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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?

#251

Post by araes »

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…

> underestimating just how many different materials/fixtures/fittings get installed in a house

This is one of the reasons why I would believe Lowes or Home Depot or another construction supply place would 52 such a piece of software. They have those zillions of "something" that get installed, and the lumber. They already know what all those people buy.

At least for a construction company: pick a general house, gives you adaptations for common landscapes, choose interior finishing(s) / style(s), gives you plans (with adaptations), already has them approved for your area (with variants), gives you parts list, gives you plumbing/wiring, gives you button to put it all in your "cart," drive to store, pick up house worth of stuff, Lowes/Home Depot make a quick $50k-100k or so.

If you build a development, you say, give me 10 of that. Build it again, say I'd like my old order.

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

#252

Post by unethical_ban »

bluGill wrote: post #150
unethical_ban wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get this information from? Three-car garages are quite rare in Texas, and I am struggling to recall if I have ever seen a household use both carports for vehicles. At max, one car is stored in the garage while the other half is used for storage.

My wife is from Texas, and I have other family there. While older houses lack a garage, new houses all have them. It took longer for indoor parking to catch on, but it is common. Though "rednecks" are more likely to use the garage for storage of other things and park outside.

That's... well, I don't think using the carport for storage is a low-class thing to do.

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

#253

Post by jhugo »

araes wrote: post #250
UncleMeat wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ge…

“Quite challenging” is an understatement. The problem is far too big for the tech startup model. You would need to get a bunch of expensive skilled engineers, and a bunch of expensive domain experts (from many domains, since “building houses” is a massive problem space with thousands of sub-domains), and work on it for probably years before you had an MVP. It’s not the type of startup that easily attracts investment.

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

#254

Post by bruce511 »

jhugo wrote: post #253
araes wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ge…

“Quite challenging” is an understatement. The problem is far too big for the tech startup model. You would need to get a bunch of expensive skilled engineers, and a bunch of expensive domain experts (from many domains, since “building houses” is a massive problem space with thousands of sub-domains), and work on it for probably years before you had an MVP. It’s not the type of startup that easily attracts investment.

Even if you could find investors,I'm not sure you'd find any customers.

Firstly, only a tiny fraction of people are interested in building a house. And the number that build 2 are a rounding error.

Developers already have architects on staff, already have libraries of plans, why would they pay for this?

Then, every detail of the generated plan would need to be checked. Every. Single. Detail.

Most people who build a house do do because they want to make a mark, or they need something they can't find. They are all literally edge cases. They'll sit with an architect for hours trying to get that dream out of their heads onto paper, adapting to limitations of budget, planning approval, local regulations, budget, site, budget and so on.

There is no market for a product like this.

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

#255

Post by hnbad »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #167
bluGill wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is arguably the opposite of corruption. Everyone is treated the same and everything is checked in order. The option to pay for a faster approval would be corruption. This is just government offices being chronically understaffed.

Well, the problem is that putting a price tag on government services makes them exclusionary to those who can't (or can barely) afford it while making no difference to those who easily can. It's like the old saying about fines: if you punish a crime with a fine, you only make it illegal for poor people.

That said, the processing time is probably more costly than the direct expenses because having to wait longer means you likely already pay a part of the mortage rate (most banks have start-up costs on these loans and you are generally expected to secure the loan before you have the approval). The entire process is expensive enough for the actual fees not to be a meaningful issue.

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

#256

Post by bruce343434 »

araes wrote: post #251
quickthrowman wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> underestimating just how many different materials/fixtures/fittings get installed in a house This is one of the reasons why I would believe Lowes or Home Depot or another construction supply place would 52 such a piece of software. They have those zillions of "something" that get installed, and the lumber. They already know what all those people buy. At least for a construction company: pick a general house, gives…

what does 52 mean when used as a verb, like in your comment?

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

#257

Post by briffle »

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…

> my state doesn’t have earthquakes or hurricanes, but we do have to have stronger roofs for handling snow load. Buildings in Florida need specific methods to handle hurricane force winds. Buildings in California need specific methods to handle earthquakes.

If you tried to accomodate all of these methods now, your looking at much higher costs. But if your open source plans include all these methods, and people can produce kits that are shipped to you (either raw, or partially assembled) because they are identical, the costs would quickly start dropping..

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

#258

Post by araes »

bruce343434 wrote: post #256
araes wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> underestimating just how many different materials/fixtures/fittings get installed in a house This is one of the reasons why I would believe Lowes or Home Depot or another construction supply place would 52 such a piece of software. They have those zillions of "something" that get installed, and the lumber. They already know what all those people buy. At least for a construction company: pick a general house, gives…

what does 52 mean when used as a verb, like in your comment?

Visually, its supposed to be a heart shape. Such as "I (heart/want/like/upvote) this" What I would describe as mild 1337 speak, using limited ascii art when it shorthand's an idea. "I 52 this idea."

Depending on how much you like symbology, since it's 52, it also carries playing card connotations, with "makes a good hand", "hearts the card game", "want this to shoot the moon."

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

#259

Post by hedgehog »

regularfry wrote: post #239
hedgehog wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gen…

It's apparently possible to do it to Passivhaus standards, but I don't know what you need to tweak to get there. It would be an interesting exercise to try, though. It's the sort of thing that's got me thinking that the next time I need to build a garden shed I'll give it a go. Anything that doesn't need foundations, like a deck with a roof on an existing concrete pad, or similar, I'd give it a go to get some experie…

I looked at some similar ideas a while back. Screw piles are a good option for a stable base on uneven ground. Insulation requires coming up with a compatible design for the exterior walls to accommodate 4-6 inches of insulation and then rain screen on top of that. Top and bottom not so hard. Air sealing is quite a trick to do without compromising on disassembly-ready construction by using tape. Picture windows are a challenge, there's nothing really suitable available at least at US hardware stores. Not a problem for a shed but kind of in conflict with the motivation behind the system.

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

#260

Post by TheHappyOddish »

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

Also Americans assuming their experience matches the experience of the rest of the world, despite being a tiny percentage of it - peak HN.

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