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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?

#191
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 curren…

I think ideally we would all live in modest, reasonably sized simple rectangular houses that are built to last, to be energy efficient, and which achieve low cost through standard designs. The "then architect" part of the process results in McMansions that are awful to live in, are environmentally disastrous, and contribute to the growing unaffordability of housing for all but the upper classes.

> I think ideally we would all live in modest, reasonably sized simple rectangular houses that are built to last, to be energy efficient, and which achieve low cost through standard designs.

In an ideal world yes, in the real world you'll get run out of town being called a "communist", or no one will buy the houses because actually built-to-last homes are waaay more expensive than the cheap drywall and wood stuff that one sees go up in the air with every tornado video.

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

#192
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…

> I've literally seen the submitted plans for my house - there was absolutely no architect or engineer stamp on them.

Wouldn't fly here in Germany, or in Croatia - you need plans signed off by a licensed architect or structural engineer for anything residential.

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

#193

Several years ago the city of Phoenix released plans for a net zero single family home: https://www.phoenix.gov/sustainability/home You do have to provide some basic info to get them but I can confirm that they're a full set of plans.

I looked into that when it came out.

1. the house uses novel construction techniques. it's more of a design exercise than a serious attempt at something people might build.

2. you can't use the plans without getting sign off from an architect or engineer. this defeats the whole purposes of "releasing" plans.

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

#194
post #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 w…

> 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.

I think you're getting balloon and platform framing mixed up.

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

#195

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…

Also, don't forget local building codes. They vary a lot from location to location. You might theoretically be able to spec out a house that complies with most building codes, but it would probably look really funny and be hilariously expensive.

A roof pitched for heavy snow with storm shutters for hurricanes would stand out like a sore thumb in Arizona.

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

#196
post #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 w…

One nit, what we do today is platform framing. Balloon framing fell out of favor for probably two reasons, one it is not very fire safe (vertical channels in the walls), and two it's cheaper to build with shorter lumber.

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

#197

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…

Wow. I scanned through this entire thread, and haven't seen an automatic house plan generator. I saw one comment with a request, and no responses.

The architecture industry is enormous. Real estate is enormous. There's no automatic drawing, electrical, plumbing, insulation, ect... generators given specifications? I'm kind of amazed no one's trying to disrupt that. "Hi Stable Diffusion, please draw me blueprints for a 2000 sq. ft. house, with two stories, given this landscape. Thanks Stable Diffusion."

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

#198
post #163
post #86

In Hungary there is a public project to create freely accessible house plans with all necessary documentation to start to build them. The website is only available in Hungarian (but google translate manages to translate it quite well), and the houses are mostly really small compared to American standards, and their style is just way different from American houses. Anyway, let me drop the link here, maybe there is som…

Now I'm interested, why would someone in https://www.oeny.hu/oeny/nmtk/tervreszletek/NMTK-138 waste all that space on the recessed entrance instead of just making straight wall to the roof ?

It provides shadow and protection from rain above the entrance. It's a pretty common design.

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

#199

The example I'm aware of is the Segal Method: https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Segal_Method It's a modular design system based on the dimensions of commonly-available construction material, intended to be both cheap and easy to construct without (too much) assistance. The gotcha is that it's based on dimensions of materials commonly available in the 1960's, so I have no idea if something you bought today wou…

His design system doesn't try to get anywhere near modern levels of insulation and overall thermal performance, though I suspect that is fixable and even at the time he modified the system as locally available materials changed. I think it would be really interesting to do an update, everything is sort of on a grid system so it should be relatively amenable to building software tools to help with the analysis and generating complete sets of plans. Even if I had those tools and the time to do my own build I think I would want an experienced architect involved with input into the design.

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

#200
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's hyperbolic to call it a waste of time. I think the book (and the related books and principles) deserve a critical reading. In the first section titled "Using This Book" he mentions several important details that I think you are missing in your critique. One, it is meant to be read alongside The Timeless Way of Building . It is not simply a how-to manual. Two, it comes from experience gleaned in the field…

As a practical matter none of that stuff is actually useful to a middle-class person who wants to design and build an affordable, livable, code-compliant house in the real world. If you want to read it for entertainment as a piece of literature or philosophy then go ahead, but it's not going to help the OP at all.

Isn't that a "No True Scotsman" argument?
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