Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Apr 09, 2013 6:12 pm Hi All, My finacee and I are in the early stages of planning to build our first home. We have our land, on a slightly sloping block, in a great location in Perth (SOR), and want to get moving on building a sustainable home. Passive solar, good ventilation, all the sustainable fruit (in time!). We have a relatively small budget of $250K, and would appreciate advice on the best people and best ways to get our build on the move. EG do we go small builder that does their own design work with a sustainable focus, or get plans drawn by a sustainable architect then tender for builders, or go for a design and project management company that finds the builder for us? Or do we give up and go boring old big project builders (not my favorite plan). Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 2Apr 09, 2013 7:31 pm Project builders give a fair bit of house for your money and if you have a good site orientation and choose the right floor plan it can work well. Go for a custom design and the house will be smaller, for the same money. but will probably better designed The Harder You Try - the Luckier You Get ! Web site http://www.anewhouse.com.au Informative, Amusing, and Opinionated Blog - Over 600 posts on all aspects of building a new house. Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 3Jun 21, 2013 11:03 pm Hi- wondered if you had any luck finding a Perth builder to meet your needs? We're in a very similar position, but only just beginning the whole process. Would like an energy efficient, sustainable home in SOR area and not sure which builders to look at. Thanks. Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 4Jul 08, 2013 8:32 pm Well, we are now close to signing up with Right Homes, their office is in Burswood. They are a small building company with a strong sustainable focus, while using readily available products and techniques, which keeps costs more affordable. We will probably go over budget to get some of our sustainable and general wish list items. We have found them to be very supportive and helpful, and have seen homes and spoken with owners of some of their other homes, which have only had positive comments. We did look at a sustainable-design-and-tender firm (Solar Dwellings), an architect (Ecotect), a small project builder with less of a sustainable bent (Aspiron), a big project builder (Gemmil), spoke to a number of other sustainable builders (Econstruct, Evoke) who were out of our budget range, and also spoke with a number of conventional builders. In the end we have gone with Right Homes because of a good gut feeling, their happy clients we visited, good looking quality of work, the ability to essentially get a custom build to suit us and our site, and more assurance of staying within a budget by signing up with a builder rather going the design-and-tender process. I would be interested to hear how you are progressing too. Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 5Jul 18, 2013 10:10 pm Hi there, We're in a similar situation and have decided to go with Solar Dwellings, though Right Homes was on our shortlist too. We're in the initial planning stages though so we don't yet know who the builder will be. Would love to hear of your progress! Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 6Jul 18, 2013 10:23 pm I'd love to hear about both of your experiences with Right Homes and Solar Dwellings. We're still looking for the right block of land, but building something energy efficient is our top priority, though we are on a pretty budget too. Nic and Tim- How have you found working with Right Homes? Is your design custom or do they have set plans? Do they have a display home anywhere? Trixee- Is it expensive to use Solar Dwellings? They draw up the plans, etc and then shop it out to builders right? Do you have a say in the builders they send it out to? Sorry for all the questions. We're newbies to building. Thanks. Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 8Jul 18, 2013 10:56 pm They claim to build to your budget, but you will need to factor in 10% of your build budget (not including finishes such as flooring) for architect fees, plus the additional insulation will add to the construction cost. However we're at the really early stage, only received draft 1 of the concept design, so I'm still a little vague on costings, will be in a better position to comment in about a month. I think SD only use specific builders they have trained in solar passive design, but I think the list includes some large builders such as Rdink. I guess you could ask if you have a specific builder. They have actually worked with Right Homes a lot, so you never know they might end up being our builder! Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 9Jul 21, 2013 7:48 pm Hi Ardie. Right Homes has designed a fully custom home, based on our ideas, drawings, and block. I think they would use set plans if they suited you, but we just took ideas and site plans initially, then layout ideas we developed later, and we worked on a design that fitted. They don't have a display home as such, but we visited 3 homes they had built (which they suggested when we made our initial enquiry), and met the owners, to assess build quality. Display homes are only really useful for layout ideas I think, while a real home will give a better idea of what you get get quality wise, and given the design is custom, a display would not have helped us much. We were very concerned that the design-and-tender process could end up with cost blow outs and no idea of build quality as you don't have much control over which builder gets chosen. (On a modest budget build, Solar Dwellings works by finding an existing design that will fit your block and needs, and then tender to the builder that owns the design to do the build, so you are essentially paying SD to find a design, and tweek to make it passive solar etc, then pay the builder to build their regular house with minimal changes. SD also does custom design themselves, but this is more costly again). Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 10Jul 31, 2013 1:26 am Thanks for that. We're still hunting for the right block but hope to have something under contract soon. Hope you both start a build thread or update this one. Am very interested in both possibilities. Did either of you look into Highbury homes? They're building josh's house, though he created his plans through solar dwellings. good luck Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 11Jul 31, 2013 11:11 pm I've started a blog and will start a build thread when the time is right. Will be keen to see your progress too! Didn't look at Highbury directly as we didn't want an off the shelf design. Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 12Aug 12, 2013 5:07 pm Well, things are moving along now. Our plans have gotten planning approval, demolition has been set in motion, and we have signed our building contract! Next step finalise finance and await building approval, and last few bits to sort out for prestart. If all goes to plan, we should be in our house by April next year. Cant speak highly enough of Right Homes so far. Cant wait to move into our new home! Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 13Aug 12, 2013 6:39 pm That's fantastic! I'd love to see your plans if you don't mind sharing them. We have another appointment tomorrow night to go over the plans before costing. Nearly there! We're also organising finance and have just been told that the bank is willing to discount their loan by 0.96%, so it's worth pushing them on that if you haven' already done so. Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 14May 12, 2014 7:10 pm Hi How are you going with the builder? We are in the very early stages of trying to find land & whether to go design build or other options. We have a tiny budget of $200k and want solar, greywater etc systems in for this but we are looking at having a small house with only necessary rooms - ie we don't need an activity/theatre/study etc as seems to be the norm in Perth! Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 15May 12, 2014 8:41 pm So we are 2 weeks off handover now. It has been 6 months since site works began, 10 months since we decided on the builder and started doing plans, and 12 months since we bought the property. Pretty painless overall, and we LOVE the house. Cant wait to move in! We built with Right Homes, they are a small family business (almost everyone seem related in one way or another- the builder's wife is the accounts department, and his brother in law is the site supervisor for example!), and we quickly developed a good relationship with them. Some general details of our house to help with your budgeting- Our living area is 183sqm, add garage, solar pergola, and porch is a total area 246sqm, 3 bed 2 bath with open plan living area and a separate multifunction room. Fully custom designed house done with the company draftsman based on our rough floor plan sketches. This took some months to evolve with many redraws and thinking and discussing. We stuck well within council regulations and had no problems with approvals. We have had all the walls cavity insulated (double brick with rockwool fill), ceiling insulation, rainwater and greywater ready (piped), but will do PV, rainwater and greywater later. The concrete pad is green concrete made with fly ash. Without consideration for internal finishing's like curtains and use of space and PV etc to be added later, we have an 8 star energy rating. We have up-speced a fair bit on the finishing details (my dream bath and kitchen mainly!), although the standard finishing's are pretty good with Right Homes. We are saving a bit by doing our own flooring (livos products on the concrete), wall painting (Volvox), and decking on the builder-installed framework. We supplied all our own LED lighting, and ceiling fans for each room, but the builder installed it with lots of power and data points everywhere for future proofing. Total build cost will come in around the $280K mark, probably including the cost of materials for floor and wall painting and laying the decking on the framework in the pergola and porch. (We have lost track a bit of exact costings due to later variations). I guess it will add around $15-20K to the cost when we do PV, rainwater and greywater, so maybe around $300K all up? I think you will be very tight to achieve a sustainable house with all the fruit ready to go, to a good standard, on $200K. You need to expect to pay $1200-$1500 per square meter of house. Any less than this and you will have to start compromising A LOT. If you are still looking for land, then really focus on where the northern orientation will face, as this is the make or break for passive solar design. Don't expect to be able to plonk any old display home on your site, the design really needs to work for the site. We liked Right Homes because they are a one-stop-shop with no need to get an architect, tenders, subcontractors etc, but small enough to be able to do what we wanted. It was very hard with the big builders to get them to change things without a lot of hassle and cost. We were scared of cost blowouts of going via architect/tender process. Good Luck, it is fun, if a bit stressful Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 16May 12, 2014 10:03 pm Sounds like you found a great fit for your needs. I'd love to see some pictures sometime. http://www.housebythewater.wordpress.com From blank block to new home in Mandurah, Western Australia. viewtopic.php?f=31&t=65564 Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 17May 13, 2014 1:34 am Fantastic nic and Tim! Really pleased for you, hope to see pictures some time too *hint*. We're finding the architect route really slow, a bit annoying but it gives us plenty of time to think about the design. Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 18May 14, 2014 10:02 am Will have to figure out how to post photos! In all my spare time (none)- D day (moving) 1 month yesterday and lots to do..... Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 19May 14, 2014 11:48 am Nic and Tim Will have to figure out how to post photos! Oh I can help with this as I also would love to see some photos ^_^ First of all, check this thread; viewtopic.php?f=70&t=1272 But if you can't be bothered with that, here is what I do; Step 1 - Sign up to an image hosting website. I use photobucket. Step 2 - Uploads your photos in the same way as you would on facebook back in the day. Navigate to the photo on your computer and click upload! Step 3 - Copy/paste links. On photobucket these will be on the righthand side of your photo. Copy the [img] code to your clipboard, then paste into your homeone post. Ta-da! Photobucket has a smartphone App also, which can make the process super easy if the photos are on your phone. Hope that helps Re: Advice for Sustainable Build on a budget in Perth 20May 14, 2014 12:03 pm are you aiming for 100% energy neutrality? If you are, you will need to budget even more. Creator of superduperonium, expert at expert things, nobel laureate, can hold my breath for 10 minutes. 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