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Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?

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Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?

#101

Post by lostapathy »

nonameiguess wrote: post #100
lostapathy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?

#102

Post by bombcar »

gottorf wrote: post #82
bombcar wrote: post #37

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.

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 st…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?

#103

Post by philwelch »

ctroein89 wrote: post #81
bluGill wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> 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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?

#105

Post by fsloth »

runxel wrote: post #61

Just hire an architect?! You'll need him anyway because of the building permit.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?

#106

Post by hnbad »

bluGill wrote: post #43
hnbad wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ru…

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:…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?

#108

Post by mike_d »

lostapathy wrote: post #96
duxup wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 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.

Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?

#110

Post by ilc »

nemetroid wrote: post #89
bluGill wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Not sure I've ever been in a home with two cars indoors.

Northeast USA you'll see them pretty frequently.
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