[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
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Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
Wanting to build a house, and looking for a DB of open source plans
if such thing even exist.
Author : tsingy
Score : 407 points
Date : 2023-08-23 11:02 UTC (11 hours ago)
| RektBoy wrote:
| For my amusement, I presume you're from US or UK. How much do you
| usually pay for a house project?
|
| For comparison, I've paid around $2000 for whole family house
| project, it's not just plans but also heat-loss computation,
| heating systems plans etc.
|
| Country CZ (EU). It's two story house made of "bricks", with
| gas+wood+heat pump heating systems. I would say pretty classical
| here. For ~$270k, not counting the property.
|
| Also soon there is starting another round of EU subsidies in
| range of $50k paid upfront for houses with solar panels, green
| roof etc.
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| In Canada you are typically looking at approx 10-15k for
| drawings and to build the home you will spend anywhere from
| 400-Plus CAD per sq/meter depending on what kind of finish you
| want. This price is for a brick home, wooden frame, asphalt
| shingle roof. Nothing fancy. Typically drawings don't include
| any of the rough in like plumbing and electrical. That is
| designed on the fly by the contractor who does the work. House
| are typically built like shit since people only want to invest
| in the finish and don't care about the mechanical piece since
| it is out of sight and out of mind. If you can GC your own
| house, you can pick the contractors and supervise the
| construction and the quality of work will be better. If you
| hire a General Contractor, they will typically charge cost/plus
| 15% -20%. Most folks in Canada and the US buy houses that are
| built by large corporations where they have no control over the
| quality, etc. They just pick a model from the handful offered
| when there is a new development.There are few incentives or
| subsides. The US is very similar.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| How are "bricks" different from bricks?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I've been curious about this sort of thing ever since I first
| read about the Sears kit homes from the 20th. I mean, if anyone
| has those plans, then you'd think they'd have been scanned and
| uploaded to IA. I guess no one ever took Sears up on the "we'll
| send you the plans for free" page that was in the catalog.
|
| I can say that the places that sell house plans, they want
| anywhere from about $3000 on up for the paper version, and
| they're usually numbered and watermarked. Digital ends up costing
| you several more grand on top of that, and I'm not sure exactly
| how they lock those down. _On top of that_ , they're often
| missing important things like the mechanical, electrical, and
| plumbing plans. Your contractor is supposed to do that on the
| back of a napkin or something.
|
| Ideally, any plans you'd find would have the following:
|
| 1. foundation
|
| 2. floorplans, 1 per
|
| 4. exterior elevation
|
| 5. cross section
|
| 6. electrical
|
| 7. interior elevation
|
| 8. perspective
|
| 9. construction notes/details
|
| 10. materials list
| blcArmadillo wrote:
| Several years ago the city of Phoenix released plans for a net
| zero single family home:
| https://www.phoenix.gov/sustainability/home
|
| You do have to provide some basic info to get them but I can
| confirm that they're a full set of plans.
| kevinpet wrote:
| I looked into that when it came out.
|
| 1. the house uses novel construction techniques. it's more of a
| design exercise than a serious attempt at something people
| might build.
|
| 2. you can't use the plans without getting sign off from an
| architect or engineer. this defeats the whole purposes of
| "releasing" plans.
| Dowwie wrote:
| Did any developers or private homeowners use these plans?
| rcazangi wrote:
| At the risk of being slightly off-topic, what are good sources to
| find out wether and in which conditions building your own house
| is _financially_ advantageous vs buying an existing (new or old)
| house.
| toast0 wrote:
| Financially advantangeous would be simple:
|
| Get an itemised estimate of the cost of land, cost of
| construction (include permitting and utility connect fees), and
| cost of housing while under construction, convert those to net
| present value, and compare to the all-in purchase price of the
| house with taxes and fees.
|
| If you think future taxes or maintenance will be significantly
| different, you can estimate those in net present value as well.
|
| IMHO, building your own house isn't usually about financial
| advantage, it's about getting a house that fits more of your
| needs and wants with less compromise than picking from what's
| available. But there might be exceptions if you have access to
| land, labor, or materials at a significant discount to market
| rates. Or if you want a much smaller house than is usually
| marketted.
| rcazangi wrote:
| Doesn't sound so simple to me :)
|
| In any case, I take it as a matter of tradeoffs. And the
| financial side of it is one of the tradeoffs. I probably
| would not build my own house - despite all the benefits - if
| it cost me double compared to a house readily available for
| sale, for example.
| philomath_mn wrote:
| I just moved into my semi-custom build. Nothing crazy,
| economical design (basically a big box), and it came out to
| ~$190 / sq ft which is crazy cheap, but still at least 25%
| too high compared to slightly older comps in my area.
|
| This should be our home for at least 15 years though since
| I have a good track record of remote work, family in the
| area, and young kids. So hopefully the extra expense won't
| matter as much in the long run
|
| I don't think building is ever cheaper unless you put years
| of your own labor into it and you are really good at that
| kind of stuff
| philomath_mn wrote:
| > simple:
|
| > Get an itemised estimate of the cost of land, cost of
| construction (include permitting and utility connect fees),
| and cost of housing while under construction
|
| That's the thing: getting these estimates is not simple,
| especially for a hypothetical build.
| ilyt wrote:
| > At the risk of being slightly off-topic, what are good
| sources to find out wether and in which conditions building
| your own house is financially advantageous vs buying an
| existing (new or old) house.
|
| I'd imagine only if you do a lot of the actual building
| yourself.
|
| New house will just cost same or less than you trying to get a
| project then hire people to do it.
|
| Project is tiny part of the cost, but for developer it's
| already amortized over tens of homes they've built. Workers
| also "know the process" and I'd imagine build it faster than
| some custom.
|
| Now old house, that's interesting question, and that will
| heavily depend on state the house is in.
|
| Putting some insulation on old house and doing some renovation
| might come out far cheaper.
|
| Or you might get into some kind of renovation hell where every
| fix uncovers another problem with the house, then it turns out
| you not only need to re-do electrics but also water/sewage, or
| remove old insulation and replace it with better, or remove
| some rotting boards etc.
|
| Then there is of course question about whether you like house
| layout or not or how much you'd want to change it.
|
| On flip-side, the advantage of fixing up old house is that you
| don't need to do it all at once and so can take smaller
| mortgage and so pay less in cost of that.
| hasbot wrote:
| At least in America, with the massive increase in material and
| labor costs and greater building codes, a newly built home
| identical to an existing home will cost more than the market
| price of the existing home.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Related but the International Building Code is freely available.
| Its point isn't to restrict you. It's to do the engineering for
| you so you don't have to.
| [deleted]
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| See if someone sells knocked down kits. And if you've never heard
| that term, you have an entire world to explore now.
| extstopcodepls wrote:
| There are free plans on polish gov site:
| https://www.gunb.gov.pl/projekty-architektoniczno-budowlane. You
| must provide some data and email.
| franole wrote:
| Here are plans from the argentinian governent.
|
| https://www.argentina.gob.ar/habitat/modelos-de-vivienda
|
| I don' know where are you from, but be advised that construction
| techniques that we use are mostly brick based with reinforced
| concrete structure.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The Mexican government also has pretty nice plans:
|
| https://decideyconstruye.gob.mx/index.php/paso-a-paso/descar...
|
| They target different climates and some of them can be built in
| multiple stages. I'd easily live in some of those renders.
| smnscu wrote:
| Is this the kind of open-source house plan you're looking for?
|
| - https://www.wikihouse.cc/
|
| - https://www.openbuildinginstitute.org/
|
| - https://www.openstructures.net/
|
| I don't think anybody's compiled them in an "open-source house
| plans DB", but it's a pretty neat idea.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Did you know that Sears used to sell and ship complete houses?
| http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/images/1933-1940/1935_340...
|
| All the listings from 1908 to 1940 are at
| http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/byimage.htm
| yawniek wrote:
| If you want to build an original midcentury two story house, i am
| doing a model from a leica scan and plan to share it.
| LightRailTycoon wrote:
| Truss manufacturers will usually provide structural drawings for
| your house using their trusses, if you talk to the lumberyard
| that sells them. You bring floorplans, and they'll design the
| trusses to support it.
|
| Lumberyards often have fully kitted plan+materials packages you
| can order, and can often make some changes to suit your needs.
| Someting like https://www.hancocklumber.com/package-type/home-
| packages/
|
| Local lumberyards can be hit or miss, but you likely have one
| that is happy to offer a huge range of services to customers.
| wrmanis wrote:
| I know this is a little buried - but I own a truss
| manufacturing operation and I'd totally recommend finding one
| to talk to. If you can find drawings, or sometimes even just
| sketch out a floorplan (we frequently build out barns or other
| simple structures based on literal napkin drawings) we'll give
| you a layout of all the trusses, joists and beams that you
| could take and just stick frame it yourself based off.
| Naturally we're here to sell trusses, but I think most plants
| like us are always down to help out folks in the community if
| we've got the time.
| hasbot wrote:
| Is the price of a truss fairly linear or is there a length
| where the price starts to really accelerate? I'm considering
| building a 30'x60' pole barn with 18" or 24" eaves making the
| trusses 33' or 34' long.
| wrmanis wrote:
| It's fairly linear for the same kind of truss, like say a
| 15 foot span to a 20 foot span - just think bigger
| triangle. Past a certain point, in order to support the
| shear/wind/snow loads across a span requires increasingly
| higher grades and width of lumber and you start getting
| into non-linear territory. Pole barns are an extremely
| common order for truss plants, and that size should be
| pretty standard. In single family houses, though, you start
| getting into "features" pretty quick which affect the price
| quite a bit, think ceiling trays, HVAC platforms and so on,
| so you're pretty quickly into some nonlinear territory
| there as well.
| treyfitty wrote:
| You mean plans made by someone and provided for free?
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Yeah I don't know why we can't just say free plans in this
| context. Open source should be a generic for everything that's
| free.
| matt_s wrote:
| I'd disagree that the terms are synonymous. Free plans
| probably could mean printed out single sheet plans with
| renderings. Open Source usually means the legal freedom to
| change, update and share whatever it is. To me, the source of
| the plans is provided so that someone could change/update the
| plans as they wish. In the context of architectural plans
| this could be the files in something like Fusion 360 if that
| were actually used for full house plans (I don't think it
| is).
|
| Edit to add: I doubt an architectural firm would give their
| source files to plans away for free. They put a lot of effort
| into creating them, its their business after all.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I should clarify, I meant to type Open Source should NOT be
| a generic for everything free, but I was on mobile at the
| time.
| deusebio wrote:
| It'd be really cool if people who used a plan could go back and
| add pull requests for ways they'd enhance the plan after real
| world use.
| PeterisP wrote:
| This.
|
| There are so many things you notice while living in a
| particular house which would have been trivial to fix in
| planning stage, but impractical after it's built.
| blitzar wrote:
| Or bug reports ...
| soggybread wrote:
| Sorry, tech support can't help with that, you'll need to call
| pest control
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| Here's the thing: The idea of planning a house without taking
| into account the site where it will sit will never produce a good
| house.
|
| Would a pre-existing plan account for the sun exposure of your
| land? Would it have a roof that makes sense for how much it rains
| or snows? Would getting sunlight in the bedroom also mean facing
| traffic? Would it take advantage of elevation for views or make
| sure to block a nearby neighbour? Would it deal well with
| moisture, or fires, or access roads? Would you build a porch
| where you can laze away late summer afternoons and feel
| everything's just right with the world, or a place to dry laundry
| where nobody goes?
|
| If you really want to design your own house (a great idea), look
| up materials around A Pattern Language instead. Learn what makes
| a great house, then design a plan incorporating those ideas but
| customised towards your plot and your needs.
| bluGill wrote:
| While you are not wrong, those requirements are the same for
| all houses.
|
| Your typical signal family neighborhood has the following
| requirements: There will be room to store at least 3 cars, and
| at least 2 of them will be indoors. The path from the street to
| where the cars are stored will avoid hitting things with the
| car. All this means that every house will have a 3 car garage
| up front with a straight driveway to the road. A 3 car garage
| defines how wide your lot will be. All houses look the same
| because the car defines so much about how the house must look.
|
| It rains everywhere, so you will account for that in all houses
| so you can take any plan knowing rain is accounted for. Views
| are the only thing that might be different, and most people
| don't live where the views are worth worrying about - unless
| you live in a rural area your view is the other houses in your
| neighborhood.
| krab wrote:
| How many cars? 8-O
|
| Our house will have a space for one car (under a roof but not
| in the garage) a motorbike and some bikes (all bikes in a
| shed). If some of the kids will have their own car before
| they move out (IMHO 40 % chance), they can park on the
| street.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| > they can park on the street.
|
| If the HOA allows it... ;)
| ghaff wrote:
| Or the town. It's very common in places that get snow for
| on-street parking to be prohibited during 5 or so months
| of the year because of the potential need for snow
| plowing.
| justusthane wrote:
| Not to dispute that but just for another point of view,
| I've lived in four different towns, varying in population
| from 1,300 to 120,000, all with very long winters, and
| they've all allowed on street parking all winter (usually
| alternating sides of the street to accommodate plowing).
| ghaff wrote:
| I've seen that as well--more commonly in cities where
| there otherwise just isn't enough parking if you force
| everyone off the streets. Suburbs, where most people have
| garages and driveways seem more likely to just disallow
| parking in the street period.
| krab wrote:
| In our city, that's the responsibility of the city
| council and their traffic signs.
|
| Actually, there is only an equivalent of HOA for
| apartment blocks. House owners are usually only bound by
| law and personal relationships with neighbors (I'm in
| CZ).
| krab wrote:
| Check street view to get an idea how such a street looks
| like. Not my place but fairly similar feeling.
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/AUurWkVyhLMxzmHWA
|
| My point is that the needs may be very different
| according to context.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| Not really relevant to the discussion, but those are some
| lovely looking buildings!
| dsr_ wrote:
| My house has no garage, but a semi-circular driveway plus a
| spur that means that we could park 9-10 full sized vehicles.
| There are basically no houses here with a 3 car garage, and
| rather few with a 2 car garage. Houses without garages are
| fairly common.
|
| It rains here, but it also snows here -- so a roof that can
| shed water but not hold the weight of 3 feet of snow is not
| suitable. Putting our roof on a house in Georgia would just
| be a waste of money.
|
| Some ground can deal with basements. Most of Florida can't,
| so they build on slabs. Then they need to put the HVAC and
| plumbing somewhere that isn't the basement.
|
| A house in Florida should be designed to withstand hurricanes
| and floods. A house in California should expect frequent
| minor earthquakes.
|
| My backyard view is great. My front view is of a road.
| Planning for those in the wrong direction would be bad.
| bluGill wrote:
| Parking in the sun is an option. Everything else is
| something most houses can be adjusted to handle without
| changing the layout.
|
| It turns out that a roof built with the basic standard
| components can handle a large enough snow load for most
| locations. Even if it can't, the roof it generally
| engineered separately and placed on top, so you can
| interchange a different one without changing the house
| plans.
|
| If you don't have a basement you delete the stairs down and
| get a closet which is also used for a tornado shelter.
|
| A house in Minnesota is designed to withstand hurricanes
| and floods - It turns out storms can momentarily get as bad
| as a hurricane and so houses everywhere need to handle it.
| Likewise MN gets minor earthquakes - it is rare, but still
| happens enough that unless it greatly increases costs (it
| doesn't that much) you take in the earthquake work someone
| else does.
|
| No California does have major earthquakes that Minnesota
| houses probably cannot handle. California is on their own
| code system. However Minnesota shares codes with states
| that get hurricanes and floods - those states put in a
| little more insulation than is needed, while they build for
| hurricanes - and both states get better results for it.
| Meanwhile those designing building components can scale
| better (cheaper!) knowing that once their parts work in one
| state they can sell to others.
| gpm wrote:
| > Some ground can deal with basements. Most of Florida
| can't, so they build on slabs.
|
| Around here every house has a basement. Flooding is an
| extremely minor concern given the terrain and you want the
| foundation to be below the frost line. The provincial
| building code requires a heated basement on clay soil (all
| nearby soil is clay) to a depth of max(1.2m, frost line).
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Where do you get this information from? Three-car garages are
| quite rare in Texas, and I am struggling to recall if I have
| ever seen a household use both carports for vehicles. At max,
| one car is stored in the garage while the other half is used
| for storage.
| bluGill wrote:
| My wife is from Texas, and I have other family there. While
| older houses lack a garage, new houses all have them. It
| took longer for indoor parking to catch on, but it is
| common. Though "rednecks" are more likely to use the garage
| for storage of other things and park outside.
| nemetroid wrote:
| Not sure I've ever been in a home with two cars indoors.
| ilc wrote:
| Northeast USA you'll see them pretty frequently.
| ghaff wrote:
| When I owned two cars in New England, it was a pretty big
| win to get both cars inside during the winter especially
| if a storm were coming. Always took a bunch of cleanup in
| the fall to deal with all the crap that had migrated out
| to the floor of the garage during the summer.
| ilyt wrote:
| I feel like not having dedicated shed/storage area in the
| house plan is one of most common architectural mistakes,
| given just how often garage ends up being just that
| ghaff wrote:
| On the other hand, I've often thought of adding a shed
| and it would invariably end up being a case of crap
| expanding to fill the space allotted to it. I don't need
| another 10'x13' shed to store more stuff. (I admittedly
| already have a workshop that sticks off the side of the
| garage.)
| ctroein89 wrote:
| > While you are not wrong, those requirements are the same
| for all houses.
|
| Not every house needs triple-pane windows and R25 insulation
| in the walls, sitting on a 8-ft deep basement, with a steep
| roof pitch for snow to slide off of. Generally, you want to
| cut corners, because building to code in New York would be
| overkill in Texas.
|
| You could have unique plans for each climate zone, but then
| the slope of the land and the shape of the lot also matters.
| Ideally, you'd want to be situated on a southward facing
| slope, beneath the road, so you could have huge windows
| towards the back of the house to taking in winter sun,
| natural insulation from the hill, and smaller windows facing
| the street. If you can't, you'll have to compromise on
| something that makes the house less pleasant to live in
| and/or harder to heat/cool.
|
| At this point, we might actually have 100 distinct home
| designs, for each climate zone and slope. If you're lucky,
| these standard might actually be compliant with zoning for
| your lot, and maximize the allowable use of the lot. Every
| town is different, and who knows what silly rules your town
| requires.
|
| At this point, you still need a design that local builders
| know how to build. Builders talk about "communities of
| practice", where they know how to build a certain way in
| response to how all of the other contractors in that area
| will also build, so that a subcontractor doesn't ruin another
| subcontractor's work. If you hire builders to build in ways
| they're not familiar with, they'll make mistakes. Most
| mistakes will be fine, but they could add up to failing to
| meet the code or standard for which the house was designed.
|
| Ideally, you want to find an architect and a builder who have
| worked together before, to design and build the kind of house
| that you want using the techniques appropriate for that
| design, with the builder having crews of subcontractors that
| he/she has worked with before. If you've reached this point,
| you might as well take the extra step to building the perfect
| house for you, and customize it just a little more.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >Ideally, you'd want to be situated on a southward facing
| slope, beneath the road
|
| _If_ you casually assume everyone lives in the northern
| hemisphere.
|
| Don't worry, we're already used to it with you all
| decorating websites with snow-themes in December, and
| saying "releasing this spring!" when what you actually mean
| is "April".
| bluGill wrote:
| > Not every house needs triple-pane windows and R25
| insulation in the walls
|
| Yes they do. Cooling is a large energy cost. Besides, you
| end up with that much space in your walls anyway just
| because for material strength reasons you need wide walls.
|
| > sitting on a 8-ft deep basement
|
| A basement is a line item that can be added or deleted at
| will. If you don't have stairs to the basement you still
| need that space except it gets a floor and is marked
| tornado shelter.
|
| > with a steep roof pitch for snow to slide off of
|
| They still build the same roof pitches so rain runs off.
|
| > you want to cut corners, because building to code in New
| York would be overkill in Texas.
|
| Not really because much of house design that matters is
| about structural matters where thickness matters. Other
| parts are about standard parts, you can buy a 2x4 off the
| self. While 2x3s exists, they cost more than a 2x4 and are
| generally lower quality.
| rascul wrote:
| > A basement is a line item that can be added or deleted
| at will.
|
| If you already need a deep foundation and basements are
| common enough in the area so people know how to do them
| well, maybe. For other areas, it's a significant expense,
| a lot of work, might require design changes, and it'll
| probably leak.
| unregistereddev wrote:
| > you end up with that much space in your walls anyway
| just because for material strength reasons you need wide
| walls.
|
| For material strength, walls are fine with 2x4 framing.
| However, 2x4 framing is limited to R19. So this is
| actually not true. The reason builders went to 2x6
| framing is entirely to allow for a larger insulated
| cavity.
|
| > They still build the same roof pitches so rain runs
| off.
|
| Roofs do not require the same pitch to dispel snow as
| they do to shed snow. Roof pitches are genuinely steeper
| in areas that see particularly high snow loads.
| philwelch wrote:
| Very good points. Though I would point out that insulation
| is still very important for Texas houses to keep cool in
| the summer. I'd also add that local soil and ground
| conditions are going to affect how you build the house's
| foundation.
| jannyfer wrote:
| > Your typical signal family neighborhood has the following
| requirements
|
| Maybe in your city.
|
| A home designed for Texas is not a good home in Calgary.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| Why?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Snow and cold vs. sun and heat as the primary
| environmental issues to deal with, as a quick example.
|
| But also humidity, local ordinances, matching the style
| of surrounding buildings, the relative value of land
| favoring single story (texas) or tall (Calgary) houses
| bluGill wrote:
| Relative value of land and matching style is semi valid.
| However none of that prevents you from take a house from
| one area and building it in the other. In most cases
| local ordinances will allow it though it will cost
| slightly more as builders are not familiar with some
| details and some materials might not be readially
| available. However the design itself will still work if
| you want to.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Texas doesn't have a subarctic climate
| athenot wrote:
| Humidity is one difference that comes to mind.
|
| In most of Texas, the air outside is humid, you need a
| moisture barrier between your structural wall and your
| rainscreen/siding.
|
| In Calgary, cold winters will have very dry air, so the
| humidity will be much higher inside the house. So the
| moisture barrier needs to be on the other side.
|
| In either case, you don't want the insulation layer or
| the structural layer to be collecting condensation from
| the humidity / temperature differential, or you will get
| mold.
|
| Disclaimer: not a builder, just deal with humid climate.
| ilyt wrote:
| Right but "put that plastic thingy on one or the other
| side" isn't exactly something needing whole new plans for
| a house
| bluGill wrote:
| Vapor barriers are not in any house design. They are
| something you put on and the inspector will check, but
| they are not on any house design.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| Also, don't forget local building codes. They vary a lot from
| location to location. You might theoretically be able to spec
| out a house that complies with most building codes, but it
| would probably look really funny and be hilariously expensive.
|
| A roof pitched for heavy snow with storm shutters for
| hurricanes would stand out like a sore thumb in Arizona.
| [deleted]
| nradov wrote:
| Reading "A Pattern Language" is, frankly, a waste of time for
| anyone looking to design and build a house where people can
| actually _live_ on a reasonable budget. A few of the patterns
| are decent, but most are outdated for modern lifestyles or
| appear to have been contrived to push the authors ' biased
| opinions on how people ought to live. Many of them would be
| ridiculously expensive and consume an unreasonable amount of
| space for minimal utility. If you were to actually design a
| house the way they seem to recommend it would end up being 8000
| ft2 (including outbuildings) and looking like some weird cross
| between an ancient Roman villa, a Victorian mansion, and a
| Hobbit hole. The market for rich eccentrics who want that sort
| of thing is pretty small. There is a reason that book is held
| in higher regard by software architects than by real
| residential architects.
| harrylove wrote:
| I think it's hyperbolic to call it a waste of time. I think
| the book (and the related books and principles) deserve a
| critical reading. In the first section titled "Using This
| Book" he mentions several important details that I think you
| are missing in your critique.
|
| One, it is meant to be read alongside _The Timeless Way of
| Building_. It is not simply a how-to manual.
|
| Two, it comes from experience gleaned in the field working as
| an architect and builder. It is not simply highbrow art,
| mysticism, or eccentricity.
|
| Three, the patterns are separate from implementation: "[You]
| can use the solution a million times over, without ever doing
| it the same way twice." He goes on to distinguish patterns in
| which he believes an invariant property has been established
| from those in which more research is needed. He even states
| that some patterns are just a guess and shows how to identify
| those in the description of each pattern.
|
| Lastly, he states there is a danger that people will assume
| that this one pattern language should stand for all time: "Is
| it not true that there is a danger that people might come to
| rely on this one printed language, instead of developing
| their own languages, in their own minds? The fact is, we have
| written this book as a first step in the society-wide process
| by which people will gradually become conscious of their own
| pattern languages, and work to improve them."
|
| The purpose of the book and its principles is not to recreate
| an aesthetic through pastiche. You are meant to use the
| principles in the book to create your own language that works
| for your context. A pattern that works for me in my
| environment may not work for you. That fact doesn't nullify
| the value of the pattern. The purpose of the two books
| together is to acknowledge that humans have deep feelings
| about the environments they inhabit. Whether those feelings
| can be explained or not is beside the point. The point is
| that we have them. These feelings happen across cultures and
| time. When we apply those feelings about our environments to
| the built world, several patterns seem to emerge. Hence, you
| get the concept of pattern languages.
|
| Alexander takes the bold step of not only acknowledging human
| feelings but centering them in the discussion about how the
| world should be built. This point should interest those who
| are sympathetic to the Agile Manifesto, or to principles of
| user-centered design, or to product design and product
| management. This fact is also likely why certain interests
| are uncomfortable with his work. Powerful interests do not,
| in general, like to lose power, and change is expensive.
|
| Later works, including his series on _The Nature of Order_ go
| deeper into his exploration of these principles, even the
| possibility of an objective evaluation of beauty. And yes,
| there is a bit of woo going on which can make some people
| feel uncomfortable. We are all capable thinkers. You can
| decide for yourself which ideas resonate and which do not.
|
| Personally, I found that his ideas changed the way I
| experience the world, including giving me the ability to
| evaluate the kind of home I want to live in and how to
| optimize that home to increase my own happiness. I may not
| ever get the chance to build my own home. But I have a voice.
| I participate in society. I believe the world could and
| should do better than optimize itself for money. I believe I
| am not unique in finding the books useful.
|
| (edited for clarity)
| nradov wrote:
| As a practical matter none of that stuff is actually useful
| to a middle-class person who wants to design and build an
| affordable, livable, code-compliant house in the real
| world. If you want to read it for entertainment as a piece
| of literature or philosophy then go ahead, but it's not
| going to help the OP at all.
| harrylove wrote:
| Isn't that a "No True Scotsman" argument?
| worik wrote:
| > Here's the thing: The idea of planning a house without taking
| into account the site where it will sit will never produce a
| good house.
|
| That is untrue
|
| Perhaps not the "best possible" but relocation of houses is
| very common and practical. Kitset houses are transforming the
| industry
| ilyt wrote:
| > Would a pre-existing plan account for the sun exposure of
| your land? Would it have a roof that makes sense for how much
| it rains or snows? Would getting sunlight in the bedroom also
| mean facing traffic? Would it take advantage of elevation for
| views or make sure to block a nearby neighbour? Would it deal
| well with moisture, or fires, or access roads? Would you build
| a porch where you can laze away late summer afternoons and feel
| everything's just right with the world, or a place to dry
| laundry where nobody goes?
|
| Would you, the first-time-house designer be able to accommodate
| for all those issues? Or even _know they exist in the first
| place_?
|
| > If you really want to design your own house (a great idea),
| look up materials around A Pattern Language instead. Learn what
| makes a great house, then design a plan incorporating those
| ideas but customised towards your plot and your needs.
|
| Horrible idea. By all means be the input in the process, but
| pick someone that actually knows how building works and that
| can instantly point out any misunderstanding or lacks of
| knowledge you have.
| exabrial wrote:
| I was coming here to say this.
|
| This is far more complicated that the author appreciates.
| Dowwie wrote:
| Nearly every new home that has been developed in my town for
| the last 5 years looks exactly the same, with the exact same
| floor plan. These new houses replace old houses that also
| looked exactly the same with same floor plan. It's a fugly two-
| family townhouse. Good houses don't matter to buyers in a
| seller's market. Poor architecture, poor execution, poor
| everything and yet they're selling.
|
| Only the rich can afford good houses.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Developers go cheap.
|
| It's very rare to be in the position to build your own home,
| as you'll never do it cheaper than a mass market/spec
| builder. It's almost always cheaper to just sell your
| property and buy something already existing.
|
| If you do end up building custom, it's almost a waste to find
| free plans, as you'll want to customize to your liking as
| much as possible.
| ilyt wrote:
| Pretty much. Even if custom costed exactly same money, it
| still means someone would need to wait 1-2 years before it is
| built vs just moving in to new house within a month
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| > _The idea of planning a house without taking into account the
| site where it will sit will never produce a good house._
|
| There's a free software tool from National Renewable Energy
| Labs that lets you make a rough sketch of your house, including
| orientation and try alternate features to determine if adding
| more insulation would be worth it. Or a more efficient furnace.
| Each airport (at least in the US) measures weather (temp, wind
| speed/direction, humidity, cloudiness, etc) every hour. Local
| climate files will have the past 20 years of weather so you can
| evaluate the costs/benefits of different systems with your
| actual records.
|
| https://www.nrel.gov/buildings/beopt.html
|
| Disclaimer: I worked on an older version of this tool.
| insaneirish wrote:
| Love BEopt! It's definitely a favorite in the "construction
| nerd" community (such as
| https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/). I used it quite a bit
| in making design choices for an extensive renovation on my
| own home.
| disposition2 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! While the original query was in regards
| to building a new home, this seems like a great tool (and is
| advertised as such) for checking out existing homes
| (especially older homes) as well.
| paulusthe wrote:
| > If you really want to design your own house (a great idea),
| look up materials around A Pattern Language instead. Learn what
| makes a great house, then design a plan incorporating those
| ideas but customised towards your plot and your needs.
|
| I get this is hn where diy ethos runs deep, but please don't do
| this. Hire someone to design it and oversee construction for
| you.
|
| Expertise exists and matters.
| samtho wrote:
| I've worked in construction, maybe this was true for post-and-
| beam and perhaps some other methods where you are using what is
| available from nature.
|
| Historically, for example, log cabins are popular in the woods
| because logs are plentiful and adobe was used in desert
| environments because of the abundance of sand, lime, binders,
| etc. I would not build a solid wood home in the desert of New
| Mexico for the same reason why I wouldn't build a masonry house
| in the forests.
|
| Today, we have all but perfected the manufacturing of,
| developed logistics for, and codified laws governing building
| standards focused on raw building materials that you can order
| from a lumber yard or even Home Depot.
|
| Modern building construction, at least in North America, is
| based around the "balloon framing" idea that the walls support
| subsequent floors and the roof, maybe with a load bearing wall
| in the middle somewhere. With 2x6 framing members, you can go
| up to 3 floors in some jurisdictions without additional
| engineering sign off. As long as there is a flat platform to
| build the first floor, you can build up.
|
| The foundation is the only thing that would require custom
| construction, with a pier and beam, you need to drive your pier
| 1-3ft below the frost line and with a slab or basement
| foundation, you also need to reach below the frost line, but
| requirements differ between codes.
|
| Drainage is another area that needs special attention and is
| 100% custom for each project.
| rascul wrote:
| > Modern building construction, at least in North America, is
| based around the "balloon framing" idea that the walls
| support subsequent floors and the roof, maybe with a load
| bearing wall in the middle somewhere.
|
| I think you're getting balloon and platform framing mixed up.
| hedgehog wrote:
| One nit, what we do today is platform framing. Balloon
| framing fell out of favor for probably two reasons, one it is
| not very fire safe (vertical channels in the walls), and two
| it's cheaper to build with shorter lumber.
| avar wrote:
| > Historically, for example, log cabins are popular in the
| woods because logs are plentiful [...] I wouldn't build a
| masonry house in the forests.
|
| Why not? Perhaps the US is different, but in mainland Europe
| you'll find plenty of brick houses in the forest.
|
| Yes, historically you'd build a log cabin out of materials
| found on-site, but is anyone doing that anymore? Presumably
| you'd want logs shipped from elsewhere, if only to get ones
| that have dried out already.
|
| At that point, why would it be prohibitively expensive to
| choose other building materials?
| electrondood wrote:
| +1 to A Pattern Language. That is an incredible book.
|
| It's like a system design template dictionary for homes,
| spaces, cities, etc.
| lostapathy wrote:
| This gets said a lot - but in practice, very little housing is
| built that way.
|
| The mega builders that build big developments certainly don't
| match up house plans with the way lots are oriented, and that's
| where most houses are built.
|
| I'm not trying to argue we shouldn't work on that, but to just
| dismiss off the shelf house plans entirely because "you have to
| build for the site" is rejecting the reality of how things are
| done.
|
| At the very least, a repository of plans that was categorized
| simply by the orientation it was optimized for would be a step
| ahead of how most housing is planned and built today.
| digging wrote:
| What does that have to do with this thread? The OP isn't
| buying a prebuilt house. Probably because they're not good
| houses.
| lostapathy wrote:
| Even if you're having a new house built, you get a lot less
| choices than you might think. To most builders, "custom
| home" means you get to pick the paint and flooring, not
| that you have appreciable input into anything structural.
|
| I'm sure it varies regionally, but where I'm at (Kansas
| City market) you have to be in about the $800k range,
| generally, to be able to work with an actual architect and
| build something custom - and that's just plain out of reach
| for most people.
| ticviking wrote:
| The other option is self-built.
|
| But that's been roughly the way things have always been.
|
| What's changed is the creation of a middle path of "built
| to sell" homes.
| digging wrote:
| I know, but I was assuming the OP already knew they had
| the opportunity to dictate the architecture of their
| house, since that's what they were asking about. Either
| they have money or they have volunteer labor and low
| expectations.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| The entire purpose of designing your own house is to take
| these things into account. If you're looking for a cookie-
| cutter generic design, just let a mega builder use one of
| their templates and they'll get what you're talking about
| here.
| lostapathy wrote:
| You're missing my point - it's that less people have access
| to the type of "use an architect and build a custom home"
| experience you're talking about.
|
| I was shocked when I was looking to have a new home built a
| few years ago how much you have to spend to actually get
| into a "custom home" and not a fairly templated house.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Anyone who has driven through a bunch of tract homes knows
| this to be true. The homes are built to maximize the number
| of homes in the available space and nothing else.
|
| If you really don't believe me just survey home owners in
| those now 2-year old tract homes. Even if the actual houses
| have excellent construction you'll discover the builder
| completely declined to take into account things like drainage
| of the lot or how maintenance can be performed.
| datavirtue wrote:
| [flagged]
| ilyt wrote:
| They just want to sell a bunch of houses quickly, not to
| create perfect houses. Good enough is quite literally good
| enough for them.
|
| There will be compromises because they build for average
| buyer, not for you.
|
| And people that are looking for a house usually want to move
| there as soon as possible, doing custom not only means you
| need to pay more but that you also have to wait longer and
| pay for the place you're currently living extra year or two.
|
| Ideally all would start from some common plans then architect
| would customize it based on the future home owner input but
| that's frankly expensive.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I think ideally we would all live in modest, reasonably
| sized simple rectangular houses that are built to last, to
| be energy efficient, and which achieve low cost through
| standard designs.
|
| The "then architect" part of the process results in
| McMansions that are awful to live in, are environmentally
| disastrous, and contribute to the growing unaffordability
| of housing for all but the upper classes.
| kansface wrote:
| Architects don't design McMansions. The lack of an
| architect is actually how they are produced. Less than
| 10% of housing in the US was designed by an architect.
| nradov wrote:
| Ideally people would have a variety of options for size
| and style based on what they like and can afford rather
| than being forced into your personal preferences. There
| are more important factors than energy efficiency for
| most buyers. While I don't have a McMansion myself, they
| are actually quite livable for the target market of
| upper-middle class suburban nuclear families with
| children. The major homebuilders literally hire
| sociologists to do field research on such families and
| then design house plans to fit their lifestyle.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I think ideally we would all live in modest, reasonably
| sized simple rectangular houses that are built to last,
| to be energy efficient, and which achieve low cost
| through standard designs.
|
| In an ideal world yes, in the real world you'll get run
| out of town being called a "communist", or no one will
| buy the houses because actually built-to-last homes are
| waaay more expensive than the cheap drywall and wood
| stuff that one sees go up in the air with every tornado
| video.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Building with bricks adds 3x the cost compared to stick
| framing.
|
| On top of that, they'll hold up better to a weak tornado,
| but anything over EF2 will structurally compromise one.
|
| Add in all of the other disadvantages, and it is small
| wonder why people don't use them often in construction
| anymore.
|
| They're pretty high up on the list of CO2 cost as well,
| between firing and shipping.
| albuic wrote:
| Those might not be common in the US or in your place but
| are very common in others and are at least in the country
| I live in, because they are just an investment.
| duxup wrote:
| I duno if I agree with this. They might not go lot to lot but
| a big developer also is the one who orientates the lots and
| selects the designs ... I think it is all relative to how
| they do business / organize lots.
|
| It's more general than lot to lot, but still seems to take
| into account the general lay of the land, the city's codes
| and etc.
| lostapathy wrote:
| Maybe this varies regionally?
|
| I'm around Kansas City. The biggest builders here will be
| in multiple subdivisions at once, with varying topography,
| and they may or may not have been the ones to plat out the
| lots.
|
| They will absolutely sell you any house plan in their
| catalog to go on any lot, so long as it fits. You might get
| a walkout basement instead of a full in-ground basement,
| but that's about how much it varies.
|
| The only variability is that smaller plans would be
| available in nicer subdivisions (that require
| bigger/expensive houses) and larger plans won't be
| available in subdivisions where they don't physically fit
| on the lots.
| [deleted]
| mike_d wrote:
| > The biggest builders here will be in multiple
| subdivisions at once, with varying topography
|
| You are ignoring the tens of thousands of hours pre-built
| builders put into streamlining designs that can be put on
| almost any plot of land. Think of it as downloading a
| piece of software and saying "oh it just works
| everywhere" while ignoring the engineering time that went
| into testing and bug fixing on every platform.
|
| Regardless of what you see as a casual outside observer,
| an architect and civil engineer are putting their stamps
| on each set of blueprints for each construction site.
| lostapathy wrote:
| > Regardless of what you see as a casual outside
| observer, an architect and civil engineer are putting
| their stamps on each set of blueprints for each
| construction site.
|
| Hard disagree on this wishful thinking. I've literally
| seen the submitted plans for my house - there was
| absolutely no architect or engineer stamp on them. The
| true mega-builders might do this, but smaller operations
| (say, 25 to a few hundred houses a year) don't.
|
| In my subdivision (which will be a few hundred houses
| built by one company) the plans are all new to this
| subdivision, designed by the head guy, and there aren't
| enough houses of any plan to amortize "tens of thousands
| of hours" among them (they've built 4 copies of my house
| so far, for reference).
|
| You don't need an engineer or architect involved in
| building a "normal" house or developing plans in large
| parts of the country. There's no calculations required,
| for the most part, either. The codes allow a prescriptive
| path to compliance, so if you fall the span charts in the
| codes, it's good to go.
|
| The only real notable exception is in truss design - but
| that's never designed by an architect either. The builder
| sends the house design to a truss company along with
| required loads in the area, and the truss company sends
| back trusses that cover the space and hold the required
| loads.
|
| Threads like this are peak HN - people who "know better"
| how the world should work (and hey, I wish I worked like
| that too) telling people who have actually experienced
| something their experience can't possibly be real. I
| actually have had a house built recently. I did a ton of
| research, and this builder was the best I could do in my
| area and at my price range (about $600k). The options get
| a LOT worse as you spend less on new constructions.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| > Threads like this are peak HN - people who "know
| better" how the world should work (and hey, I wish I
| worked like that too) telling people who have actually
| experienced something their experience can't possibly be
| real.
|
| "Engineer's Disease" -- the idea that deep domain and
| problem solving skills easily transfer over to other
| areas in anything but a superficial sense.
| [deleted]
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I've literally seen the submitted plans for my house -
| there was absolutely no architect or engineer stamp on
| them.
|
| Wouldn't fly here in Germany, or in Croatia - you need
| plans signed off by a licensed architect or structural
| engineer for anything residential.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _You are ignoring the tens of thousands of hours pre-
| built builders put into streamlining designs that can be
| put on almost any plot of land._
|
| No they aren't. This thread was started by someone saying
| "The idea of planning a house without taking into account
| the site where it will sit will never produce a good
| house.".
|
| Both of you (and everyone) is saying this isn't true.
| ilyt wrote:
| I think the "good house" would need to be defined first.
|
| Like, going by objective measures like "how well it is
| insulated and how much it costs to cool/heat it", or "how
| well it uses the space of the plot" most of them fall
| well within "good", partly because at least on insulation
| level most countries require them to be at least decent.
|
| But how well that fits the new owners ? Now that's where
| there would be actual benefit from either customization
| or doing it from scratch.
| lostapathy wrote:
| I'm actually taking issue with that assertion - mid-sized
| builders absolutely don't have that kind of time put into
| the designs of their house. They build one and iterate on
| the problems - it's not so different from software. I
| know - we've had quite a few problems related to being
| the 2nd iteration of a new house plan for a builder.
| georgeolaru wrote:
| Perhaps you're looking for 'Neufert'? Here's the link:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architects%27_Data. It was a go-to
| reference book during my university studies.
| [deleted]
| runxel wrote:
| Just hire an architect?!
|
| You'll need him anyway because of the building permit.
| fsloth wrote:
| In general house is a big investment. If someone is already
| familiar with construction then DIY is probably fine. But if
| not ... I would like to know the rationale for _not_ hiring an
| architect. I'm sure there are many who will draw a bog-standard
| gabled house in no time? Plus, if they are familiar with the
| region they should be aware any gotchas in building codes and
| permits.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Anyone interested in building this? My family has a long history
| in construction and I now work in AI, this is piquing my interest
| rafamvc wrote:
| I am interested too.
| Dowwie wrote:
| I've been interested in this concept and mulled it over for
| years. I can't find an incentives model that leads to success.
| Nonetheless, group deliberations with fresh perspectives could
| lead to interesting new ideas. I'm open to connecting with
| others.
| perlin wrote:
| Let's get in touch. Do you have an email I can reach you at?
| Veuxdo wrote:
| Isn't "source" short for "source code"...?
| print_goto_ten wrote:
| It can but not really. "source" means "place of origin" .
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Consider:
|
| - buying some architectural books. Many (good ones) have plans in
| them from excellent architects. A sample from a good one is at
| [0]. If your tastes are not so 'architecture school' there are
| others.
|
| - looking at the development approvals in your local area. Plans
| are often open to all. And they will (assumedly) be up to code in
| your area today.
|
| Imo the concept of 'open source' doesn't translate to houses as
| well because regulation, construction approaches and tastes can
| be so locally specific and also change over time.
|
| [0]
| https://issuu.com/birkhauser.ch/docs/floor_plan_manual_housi...
| hnbad wrote:
| > Imo the concept of 'open source' doesn't translate to houses
| as well because regulation, construction approaches and tastes
| can be so locally specific and also change over time.
|
| I think that's the biggest problem. You can draw up a house in
| free apps in a couple of minutes or hours but that doesn't mean
| it's structurally sound or that the walls will have the right
| dimensions for the pipes and cables that need to run through
| them or that they're the right size for the kind of insulation
| you want or that the windows meet your country's/state's legal
| regulations or that the house meets the code for where you want
| to build (which can literally depend on the part of the road
| the building will be on).
|
| We approached our architect with pretty much a full floorplan
| in hand but it still took us months to pin down something that
| would get fast-tracked for approval and even then the floor
| plans had to be modified by the construction company to account
| for the placement of things like toilets and showers. Even
| without changing any of these details we couldn't take the
| floorplans and just submit them for a different part of town as
| they would likely not match the requirements there.
| 2rsf wrote:
| Your last sentence is super important, having a sketch of a
| house is far from enough. Googling "construction detail
| drawings" will bring up endless drawings of all the small,
| but critical, things you need to take into account.
| bluGill wrote:
| A large part of differences between towns is pure corruption!
| Material strength is physical facts. Water runs down hill.
| Many other such things. Many towns are in one of a couple
| national form based codes plans where if you follow the rules
| as laid out there is no need for approval as the engineering
| was already done for any generic house. If your town/state is
| not, or is but provides extras on top it is corruption:
| either the industry is trying to create a local monopoly via
| legal means; or your town board is trying to increase their
| power. Either way it is only making housing more expensive
| without serving any public good.
|
| Not all houses need to meet the form based codes. If you want
| to do something different then you need a professional
| engineer to stamp and approve the plans - once stamped the
| town needs no more input.
|
| Apartments and commercial buildings start to get more complex
| (but even then many meet form based codes as it is cheaper
| than calculating out all the stresses). However again
| professional engineer needs to approve the plans not the
| town.
| hnbad wrote:
| My reference in this case is Germany, not the US, so the
| processes are a bit different but the point stands: it's
| difficult to use the exact same plans for two different
| houses in different places, let alone if you want to make
| any modifications as those may have knock-on effects you're
| not aware of. To be fair, a lot of those were not in the
| architect's plans in our case.
|
| But you're right that you can basically get a permit for
| nearly anything if your pockets are deep enough and the
| restrictions are often arbitrary. That's why I mentioned
| fast-tracking: the area we built in had fairly strict
| requirements compared to houses only a few blocks away and
| any deviation would have required a costly and lengthy
| approval process (measured in months rather than weeks) so
| staying within the requirements was primarily a financial
| decision.
| bluGill wrote:
| > lengthy approval process
|
| This is corruption. The process of approval should not be
| lengthy of costly.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| It is arguably the opposite of corruption. Everyone is
| treated the same and everything is checked in order. The
| option to pay for a faster approval would be corruption.
| This is just government offices being chronically
| understaffed.
| slackfan wrote:
| >Everyone is treated the same
|
| Verifiably false.
|
| >everything is checked in order
|
| Also verifiably false.
|
| >The option to pay for a faster approval would be
| corruption
|
| Is on the table in many jurisdictions.
| Mvhsz wrote:
| I would add that an architect's job is to find the little
| details that make your big investment better. One thing I
| associate with off the rack house plans in big developments
| is having the shades drawn all day because otherwise the sun
| will shine right in your face. An architect looks at the site
| and the sun and adjusts window heights and overhangs to suit.
| Amongst many other details. A house being such a big
| investment, hiring an architect seems wise.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Otoh, if your house was built by a developer, the plans on
| file may have only a vague relation to the as built.
|
| My first house was a Seattle skinny, garage off the alley.
| The plans on file were for a garage in front, different upper
| floor layout, and a different roof shape.
| chewmieser wrote:
| We do have prefabs. They tend to be built in a way that's
| compatible with a lot of jurisdictions (some would say better
| than traditional homes because of this).
| djinnandtonic wrote:
| ngl I read this as "open source house plants" and immediately had
| some future shock
| [deleted]
| spacebouy wrote:
| It's not plans/drawings, but worth mentioning the Pretty Good
| House framework: https://www.prettygoodhouse.org/
| hockey wrote:
| Check the local council websites.
|
| In Australia at least we need to submit development approvals
| which are public for some time.
|
| As part of these approvals there will be floor plans and
| architectural drawings. They won't be enough to build off
| (usually), but they're a great source of inspiration it you're
| looking for ideas, costings, and what your local council is
| willing to approve.
| ryanackley wrote:
| This is true in most parts of the USA as well. In the State of
| Florida where I live, all drawings and plans become public
| record and these would definitely be enough to build. This is
| because all drawings used to build are required to be
| submitted. This includes details like engineering drawings and
| calculations and roof truss layout.
|
| They are still protected by copyright but I'm not sure if it's
| relevant in the context of using the same plans to build a
| house. Copyright is meant to protect against copying and
| derivative works not how the information is used.
| janquo wrote:
| Polish government has released free plans for special <70 squared
| m houses that do not need permission to be built. I'm afraid you
| have to fill in the form with fake info to download them.
| https://www.gunb.gov.pl/projekty-architektoniczno-budowlane
| isaacremuant wrote:
| You need to think architecture instead of software development.
|
| The same way an architecture would be wise to converse with
| software developers to start building a mental model of their
| industry, so should you in the reverse.
| fuball63 wrote:
| I look at these while I'm daydreaming of building a cabin during
| work. https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/extension-
| aben/buildingplans/housing
| dangus wrote:
| If you're going to go through the trouble and extra expense of
| constructing something that is brand new, you might as well hire
| a professional architect.
|
| Why go through the trouble to build something if you're just
| going to get a mediocre building plan someone is willing to give
| away for free?
|
| In other words, you get what you pay for.
| polonbike wrote:
| Not completely what you are looking for, but still open source
| plans of house: Wikihouse https://www.wikihouse.cc/
|
| Earthships are also said to be open source, but the plans are
| (definitely) not free https://earthshipbiotecture.com/
|
| You can also check Open Source Home, by Studiolada (those are
| free, but the plans are in french)
| https://www.countryliving.com/remodeling-renovation/news/g46...
|
| Open Source Ecology is now listing a house in their list of
| builds https://www.opensourceecology.org/extreme-build-of-the-
| seed-...
|
| Open Building Institute is also promoting a configurable house
| https://www.openbuildinginstitute.org/
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Also check our Yurts:
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.instructables.com/Build-you...
| araes wrote:
| Wow. I scanned through this entire thread, and haven't seen an
| automatic house plan generator. I saw one comment with a
| request, and no responses.
|
| The architecture industry is enormous. Real estate is enormous.
| There's no automatic drawing, electrical, plumbing, insulation,
| ect... generators given specifications? I'm kind of amazed no
| one's trying to disrupt that. "Hi Stable Diffusion, please draw
| me blueprints for a 2000 sq. ft. house, with two stories, given
| this landscape. Thanks Stable Diffusion."
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I work in construction management and I think you're
| underestimating the complexity of generating a set of
| construction plans that meets code, passes inspection, and
| has coherent aesthetics.
|
| There isn't just one set of building codes for every
| jurisdiction, different jurisdictions adopt various sets of
| code.
|
| Different geographic regions require various things that
| other areas don't require. My state doesn't have earthquakes
| or hurricanes, but we do have to have stronger roofs for
| handling snow load. Buildings in Florida need specific
| methods to handle hurricane force winds. Buildings in
| California need specific methods to handle earthquakes. And
| so on. How a building is designed is highly dependent on
| _where_ it is located geographically.
|
| You're also underestimating just how many different
| materials/fixtures/fittings get installed in a house.
| Plumbing fixtures and light fixtures, electrical wiring
| devices, floor/wall/ceiling finishes, doors and door
| hardware, siding (type, color, trim color), windows,
| woodwork, cabinet, cabinet hardware, countertops, bathroom
| vanities, appliances, rain gutters, garage door,
| driveway/sidewalk material and color, deck material and
| color, etc.
|
| I guess what I'm trying to say is that designing and building
| a building is far more complex than it seems.
| Kailhus wrote:
| It's also fair to say the training data is probably not
| readily available either
| Zezima wrote:
| Wikihouse is awesome! Thanks for that introduction
| junon wrote:
| The earthship biotecture project is really neat, thanks for
| sharing.
| jacob171714 wrote:
| Its best to take and use the principles of it in another
| house. I personally don't want a bunch of tires breaking down
| and leaking chemicals and fumes into my house over a couple
| decades. Also much of the savings are from using your labor
| or volunteer/intern labor rather than paying someone else.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Having toured a couple, they also smell like farts.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| There's a good critique of the earthship from a decade ago
| called 'hacking the earthship' :
| http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Earthship-Search-Earth-
| Shelter...
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170505101559/http://archinia.
| c...
| spacecadet wrote:
| People have built earthships without tires to great lengths
| and personal energy expenditure.
| jacob171714 wrote:
| If its worth it for you then thats great. But at least
| the original earth ship requires packing like a hundred
| or two tires without power tools. There are machines that
| make bricks out of earth and there is probably a way to
| use recycled material to hold those to together in the
| same way as tires
| zo1 wrote:
| Its such a shame that a great sustainability project is
| ruined by some weird drive to "recycle" something stupid
| like tires. Just buy the effing bricks, have a construction
| company do it, have a factory safely recycle the tyres, and
| we can all save the environment. It strikes me as a very,
| for lack of a better term, misguided "hippy" commune kinda
| thing.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yeah, and it will never get approved in any of the 10,000
| zoning districts in the US. You should grab a random
| township zoning PDF and read the entire thing before even
| thinking about building something under 1600 sq ft, and
| that doesn't use materials from your local building
| supplier.
| SamBorick wrote:
| I think it's worth noting that the inventor of the earthship
| plans does not himself live in an earthship. I have seen a
| lot of anecdotal accounts of people living in earthships
| developing health issues because of off-gassing from the
| tires. Also they are really optimized for desert
| environments, they don't preform as well in high humidity.
| pengaru wrote:
| When they filmed Garbage Warrior, Reynolds and his wife
| were occupying what he described as the first one "because
| it works". Have they since moved out?
| j0r0b0 wrote:
| > You can also check Open Source Home, by Studiolada (those are
| free, but the plans are in french)
| https://www.countryliving.com/remodeling-renovation/news/g46...
|
| The plans aren't on the website anymore, but you can get it
| from
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170918182346/http://www.studio...
| gmenegatti wrote:
| Please, does anyone know any open source house plan generator?
|
| Let's say something that can generate house plans according to
| some parameters.
| [deleted]
| friendzis wrote:
| Real estate ads?
| dfworks wrote:
| Planning applications in the UK are publicly available and many
| have architectural drawings/site plans attached with varying
| degrees of detail.
|
| There are millions of applications and each local authority has a
| different database so it may take a bit of digging to find what
| you are searching for.
|
| Application example -
| https://publicaccess.tewkesbury.gov.uk/online-applications/a...
|
| Drawings example - https://publicaccess.tewkesbury.gov.uk/online-
| applications/f...
| mrweasel wrote:
| Same in Denmark, you can either look them up on
| https://weblager.dk or if a house you interested in isn't
| available there you can normally request the drawing from the
| city, for a small fee.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| TLDR: Talk to a highly experienced general contractor (GC) who
| builds homes. The good ones will have plenty of plans that you
| can edit to your heart's content. All three GCs that I
| interviewed immediately showed / emailed me plans they thought I
| would like to start from.
|
| ---
|
| I built a house in Cape Cod (Massachusetts, United States,) a few
| years ago. A few things to consider:
|
| When I started working with my GC, he had a whole filing cabinet
| full of designs. They weren't "open source," (as in copyrighted
| under GPL/MIT/Apache,) but he scanned the design we started from.
|
| I then used (shockingly) preview on Mac to cut and paste it up to
| move some walls and rooms around. (Basically, we took some space
| out of the master bedroom to make one of the other bedrooms
| larger. The master bedroom still has a lot of extra space.)
|
| He then sent my changes to a professional designer who brought
| the design up to something that the contractors could follow, and
| made the garage deeper so we had extra storage and a garage door
| for a riding lawn mower. In 2017, in Cape Cod, this cost me a
| little over $1000.
|
| ---
|
| But, if you really want to get creative, I suggest hiring an
| architect. They have the experience that you, as an untrained
| novice, don't have. A good architect should be able to weigh your
| desires and give you something that'll be better than you could
| imagine.
|
| Considering that redos are _very_ expensive when building a
| house, spending a few thousand on an architect will be much
| cheaper than spending tens of thousands on a "redo" after the
| fact.
|
| ---
|
| Furthermore, if there is a house you like, at least in MA, it's
| easy to find the dimensions online. Just google "[town name]
| GIS", and you will find the town's database of all homes. Enter
| the address (or street,) and you will be able to find room
| layouts (with sizes) used for assessments, and even the
| assessment of value for the home. These are all publicly
| available records.
|
| It's also useful to pull the GIS data of any land you're planning
| on buying (in MA.) This will tell you who paid what for the land
| going back as far as the records are available. You can use this
| in negotiations. (I knew that my GC overpaid for the land before
| the 2008 crash, so I adjusted my negotiation style accordingly.)
| fhk wrote:
| My plan for this was to learn how to frame...
|
| https://onlinecourses.shelterinstitute.com/courses/free?utm_...
|
| There's also then a in person course to actually do it!
| trey-jones wrote:
| I want to respond here because I actually built (am still
| building) my own house. I looked around for this type of thing
| back when I started, which was 2008. At the time I didn't really
| find anything. My wife and I ended up drawing it out ourselves,
| and my dad and I ended up sort of winging it during construction.
| As in, "These plans don't quite work here, so we'll make these
| adjustments right now." It should be said also that neither I nor
| my wife are architects. At the time I would have said my dad was
| an extremely experienced and proficient amateur builder (he also
| built his house around 1980), and that I was just an amateur.
| After 15 years of working on this project, I will call myself a
| proficient amateur as well. I know that we could have done better
| at planning - I did not know enough about building before we
| started and relied too heavily on my dad during those times. If I
| had the opportunity to do it a second time, it would be better,
| but I'm not doing it! (Probably).
|
| Here are some of the benefits of building your own house:
|
| 1. You know everything about it. Well, some things you forget,
| but most of it remains in the back of your mind. "Didn't I run
| some extra wire here just in case?"
|
| 2. You learn all of the skills that you will need to maintain
| your home, if you don't already have them. This means you never
| need a handyman (but your weekends are shot).
|
| 3. Just like nobody will watch your money like you, nobody will
| build your house like you. There are a lot of really crappy
| houses being built in 2023, and for the last 75 years or so. The
| reason for the crappiness, of course, is money.Being able to make
| the decision to use quality building materials instead of
| collecting 10% more profit, for example, can result in a really
| big improvement over conventional building.
|
| 4. It's really satisfying living in your handiwork. I'm sure
| there are more reasons - I can't write all day.
|
| Now the pitfalls and reasons it sucks:
|
| 1. It's really frustrating living in your handiwork. For me,
| every time I walk past something that still needs my attention,
| it's a little stressor. Of course that's not too different from
| regular homeownership, I think. There are also a lot of times
| that I wish I would have planned it better.
|
| 2. Regulations (and financing) are _really, really_ not in favor
| of building your own home. Unless you are a professional builder
| as well. Permits will expire way too soon, you won 't understand
| their processes, they won't understand your processes. Assuming
| you need to borrow money, the bank won't know what the hell to
| do. They will literally freak out and nobody will be able to help
| you. This is too far outside of their routines.
|
| 3. It's a lifetime commitment. I mean, I guess it doesn't have to
| be, but for me it definitely feels that way. I built too big, and
| now I'm stuck working on it for what feels like forever.
|
| Also, I'm in a temperate climate (Georgia, USA) where I don't
| have to worry about cold weather too much. I'm back in the woods
| where people don't ask too many questions. I have the support of
| my family, which I couldn't have done without. Overall, I'm happy
| with where I am. I usually enjoy the work, and at this point I
| don't mind taking time to do other things as well.
| jameshowison wrote:
| Not open plans, but cool CC licensed construction details/manual:
|
| https://hammerandhand.com/best-practices/manual/
|
| e.g., retrofit windows:
|
| https://hammerandhand.com/best-practices/manual/3-windows-do...
| bombcar wrote:
| I want the plans for a bog-simple square house with boring peaked
| roof.
|
| I want it to be designed to minimize cuts and make building
| simple. I want the roof to be two slabs with no fancy
| protrusions, angles, gables, etc.
|
| I want something that is easy to build and maintain.
|
| As far as I've been able to find out, bardominiums are the
| closest to what I want.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Loads of people on YouTube building those, usually as cabins.
| Bushradical has several small ones, but there are plenty of
| examples out there. Haven't found any plans, per se, but I
| haven't really looked, either.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The envelope on your house is the least complex part of it. How
| are you going to insulate? Where are vapor and air barriers?
| How will your framing interface to your foundation? What will
| your foundation design look like depending on soil conditions,
| moisture, frost heave, etc? What kind of plumbing, mechanical,
| and electrical components and infrastructure are required
| according to local code?
|
| The frame of the house is easy. The rest is not.
| bliteben wrote:
| What you are asking for is a gabled roof. It's honestly a great
| design too if it will fit the site.
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gable_roof
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, that's it (gable or a-frame, maybe possibly consider a
| Gambrel but I don't know if that "bend" greatly increases the
| possibility of various forms of failure).
|
| What I'm really looking for is someone who has taken a basic
| "square/rectangular" house and though out interesting and
| intelligent ways of arranging the rooms inside.
| simonsarris wrote:
| That's essentially what I designed for myself, to reduce budget
| while (IMO) still looking pretty and historic. It's a 30x38
| foot box. I've wrote a bit about it:
|
| https://map.simonsarris.com/p/designing-a-new-old-home-begin...
|
| But what you decide for the interior plan, to be ideal for you,
| is very much up to how you plan to use your house.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's just what I was kind of looking for - I'll be certain
| to read up on it.
|
| Part of what I want to see is how others use their space, and
| use that as a "springboard" to how I could use mine.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Other terminology would be shop house or shouse. Not a lot of
| options for large windows, but durable and easy to heat.
|
| https://www.houseplans.com/collection/shouse-plans
| baking wrote:
| Do you mean barndominiums?
| bombcar wrote:
| Ha! No, I'm planning on building entirely of bards, they may
| not insulate well but the acoustics is to die for.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Any GC (General Contractor) in Massachusetts (US) can build one
| of those for you. They are called "Ranches" and "Raised
| Ranches" depending on how deep the foundation is at your front
| door.
|
| Any GC should have a huge stack of these plans sitting around,
| or has worked with a designer that can quickly edit a pre-
| existing plan for you.
|
| FWIW: I grew up in a Raised Ranch built into the side of a
| hill. One side had the basement mostly buried, the other side
| had the basement wall mostly exposed with a garage. The front
| door was at the point where the basement as 50% underground, so
| the entry has a very high, and impressive ceiling. At the end
| of the day, it was still a box with the roof you want.
| turtlebits wrote:
| You can literally sketch this yourself and give to a structural
| engineer and file for a permit to build.
| gottorf wrote:
| I'm not sure where you're located, but here in the US you can
| build the building you're describing (a square house with a
| gable roof, without eaves if you want the roof to terminate at
| the wall) pretty easily with regular dimensional lumber
| framing.
|
| Barndominiums generally imply steel framing and requires heavy
| equipment, at least to hoist the steel beams into place. They
| are less easy to build and maintain than a stick-framed home,
| in my opinion. A simple incarnation of a latter could be thrown
| up by two hobbyists, if it's small enough.
|
| Lstiburek's "perfect wall"[0] may be of interest to you. Simply
| put, layered from the inside to the outside, it's drywall, wood
| studs (with batt insulation), sheathing (plywood or OSB),
| plastic house-wrap over the sheathing to serve as an air and
| vapor barrier, some depth of external insulation on top of that
| in the form of boards, then finally the exterior cladding.
|
| [0]:
| https://buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-the-p...
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, the perfect wall is definitely part of it - and I want
| eaves that overhang quite far because that protects the walls
| something fierce -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPUvfTipgyg
|
| Something like this look: https://www.stocksy.com/791391/two-
| story-house-with-wrap-aro... is exceptionally resistant to
| weather issues.
| 0x53 wrote:
| I have wanted to build something similar for a long time, but I
| would like it to be a passive house as well. I gave up on ever
| finding a premade plan. Instead I have been using fusion 360
| and sweet home 3d to design it myself.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you're willing to make your final result available I'd
| certainly take a look!
|
| I realize that actually building it will require
| customization for local codes, etc, but I'd love a place to
| start - and I want to integrate building science instead of
| building spectacle.
|
| The big thing is the detailed blueprints. The "look" is just
| the start of it.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| You can find some plans over here:
| https://www.sweethome3d.com/gallery.jsp
|
| Check also their forum for many member submitted plans:
| https://www.sweethome3d.com/support/forum/listthreads?forum=...
|
| Did I mention that the free/open source software Sweet Home 3D is
| great :-) It's been posted a few times on HN.
| thegabriele wrote:
| What if you just wanted to train a specialized diffusion model on
| free house plans?
| regularfry wrote:
| The example I'm aware of is the Segal Method:
| https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Segal_Method
|
| It's a modular design system based on the dimensions of commonly-
| available construction material, intended to be both cheap and
| easy to construct without (too much) assistance.
|
| The gotcha is that it's based on dimensions of materials commonly
| available in the 1960's, so I have no idea if something you
| bought today would fit.
| hedgehog wrote:
| His design system doesn't try to get anywhere near modern
| levels of insulation and overall thermal performance, though I
| suspect that is fixable and even at the time he modified the
| system as locally available materials changed. I think it would
| be really interesting to do an update, everything is sort of on
| a grid system so it should be relatively amenable to building
| software tools to help with the analysis and generating
| complete sets of plans. Even if I had those tools and the time
| to do my own build I think I would want an experienced
| architect involved with input into the design.
| Untit1ed wrote:
| Not exactly a database but the Australian government has a few
| available at https://www.yourhome.gov.au/house-designs
| HenryBemis wrote:
| May I assume that you want a DB so that you can see similarly
| sized houses/flats and get ideas on laytouts, balconies, etc?
|
| Someone already wrote: ads. Go to your house/flat hunting website
| of choice, use the appropriate filters (house/flat) floors,
| sqm/sqft, etc. Usually the photos and the layout are there, and
| if you put a price range you can also see the cheap ones vs the
| expensive ones.
| prawn wrote:
| Presumably they want detailed drawings that can be taken to a
| builder and bypass the cost of an architect and draftsperson.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| A very surprising number of housing listings don't include a
| drawing/diagram of the floor plan. Just photos of the interior
| taken with a wide-angle lens that distorts the size of
| everything.
| b59831 wrote:
| [dead]
| philomath_mn wrote:
| Important questions:
|
| - Are you going to build it? OR
|
| - Are you going to act as the general contractor? OR
|
| - Are you going to have a builder build it?
|
| I just finished the lattermost process. In that case, you can get
| ideas from open source plans, but getting a builder to build your
| plans will be a full-custom build with the corresponding costs.
|
| We looked at the plans several builders offered, modified one we
| liked, and then had them build it. From what I can tell, this
| route saved a lot of time and cost (assuming you are going the
| builder route).
| max_ wrote:
| I just got side project idea, dribble/GitHub for Architects. What
| do you guys think?
| weego wrote:
| There's no such thing as good "generic" architecture. Context
| and location are key.
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| Episodes of This Old House.
| Mycromanage wrote:
| app.sketchup.com is the AMAZING web app version of SketchUp. In
| the 3D Warehouse, there are millions of homes & buildings already
| made. You can download all for FREE and then easily take them
| apart & make them unique. NOTE! When you first get to the 3D
| Warehouse area, you'll default be in & searching the "Products"
| area, this is just for official Products that manufacturers have
| uploaded (super cool!) but you must click "Models" button/area
| right next to that, this is where billions of models uploaded by
| random people are found & 99% of the time the only place to
| search. Some Models are insanely detailed. Keep searching
| different words to find what you want, search here is picky. Good
| Luck!
| paulhart wrote:
| Here's a set of designs from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing
| Corporation, all lovingly posted by an acquaintance to IA:
|
| https://archive.org/search?query=Canadian+house+designs
| digitcatphd wrote:
| I would still advise you to use an architect. Different home
| structures and styles work better in different conditions. You
| should first consult a specialist and seek confirmation before
| doing if fully DIY.
| uptown wrote:
| Not exactly what you're looking for, but I've gotten hooked on
| the "Floorplan" subreddit lately:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/floorplan/
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| jppope wrote:
| The city of South bend has a bunch available:
| https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/10/6/pre-approved-h...
| jmforsythe wrote:
| Could we please stop calling anything with a permissive copyright
| "open source"?
| turtlebits wrote:
| Just browse the myriad of floor plan sites and find one you like.
|
| Any plan (at least in my area) is going to require an licensed
| Architect stamp and engineering to match local code.
|
| It's also worth it to spend the money up front to get a house
| designed that fits your lot (terrain, light, elevation, etc) -
| you'll more than make up for it in final home value.
| gbalint wrote:
| In Hungary there is a public project to create freely accessible
| house plans with all necessary documentation to start to build
| them. The website is only available in Hungarian (but google
| translate manages to translate it quite well), and the houses are
| mostly really small compared to American standards, and their
| style is just way different from American houses. Anyway, let me
| drop the link here, maybe there is something interesting to be
| found there: https://www.oeny.hu/oeny/nmtk/mintatervek
| ilyt wrote:
| Now I'm interested, why would someone in
|
| https://www.oeny.hu/oeny/nmtk/tervreszletek/NMTK-138
|
| waste all that space on the recessed entrance instead of just
| making straight wall to the roof ?
| seszett wrote:
| It provides shadow and protection from rain above the
| entrance. It's a pretty common design.
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