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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?

#241

Post by bombcar »

philwelch wrote: post #240
gottorf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are also sheathing options that have the equivalent of house-wrap and sometimes even some insulation built into them, like the ZIP System.

Someone's been watching all the right YouTube channels ;)

I'm definitely looking at the ZIP system and friends, and for those interested I'll drop some links I've been following:

https://www.youtube.com/@StudPack

https://www.northernbuilt.pro

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

#242

Post by mike_d »

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…

> Threads like this are peak HN - people who "know better" how the world should work

Peak self own. I literally asked an architect before posting.

> there was absolutely no architect or engineer stamp on them.

Did you review the copies on file at the planning department? While there are exemptions in some states for simple or stick built homes, larger planned developments or construction financing (which all big builders use) will require it.

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

#243

Post by lostapathy »

mike_d wrote: post #242
lostapathy wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Peak self own. I literally asked an architect before posting. > there was absolutely no architect or engineer stamp on them. Did you review the copies on file at the planning department? While there are exemptions in some states for simple or stick built homes, larger planned developments or construction financing (which all big buil…

> While there are exemptions in some states for simple or stick built homes,

The vast, vast majority of single family homes built in the US are simple, stick built homes, without anything going on that requires any more engineering than consulting the span charts in the codes.

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

#244

Post by thfuran »

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.

My college dorm is the only place I've ever lived that didn't have at least a two car attached garage. That's five of five houses with two or three car garages.

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

#245

Post by photonthug »

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…

Probably commercial BIM plugins for something like AutoCAD are doing stuff like this, although it's probably more like classic constraint solving than stable diffusion. Anyway BIM has been around for years, so that's the training set you'd want for doing other things.

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

#246

Post by dave333 »

Log Home Builders Association https://www.lhba.com/ is not free open source but is very cheap to take a course and get a cookbook for building so called butt and pass log homes. Many self builders have built amazing homes with this method but it is not for the faint of heart and takes most people several to many years to build their home. Worth knowing about since the building technique uses big whole logs carefully graded for taper and diameter stacked in a rectangle and "nailed" together with rebar nails driven vertically down into 1/2 inch holes drilled in the logs. Finished houses look amazing check out the website gallery pages.

https://www.lhba.com/student-homes-gallery

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

#247

Post by dave333 »

Free tiny house plans:

https://www.thespruce.com/free-tiny-house-plans-1357142

However building any house is about 10 times as much work as you think it will be. Once the main structure is built and roofed in you are about 10-20% done.

For my money this fold-out tiny house on steroids with a base price of $85k is way more cost effective than self-building a house from free plans.

https://podxgo.com/pages/grande-s1

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

#248

Post by krab »

bennyp101 wrote: post #123
krab wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check street view to get an idea how such a street looks like. Not my place but fairly similar feeling. https://maps.app.goo.gl/AUurWkVyhLMxzmHWA My point is that the needs may be very different according to context.

Not really relevant to the discussion, but those are some lovely looking buildings!

Yes, it's a nice area. The houses are very large so there usually are 2 - 5 apartments and they share the garden. That's a very interesting compromise for living with a garden close to the city center.

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

#250

Post by araes »

UncleMeat wrote: post #219
1270018080 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If this is aimed at me, its not that I believe the act of creating generative architecture software is trivial. Perhaps too flippant above. I believe it is probably quite challenging. Which is an excellent reason to create such a software, because it's much harder for someone to quickly steal or release a competing product. I was only surprised someone was not immediately using this thread to advertise their house generator.
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