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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?

#211

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS »

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.

Loads of people on YouTube building those, usually as cabins. Bushradical has several small ones, but there are plenty of examples out there. Haven't found any plans, per se, but I haven't really looked, either.

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

#212

Post by [deleted] »

lostapathy wrote: post #117
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…

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#213

Post by Kailhus »

quickthrowman wrote: post #210
araes wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I work in construction management and I think you’re underestimating the complexity of generating a set of construction plans that meets code, passes inspection, and has coherent aesthetics. There isn’t just one set of building codes for every jurisdiction, different jurisdictions adopt various sets of code. Different geographic regions require various things that other areas don’t require. My state doesn’t have eart…

It’s also fair to say the training data is probably not readily available either

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

#214

Post by albuic »

zdragnar wrote: post #208
mschuster91 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

Building with bricks adds 3x the cost compared to stick framing. On top of that, they'll hold up better to a weak tornado, but anything over EF2 will structurally compromise one. Add in all of the other disadvantages, and it is small wonder why people don't use them often in construction anymore. They're pretty high up on the list of CO2 cost as well, between firing and shipping.

Those might not be common in the US or in your place but are very common in others and are at least in the country I live in, because they are just an investment.

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

#215

Post by 1270018080 »

araes wrote: post #197
polonbike wrote: post #9

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…

Why is that surprising? It's like why AI art is a running joke to real artists, and LLMs are a joke to good software engineers etc.

Random text/image generators have no intelligence, no knowledge of design, building regulations, engineering, physics. A fun little tool to set up boilerplate is its peak usefulness.

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

#217

Post by bluGill »

rascul wrote: post #204
bluGill wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not every house needs triple-pane windows and R25 insulation in the walls Yes they do. Cooling is a large energy cost. Besides, you end up with that much space in your walls anyway just because for material strength reasons you need wide walls. > sitting on a 8-ft deep basement A basement is a line item that can be added or deleted at will. If you don't have stairs to the basement you still need that space except i…

> A basement is a line item that can be added or deleted at will. If you already need a deep foundation and basements are common enough in the area so people know how to do them well, maybe. For other areas, it's a significant expense, a lot of work, might require design changes, and it'll probably leak.

Basements are always expensive. They are common where the soil demands a deep foundation as when you already need to move a lot of dirt you may as move more and get something useful out of it. Realistically though even in places that need deep foundations you are probably better off building a floor up and no basement.

Either way though, they are easy to remove from plans if you don't want one.

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

#218

Post by bluGill »

unregistereddev wrote: post #171
bluGill wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not every house needs triple-pane windows and R25 insulation in the walls Yes they do. Cooling is a large energy cost. Besides, you end up with that much space in your walls anyway just because for material strength reasons you need wide walls. > sitting on a 8-ft deep basement A basement is a line item that can be added or deleted at will. If you don't have stairs to the basement you still need that space except i…

> you end up with that much space in your walls anyway just because for material strength reasons you need wide walls. For material strength, walls are fine with 2x4 framing. However, 2x4 framing is limited to R19. So this is actually not true. The reason builders went to 2x6 framing is entirely to allow for a larger insulated cavity. > They still build the same roof pitches so rain runs off. Roofs do not require the…

Builders have gone back to 2x4 in cold climates. They put 2 inches of foam outside. The wood of studs is r5 even though the insulation is r19, so the continuous foam is better.

And in warm climates there were going to 2x6 as well as air conditioning needed the r value.

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

#219

Post by UncleMeat »

1270018080 wrote: post #215
araes wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why is that surprising? It's like why AI art is a running joke to real artists, and LLMs are a joke to good software engineers etc. Random text/image generators have no intelligence, no knowledge of design, building regulations, engineering, physics. A fun little tool to set up boilerplate is its peak usefulness.

There's a specific disease where it is incredibly easy to think that other fields you aren't an expert in are trivial.

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

#220

Post by ClumsyPilot »

quickthrowman wrote: post #210
araes wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I work in construction management and I think you’re underestimating the complexity of generating a set of construction plans that meets code, passes inspection, and has coherent aesthetics. There isn’t just one set of building codes for every jurisdiction, different jurisdictions adopt various sets of code. Different geographic regions require various things that other areas don’t require. My state doesn’t have eart…

There also seems to be shortage of cad tools avable to inspect a building plan.,like as a consumer you would home you would get a plan of the house when you buy the house
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