You mean plans made by someone and provided for free?
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.
Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
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Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#12May 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.
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#13Here’s a set of designs from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, all lovingly posted by an acquaintance to IA:
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#14Isn't "source" short for "source code"...?
It can but not really. "source" means "place of origin" .
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#15Not exactly what you're looking for, but I've gotten hooked on the "Floorplan" subreddit lately:
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#16It'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.
Or bug reports ...
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#17Check 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.
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.
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#18You mean plans made by someone and provided for free?
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.
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.
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#19Consider: - 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 a…
> 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.