Design efficiency is often overlooked and is not discussed very often by buyers and builders. Over the years of designing and building houses, I have had to revisit countless house designs in order to save the building to hit a target budget. In this review, there are a few simple rules that I have outlined below.
Save wasted space
This is the easiest step for someone with a high level of spatial awareness. A quick overview of a floor plan will highlight areas that are larger than necessary or excessive. Examples can be long run lengths, irregularly sized areas where parts don’t connect or flow properly, or just oversized parts. Last year a client came to me and showed me a house plan he designed by a self-styled architect that had an 8.5mx 3.0m master bedroom and the client didn’t didn’t identify the piece as strange until I pointed it out.
most effective design for your homeIf you are familiar with visualizing architectural plans, this process is fairly straightforward, but for most home buyers it is very difficult to visualize the space just by looking at a scale drawing. A simpler way that I recommend for buyers is to take a blank piece of paper and cut out the downsized furniture they have in their current home and then position them on the home design plans where they think it is. it will be fine. This will then help them assess the proportions of the dimensions of the rooms in relation to their furniture.
Eliminate excess engineering costs
When designing and building two-story houses, the main factor for profitability is engineering costs. Large spans of open space on the ground floor could cause the engineer to increase the depth of the suspended slab from 172mm to 257mm, which adds significant costs. Keeping enough structural walls under the slab in key positions will eliminate the need for that cost and can still mean you have a fantastic open space.
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It is also essential to minimize overhead tile extensions, which an experienced architect or home designer will do automatically, but often overlooked by novice designers. This poor design feature will give a house a concrete slab where it is underused and hidden in the eaves of the roof, which just means it’s a very expensive ceiling.
Reducing the need for structural columns is also a factor. Since the supply and installation of a structural post can cost anywhere from $ 400 to $ 500 each, you want to reduce the number used in designing a house. Clever use of interior walls can easily save $ 3,000 – again, a cost that will never be seen once the house is finished.
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This step-by-step analysis was recently done on an inexpensive two-story house design that highlights the changes to the house’s elevation and styling, which saved significant construction costs.