Design clues

Surprisingly, the more I learned about designing a house, the more I realized that many of the decisions are already made for you. This is because of layout, practicality in design and the fact there are many stock and standard sizes to items. Of course you can design your house outside of standard sizes but this just increases the cost to the house considerably. Some of the design features that influenced the design of the house include:

1. the location and size of the garage decides much of the frontage/ street appeal of the house. Like I’ve stated before, in our case a tree that could not be removed obstructed one side and the curb cut was on the other side determining the location of the garage from the start.

2. The size of the garage is a minimum 12′ for a single garage and 20′ for a double.

3. you should look at published and manufacturers tables to know this for sure but basically maximum floor joists spans between either bearing walls (ie exterior) or beams is about 18′ for solid wood and 22′ for manufactured. That means in a house that is either 30′ wide or 30′ deep there will be at least one bearing wall down the middle. Location of posts for beams and size of beams and footings also follow rules but are basically designed and stamped by the engineer.

4. interior doors are generally 2’6″ (30″) wide and 80″ tall. Doors can come in other sizes but this I believe is the most common size.

5. kitchen cabinets generally come in multiples of 3″ ie 15-18-21-24″ wide. Bottom cabinets are always 24″ and top cabinets can be either 12″ or 18″ (more expensive but better) deep.  The bottom cabinets always end at 34 1/2″ high and the top cabinets start at 54″ and up. The upper cabinets can extend as close to the ceiling as you like as they have different sizes available.

6. walkways and staircases that allow people to move through the house should be at least 3′ wide and preferably 4′ or more.

7. rooms and sitting areas should be laid out in a 12×12′ pattern.

8. the kitchen lay out is determined by a triangular arrangement of the sink, stove and refrigerator where the sum of the sides of the triangle is at most 26′ to minimize walking between appliances while cooking

9. the kitchen counter top should be a minimum of 20′ length

10. the dishwasher must always be close to a sink for drainage

11. the furnace should be centrally located to maximize the efficiency of the vent ducts and minimize distance of runs

12. the height and width or each step in a staircase must fit according to rules to be comfortable to use ( your designer or computer program can decided this but there are graphs and tables for this as well)

13. There are many codes that determine other factors in the house ie % window area in basement to allow fire egress, % window area in each wall, % window area in walls adjacent to other houses, limiting distance between wall and property line to allow for fire code, minimum height of ceiling above a staircase et et.

14. A lot of attention should be placed on space around objects allow for first minimum space required to move and for appropriate proportions. For example, there is a minimum space in front of a dishwasher, oven and fridge to allow for the door to open and still stand in front of the appliance (I would think at least 30″ but likely more is required). There is a minimum space around a fireplace hearth (check ASTM requirements but I think it is 1′ on each side and 4′ in front non combustible material). There is a minimum space to allow doors to open and close and in front of toilets, counter tops et et. In addition to these minimum space requirements, space should be proportionate to the size of the hall and room. There are a lot of space requirements already established by the National Kitchen and Bath Association (NKBA) or American Disability Act Accessibility Guidelines for Building Homes (ADA).

For all these reasons and many more, much of the design of the house is actually already determined before you even begin and it is really a lot about reading the rules that govern how a house is built. In general, I think for many of the people out there, a good designer/ architect will help you through this process.

Home Design Software Review

I used two different home design software programs out there.

Punch Home Design Software for Mac- This program provides a basic and simple method of designing a house. I played with this for a few months but than I became frustrated because I wanted a higher level of detail. For example, I wanted to include pictures of the gutters, frieze, corner moldings and coins. I think these are important architectural details that improve the street appeal for the house.

Chief Architect- Once I used this, I realized that I was wasting my time with the other program. Forget anything about the top ten list for home design software programs, this program is in a complete other league. The level of detail in this program is amazing from the fine details it allows in determining the structure of each wall ie an exterior wall can be defined like this: 1/2 drywall, vapour barrier, 2X4 stud 16″o.c, 1/2 plywood, air barrier, firring strips, siding and measurements are determined to the smallest fraction or decimal. It also includes multiple examples of interior/ exterior moldings, furniture, dining room/ bed room sets. There are multiple manufacturers who have provided cad files for their products to be included in your design. You can also copy pictures from the internet or your own sources to create texture files of flooring/ tiling and even exterior views from inside the house. This product is literally one step below professional cad drawings and should be included in all small contracting firms who wish to provide their own quick designs and drawings for clientele. The downside is this program is 5X more expensive than the other one.

In addition, I used Project Libre for my timeline and Gantt chart. It is free so it is hard to argue the price point but I have really no comparison. In some things, I found it difficult to manipulate but as a whole it was easy enough for me to understand and you can see the Gantt chart timeline on the website to decide for yourself. It prints to pdf’s and 11X18″paper.

 

Designing a house

Here are some of the earlier sketches of the house we wanted. Some of these sketches were done before we found our property and as a result our design influences were limited to what we thought we could find in our neighbourhood ie 40-50′ wide property. Once we had our land than additional influences came into play such as land mark features ie lakeview and parkview, location of curb cut for the drive way, location of obstructing trees et et.

 

Once we got our piece of land, we needed to emphasize the lakeview on the left side (the south side) of our house and de emphasize the right side which was obstructed by a large tree. The current rendition looks like the following:

We would have preferred to move the garage to the right side but the curb cut was on the left side and a large obstructing tree was on the right preventing any driveway in that area. I prefer to isolate the garage from the house to avoid the cold floor/ venting/ gas leak and insulation problems you get building above the garage. So this is what we had until the next stage when we began working with our builder.

The first few drafts

The design of a house is influenced by a number of factors. These include the property size, the zoning requirements in the area, the appearance of the neighbourhood and adjacent houses, the presence of landmark features, what you like. I think before you buy a property, you should have an idea what you would like and in turn, your house will be influenced by what your property size is.

For example, I knew from the beginning that I wanted a flat piece of land with no trees near the house structure. I also knew if we wanted to stay in the area, most of the properties in our area were at most 60′ wide. More often the house properties were 40-50′ wide. As I said earlier, the width of the land is more important than the length. I than became interested in victorian house designs that could accommodate that width. Finally, I wanted an attached garage but I didn’t want to have living space above the garage (I have my reasons but mainly because I find this space cold and providing insulation and ducting through the garage is always trickier).  This of course meant that I would need either 12′ frontage for a single garage or 20′ frontage for a double garage. I came across an old design by a victorian era architect named George F Barber that met most of our design specifications. This included 4 bedrooms, street appeal and a house width of 38′.  With a single attached garage the total width would be 50′ and with side yard set backs, we would need a property at least 56′ wide.

How to design your house

Designing a house is a long and complex process. I’ll do my best to describe how it worked for us but I’m sure there are many ways to get it done.

I’ll begin with why we wanted a new house.

Our family was getting bigger and many of the compromises we made in buying our first house was becoming more and more of a nuisance. For example we had 3 bed rooms but with a teenager in the family that didn’t want to share, we really wanted 4 bedrooms. Also, we didn’t have a garage and our garbage/ recycling bins were often left in awkward places around the house. Those were our biggest problems in the beginning. When we started looking for a place to live in, we didn’t know that we were going to try and build our new house.

My wife and I had many discussions about the perfect house we would like to live in. I think both of us are very simple people so we didn’t think what we wanted was much. Of course, if you live with endless wealth and land than you can dream up the biggest mansion with every amenity possible. However, we knew that this was never going to be possible so we talked and made a list of all the nice things we would like. We knew we wanted the garage and the extra bedroom. Everyone wants a bigger kitchen and so we said that we would be satisfied with getting just that. After that we looked at designs of houses and both my wife and I agreed quickly that we loved the ‘downtown’ victorian architecture. From the nice front porches, to the vivid colours of blue, green, orange to the turrets that created coves and niches inside the house. This was our beginning.

Example of Blue Victorian House we like (Photo credit: FlyingColors (i) Contact)

After this, we sat down with our children and everyone was allowed to tell us one thing they would like in the new house. Of course, you have to put this in perspective and understand that my children are two girls and a boy 13, 6 and 3 years old. So the list looked something like this:

1. swimming pool

2.hockey stick room ( I was really proud of my boy for wanting this)

3. amusement park ( I’ll assume this means play structure)

4. 4 bedrooms

5. office/ library

6. attached garage

7. laundry chute

8. built in closets for everyone

So that was our list and we went from there.

Our land

We’ve lived in our neighbourhood for 5 to 6 years and over that period of time, we spent a lot of time with our kids in a local park. The area was small but secluded. It featured swings, slides, a baseball diamond and a splash pad for the summer. In the winter, the neighbours ice a hockey rink. We spent a lot of time in that park looking at our kids and one day it struck me that I would love to own one of the houses across the street facing the park. There were only a few houses in that location, maybe 6 in total. All of the houses were built almost 60 years ago and the last house that sold in that small area was almost 20 years ago. People liked to live and see their kids grow up in those houses. I always said that if a house in that little area came up for sale I would try to buy it. So when we got our call in Vancouver, I was almost in disbelief that one of those houses was for sale.

I remember checking the address on google maps and than asking my wife if she was interested. Despite all the problems related to building a house, my wife told me to buy it. So we did. It didnt happen quite so fast but over the course of 1 month we were able to negotiate a fair price for the land.

 The white house is ours

The land was good but not perfect. There was a park across the street. The land was 52X135′ although I would have preferred a wider piece of land, it was flat, we measured the trees in the front and backyard to determine if we were going to be restricted in our building, we got a survey of the land and this showed no easements on the property and the dimensions of the land were correct. There were a few downsides such as the asbestos in the roof and the oil tank in the basement but we incorporated these costs in the costs of the purchase. We didn’t overspend on the house structure but the final estimated house value would support the costs of our construction. Maybe the best feature of the house was the view that we knew would be there across the park. In this and only a few houses at the end of the street and even in our entire city, we could see the lake!

The perfect land

My idea of the perfect land to build a new house is the following:

1. the real estate value in the area must support the house you intend to build. If you want a mansion than you must buy near mansions, but if you buy in the suburbs than your house will end up like a house in the suburbs. Buy in the area with that supports the highest real estate value you can afford.

2. ironically, if you intend to demolish your house and build it from the footings, than you should also look for a place that has the cheapest house possible in the worst condition. This means that in your purchase you are spending less on the house and more on the land and you will retain as much of that value when you demolish the house and start building. If you choose only to renovate or modify or gut your existing house than you should look for the house with the most appropriate size, structure and layout that you need.

3. you should avoid any plots of land with hills or valleys as this will limit your construction. For example in our area, zoning bylaws limit houses to two stories and 9 meters high from the average grade measured at the street level. If for example your house is on a hill and your garage is below grade, they may actually count the below grade garage as your first floor limiting you to only a bungalow and your 9 meters start at the street level but your house actually starts on top of the hill. Buy a flat piece of land.

4. avoid large trees near the house you want to build. In our area and I believe in most areas, city bylaws prohibit the destruction of ‘mature’ trees even on private property. If a ‘mature’ tree defined as 30 cm diameter measured at 140cm height (could be defined differently in you neighbourhood) is damaged on your property before, during or even after the construction of the house, the city may be able to fine you the amount they believe is necessary to replace that tree. The amount may measure in the thousands. Even if you buy the property with the intention of applying for a permit to remove the tree, you will need an arborist report and still pay the city a fine to remove the tree. This amount may also be in the thousands or tens of thousands but at least it would than be legal to remove the tree. Large trees near a house also damage the weeping tile and sewage drainage so for these reasons its better to have them away from the house either in the far backyard or frontyard.

5. Avoid houses near ravines, rivers, cliffs or other natural landmarks that may trigger an environmental audit or an application to the local conservation authorities. This just takes up more time, is costly and may limit what you can build on the land

6. Avoid any heritage homes unless you plan to keep the exterior structure and absolutely love the appearance. Even still, you may be forced to have an additional application/ review to meet the requirements of the heritage designation

7. The width of a land is generally more important than the depth. Of course, people would love to have the largest plot of land possible to build their house but in the real world in the city often you need to choose between lands that are of limited size. Most pieces of land that I have seen are longer than they are wide. Zoning bylaws in our area generally limit the ‘roof’ area of the house to 33% of the land area ie a 50X100′ plot of land measures 5000 sqft and the largest roof you can build on that land is 1650 sqft. A two storey house would have a maximum living space of 3300sqft. In addition, zoning rules often require front yard/ backyard and side yard set backs. In our neighbourhood that is 6m in the front (in some areas it is determined by the average set back of the two adjacent houses on each side) and 1.2m (3′) on each sides. Building code restrictions also stipulate a ‘limiting distance’ on the wall adjacent to another dwelling. If you have houses on either side of your house than this limiting distance is determined by the % area of windows in your planned house. The intention of the rule is to limit the spread of fires from 1 house to the next and generally windows are easy points of spreading of fires. If you intend to have more windows than the sideyard setback increases on the side adjacent to another house and if you have no windows than in our area, this distance is 3′. So for all these reasons the size of your intended house is restricted by several rules. In our example of a 50′ wide land with a maximum roof area of 1650 sqft, the house can start at most 6 meters back from the private property (not necessarily the street as there is often city land in the front along the street/ sidewalk) and 44′ wide (assuming we have no windows on either side of the house). To have a roof of 1650 sqft the length of the house can be up to 37.5′. The back yard setback is not usually a consideration unless you have a very shallow piece of land. In most cases, people prefer to have more of a backyard (useful space) than a side yard (not useful space). Within this house of 44’X37.5′ if you have a single car garage, you will commit a minimum of 12′ frontage to that garage. If it is a double garage at least 20′. So a double garage house will look like two garages and 24′ of house in the front. If the width of your land increases even by 5′ than your house changes substantially (ie think of 5 extra feet multiplied by 100). Land area is now 5500 sqft, max roof area 1815 sqft max living space 3630 (that 5 extra feet gave us 300 extra sqft of living space), the max width of the house is now 49′ and the massing of our house looks a lot better because our double garage of 20′ now balances better with 29′ of actually house facing the frontage (yeah for street appeal!). The max length of our house is still 37 feet and we still get a nice back yard with 300 extra sqft of living space. I’ve found in fact that every 6″ of the width of your land makes a huge difference on the design of your house.

8. dont buy a corner lot because you now have two front yard setbacks (in our case 6m from each street) that limits where you can build your house

9. avoid all easements and ‘right of way’ that will restrict where you can build your house. if you buy the property and an easement is there you cant build there.

10. avoid houses that have asbestos, in ground oil tanks or oil tanks in the basement. In our area, a hazardous substance survey is required to document them and a certificate after removal is necessary before the application for demolition permit is provided. On the flip side, it is actually better to have a house that is not connected to services because there is often a fee for connecting and disconnecting these services during the construction and you can save yourself half the money if you dont have to disconnect the house in the first place (several thousands of dollars)

That’s my idea of a perfect piece of land to build a house. Of course the location and view must be great but I think this would be factored in the estimated final value of your house and there are a lot of personal preferences out there. To find out how we did, keep reading!

Book review

Cover of Sheds & Garages (Outdoor Buildings)

1. Barbers Turn of the Century Houses by George F Barber and Co.  (2 stars **)

I love victorian era houses and this was where I began in researching house designs that I liked. This book has many crude drawings of houses George F Barber designed and built.

2. Sheds & Garages by Sunset Media (1 star *)

This is a picture book of sheds and garages. It teaches you some basics but is really not a serious building book.

3. Ultimate Guide to Ceramic Tile and Stone by  Creative Homeowner (1 star *)

Another picture book. It gives good ideas about design especially with tiling the range hood. There are also some tricks in the book about tiling.

4. Get your house right by Marianne Cusato & Ben Pentreath (5 stars *****)

Cover of Get Your House Right  via Amazon

In my opinion, this is a must read book for anyone considering how to build a house. There is information in this book that will open your eyes up to the world of design and make you realize how ugly some houses are from the word ‘dog nosed houses’ to ‘mcmansion houses’. There is amazing detail on the size and proportion of windows, frieze, moldings, massing et et.This book goes a long way in teaching regular people and designers how not to design an ugly house

5. Building Construction illustrated by Francis DK Ching (4 starts ****)

I read a lot of books about construction details and this is a good one to start with. It has excellent illustrations and is thorough.

6. Designing your perfect house by William J Hirsch Jr (3 stars ***)

I came across few design architect books I could read but this is a simple book that illustrates basic ideas that should be incorporated in your planning. From choosing the correct location to considering flow through your house. Some of the house examples unfortunately are for the super rich and may not apply to people building a modest home

7. Smart Womans Guide to Homebuilding by Dori Howard (4 starts ****)Cover of “Building Construction Illustrat…

Cover of Building Construction Illustrated

A lot of the basic questions you need to ask about your contractor, architect, banker are in this book. It is a good start to organizing your questions once you have agreed to do it but need to find people to help you.

8. Carpentry & Construction by Mark R Miller and Rex Miller (4 stars ****)

This is an excellent book on how to build a house and goes into some of the nitty gritty like how to use a framing square to build a roof. All the calculations to cut rafters for hip. It is supposed to be a carpenter book but in truth this and many of the books are jack of all trade books that includes stuff on drywalling, plumbing, kitchen installation et et. It has good illustrations

9. Canadian Wood-Frame House Construction by CMHC (4 stars ****)

This is another good construction book that gives you a lot of basics about building a house. It is similar and redundant to some of the other building books. It has good explanations on Heat recovery ventilators and framing of floor penetrations that require double/ triple headers and trimmers that I haven’t seen much of in other books. Its based on the 2005 Canadian National Building Code as well so I thought it was quite reliable.

Cover of Carpentry & Construction

10. 2005 Canadian National Building Code by Commission on Building and Fire Codes National Research Council (2 star **)

Ok I didn’t read this entire thing. There is now an updated version but each version is 300$ and is a 4? volume tome of 1500 pages. It is essentially un readable because it has lots of technical jargon but for very precise information ie for limiting distance you can use the index to just get the information you want. Some of the other books may disagree on construction methods and basically this book (or now the 2010 version) is the standard. It should be clear as well that some of the building instructions are specific and some just mandate an end goal leaving the method of construction up to the builder.

11. Complete Building Construction 5th ed by Rex Miller & Eugene Leger (4 star ****)

This is another good construction book. I liked this book because it included rudimentary engineering calculations for allowable girder spans, post spacings, tributary areas, bearing load and heat flow. It also includes some scientific evidence to challenge building methods ie wire mesh in floor slab is not better than a thicker slab or is an air barrier necessary? I think it is a bit out of date but generally a good book.

12. The Complete Guide to Contracting your Home by Kent Lester and Dave McHuerty (3 star ***)

I found this difficult to read because it assumes a basic construction vocabulary from the beginning (they tell you to read the glossary but this is difficult) and it has lots of pages of dense information. After reading some of the other books it can become easier to understand. It has lots of good check lists to go through when talking to a contractor and organizing yourself but even that I found too thorough to be practical. When the checklist is 100 items long than it’s easy to get lost along the way. Construction checklists should be computerized to keep easier track of events and planning using a Gantt chart or a Project Management software. Lists of checklists are difficult to read. It otherwise gives a thorough and detailed analysis of step by step management of how to construct your own home from beginning to end.

13. Building an Affordable House by Fernando Pages Ruiz (4 star ****)

This was one book that really helped my understanding of factors during the house building project that actually reduced the cost or where more cost effective. It is an easy to read book and has numerous hints. Some of them will not apply to your situation but some will.

14. New Old House by Ed Knapp (2 star **)

This is a picture book which is just useful to give some ideas about design. Unfortunately, most custom builders will not consider the ideas in this book because they ironically are too ‘custom’ using antique and reclaimed materials. The ironic thing I found about custom builders is that although your house is truly custom, it is still made with stock materials and standard sizes/ layouts.

15. Measuring, Marking & Layout by John Carroll

I didnt read this book yet but I hoped to soon.

 

 

What can you afford

This is a difficult question but one of the first questions that you need to ask. There are several options to build your own house and depending what is suited to your situation, this should determine what type of home you can afford. They are:

1. self finance- you are very rich and have enough cash to pay for everything. Does that mean you SHOULD spend as much as you want on the house? I and many people would argue no for the reasons below

2. maximize credit- if you have assets with considerable equity ie a home with 80+% equity or other forms of collateral to extend credit than you can use these to finance your build. In our country, banks will only give Home equity line of credits (HELOC) up to 65% total equity and total borrowing cannot exceed 80% but this is different than a construction loan (see below). For example, in the above example if the home owner had 80% equity in their house they can get a line of credit for an additional 45% of your house to finance your building. This is only true if you are not destroying your house. If you are destroying your house, the bank will not provide a HELOC against the house and may in fact foreclose on the mortgage the moment they realize you have destroyed the house. In this case you must pursue option 1 or 3

3. construction loan- from my experience, getting a  construction loan from a retail bank requires dealing with the right person who is familiar with the loans and is able to get the right advice. In most cases, it seem that that a construction loan requires at least 35% equity in the land value and sufficient cash to build up to the second milestone payment. We had great difficulty understanding this but to give you a better example, if you have a land only value of 500k you could mortgage up to 325k and you would have to give the bank the balance 175k to begin with. The mortgage for the land would be considered the first milestone payment and the bank will not give you anymore money until you reach the second milestone. That may be foundation only or exterior walls and roof or et et… whatever the second milestone is according to that bank. Because they dont give you the money until you reach that point than you will need money to get there and that could be any amount between 100k to 300k. That sounds like a lot of equity and it is. In fact, it is usually more than this because the initial payment was for land only but in most cases when you buy land you are in fact buying land and a house. So if your land value is only 500k but you buy the initial house and land for 600k thinking you would demolition the house than you add 100k to the costs. You wont get this money back if you demolish the house. If you wish to keep the equity in the house than you should renovate or gut the house. In our scenario you would need at least 325 to 500k cash to begin. The advantage of a construction mortgage is once construction begins, you pay only the interest of the mortgage until completion of the house. At our current retail bank rate that would be about 3% per annum

When considering the cost of the house, you should also consider whether the final value of the house in that location is worth paying for. For example, if the bank appraisal of the final house value is 1 million dollars land and house than you should not spend more money on that house than that amount. In our above example, if our land value is 500k than you should not spend more than 500k on building the house. In truth, if you spend 600k on the land and house and tear down the house than you should not spend more than 400k on building the house.

This is an important rule but it is restrictive. The bank will not give you more money than they think the value of your final house will be. If you have an idea or your real estate values in the area than this will be helpful to guess or you could ask your real estate agent. See the section on what’s the best land to start with to see more details. In general, in areas where homes are selling for less than the final house will be limited to lower quality materials ie click laminate or carpet floors, mdf moldings, osb walls. In high value areas, you can build to higher quality materials ie granite top, hardwood throughout, wainscotting et et.

Finally, whatever your final mortgage or loans turn out to be, you should consider, before you start building or buying land whether you can afford the final mortgage of the house. You can calculate this easily with online calculators but if you start with a 500k land and build a 500k house and cannot afford to mortgage an 700-800k mortgage (you already have 200-300k equity in the house) than you may be forced to sell it on completion. Consider this before you begin.