Things I wish I had done when building?

Captain Slow IRL

copper12 wrote: »

don’t hand over any money until the job is done’

I'd have thought all money to be up front?!?!

copper12

Direct labour; you will have to pay for materials, but labour?

Slig

Made sure the house was air tight, at least to an extent that the only air circulation was through the vents and fans

SillyMonkey

I've heard people talk about the house being air tight (bar the vents), how exactly do you go about this.

muffler

SillyMonkey wrote: »

I've heard people talk about the house being air tight (bar the vents), how exactly do you go about this.

You would need to open a new thread for this question.

Cheers.

RKQ

SillyMonkey wrote: »

I've heard people talk about the house being air tight (bar the vents), how exactly do you go about this.

Check out a number of previous threads and suppliers listed therein - ie Pro clima (Solitex), Siga and Moy. Each manufacturers site show full installation guides and recommendations.

http://www.ecologicalbuildingsystems.com/products/intello/technical.shtml

Do-more

Next build I will make sure to order all the external doors to open with the same key. It'll be a pain if we loose a key as all barrels will have to be replaced but it's very handy to carry just one key for all doors inc. the shed/garage.

muffler

Do-more wrote: »

Next build I will make sure to order all the external doors to open with the same key. It'll be a pain if we loose a key as all barrels will have to be replaced but it's very handy to carry just one key for all doors inc. the shed/garage.

You'd be well and truly fu**ed if you loose the one key then :eek:

lanod2407

Captain Slow IRL wrote: »

I'd have thought all money to be up front?!?!

Absolutely no way!

Never agree to pay money up front. If you're paying labour by the week, make sure that you keep back a significant enough amount until after all of the work has been completed. Don't pay the final instalment until you are totally satisfied that every last item has been completed to your satisfaction.
May sound hard, but if there's no reason to come back to finish off then you'll end up doing it yourself, or gritting your teeth years later as you pass that piece that the bugger promised to come back and finish!!!!

dunie001

It's my father's house really but here goes:

1. Have the stairs built in such a way so that they don't end up at a wall of glass (front porch/draught lobby). Had nightmares for years of falling down stairs and being mutilated by all the glass...

2. Five times more insulation...it's warmer outside than inside most days!

3. Double the width of every corrider in the house...we can't get a couch into the sitting room without removing the plaster from the wall and/or painting over all the scrape marks left behind...bloody nuisance.

4. Put in more windows in the right places. Most of the windows at the moment are on the North side...we have to have lights on inside after 1pm! The sun misses the whole inside of the house completely!

5. Triple the size of the utility room...no space at all for storage.

6. Build a basement for even more storage...

7. Yet more storage...


The only ingenious idea that my father did have (back in 1983) was to build the utility so that one wall of the utility connected directly to kitchen, allowing us to put the dishwasher high up and built into the utility/kitchen wall...so that the back of the dishwasher was in the utility and the front is in the kitchen...so we only have the front part of dishwasher to look at...absolutely revolutionary!

lanod2407

dunie001 wrote: »

It's my father's house really but here goes:


3. Double the width of every corrider in the house...we can't get a couch into the sitting room without removing the plaster from the wall and/or painting over all the scrape marks left behind...bloody nuisance.

Love the idea for the dishwasher ............ but be careful about the size of corridors ....... I'd rather have to be careful with couches and other furniture than have a large amount of 'dead space' designed for those infrequent times when you move furniture.

Also, make the Utility room more long and narrow than square ....... a square utility room has dead space in the middle where narrow has more wall storage space!!

MacTheKnife1

dunie001 wrote: »

Double the width of every corrider in the house...we can't get a couch into the sitting room without removing the plaster from the wall and/or painting over all the scrape marks left behind...bloody nuisance.

Sh*t - I just send my engineer off to start my house and now you tell me. I fought for every square inch and so minimised the corridor width. Please tell me what width is your corridor??

lanod2407

If your Engineer is any good he'll know what minimum width is required to move furniture without taking chunks out of the wall!

Slig

Depends on your design. I played around witha design for my own house and have no long corridors. I think a corridor is a waste of space that could well be utilised better incorporated into living space.

dunie001

The corrider is actually only about 4m long and is the only narrow part of the whole house. It's 880mm wide...which is ridiculously narrow for getting a couch or a bed around a corner out of or into the sitting room/kitchen.

I'd recommend the corrider to be a minimum of 1.2m wide or even 1.5m. It'd make it far easier for wheelchair access etc. and especially for getting furniture into and out of rooms without worrying about damaging the paint-work!!!

Although I can't remember off hand what the minimum width is in the Building Reg's at the minute...been a while since I was looking at it.

MacTheKnife1

dunie001 wrote: »

The corrider is actually only about 4m long and is the only narrow part of the whole house. It's 880mm wide...which is ridiculously narrow for getting a couch or a bed around a corner out of or into the sitting room/kitchen.

OK mine is very short 3m and 950mm wide. I have another small one that is about 3m long and that is 1050 mm wide. So I think it si OK.

MacTheKnife1

Slig wrote: »

Depends on your design. I played around witha design for my own house and have no long corridors. I think a corridor is a waste of space that could well be utilised better incorporated into living space.

I agree with this and for that reason tried to minimise the width and length of them. Short n sweet.

inchbyinch

1) Keep the utility away from the kitchen and put in a larder to store excess food. It keeps all your washing/ironing board/dirty gear etc and general storage away from your kitchen which makes it so much easier to keep your kitchen clean. So when people arrive in you don't have to shut the door of the utility to hide the mess and the mess in the utility becomes a fact of life!!
2)If you can keep it near the bedrooms
3)Small freezer in the kitchen and large one in the garage (if you have a large family)
4)A proper drying room which is insulated heated and ventilated!!!......the moisture inside on a wet day is awful!!

Slig

inchbyinch wrote: »

1) Keep the utility away from the kitchen and put in a larder to store excess food. It keeps all your washing/ironing board/dirty gear etc and general storage away from your kitchen which makes it so much easier to keep your kitchen clean. So when people arrive in you don't have to shut the door of the utility to hide the mess and the mess in the utility becomes a fact of life!!
2)If you can keep it near the bedrooms
3)Small freezer in the kitchen and large one in the garage (if you have a large family)
4)A proper drying room which is insulated heated and ventilated!!!......the moisture inside on a wet day is awful!!

I like your style:D. They all make sense on practical terms but the amount of clients that would look at you like you have two heads if you even suggested putting the utility off the dining area instead of the kitchen area is mad.

For me its designing a properly insulated house that removes all cold bridges.

inchbyinch

Most people who go to build a house rarely think of flow and how rooms work on a practical level.......having your dirty washing and main storage room off the kitchen is baffeling.

For what its worth I started the design of our new house with the Kitchen/Diner in the middle of the house. Its a work in progress but there has been much more since we did this

Totally agree with the insulating point....up to the back axle I say:D:D

priorities:
Insulation
Sound transfer
Kitchen
People Flow in open plan

WarrenpointPat

Talking to friends in the TV / Satellite business one item often overlooked is to have an adequate number of TV / Satellite sockets around the home. Also, even when you are having the necesssary tracking etc. done make sure that proper high quality satellite cable is used etc., not cheap high loss TV cable otherwise you will be plagued with poor signals and it can be very difficult and expensive to fix afterwards.

One thing my friends often say is don't let an electrician install your TV system cabling...get the job done by someone that actually understands what they are doing. Wiring up a TV / Satellite point with a proper distribution amplifier in your loft, that gives a consistantly high quality signal is not as simple as wiring up a mains socket !

One final thing...with the growing craze for surround sound speakers and of course the already big demand for broadband / computing...you might want to have speaker cables / sockets or networking cables as needed ..it is of course easier to have all this done at the build stage....a pain to do afterwards and will result in a cable / clutter free environment that is a pleasure to live in....it will avoid, for example.having cables trailing across wooden floors or trying to hide them under the carpet.

inchbyinch

It can be alot of expence to put in all that cabling. It might be easier at design stage to design in a service duct into most of the rooms....it would make retro fitting far easier!!

WarrenpointPat

inchbyinch wrote: »

It can be alot of expence to put in all that cabling. It might be easier at design stage to design in a service duct into most of the rooms....it would make retro fitting far easier!!

Good point although a service duct will not always ensure you have the cable access points exactly where you need them. Brilliant though for adding on cables at a later stage when the latest new fangled tech idea has come along and you want to get 'hooked' up !

What really irritates my friends is when either no allowance has been made for cables of any sort or cheap cables have been installed which then need replaced. Also, and this is more to do with apartments....when the tv / satellite system has been poorly designed / installed....a nightmare to correct!

RKQ

inchbyinch wrote: »

It might be easier at design stage to design in a service duct into most of the rooms....it would make retro fitting far easier!!

Good idea!

Especially for sat tv to replace cables or add a cable for Sky+ . Nice to have a duct to wire future Stereo speakers into each room etc.
Or a duct thats easy to get into so you can intall that Socket you forgot! (Without pulling up the floor)

dunie001

Yep! anything that can avoid ripping up walls and floors for the sake of a 10euro cable is worth overdoing!!!

You should put in a service duct that you can crawl into...now there's an idea. You could spy all round the house like Die Hard or something!!! Cool!:D

J.R.

Build a decent size cloak room, especially if you've kids, for all the coats, sports gear, bags, suitcases, shoes, boots, wellies, hurleys, etc.

If you've 4 in a family & each has 3/4 coats that 16 coats plus all the footwear & gear ......soon fills up a small space.

Slig

Storage is something that is often overlooked in modern houses, even the utility can only hold so much.

mukki

keep the pipe from the hot water cylinder to the kitchen sink as short as possibal, i moved that tank into a wardrobe at the last minute to get it closer to the stove and now have to run the tap for 2 mins to get hot water

Ashfield

It probably has already been mentioned but put in sockets, sockets and sockets!!!
And an outside tap, very handy and easy to do!!

oldhead

Why use Cat 6 instead of Cat 5 cable, what is the difference????

Elizavet

Hi

I know I'm a newbie here, but since we're currently building our home (I've initiated a thread with an radiant heating/cement floor question - help!), I think this thread is a GREAT idea. I've already picked up on a couple of points of interest. Nothing wrong with having it all in one place!


Elizavet

muffler

Welcome aboard. Hope you find the forum interesting and helpful.

soldsold

Hide downpipes behind stone cladding, but leaving access to rod if ever needed (it probably won’t). Add a mat well inside the external doors and outside the external doors so mat only comes up to finished floor level. Put metal frame under external mats with drainage off them – to stop mats getting soaked/ muddy. (imagine having a mat over a cattle grid with a fine grill underneath). Put a water line up to the outside fascia to drip water hanging baskets. Order patio doors to open inwards instead of out so they don’t get caught in the wind (if interior space suits). Better still get patio doors that can be adjusted in stiffness, many can. Put an overhang on south facing windows for summer shade.


Steve

AJE

great thread! sorry i just had to say it. i took me a while but it is great to know what not to do.

nice one villian and to any admin that is out there keep this thread available for a long time

(would do the thank you thing but new here and still learning)

maurice1

Cat6 can handle higher speeds than catV.
Be careful that cat6 is not run in long straight lines as it starts to act as an antenna so has greater losses
Better still, carefully put in 20mm round plastic conduit as cat6 will be obsolite in 10 years time

FergusD

Why would you specify cat6 exactly?

I'd barely specify that for a datacenter. It's expensive and for home use gives you nothing that I can think of over cat 5e.

Fergus.

Villain

FergusD wrote: »

Why would you specify cat6 exactly?

I'd barely specify that for a datacenter. It's expensive and for home use gives you nothing that I can think of over cat 5e.

Fergus.

A lot of CAT6 cables in homes are used for video so the extra shielding that CAT6 gives offers better results over distances than CAT5, if your just using the cable for data CAT5E is grand but CAT6 offers better quality on some uses, only thing CAT6 really needs sweeping bends otherwise damage will occur I have seen plenty of CAT6 cables have problems due to poor installation and severe bends.

Chipboard

Everyone I know who has done a self build says they would do it better the second time - excellent thread.

IMO please please please put in alarm cable to every external window and door. We are currently viewing houses and almost none are fully wired for an alarm. It is so simple to wire for an alarm that you could do a house (at build stage) in around 30 minutes with a roll or two of wire.

Many builders these days seem to just stick a wire into the corner of each downstairs room for a PIR (movement sensor) and the back and front door. A proper alarm has a sensor on every external door/window so that your alarm sounds when the guy begins to jimmy your window not when he has already broken in.

I know you can always fit wireless but why bother with all the big awkard sensors and having to replace batteries, and its more expensive.

RandomName2

If I had my time back I would have checked out the existing sewage systems .

Talking of which, does anybody have any information about how to essentially design a sewage system from scratch? I'm in a highly urbanised area, but the plumbing in the immediate vacinity is a very strange 19th century set up (linear connection between the houses rather than directly to sewer mains).

mikemike

Ah yes , the utility .. At least once or twice a week I regret making it so small , 2/3 times larger would be a f*cking paradise , oh baby !!!:D

I think I'll start just using the front door so it doesn't annoy me ..

More insulation would be a good idea , and make sure the driveway is big enough for more then just 2 cars , if you have the space to make it bigger that is ..

ThePiedPiper

We wish we'd put bigger windows on the house.. We've a great view out the front of house but now windows are in, we haven't taken advantage of it as much as we could've.. Our engineer/architect said the ones in the drawings are as big as would be allowed but we reckon he was just making things as easy as possible for himself!

fitzie79

changed the location of the front door. When it's windy the wind blows directly into the front of the house. Over the past week I've noticed that the door can be caught with the wind and can be difficult to open. Possibly would have put the door at the side of the porch where it's more sheltered but it wouldnt have looked as well.

Wonky Knees

Hired a QS to price up and monitor invoicing. No matter how good the builders are there comes a point where convenience takes precedent over getting best price.

Doubled checked the architects measurements on the plans against the frame of the build "before ordering bathrooms".

Leave plumbing points behind the wall in case an extra rad is needed.

Plumb for tap to front and/or back for watering instead of dragging hose through the house.

Paid the extra for the motorised velux roof windows.

that's for starters.

observer

RunForestRun wrote: »

We wish we'd put bigger windows on the house.. We've a great view out the front of house but now windows are in, we haven't taken advantage of it as much as we could've.. Our engineer/architect said the ones in the drawings are as big as would be allowed but we reckon he was just making things as easy as possible for himself!

how do you mean your engineer/architect??

There is no limit to the size of windows. I am an architect and you can get windows / doors up to 3m wide! this is so dissappointing to hear as a professional wanting and loving to work for people on their houses and achieving everything they want

muffler

observer wrote: »

how do you mean your engineer/architect??

There is no limit to the size of windows. I am an architect and you can get windows / doors up to 3m wide! this is so dissappointing to hear as a professional wanting and loving to work for people on their houses and achieving everything they want

I think what was meant (possibly) was that due to design constraints set out in a PA's Development Plan traditional sliding sash style windows would be encouraged. Glass/wall ratio could well have been a factor.

Anyhow this is something that would merit a thread of its own as I dont want to see this thread pulled off topic.

40701085

...built large fireplaces - all of them.

Much easier to close them in than widen them out.:(

Larrson

inchbyinch wrote: »

1) Keep the utility away from the kitchen and put in a larder to store excess food. It keeps all your washing/ironing board/dirty gear etc and general storage away from your kitchen which makes it so much easier to keep your kitchen clean. So when people arrive in you don't have to shut the door of the utility to hide the mess and the mess in the utility becomes a fact of life!!
2)If you can keep it near the bedrooms
3)Small freezer in the kitchen and large one in the garage (if you have a large family)
4)A proper drying room which is insulated heated and ventilated!!!......the moisture inside on a wet day is awful!![/quote
Agree 100% with everything you said, we are definitely on the same wavelength

aero2k

mukki wrote: »

keep the pipe from the hot water cylinder to the kitchen sink as short as possibal, i moved that tank into a wardrobe at the last minute to get it closer to the stove and now have to run the tap for 2 mins to get hot water

Sorry, just found this thread today.
I believe this problem can be avoided by having a loop of pipe from the cylinder to all the hot taps and a tiny pump to circulate it - you get hot water almost immediately that way.

Wonky Knees

Link the smoke detectors together for a future connect to the monitored fire alarm.

Take photos of the studs when the plumbing goes in so you can remember where not to drill!

Thank my plumber for persuading me to get a combi-boiler. The hot water feature is fantastic.

Every time you buy materials ask for a further 10% off.

auzworld

Other ideas i'll be doing are ...
Build in a lundry shute directly to utility room if you can
Build sliding draws under stair case for storage + in attic conversion built into wall
Add Extra double sockets EVERYWHERE
Install A intercom/phone system to each room ( had one in family house and was very handy to ring other rooms in house.)
Install one unused cables for future applications ( Multicorev6+ )
Surround sound speaker wires for TV
Front door wires for video monitoring / door release
Walk in Warddrobe