Just hire an architect?!
You'll need him anyway because of the building permit.
Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
61–70 of 262 posts
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#62I 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.
Do you mean barndominiums?
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#63If you’re going to go through the trouble and extra expense of constructing something that is brand new, you might as well hire a professional architect.
Why go through the trouble to build something if you’re just going to get a mediocre building plan someone is willing to give away for free?
In other words, you get what you pay for.
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#64I 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.
Do you mean barndominiums?
Ha! No, I'm planning on building entirely of bards, they may not insulate well but the acoustics is to die for.
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#65Please, does anyone know any open source house plan generator?
Let’s say something that can generate house plans according to some parameters.
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The earthship biotecture project is really neat, thanks for sharing.
Its best to take and use the principles of it in another house. I personally don't want a bunch of tires breaking down and leaking chemicals and fumes into my house over a couple decades. Also much of the savings are from using your labor or volunteer/intern labor rather than paying someone else.
People have built earthships without tires to great lengths and personal energy expenditure.
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#67Here'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 (temp, wind speed/direction, humidity, cloudiness, etc) every hour. Local climate files will have the past 20 years of weather so you can evaluate the costs/benefits of different systems with your actual records.
https://www.nrel.gov/buildings/beopt.html
Disclaimer: I worked on an older version of this tool.
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#68Earlier 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…
> Your typical signal family neighborhood has the following requirements Maybe in your city. A home designed for Texas is not a good home in Calgary.
Why?
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#69Here'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…
Thanks for sharing! While the original query was in regards to building a new home, this seems like a great tool (and is advertised as such) for checking out existing homes (especially older homes) as well.
Re: Ask HN: Where to find open-source house plans?
#70Here are plans from the argentinian governent. https://www.argentina.gob.ar/habitat/modelos-de-vivienda I don' know where are you from, but be advised that construction techniques that we use are mostly brick based with reinforced concrete structure.
The Mexican government also has pretty nice plans:
https://decideyconstruye.gob.mx/index.php/paso-a-paso/descar...
They target different climates and some of them can be built in multiple stages. I'd easily live in some of those renders.