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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?

#131
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).

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

#132
post #120

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.

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 pr…

> 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.

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

#134
post #79
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…

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 Geor…

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.

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

#135
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The earthship biotecture project is really neat, thanks for sharing.

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.

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?

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

#136

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 neig…

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.

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

#137

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 neig…

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…

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.

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

#138

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…

> 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...

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

#139
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Rega…

> 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…

> 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.

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

#140

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 neig…

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.

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