Building a new house

[GWN7]

So I'm planning on down sizing in regards to my house. Sell the one in the city and move to my place in a small town I already own. There is a really small house there now (about 400 sq ft) that I can live in while I build a new place. I have sort of found a building plan that I like but it needs some tweaking.

I know I will need a engineer to stamp the foundation and approve the building plan but I want to design and build my own house.

Any one ever use a online drafting program? Or can recommend one to buy?

[MotoSook]

Before we ever considered building a guest house, I bought a version of Punch to model interior changes at our old house. It was cheap IIRC. I don't have the CD to look at but it is probably their $50 version:

Punch! Home & Landscape Design 17.5 | Punch Software | Official Site

If you want to get fancy they have more powerful versions.

Home Design | Punch Software | Official Site

The program is kinda like a watered down CAD program with pre-drawn features that you pick and drop. You can the render it in 3D and do a walk through. It'll also give you the material list so you can price material.

The architect who took my design and turned it into a permit drawing was a MAJOR disappointment. He gave me back 4 sheets and 1/2 of them was typical building details that was scanned and layed on the drawing. When it came time to build, the builder and I just went off my drawings.

But the architect's drawing were good enough for permitting. I live in a rural area and the building inspector knows I am an engineer with design and construction experience so it probably helped.

Talk to your building and zoning department. They will help you through the permitting process and recommend an architect who will make permitting easier.

I recommend you play with the house design (which ever program you use). Design it, print the design, set it on the dinner table and make fly by reviews, redesign and repeat until you are completely out of ideas. You'll make changes during construction, but the dinner table fly by reviews will minimize the cost of construction changes.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Google Sketchup is a decent and free drafting program that can do 2D and simple 3D. The 2D reminds me a lot of AutoCAD.

Make sure you talk early and often with your local city/county zoning and inspection authority. I added a 3rd car garage a while back and had to jump through a LOT of hoops, I can imagine a house is far more complicated. Fortunately they were very helpful and used to dealing with homeowners that don't do it every day.

[2porscheguy]

GWN7, you should take your plans one step further....get a 3D HOME KIT from a hobby store and build an actual scale model!...like this one:




We did this when we built our house back in '97 and our cottage. It's very simple and it allows you to get the full picture before you actually start building. I've still got ours in the basement somewhere...I'll post a pic later.

Alex

[GWN7]

That's a really nice model but I said I was downsizing not upsizing.

There are about 250 people in the town and 600 (or so) in the municipality. So the building and zoning department is really small. Only one person works in the municipality office and I have been hunting with both her husband and their son. If they have a building inspector I probably have had a drink with him at one time or another. It's all about liability. As long as the plans have a engineers stamp on them I'm good to go. As long as your paying cash you don't really have anyone looking over your shoulder.

This is what I'm sort of looking to build:



The changes I want to make are increase the footprint to 28' (or 30') X 38', swap the bedroom across from the bathroom with the bathroom and move the kitchen across to the same side. This puts the wet wall all on the same wall. Delete the side entrance. Increase the master bedroom and the bathroom sizes.

[GWN7]

Here is what the front of that plan looks like:



I'm not sure if I like the open front, but I like the garden door.

Here's another with the enclosed front porch.




Delete the side overhang

[mikeatfhc]

A large percentage of Licensed Architect's use a program called Chief Architect. It is a fantastic program and much better for smaller architectural firms to use than say AutoCAD as it is geared towards residential/commercial construction.

They sell a smaller version of their Chief Architect software that contains many of the same attributes of CA - Home Designer Suite 2014.

Home Design Software - Home Design Projects

It is really impressive for $100. They also sell cheaper versions but I cant vouch for them as I haven't used them.

Now granted, I have some CAD experience - from years ago... but I picked it up really quickly and drew this in one afternoon.

This will be the look for the front my house next spring.