SAVE UP TO 50% ON THE COST OF YOUR SELF BUILD PROJECT
Too good to be true? NO! Not if you follow a few simple guidelines
This statement is hopefully going to cause a bit of a stir in the Self Build industry! It has already sparked controversy at the Autumn Self Build shows around the country, bringing comments from businesses and the public along the lines of: "You cant say that!!" "Prove it!" "Who do you think you are? Some sort of magician?"
What has happened in the Self Build and Renovation industries over the past 10 years or so is that we have moved away from the idea of "Let's build ourselves a house and get a bigger house, built to the same or better quality AND save money at the same time".
We now work more on the principal of "Let's build ourselves, and gets lots more "whistles and bells" in our new home, for about the same cost as buying a standard developers house".
Most companies will presently quote you between £120 and £150 / sq ft for an average Self Build cost. I believe that it is within everyone's power to significantly reduce that figure. Sometimes by up to 50% and occasionally even more!!
"Self Build Simplified" (one of the main sections of this site) has been written to help you to towards achieving this target. But, to give yourself the best chance of success, you need to take notice of and put into action the ideas it contains, and you need to keep yourselves under control!
As with most things, the main "trick" to saving money on your Self Build project is to "keep it simple" "Simple" doesn't have to mean "boring", but it does normally mean "cheaper".
Here are three examples of how you can save money by keeping things simple and by furnishing yourselves with a bit of knowledge about the subject (which you can access by reading "Self Build Simplified"):
1) What shape is best for a house if you want to save money?
Here is a rectangle which could represent the simple shape of a house design, measuring 15m x 5m. This shape encloses 75sq m of floor area. Multiply this by 2 floors and it would give you a house of 150 sq m floor area
Here is a square, which could also represent a house design, measuring 10m x 10m. This shape encloses 100sq m of floor area. Multiply this by 2 floors and it would give you a house of 200 sq m floor area.
Both of these shapes are common in self build projects, but which is going to cost more to build?
Answer: Measure the perimeter (representing the total length of the external walls) of each shape. You'll find that in fact they are both EXACTLY THE SAME 40 metres!!
In other words, for the same amount of brickwork, blockwork, timber frame, or whatever material you use to build the house, you get 25% more floor area by using the square shape than by using the rectangle! Dont believe it? Check it again!
In the example given above, that 25% equates to 2 good sized rooms on the ground floor and 2 good sized rooms on the first floor! FOR THE SAME BUILD COST!
Alternatively, you could build a smaller, less expensive square house to give you the same overall floor area as the rectangular house at a significantly lower price.
Another way of looking at it is to say that "On a build budget of £150,000, there could be a cost difference of up to £37,500 to provide exactly the same living space inside the building, depending which shape you chose!!"
Please note that I am not suggesting that everyone builds square houses, - but, having that little bit of knowledge that you probably didn't have 2 minutes ago, now allows you to go to your Architect or Designer and, rather than saying "Can you design me a house" and letting them get on with it, using only their own ideas, you can now say: "Can you design me a house,- but I want to maximise the efficiency of the floor area, so lets start with a square shape and work outwards if we need to".
Simple isnt it?
2) "Corners add cost":
Every time you add another corner (in addition to the four you obviously need!) to a building your "price per square" ft cost will increase.Adding little "lean toos" "annexes" and the like will add an disproportionate amount of work, materials and cost to the overall project, compared to keeping the shape simple.
The extra cost for a small utility room annex only adds 2 corners and a small floor area, and may not be excessive (although it would still be better to try to keep these small additions within the simple "rectangle or square" shape mentioned earlier where possible), BUT, when you start to add features which increase the number of corners on a building to 8, 10 or more, it can add quite a substantial amount to the "cost per square" foot of the building.
Why?
Simply because there is a lot more work to do "joining up all the bits". More trenches to dig for the footings, more turns and manholes in the drainage layout, more labour required setting out all the turns and angles in the brickwork, more scaffolding and more work in building it, cavity trays (where annexes abut the main building), more cutting to form the roof, meaning more labour and more waste. More labour and waste tiling the roof, more work in fascias, soffits, gutters, downpipes The list goes on and on!
So, here again, the simple 4 corner shape can save you a lot of money on your build cost.
3) Simplify your foundations:
In many cases, the area of a Self Build project that ends up costing much more than expected are the foundations.Problems encountered underground, which can affect your foundations include "made up" ground, sloping ground, running sand, mineshafts, mixed "substrata" (i.e when the ground is made up of more than one type of material, e.g, rock & clay).
We can never be 100% sure what problems we are going to come across when we start excavating the foundations to a building.
If there is a chance that the foundations on your project are going to cause you problems which will increase your costs, it makes sense to try to minimise the potential effect of those problems. In fact, even on good ground, it is always sensible to look into ways of saving money on your foundations.
There are two ways of making your foundations less costly:
1) Design the house with fewer internal walls which need foundations
2) Do away with the need for some of the foundations.
2 ways to achieve this goal are:
1) Have a slab designed which will carry the weight of the internal walls on it, without them needing foundations.
In other words, "beef up" your floor slab so it becomes "load bearing" and can take the weight of whatever weight you need to impose on it. This would be a job for a Structural Engineer and would involve a thicker slab and reinforcing.
The "upside" of this method is that it can reduce the number of foundations you need and therefore their cost, but the downside is that the cost of the design work and the extra work in the slab could easily be higher than the savings you may make underground.
2) Design the house to use a "suspended ground floor".
Using the square shape design shown earlier, it would be quite easy to design a floor layout which included just one load bearing internal wall, as shown here:
By doing this you give yourselves the opportunity to use a "suspended concrete floor construction.
Suspended floors do exactly what they say on the tin! They suspend between the walls either end.
By utilising a "Concrete beam and block" suspended floor, using the example here, you could design the floor to take the weight of the dividing walls between the kitchen and hall, and the living and dining rooms. - Thus doing away with the need for foundations under these walls (The diagram shows a very simple design. Most house designs will include numerous walls requiring support of one form or another).
The benefits of the beam and block floor system are:
1) They reduce the need for some of the foundations, and thus reduce the risk of hitting problems and extra costs underground
2) They enable the foundations to be dug and concreted faster and at less cost. They also reduce the risk / effect of "trench collapse", flooding, or other problems that you can encounter after you dig.
3) They remove the need for either "mass fill" concrete to the foundation trenches or brick / blockwork to the foundations which are not now needed, thus increasing the speed and reducing the cost of that part of the project.
4) They enable you to put some of the earth dug out from the trenches back into the construction to bring the ground level under the suspended slab up to the right level (this could save you a lot of money if you were going to have to take this earth away in trucks)
5) They can sometimes work out cheaper and quicker to construct than a concrete slab.
6) They give you a "void" under your slab which may be useful for passing services through from one part of the house to another.
2) They enable the foundations to be dug and concreted faster and at less cost. They also reduce the risk / effect of "trench collapse", flooding, or other problems that you can encounter after you dig.
3) They remove the need for either "mass fill" concrete to the foundation trenches or brick / blockwork to the foundations which are not now needed, thus increasing the speed and reducing the cost of that part of the project.
4) They enable you to put some of the earth dug out from the trenches back into the construction to bring the ground level under the suspended slab up to the right level (this could save you a lot of money if you were going to have to take this earth away in trucks)
5) They can sometimes work out cheaper and quicker to construct than a concrete slab.
6) They give you a "void" under your slab which may be useful for passing services through from one part of the house to another.
Ask your designer about suspended floors to see if they would be suitable for your project.
The above three ideas are just a tiny example of the ways you can save money on your Self Build projects. By reading "Self Build Simplified" (http://www.buildinganddiy.com/cg-contents.php), you will learn many other ways to make savings in your Self Build design and build costs. A few hours spent reading it could literally save you tens of thousands of pounds in the overall cost.
Good luck, and let us know how you get on!