or costing service.
9. What Real Life Architecture will do
9.1 Real Life Architecture will provide the Estimator Engine with reasonable care and skill, and in line with its description in these terms and in the Before You Start guide.
9.2 Real Life Architecture will keep a record of your answers and your report (section 11), so that either side can refer to exactly what was entered and what was produced.
10. Limits on liability
10.1 Real Life Architecture does not promise that your report will match the prices builders quote you, or that your project will be built within the range shown.
10.2 The total liability of RLA Media Ltd to you in connection with the Estimator Engine is limited to the fee you paid for the calculation concerned.
10.3 Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.
10.4 Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights, including your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
11. Your information
11.1 What is held: your name, email address, the property address and postcode, your signature on the purchase form, your answers, your report, and your answer to the optional survey. Payments are processed by the website platform; Real Life Architecture does not see your card details.
11.2 How long: your answers and your report are kept for six years from the date your report is issued, so that questions, complaints and claims can be dealt with against an exact record. If your calculation closes before a report is issued, the answers you gave are kept for six years from purchase.
11.3 Discussing estimates publicly. Real Life Architecture may publish and discuss estimates produced by the Estimator Engine, including on social media. It will not publish your name, your address or any image of your property, will not describe your location more precisely than a city or region of the UK (for example "London" or "the Scottish Borders"), and will not publish anything that would identify you.
11.4 Right of reply. If you publish comment about an estimate produced for you, Real Life Architecture may respond publicly and may refer to the answers you gave and the report issued, so far as reasonably necessary to respond. It will not publish your name or address unless you have made them public yourself. It will never publish anything untrue.
11.5 The lawful basis is the legitimate interest in running and promoting the service, protecting its reputation and dealing with legal claims. You may object to this use and ask for a copy of what is held. The Privacy Policy explains your rights under UK data protection law and how to use them. If you are unhappy with how your information is handled, you may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
12. Your report, and the rights in it
12.1 Your report is licensed to you for your own project. You may share it with your family, your architect, your builder and your lender.
12.2 You may not republish it, sell it or make it available to the public.
12.3 The drawings, questions, report layout, rates and software are protected by copyright and database right, owned by RLA Media Ltd. Níall Hedderman asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of the drawings.
13. Insurance
13.1 RLA Media Ltd holds professional indemnity insurance that covers the Estimator Engine, as required by ARB.
14. Complaints
14.1 If something has gone wrong, email Níall Hedderman at project@RealLifeArchitecture.co.uk with your full name, the property address and your report reference. Your complaint will be acknowledged within five working days, and you will receive a full response, or an update, within twenty working days. A copy of the complaints procedure is available on request.
14.2 If a dispute cannot be resolved, you may use an approved alternative dispute resolution provider. Details are available through the Chartered Trading Standards Institute at www.tradingstandards.uk. Citizens Advice can also help.
14.3 Níall Hedderman is regulated by the Architects Registration Board. If your concern is about his conduct or competence as an architect, you may raise it with ARB, 5th floor, 70 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8NH, 020 7580 5861, www.arb.org.uk. Nothing in these terms prevents you from doing so.
15. Ending the agreement
15.1 The agreement ends when your calculation expires, or seven days after your report is issued, whichever applies. Sections 10, 11, 12 and 14 continue after that.
15.2 Real Life Architecture may suspend your calculation if you break clause 8.3. If it ends the agreement for any other reason before your report is issued, your fee will be refunded.
16. Changes and governing law
16.1 These terms may be changed for future purchases. The version that applies to you is the one published when you bought.
16.2 These terms are governed by Scots law. If you live elsewhere in the United Kingdom, you keep the protection of the consumer law where you live and may bring proceedings there.
Useful contacts
Architects Registration Board, 5th floor, 70 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8NH. Telephone 020 7580 5861. www.arb.org.uk
Information Commissioner's Office: ico.org.uk
Real Life Architecture is a trading name of RLA Media Ltd, registered in Scotland, SC768354. Estimator Engine Terms of Use, version 1.1, 25 September 2026.