Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 262 posts

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

#151

Post by bluGill »

hnbad wrote: post #106
bluGill wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> lengthy approval process

This is corruption. The process of approval should not be lengthy of costly.

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

#152

Post by Dowwie »

mountainriver wrote: post #80

Anyone interested in building this? My family has a long history in construction and I now work in AI, this is piquing my interest

I've been interested in this concept and mulled it over for years. I can't find an incentives model that leads to success. Nonetheless, group deliberations with fresh perspectives could lead to interesting new ideas. I'm open to connecting with others.

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

#154

Post by rcazangi »

toast0 wrote: post #120
rcazangi wrote: post #104

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…

Doesn't sound so simple to me :)

In any case, I take it as a matter of tradeoffs. And the financial side of it is one of the tradeoffs. I probably would not build my own house - despite all the benefits - if it cost me double compared to a house readily available for sale, for example.

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

#155

Post by ilyt »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #21

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…

> 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 neighbour? Would it deal well with moisture, or fires, or access roads? Would you build a porch where you can laze away late summer afternoons and feel everything's just right with the world, or a place to dry laundry where nobody goes?

Would you, the first-time-house designer be able to accommodate for all those issues? Or even know they exist in the first place?

> If you really want to design your own house (a great idea), look up materials around A Pattern Language instead. Learn what makes a great house, then design a plan incorporating those ideas but customised towards your plot and your needs.

Horrible idea. By all means be the input in the process, but pick someone that actually knows how building works and that can instantly point out any misunderstanding or lacks of knowledge you have.

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

#156

Post by insaneirish »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #67
zemvpferreira wrote: post #21

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…

> The idea of planning a house without taking into account the site where it will sit will never produce a good house. There's a free software tool from National Renewable Energy Labs that lets you make a rough sketch of your house, including orientation and try alternate features to determine if adding more insulation would be worth it. Or a more efficient furnace. Each airport (at least in the US) measures weather…

Love BEopt! It’s definitely a favorite in the “construction nerd” community (such as https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/). I used it quite a bit in making design choices for an extensive renovation on my own home.

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

#157

Post by ilyt »

lostapathy wrote: post #87
zemvpferreira wrote: post #21

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…

They just want to sell a bunch of houses quickly, not to create perfect houses. Good enough is quite literally good enough for them.

There will be compromises because they build for average buyer, not for you.

And people that are looking for a house usually want to move there as soon as possible, doing custom not only means you need to pay more but that you also have to wait longer and pay for the place you're currently living extra year or two.

Ideally all would start from some common plans then architect would customize it based on the future home owner input but that's frankly expensive.

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

#158

Post by ilyt »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #112
mike_d wrote: 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…

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. No they aren't. This thread was started by someone saying "The idea of planning a house without taking into account the site where it will sit will never produce a good house.". Both of you (and everyone) is saying this isn't true.

I think the "good house" would need to be defined first.

Like, going by objective measures like "how well it is insulated and how much it costs to cool/heat it", or "how well it uses the space of the plot" most of them fall well within "good", partly because at least on insulation level most countries require them to be at least decent.

But how well that fits the new owners ? Now that's where there would be actual benefit from either customization or doing it from scratch.

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

#159

Post by ilyt »

Dowwie wrote: post #140
zemvpferreira wrote: post #21

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 g…

Pretty much. Even if custom costed exactly same money, it still means someone would need to wait 1-2 years before it is built vs just moving in to new house within a month

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

#160

Post by ilyt »

athenot wrote: post #76
fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Humidity is one difference that comes to mind. In most of Texas, the air outside is humid, you need a moisture barrier between your structural wall and your rainscreen/siding. In Calgary, cold winters will have very dry air, so the humidity will be much higher inside the house. So the moisture barrier needs to be on the other side. In either case, you don't want the insulation layer or the structural layer to be coll…

Right but "put that plastic thingy on one or the other side" isn't exactly something needing whole new plans for a house
Post reply on HN