Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Nov 14, 2016 7:30 pm First some background. I'm a farmer, in my 60's and soon to start building my retirement home on my farm in Central Vic. and had no design experience.
Been thinking of building a new house for some years and in July 2015 decided I needed to do something about it, ie. get some lines drawn on a plan. How? I did an Internet search and came up with the Home Designer range of software which seemed OK so I purchased Home Designer Suite https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/products/home-designer-suite/ @ US$99. My idea at this stage was to draw up plans and then get a designer to polish them up for me. The Suite software was good, but I could see its shortcomings so upgraded to HD Pro https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/products/home-designer-pro/ @ US$495 (you pay the difference in price for an upgrade). At this price you are buying some fairly serious software and the learning curve is steep, but with much practice (and stubbornness) I got the hang of it and ended up with what my wife and I regarded as a workable plan. This took us up to Feb. 2016 and it was time to look at getting some working drawings done – elevations, sections, plot plan etc. I thought I might get this done by a drafty/designer for around $1000 or less, but the first one I saw wanted to do the full service thing and quoted $6000 and when I said that I wouldn't accept this he said, half sneeringly, “well, you are not allowed to do it yourself, you have to be a registered designer”. The second quote was $6600. This for a house of ~350sqm. OK, if I can learn how to draw a plan I can learn how to do the working drawings and by May 2016 I had a complete set of working drawings. Fortunately my nephew is a supervisor for a home building company and he could help me a bit and my chosen builder made some good suggestions and said that they were the best of the owner drawn plans he had seen. A builder is permitted to draw plans under their name and he was quite happy to put his name to my plans and submit them to the building surveyor after I had organised the slab engineering and Planning and Septic permits. Last week we received the building permit so hopefully a slab before Christmas. Below is a render/model of the north face of the planned house. The walls will be Mt Gambier limestone and the timber sections will be red ironbark, which will go grey in time. To get some idea of the utility of the software note the shade lines: the sun is at 1pm for 15th Feb 2017. I used the program to get the eve overhang (1m) and the window heights to maximize winter sun and minimize summer sun. It will show shadows for all times of every day of the year and for both internal and external views. And much, much more. Have I made mistakes? Of course, but hopefully nothing too serious and the builder says that we can work things out as we go. Re: Design your own home 2Nov 18, 2016 4:06 pm Good on you! I think we should all get much more involved in the design of our own homes. Have look at this, it might be of some interest to you: http://www.architectyourself.com/design-your-own-home/ Re: Design your own home 3Nov 18, 2016 6:41 pm Thanks A_Y, One very useful (and somewhat amusing) bit of advise came from my nephew's boss. He owns a home building company that does more expensive homes- half million plus jobs and when I said that my wife wanted a deck upstairs he said "not a good idea; you have to tank them (make waterproof), but they mostly end up leaking, but after the warranty period is finished". This suited me as the house is near wetlands and the mossies would eat you for 6 months of the year. The room upstairs and on the far right is what would have been the deck. Re: Design your own home 4Nov 19, 2016 8:08 am Nice design mate, good on you for having a go! Good luck with the rest of the pre construction process. Kind Regards James Mason www.renovationjunkies.com.au Re: Design your own home 5Nov 19, 2016 9:59 am Can I ask what resources, books, forums etc you used to produce the design? Did you have to learn the skills from scratch or ha you done a bit before? Re: Design your own home 6Nov 19, 2016 6:12 pm Thanks for the kind words James. The basics such as what window area to have I got from the Internet, but mostly it was my intuition/knowledge/experience that led me along. I had never done any design or building work before this, though 45 years farming gives one a good feel of what is practical and the general principle in the design was to keep it simple. The house is designed as a rectangle so there is nothing complicated for the builder. A cousin (plumber) said to me that they usually add 20% to a quote if an architect is involved as they invariably make things difficult for the tradies - I didn't want to go there. Sorry Mark (architect_yourself) The beauty of software such as Home Designer is that you can see what you design efforts lead to and make changes accordingly. I redid my design from scratch 5 times to get to the finished product; a lot of work, but I got tremendous enjoyment and satisfaction from doing it and as Mark pointed out in his website he linked to, I can deal with the tradies from a position of some knowledge and authority. The Forum connected to the Home Designer website - https://hometalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/5-qa/ got me out of trouble a couple of times and apart from that it is a matter of...when all else fails, read the instructions. The reference guide for Home Designer Pro runs to 1200 pages! Design your own home 7Nov 19, 2016 7:30 pm Try floorplanner. It's for free. I used this software to design my home. I then passed my drawing effort onto an architect. Having the initial time to play with the design leads to a resolved design. Re: Design your own home 8Nov 20, 2016 7:18 am Not entirely surprising that trades add an addition 20% for dealing with an architect! Hopefully others will follow your inspirational example Harpies and become more invested in the design if their next home Re: Design your own home 9Nov 20, 2016 7:20 am hi Nikil.. i think thats the best of both worlds, having a good go at the design yourself and then paying an architect or building designer to work out the complicated bits. How did it turn out? were you pleased with the results? Re: Design your own home 10Nov 20, 2016 9:13 pm I spent the better part of one year fine tuning the design with floor planner. I did not want a builder to dictate design principals. My wife and I are very happy with the end result. We feel that we have achieved a truly custom design. Make sure your architect provides you with an energy report, relevant dispensations if needed, survey and soil test and illumination power density report. Thanks for you interest architect_yourself. Re: Design your own home 11Nov 21, 2016 2:15 pm hi ecarol0214, Depending on where you live you will almost certainly need some sort of registered building professional to submit the Building Permit application (this is the technical bit - trust me it is better in the long run to get someone else to do this). However often a builder will submit this on your behalf if you provide him with the design. He will have his draftsperson draw up some additional drawings and details, plus you will need an energy assessment and structural engineering doing. But you can definitely do the design work yourself. You can easily produce your own floor plans, sections, elevations and even 3D models with a bit of know-how and a bit more practice. You may need to tweek them a bit to make them more build able, and to ensure they comply with building codes and the local council requirements, but the essence of the design will be your own. Re: Design your own home 12Nov 21, 2016 2:40 pm Additional items you will need to look at - Soil test & report; slab or footing design; site plan with overlooking & overshadowing details; reflected ceiling plan; structural wall bracing layout. Peter Clarkson - AusDesign Australia www.ausdesign.com.au This information is intended to provide general information only. It does not purport to be a comprehensive advice. Re: Design your own home 13Nov 21, 2016 2:53 pm I would recommend getting a qualified engineer to do the soil test/report, slab or footing design and structural wall bracing. Apart from anything else they are insured if something goes wrong. Once you have your basic design you can interview a few local engineers or get your chosen builder to do it Re: Design your own home 14Nov 21, 2016 3:17 pm A majority of Building designers will provide a bracing layout & schedule. As for ourselves we provide this plus a slab &/or footing design for class A, S & M soil profiles, in line with the Australian standard, after arranging the soil test. Engineers do a good job but we opt to keep as much in house as possible to be able to offer our clients competitive fee structures. Peter Clarkson - AusDesign Australia www.ausdesign.com.au This information is intended to provide general information only. It does not purport to be a comprehensive advice. Re: Design your own home 15Dec 13, 2016 8:31 pm First milestone with the slab pour. Had a good team and the job went well. I made some changes in the laundry, but there were no variance fees as I'm doing the build cost plus. This is probably easier in the country as people know one another and your reputation is your business, ie. get a bad reputation and you go out of business. The plumber is my cousin, I've been with the electrician and his father for 20 plus years, I employ the building surveyor (he's not working for a large home building comp.) and I can easily check on the bona fides of the others. Getting ready Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ [/URL][/img] Finishing Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ [/URL][/img] Cure slowly Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ [/URL][/img] Re: Design your own home 16Dec 14, 2016 7:00 am Looks like a great site! Interesting what you say about Cost Plus too. Generally I would advise against it because it favours the builder too much (you take all the risk), but i know what you are saying about reputation. If there are likely to be plenty of changes, then it is definitely the way to go but usually I would hope to have the design pretty much nailed down before any work starts. Keep us updated on the progress! Re: Design your own home 17Dec 14, 2016 10:51 am Getting a slab down is a pretty exciting milestone! Full steam ahead, and hope the weather gods favor the rest of the build for you mate!! Keep the pics coming. Kind Regards James Mason www.renovationjunkies.com.au Re: Design your own home 20Feb 05, 2017 7:26 pm The Christmas break is long gone now and things are starting to happen. The slab was cured by covering with water for 16 days and has only a few fine cracks so I'm happy with that. The new driveway is finished, all 1.7kms of it: [/URL][/img] Fortunately I had reserves of excellent roadmaking gravel in a paddock 8kms away and that saved me much money. The new track is all weather and suitable for all heavy vehicles including B doubles. The other side of being so far off the main road is that the power is also a long way off, in this case 1.4kms so it was a 'no brainer' to put in a solar off grid power scheme. To run the grid that distance would have been in excess of $100,000 and the off grid scheme was around half that. [/URL][/img] Because this is all in a steel framed shed that can go from very hot to very cold I decided to build a room around all the gear and put a small air conditioner in it. The batteries have an optimum temp. range of 15°C - 25°C so the air con. is set on automatic for 21°C and it costs nothing to run. [/URL][/img] The limestone has now been ordered and will arrive in 5-7 weeks and they will start the framing 2 or 3 weeks before it arrives. Needless to say I am looking forward to some real building work happening. Hi Mofflepop, I would recommend finding a building designer to prepare plans, they should design to your specified budget. The benefit is you can tender the project out… 9 20417 ideal house depends on the site and location as much as internal floor plan....what is the distance from the house to all four boundaries, where is north, describe your… 3 15165 Thank you so much for the effort. We will use it to talk with builder. We also had idea of building duplex instead and seeking suggest ions. viewtopic.php?f=31&t=106744 11 13843 |