Articles published in 2004

Last month we discussed vacuum systems in broad outline, and now is the time to look at some of the finer detail.

No matter how smoothly a selfbuild goes, there are always some problems to be overcome. This month I reminisce about some of the difficulties I have had with the services of my last selfbuild, where I now live.

One of the great attractions of selfbuilding is that it allows you to design your home to suit your own needs and preferences. You don’t have to make do with what is available on the second-hand housing market, or – even more limiting – with what the speculative builders are offering. Producing the design of your future home is an exciting time in the selfbuild process, and making decisions that are likely to be standing for generations to come can give you quite a buzz.

Last month we suggested that you start out on your design journey by assessing roughly what size home you need, in particular, the floor area. From this you can derive an approximate estimate of the overall building cost. Of course, this is only a first approximation, and as your ideas become more refined you should be able to get a better idea of the build costs. The intention, throughout, is to keep the project financially viable, that is to say, both profitable and within your budget.

Our last two articles about design have focussed mainly on floor layouts and the interior. Now is the time to consider exterior design, as shown in the elevations. Major decisions need to be made about the roof shape and covering, and about the wall materials and window style. The appearance of the house is a major factor in its acceptability for planning permission.

For many years, Murray Armor’s Building Your Own Home was the only book available. But now, there’s a wide choice of selfbuild books, a choice that was widened in September when Julian Owen’s Self Build was published. It seemed to me that reviews of all the selfbuild books would be useful for readers.

One of the virtues of a central vacuum system is how little maintenance is required. The dust canister needs to be emptied about twice a year, and this is an easy job. For models with self cleaning filters, that’s it. Others may have a cloth filter which needs brushing down in situ when the canister is emptied, and a few models have a sponge filter which needs to be removed and washed. Obviously, the ease of filter cleaning is one of the factors to be considered when you purchase a system.

Last month a lady phoned me up seeking a book that would enable her to work out costings for the house she was going to build. I tried to guide her towards Mark Brinkley’s Housebuilders’ Bible, a most useful guide for costings. But she wanted something more detailed, something that would give prices for each and every element of the construction process.

Most people who come to selfbuild already have some ideas for the design of their future home – after all, it is the ability to have a custom designed home that is one of the big attractions of selfbuild. But before you get your design ideas committed to paper – let alone to bricks and mortar – it is beneficial to think more widely and more deeply about the possibilities. 

So far in this mini-series about designing your home-to-be, we have considered the lay-out of the plot and the number of storeys, and we started looking at floor lay‑outs. What needs further consideration is the interaction between the lay-outs of the upper and lower floors. There are several constraints which prevent the lay-outs being designed independently of each other (besides the obvious constraint that the lower storey must support the upper one).

We’re coming to the end of this mini-series on design, and this month we look at how your design ideas can be expressed – as drawings on paper, as a model, or as computer graphics.