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The Essential Guide » Design and Finance » How Do We Do Designs or Find Designers For New Self Build Development Project?

How does the design process work for a new Self Build House?

Introduction:

The natural first step for most potential Self Builders (immediately after deciding that such a venture would be a good idea) is to grab a few sheets of paper, a ruler, and pen, get settled into the settee (with a glass of wine or beer) and have go at designing their “Dream Home” (Am I right? - And you thought you were the only people to have done that!!)

You might now be saying to yourself: “How did he know we would do that?”. – Well:

A) I have done it myself!

B) Unless you have not got a few bricks and some sand and cement “lying around the living room”, you are restricted in what you can actually “do” at this stage of the project!

C) The “Design” is pretty much one of the “top three” most important aspects of what could be the biggest project you have ever taken, or will ever take on. – So, it’s natural to want to “get started” on it (the other two most important aspects would be “finding the land” and “getting the Planning / Building regs”).

As I carry on my “stunning insight” into the mind of a self Builder, - I can pretty much guarantee (unless you are a designer of some description) that the drawings you come up with will be NOTHING LIKE “to scale!”

If anyone tried to build what you initially draw, it would fall down in 10 minutes flat!

BUT, it is a valuable “first exercise”, and by doing it, you have already started to reap the benefits of being a “Self Builder”.

How?

You have just “taken control” of the design of the home that you will (hopefully one day soon) be living live in.
You have also started to save money.

If you spend some time scribbling down your ideas for room the room layouts and the “overall appearance” of the house, then, when you are ready, you will now be able to take those sketches to whoever is going to prepare your full “Planning Permission” drawings. As long as they can make some sort of sense of them, they can often then move straight onto preparing the full design drawings. Thus, saving you up to 2 – 3 weeks, - and possibly a few hundred pounds.

So, going through this process of coming up with a “rough design”, no matter how rough it is, is just the right thing to do at this stage.

Also, the earlier you start to think about the design you would “like”:

The quicker you can start to “talk about it” seriously to “each other” / to “Finance” companies / to “Planning Officers”.
The quicker you can start to work out what sort of size your new home is possibly going to need to be to give you everything your family will need

Once you have some idea of the physical size of the building, you can then start to consider what sort of sized plot you will need, and can start to do a bit of homework to see what the likely price of that sort of sized plot would be in a location that you would like to site it.

You can also start to get some rough ideas on the building costs (see other sections of this guide for more info).

You could also start to use the Networking section on this site to communicate with other people who are already “doing it”, or who have recently completed a project, to get an idea of how much it is costing, or did cost them.

Obviously, a few scribbles on a sheet on A4 are not necessarily the final designs for your house, they are just “somewhere to start”. – You can still change anything you want at any time up until you are ready to submit the Planning Application.

In this section we will briefly go through the different stages of the design, outlining the input needed from you and others in each section.

Initial design sketches:

Self Build Initial house design on napkin

As I mentioned above, it is a good idea if you can prepare something which you can take to your Architect / House Designer that you can lay out on a table and discuss. – If you just turn up to the first meeting with all your ideas in your head, you will find it hard to communicate them accurately to the other person (e.g. “Have you seen the houses on the “so and so” estate? – Well we like the third one from the end, but with a porch and bigger windows! – does that explain what we want?)

If possible you should always try to prepare these initial sketches at least roughly to scale. - I have, on many occasions sat for an “initial chat” with a Self Builder at the early stages, and been given a set of sketches which have been drawn freehand (possibly whilst also watching the TV), and have basically had to bin them! – Freehand sketches can be so inaccurate, that they actually bear no resemblance at all to how the building, or the room layout would look once it is drawn properly to scale, and in fact would in most cases be impossible to build!

It is important, if you want your designs to be “usable” by your designer, that when you do these designs that you think about how it is “in real life”. For example:

Wall have a “thickness” they are not just a “pencil width” thick! – Internal walls are normally about 4” (100mm) thick, and external walls are in the region of 10” – 12” (250mm – 300mm) thick.
Internal doors are around 2’6” (approx 750mm) – 2’9” (approx 825mm) wide and 6’6” (1950mm) high.
External doors are around 2’9” (825mm) wide by 6’6” (1950mm) high.
Standard Staircases are around 3’ (900mm) wide and about 8’ (2.7m) long (measured along the flat surface). - Make sure you put the staircase on your “First floor” sketches in the same position as they are on your “Ground floor” sketches (trace “one on top of the other” if you like).
Rooms heights are normally around 8’ (2.4m)
Standard window “widths” are in the region of 2’ (600mm) / 3’ (900mm) / 4’ (1200mm) / 6’ (1810mm) and 7’6” (2338mm) wide.
Standard window “heights” are in the region of 3’(900mm) / 3’6” (1050mm) / 4’ (1200mm) / 4’6” (1350mm) 5’ (1500mm)
The top level of a window in the external wall is usually around 7’ (2.100m) above the internet floor level.
The internal floor level is normally 6” (150mm) above the outside ground level.
Joists and floor boards normally measure about 9” (225mm) thick.
Worktops are usually 2’ (600mm) wide and sit at a height of 3’ (900mm). (– Make sure any windows next to worktops are no more than 4’ (1200mm) high or the cill of the window will be below the top of the worktop. – 3’6” is normal for this location).
Baths are normally about 5’8” (1700mm) long and about 2’4” (700mm) wide
Toilets “stick out” about 2’6” (about 750mm) and are usually around 450mm – 500mm wide (cistern)
Soffits / fascias normally “protrude” from the front and back of the building by about 300mm
An average slope for a roof is about 30 degrees.

Those are some rough guidelines to help you to prepare your initial sketches so that they will be useful to the person preparing your final drawings.

Even if your design doesn’t end up using conforming exactly to those measurements, at least you will usually be “in the right ball park” - that will make it far more likely that your design will “work”.

What do we need to think about when we do these initial designs?

couple planning a Self Build project on computer and with diary

The idea of doing these initial sketches is simply try to get an idea of what you might need (and want) from your new home, - as regards over all layout, sizes of “living” spaces (living room, dining room, family room etc), and “working spaces” (kitchen, utility room ). – They are also to try to come up with something that is going to be within your budget and something that is “buildable”.

Think about the number of bedrooms and bathrooms you are going to need, and whether or not you would prefer an attached or a separate garage (this could change later on when you start to look at plots of land. - Depending on the shape and size of the plot itself, you might HAVE to build the garage into the structure of the house to get everything to “fit” onto the plot.)

If your budget is going to be fairly tight, try to keep the design simple. – I discuss the design again in more detail in alter section, but one of my “mantras” is “Corners add cost and curves add considerable cost”! – Bear that in mind when you start to sketch.

The cheapest design is a square. It encloses the maximum internal area for the minimum external wall length. The further away you go from a “square” the more expensive your house will be to build. AND, - every time you add a “corner” you also increase the overall cost of the building.

At this stage you don’t need to worry about materials – that comes later. – You are just after “sizes and shapes” at the moment.

External Design:

If you feel confident enough to have a go at drawing the external appearance of the house, that’s great,, but at this stage that is not so critical. (The internal layout often dictates the external shape and size. – So your designer won’t have any problem “knocking up” external elevation drawings if he / she has the internal layouts presented in a reasonably accurate format).

If you do have a go, just use the list above to calculate the overall sizes and measurements (remembering to add the external / internal wall thicknesses to the room sizes).

Not sure where to start?

If you are not sure where to start when it comes to designing a layout, - have a look at other properties and try to get some general idea from them.

You could use your present house as something to use as your “baseline”. - If you don’t like the layout of the house you are in, - why not? – What would you change?

Have a look at layout of houses of your friends and family. – Try to pick up on the “good bits”, and use them as a starting point for your own design. – I can’t really advise you to visit “show houses” to get an idea of “what’s hot and what’s not” - when you would have no intention of buying one can I?

sedction through a Self Build house with question mark.

There is no “right and wrong” in house design. – However there IS “good and bad” design. I am often amazed at how many houses designed by “so called” experts, fall into the “bad design” category.

A general rule of thumb for Self Build is that:

Designing a house that suits the people who are going to be living in it is most the most important thing. - Sellability at a later date is also important, - but, if you are building the house with the thought of living there for a number of years, then concentrate mainly on getting what YOU want and need, whilst giving a “nod” to what is going to be “sellable” when you do eventually come to want to move on.

Once you have these initial design sketches:

You have the basis from which you can start planning the rest of the project.

Until you have something you can “look at” which shows you what you are going to be needing / wanting in the way of approximate dimensions and sizes, you can’t really start to look for suitable plots, or work out costs.

BUT, as soon as you have those “roughly accurate” sketches, you are then ready to move onto possibly looking at “costs” / “finance” / “Location” and possibly start to look at some actual plots!

When do we need the final designs to be confirmed?

This will usually be at least a few weeks if not months “down the line”, once the “working drawings” are all ready to go off to the Planning Office, and you are casting a final glance over them – At this stage its usually still a fairly simple job to change things around. – It might cost you a “few quid” for the designer to edit the drawings, but it’s worth it if it improves an aspect of the design which is going to be important to you.

And don’t worry if, once you reach the final design stage, you end up throwing you initial designs in the bin because they don’t work with the plot you have found. - They were still a valuable tool to give you a direction to “set off” on, and to focus your mind on the project.

Self Build projects tend to take on a “life of their own”, and they evolve with time. - If you are flexible enough to say (about ANY aspect of the project) “that’s not right, - this way is better”, then you are likely to get a far more successful outcome.

However you have to start the process somewhere and those initial sketches are usually the best place to start to formulate you ideas into a workable “plan”.

Working with Project Managers / Package Build companies:

Whether you have decided to “go it alone” or you decide to use the services of a “specialist” such as a “Project Manager” or “Package Build” company, these initial designs are still very useful to have with you at your first meetings.

Just as your own designer will need some guidance from you to come up with your final designs, so will an Architect working for a Package Build company. - AND, just as you would have to think about the “pro’s and con’s” of actually building the house if you take the whole project on yourselves, - a “Project Manager” would also have to do exactly the same.

Conclusion:

Preparing these initial designs yourselves, is, to my mind, a very important part of any Self Build project.

You are normally considering one “of these projects” so that you can get something “better” and something more suitable (and cheaper) for you and your family, than you can normally get by buying something “off the shelf”.

If you then give control of the design to someone else, who is to say that their ideas are going to be best (and most cost effective)for you?

If you have no experience of building, you may be tempted to let someone else “have the reigns” and you may just “nod” in agreement at their ideas, but when you actually get the thing built, will it suit YOU?

Think about it!

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