I am looking for some input on ways to help me save money by doing some of the work, or maybe using different material, or ways to cut back besides cutting the living space. Thanks in advance for your help. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
I am looking for some input on ways to help me save money by doing some of the work, or maybe using different material, or ways to cut back besides cutting the living space. Thanks in advance for your help. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
When we were in the process of looking at building, our builder suggested things like site clean up, painting, landscaping.
Basically it is the things that are not as sensitive to timing and scheduling (ie electrical must be done prior to sheetrock).
It also depends on your builder... some are willing to work with you, some are not.
Joker:
I assume that you're going to be having a general contractor or builder build your house. His/her major concern about letting you do stuff is going to be your level of experience and how that might impact overall quality of construction and schedule. For example, framing is pretty straightforward and you could probably do some of it if you can swing a hammer but professional carpenters / framing crews will be much faster and more efficient so letting you help might slow them down to the point of actually costing more.
Like darinuser said, see if you can get the builder to let you do all the painting yourself. This is work that gets done at the stage of construction that can be scheduled to not impact too many other trades.
Don't skimp on things like insulation and windows/doors. These are things that will pay for themselves in energy efficiency.
You could cut back on your cabinetry, flooring and lighting fixtures - going with the lease expensive in all of these areas. All of these things are easily upgraded by total replacement sometime later when the budget allows. Lower cost carpeting, for example will still look pretty good when new - it just will not have the durability of a better grade.
Just some thoughts.
WVBill
Actually, what we did is use the cheap grade carpeting/flooring in places like the bedroom and closets, since these don't get heavy traffic and the materials will therefore have a longer life span. Then we spent the money we saved on better quality flooring for the baths, living room, dining room, hallways. etc. That way we were able to get a good grade of flooring for high traffic areas, rather than a midgrade for everything.
Work hard on planning. Knowing where things like toilets, sinks, electrical outlets, etc will go can save you from some expensive redo's later on. Seems like most people wind up spending extra money during construction because they changed their minds about something midway.
Steve
We moved into our new home in May '02. I had always wanted to build my own home and was only going to sub the foundation and the framing. I had everything priced out and decided to bid the whole project out to see what I would save.
In the end my wife and I did the electrical, painting, hardwood floors, tile work, barn siding and a lot of the site work. The house was finished in six months. If I had done more work the money saved would have been eaten up by the time delay.
We could have just had the house built but were able to have more because we did some of the expensive extras like tile and hardwood ourselves. We saved $14,000 on tile and the hardwood floors and $9,000 on the electrical. Doing the painting was $8,000 to $10,000 in savings.
In building time is money if you are using financing. Too many people try to do too much and end up in a mess. When we moved in we were both tired and any more on our plate would have been too much.
<font color="blue">"Work hard on planning."</font color>
This is the trick. Plan the work; Work the plan.
Too many think they are saving thousands and either take too long, eating up interest as already stated, or spend too much on frills.
Be sure you get the contractor to put the amount of money he'll credit you in writing. I've cleared the lots and done the telephone/satellite TV wiring, exterior and interior painting and purchased/installed all the plumbing fixtures on both homes. You can save money, just be sure you know how much. The end of the project is not the time to discuss it.
Joker, welcome to the forum. We moved into our new house in Oct. '02. We did some work to save money, other to improve quality and did a lot in the planning phase to keep costs in line. We did all the porch/deck work other than the roof. I ran all the video/audio/network/phone wires and did the trimouts. Our biggie was all the ceramic tile. It was a big job but for the same money as vinyl installed we got ceramic with our labor.
One thing we didn't do was the painting. Yes, you can save a bunch there but it also takes a whole lot of time. We had a crew of four painters on site for at least three weeks and looking back we're very happy we didn't try to do that ourselves.
In the planning phase we put the money in the structure and anything else that is hard/impossible to change later. We went with cheaper options in lighting, carpeting and other areas that are easy to change down the road. Same thing we did in our last house and that scheme worked well for us over 12 years there.
One other thing we did that seemed to help was get to know the subs, keep things cleaned up and bring goodies out from time to time. May not have saved anything but in many cases the crews did things for us that they may not have on a different site [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
Rob
Joker, Is it better late than never or better never than late?
Some items not mentioned: Bathrooms and kitchens are about the most expensive per square foot and are targets for minimizing. Multi level floors, changing wall heights, more than one floor, vaulted or tall ceilings are all cost drivers. You live in the volume enclosed (up to a ceiling height of about 8 ft)but pay to build the area of the enclosing walls. Long skinny shapes or multiple wings increase costs as do the number of corners in the outer walls. taken to the extreme (but not to the point of being ridiculous as in a spherical house) a square or nearly square rectangle is cheaper to build. There is also energy savings in minimizing the perimeter of the building for the enclosed volume. A 45 by 45 ft house (a bit over 2000 sq ft) has 180 ft of (say 8 ft wall) which gives 1440 sq ft of exterior wall. Compare this to a 27 by 74 ft house (also about 2000 sq ft). (My mom's house is 26x72). This second house has 202 feet of perimeter, about 12% more. It will have about 12% more air infiltration, 12% more siding and trim and cost about 12% more to heat and cool (rough approximation) throughout its life (50-100 years). A two story home more closely approximates a sphere but building costs for two stories are often more than the same sq ft on one floor (if land cost is excluded) Bricking above 8-10 ft as does vinyl instalation gets more expensive.
Vaulted cilings cost more to heat and cool, more to drywall, tape, bed,texture, paint. A high pitch roof costs considerably more to cover. Some extra roofing materials and usually a lot more in labor. Above about 8 in 12 pitch starts elliminating some roofers. I am designing with 12 in 12 but will capture some second floor space without building much second floor walls (just dormers). Lots of tradeoffs...
Most expensive home component is the extra space you elliminate by ecomomizing during construction and have to add later by remodeling. It is heaper to build at least the shell you need and delaying finishing some space than to build less and have to add an addition.
Custom anything is likely to be more expensive. COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) products can save serious $ versus custom items.
When comparing costs of systems, consider the installed lifecycle cost of the systems. Take for example a furnace with an expected life of 20 years. If you could pay more and increase the efficiency sufficiently such that the offset fuel costs pay for the extra efficiency much sooner than the expected life, then that is the thing to do. Actually you need to consider energy conservation and systems costs in light of the cost of money. Some upgrades are not expenses but are investment opportunities.
An example: You buy and install a CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamp) in place of a regular light bulb. The initial cost is about $15 more for the CFL but actually over the installed lifetime of the CFL its savings in electricity will pay for it and return you another $15-20 in offset electrical consumption. This is what I mean by an investment opportunity rather than an expense.
To really get into this you need to get data or reasonable estimates of llifecycle costs for systems. This includes things like repairs over the life of the unit. NPV (Net Present Value) calculations include the cost of money and are the REAL way to compare actual costs. You could consider buying a cheap XYZ unit and investing the difference in a savings bond. Do the numbers... at the end of the life of the unit are you ahead or would you have been better off to buy more efficiency or better frequency of repair?
Many (if not MOST) HVAC sekllers/installers are not HVAC engineers/systems designers. Many ,if not most, A/C units installed in the USA are oversized and many are bad investments due to low efficiency. Why is this? 1. They make more money selling you a larger unit and you compromize on SEER to buy more tons of A/C., 2. If they oversize the A/C they don't get callbacks because it will cool the house. 3. They don't really know how much is enough because they aren't really HVAC designers/engineers so they oversize to be sure.
Unfortunately oversized A/C is inefficient/costs more to operate and doesn't dehumidify nearly as well as a properly sized unit. A/C unit's efficiency ramps up, asymptotically approachinig their best efficiency over about a 40 minute or thereabouts time period and then maintain the best efficiency for the duration of that run cycle. Oversized units knock the temp down fast and shut off never having achieved good running efficiency AND they recirculate so little air that they don't dehumidify worth a darn.
How long will you personaly occupy the house? Will it be handed down in the family? Standing seam metal roofing is a good deal if you consider the lifecycle costs. It is much more expensive but may last over 50 years with no leaks. (I'm getting it.)
Keep in mind that, in general, the cheapest isn't usually the best bargain and the most expensive is frequently not the best quality nor the best lifecycle cost.
If you paint any of the exterior of the house you are a glutton for punishment. Do not try to save money by skimping on paint quality for external application. I spent nearly a year fulltime fixing up a house about 2 1/2 years ago and I still recall the stark contrast between the econo white interior latex versus the good stuff. Cheap took 5 coats to get coverage that came close to my requirements. One coat of the good stuff did better.
I frequented the ORANGE BOX (Home Depot) where I bought considerable quantities of oops paint. I paid $5 for $25/gal paint. I also bought 5 gal pails. Nearly all oops paint sold by volume for the same price irrespective of the initial price. SO... only buy the best. In case you don't know what oops paint is... they custom mix and it doesn't match so they set it to one side and later sell it for a fraction of the regular price. By careful selection and blending you can get useable colors. I did buy some god plain white to mix with some oops paint. There is a terrific difference in ease of application and coverage when using GOOD paint.
Other ideas... Stamped concrete as a sudstitute for tile, stone, or xxx. Sounds like a possibility but is likely more expensive than actual ceramic tile. Counter tops: You can buy real polished rock (granite) cheaper than the good plastic counter tops (Corian and its copy cats) It isn't seamless but it is beautiful and you can set a hot cast iron skillet on it without damage. There is a growing interest in concrete countertops. You can buy a good book on it from the Portland Cement Association. There had been writeups in "Fine Homebuilding" magazine. They are pretty durable and good looking and if you DIY they are not very expensive. The most recent thing I saw on them showed the use of self leveling cement to make getting a good finish (and level too) a no brainer.
You can save a lot on kitchen cabinets by a couple different methods. Buy COTS or buy the wall and floor units prefab and do your own face frames and doors. (What I'm thinking of doing.) Raised pannel doors run about $25-$50 each. I can get better for quality in that price range by buying the wood and hardware and building the face frames and doors myself. I could save money as well but the wood I want is expensive.
Avoid the leading edge of technology. You can pay really big bucks for hi-tech windows (or xyz systems) and not EVER save enough in energy to pay the cost over and above a modest vinyl thermopane dual glazed price (albeit with low E glass.)
Best of luck to you,
Patrick
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
<font color="blue"> A two story home more closely approximates a sphere but building costs for two stories are often more than the same sq ft on one floor (if land cost is excluded) </font color>
While I agree with most of your ideas to a greater or lesser extent, I'm confused as to how you believe having more than double the roof area and double the foundation area would cost more than the cost differential between celiing joists and floor joists for half of your total square footage. That one just doesn't make any sense to me at all.
You'll have more than double the money in concrete in the single story (the "more than" part comes from the additional perimeter requiring footers) and more than double the sheathing, paper and shingles than on a two story (again, the "more than" part comes from the additional perimeter area requiring overhangs). You'll also have more in guttering and downspouts combined (actually it'll be less in downspouts but, except in a very small amount of square footage, more in guttering). You'll also have more siding as your gable ends will be larger in the one story model if that's the side you double from the two story model.
What is it that I'm missing here? A staircase and railing can't be that expensive, can it? [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote