Design efficiency is often overlooked and not often discussed by buyers and builders. Over the years of home design and building I have had to review countless home designs to save on buildings to achieve budget targets. There are a few simple rules when undergoing this review which I have described below.
Saving wasted space
This is the simplest step for someone with a high level of spatial awareness. A brief overview of a floor plan will highlight areas larger than needed or excessive. Examples might be significant hall lengths, odd sized areas where rooms are not well connected or flowing or only large rooms. Last year a client came to me and showed me a house plan that he had designed through an architect named who has a master bedroom of 8.5 mx 3.0 m and the client did not identify the room as strange until I showed it. If you are accustomed to seeing architectural plans, the process is quite simple, but for most home buyers, it is very difficult to visualize the space just by looking at a scale image. A simpler way that I recommend to buyers is to take a blank piece of paper and cut the scale-sized furniture they have in their current home, then position it on the home design plan where they think it will go. This will then help them assess the proportion of room size in relation to their furniture.
Remove the excess cost of the technique
When designing and building two storey houses, the main factor in price efficiency is the cost of engineering. A large open space on the ground floor can cause engineers to increase the depth of suspended plates from 172mm to 257mm, which adds significant costs. Keeping enough structural walls under the slab in key positions will eliminate the need for these costs and still can mean you have fantastic open space.
Minimizing the extension of suspended plates is also important, something that an experienced architect or home designer will do automatically, but is often ignored by novice designers. This poor design feature will make the house have concrete slabs where it is underutilized, and hidden in the roof space which only means it is a very expensive ceiling.
Reducing the need for structural columns is also a factor. Because the supply and installation of structural columns can cost $ 400 – $ 500 each you want to reduce the amount used in home design. The use of intelligent internal walls can easily save $ 3,000 – again a fee that will never be seen once the house is finished.
This step-by-step analysis was carried out recently on an inexpensive two-story house design that highlights the changes made to the height and style of the house saving significant building costs.
