Category Habitat for Humanity International

If you’re drawing your own plans, the process— though slow and often frustrating—will give you a clearer understanding of your house than many builders ever have. It can save vou from making costly mistakes and will likely contribute to building a better house.

A good wav to test vour ability to visualize a house design based on plans is to visit some building sites where vou can examine both the plans and the actual construction details as the house goes up. If you’ve bought stock plans, they may seem bewildering initially; as you work with them, they’ll become much easier to read and understand. The ability to both draw and read plans gets easier with experience.

FRONT ELEVATION EAST

STEP 5 Get Organized to Build

Building a house is a process that consists of a seemingly endless number of steps. Knowing which step follows which—for example» when to call the electrical company 😮 install a tem­porary power pole, when to call the plumber to install drains and vents in the joist system— is key to organizing tasks and materials so that work isn’t held up. This knowledge comes primarily from experience, but for the first­time builder I’ve listed most of the steps in the process (see pp. 16-21).

When my brothers and 1 were building houses, we spent many hours planning and organizing so that we always knew what to do next, who would do it, and when and how it would be done. Organizing time and materials is an essential skill for any builder, whether that builder is working with professionals, friends, family, or Habitat volunteers. Staying organized and on top of the situation is espe­cially important when working with volunteers and unskilled helpers. Careful planning, good organization, and effective communication will

BUILDING A HOUSE REQUIRES that you learn more than one new language. Besides the termi­nology of building (plates, braces, lined walls, plumb, toenail, and the like), there’s also the visual vocabulary of lines, symbols, and notations found on building plans. Fortunately, most of these sym­bols are fairly easy to understand (see the illustra­tion at right). It’s important to become familiar with building plans so that you can begin to visual­ize, from a two-dimensional representation, what the house will look like with the walls framed and the fixtures and appliances in place. It’s far easier (and less expensive) to make a change at the plan­ning stage than after the walls and rough plumbing are in place.

SYMBOLS USED ON FLOOR PLANS Wall —— Window Door (and direction it opens) Sliding doors Bifold doors insulation Ш№ШШШ

Sink and Lavatory Q Q sink □ Lav

Bathtub I )

^ Wall sections to show the “guts” of the floors, walls, or ceilings. Think of a wall section drawing as an apple that’s been sliced in half to reveal its core (see the illus­tration at left). Both section and detail plans (sec below) are sometimes drawn at a larger scale to better identify the details that wouldn’t show up as clearly in a smaller scale.

ж Elevation plan to show how each side of the house will look. Elevation drawings show the foundation, wall height, siding and trim, roof style and pitch, and roof overhang at the eaves.

ж Detail plans to provide close-up views of small sections of the house. These are useful lor providing clarification or additional detail that isn’t shown in the other drawings.

It’s not uncommon for builders or owner – builders to view the local building department as enemy turf. Let me suggest that your build­ing experience will be immeasurably more positive, productive, and efficient if you view the building department as a resource and think of the building inspector as someone who can help you. Certainly there are excep­

tions, as there are in any field, but, by and large, building departments and building inspectors exist to protect prospective home – owners from unscrupulous or incompetent builders and owner-builders from themselves. The building inspector knows the building codes, which have been developed over the years to ensure that safe, durable houses are built. Your building inspector has the same goals that vou do. He or she wants a house

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that doesn’t leak, isn’t a fire hazard, and can stand up to everyday use and all but the most severe natural disasters. Building inspectors really are on your side.

Taking the plans to a building department to request permits need not be a big affair. I have often submitted basic plans on 1 I-in. by

14- in. sheets of paper. Plans do need to be drawn to scale, and the most common scale is 14 in. – 1 ft.; this means that 1 in. on a plan equals 4 ft. in the actual house. Using graph paper can help with preliminary

A plot plan lets you see, from above, the size of the lot and where your house will be placed on the land. It also shows where utilities like water and electricity are located.

This is the floor plan for a simple four bedroom house. With it you can see the size of the building, the arrangement of the living spaces, and the location of doors and windows.

designing, but an inexpensive computer-aided design (CAD) program makes professional­looking plans that are simple to draw and easy to change.

For a simple house, most building depart­ments need the basic types of drawings shown on pp. 12, 14, and 15:

a Plot or site plan to give an overall view from above, showing the shape and dimen­sions of the property and the size and loca­tion of the building.

a Foundation plan to show the location and size of the concrete footings, walls, and piers that will support the floor frame.

a Floor plan to provide a bird’s-eye view of the size and arrangement of living spaces. The floor plan shows the location and size of doors and windows and often the loca­tion of electrical, plumbing, and heating system components (see the symbols explained below). Even the location, spac­ing, and direction of the roof trusses can be found here.

Consider building a wheelchair ramp leading to an entry or at least providing гост fora ramp to be built in the future. An accessible ramp has a 1 – in-12 rise (1 ft. of rise for every 12 ft. of length). When designing a house, its smart it) look beyond what your needs are today. Try to think about and allow for expansion in the future. An addition to the family—whether a new child or an elderly parent—often requires adding a bedroom. If you plan ahead, you 11 have room to expand when vou need to. This can save a lot of work and monev down the line.

Small doesn’t mean boring

Whether we admit it or not, we all respond emotionally to our surroundings. Buildings create interior environments that can be drab, distinctive, inspiring, or discouraging. How a building looks, how its laid out, the materials used—all these influence how we feel. Ive vis­ited huge, expensive homes that were not very inviting. Just because a house is big does not mean that it is warm and attractive.

Even a small, plain house can be made to feel inviting and uplifting, giving us pleasure, raising our spirits, and making us feel safe and secure (see the photo on the facing page). In the years that IVc been a Habitat volunteer,

Eve had the opportunity to give a few humble houses a bit more personality and life than they’d otherwise have had. In this book, J’ve

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tried to include many of the lessons I’ve learned—things such as ensuring that there are two sources of light in every room. Simple things like this can help make rooms bright

and cheerv.

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Ask the right questions

Getting the details right will make life more

convenient when vou move into vour house.

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Details also present many opportunities to make spaces special by using color schemes, hardware, unique materials, and built-in features (see the photo at right). As you’re working out your house’s design, ask yourself these key questions: “Is there a place to set groceries when I enter? Where will we hang up our coats or take off our boots when we come inside in the winter? Is il easy to get food to the table and to clear the dishes?” More than anything else you do, thinking about how you will actually live in the house will help you refine its design and ensure that the experi­ence of living in it is a pleasant one.

Installing a fence around your site is a good idea. It can deter or prevent the theft of tools and building materials. It also makes the site safer by discouraging unauthorized visits.

Liability insurance is also a good idea, and it may even be required if you’re borrowing money from a bank. Always work to keep your site safe, organized, and free of debris, espe­cially boards with nails protruding from them. Stack unused materials neatly, keep trenches covered, and limit access to anv unsafe areas. One nail in a worker’s foot or a bad ankle sprain from tripping into a trench can cost a lot of time in medical attention and recovery.

STEP 3 Design the House

The bumper-sticker slogan, “Live Simply That Others May Simply Live,” speaks to the design aspects of an affordable house. To increase the cost of a house, all you need to do is compli­cate its design. Affordable housing is, by nature, small and simple. The same formula that makes for a safe house in earthquake country—small, low, and light—makes for an affordable house anywhere in the country.

Money-saving design ideas

The Charlotte house featured throughout this hook is one of the most cost-efficient designs you can build (see the photo at right). This single-story structure has a simple gable roof that extends over a small porch, where the main entry is located.

On a small lot, where setbacks seriously limit the footprint of the house, you may need to consider a small, two-story design. Habitat for Humanity has a good selection of basic house plans that fit the needs of most families (see Resources on p. 278). Admittedly, the bedrooms are not discotheque size, but you can do your dancing in the living and dining room. In a house, quantity of space doesn’t necessarily translate into quality of life. When my children were young, I enclosed our front porch and made two 5- ft. by 9-ft. rooms. They were cozy, sun-filled spaces; one was used for study, one for music. To my surprise, those two tiny rooms became the most popular parts of the house. A well-sited, well-designed house elicits that kind of reaction (see the sidebar on p. 10).

Another way to conserve space and save

money is to choose a floor plan that reduces

or eliminates hallways. As you look over a

house design, remember that doorways need

to be at least 32 in. wide—36 in. for easv

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wheelchair accessibility. And keep in mind

that the direction in which a door swings can affect how well a room works and where you can place the furniture.

Other cost-saving strategies have more to do with materials and energy use. Keep the kitchen and the bath on the same side of the house to minimize rough plumbing expenses. In cold regions of the country, run plumbing lines in interior walls and enclose the porch as a mud room to minimize heat loss when com­ing and going. To find out which house designs work well in your area, seek advice from local builders, building inspectors, designers, or architects. You’ll find it’s not too difficult to modify basic plans to suit your needs and meet building-code requirements in your region (see Resources on p. 278).

Check with your building department to see whether your house is required to have a garage. Habitat for Humanity’s policy is to “build for people, not cars,” but some munici­palities require garages. Sometimes, however, you can get a variance sc vou don’t have to

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build a garage.

Helping Hand

Improve your design skills. Check with your local community college if you’re interested in learning how to read house plans or design a house. Most community colleges offer courses in computer-aided design, drafting, and con­struction management.

IF YOU’RE BUILDING A HOUSE, somewhere along the line you’ll likely need to hire a contractor. Whether it’s a surveyor, excavator, foundation con­tractor, plumber, electrician, or other tradesperson, you’ll want to choose carefully. Regardless of the job, always get bids from at least three contractors. Ask questions about their work, ask to see other work they have done, and ask for names of former clients, then follow up by talking with some of their previous clients. Finally, before hiring anyone, call your state contractor’s board to see whether any complaints have ever been filed against your prospective contractor. (Look in the blue pages of the phone book for the appropriate department within your state’s consumer-protection division.)

When you interview each contractor, pay atten­tion to his or her attitude. You want someone who

listens to you. What you don’t need is someone who ac:s as though he or she knows what you need better than you do. Get a written cost quote that includes a detailed description of the work to be done and a completion date. Make sure all the quotes you receive are for identical work.

Most contractors are in business because they do competent work for a fair price. But this is the real world and, unfortunately, not every contractor is honest. I recently received a call from a distraught couple who had given a roofing contractor a $2,000 deposit to have their house reshingled. When the couple called to find out why the contractor hadn’t shown up to do the work, the phone number provided by the "contractor" turned out to be disconnected. So please, take care.

STEP 2 Prepare the Site

Site preparation can mean many things (see the photo on the facing page). In Oregon, for example, you’re likely to have a huge tangle of blackberry vines to subdue. In the southeast, your land may be covered with kudzu. I once built a house on what looked like an old junkyard—the lot was strewn with a dozen dismantled cars and several old motorcycles, which had to be removed before we could start the construction process. Removing vegetation or junk from a lot may be just the beginning, though. Another possibility is that you might encounter hard rock, which may require blasting. In any case, you’ll most likely need to hire a contractor to level the land, establish proper drainage, put in a septic tank
or sewer connection, prep the driveway, or dig trenches for the foundation footing. If you bring in heavy equipment, do your best to communicate to the operator that you want to save existing trees and to work native plants into the landscape when the project is finished.

Run power to the site

Before you can build, you’ll need to run elec­trical power to the site. Most builders contact the power company to arrange for a tempo­rary power pole to be set up on the site (see the top photo on p. 8 ). Another option is to ask a neighbor to allow you to use—and pay for—electricity while you are building.

Remember, you’re going to live in this neigh­borhood. There’s no time like the present to be friendly and to get to know your neighbors. If you’re building in a remote area, you’ll probably need a generator to get electricity to the site. I’ve built many houses using a portable, gas-powered generator. Make sure your generator is capable of supplying power to several tools at once.

The first step in building a house is finding a place to put it. This is not a step to be taken lightly. There are many factors to consider, not the least of which are the exact location of property lines, the setback requirements (the distance a house must be set back from prop­erly lines), and whether there are any ease­ments or restrictions on what or where you can build.

Soil characteristics are important when choosing a building site. We once built a house in Montana where 6 in. of topsoil hid large boulders, making it impossible to dig trenches by hand. Building on expansive clay soil requires extra precautions. Learn about the lot’s zoning, whether its situated in a Hood plain or on a wetland, and whether any haz­ardous materials are, or have ever been, pres­ent. Removing asbestos debris or an under­ground oil tank can be very expensive.

Also check to see whether utilities are in place—water, water meter, sewer or septic sys­tem, electricity, gas, and telephone and cable lines. When we first moved to Oregon, I inquired about a two-acre site near where we now live. The city water lines stopped mile away from the property, and to drill a deep well or extend water lines to the new site would have cost a small fortune. We looked elsewhere. Be sure to check with the local building department (as well as the health, zoning, wetlands, and any other local depart­ments that must issue approval for л construc­tion project) about any potential lot. This investigative work can save you a loi of lime and money. Make sure you’ve done all your

homework to determine a lot’s suitability

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before you buy.

Particularly in cities, finding a suitable lot can be a daunting task. The price of the prop­erty can sometimes be the biggest impediment to building an affordable house. 1 know of a couple of marginally suitable building lots in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles that recently sold for $258,000 each. Both of those lots are pitched so steeply that each one will require at least SI50,000 just to prepare for construction. That’s $400,000 before the owners can even start building! Obviously most of us have to look elsewhere. There’s no easy way to find the “perfect” lot. Check with realtors, follow up on newspaper and online ads, let friends know you’re looking for land, and focus on the out­skirts of the town or city where you’d like to build. But above all, be persistent. Keep your energy and optimism high and you’ll find the right piece of land.

high on the short-grass prairies of western Nebraska, that huge inland sea of grass where the only constant is the wind whistling across the snow-covered, sagebrush hills. Aged, warped, unpainted clapboard siding hardly slowed the wind and cold. It was an uninsul­ated farmhouse with no central heating, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and windows that let in more wind than light. Just 3 ft. from the iron stove in the kitchen, it was Iree/ing. In our bedrooms, even when Mother warmed the sheets with her flat iron, the tem­perature never got much above what it was outside. Wallpaper, as the saying goes, was used not for decoration, but for insulation.

After high school, I headed south. The first framing job I worked on was in Los Angeles in 1950. There were lots of carpenters, all wearing white overalls, cutting different pieces of wood with sharp handsaws and nailing them together with 16-oz., curved-claw ham­mers. The pace was slow and methodical. A wall chalkline would be snapped on the floor. The bottom plate was nailed to the line. Comer posts were then set and a string pulled taut over posts from corner to corner. The length of each wall stud was measured from that string. Once the studs were cut and toe – nailed to the bottom plate, we would stand on

affiliates. Families that otherwise would not have even dared to dream of owning their own home have been given a “hand up’ to a dwelling that they can actually afford. But make no mistake: This isn’t charity—the houses are not given away. Rather» in addition to shouldering a modest mortgage, the new homeowners put in around 500 hours of “sweat equity,” working with volunteers who help them build their house. In the few years I have lived here in Coos Bay, Oregon, we have built eight houses that have become homes for the families who worked with us. Because of all the volunteer labor, we are able to build these houses for about $30,000 to $35,000, plus land, which results in a mortgage that even low-income families can handle.

lfHFH can build an affordable house, why can’t anyone? First of all, others arc doing it. More than 175,000 owner-builders create new housing units each year. It takes a significant amount of courage, effort, and time, not to mention a piece of land, some money, and help from friends—but it can and is being done. How to build a simple house is not a mystery. It’s rather like putting together Lego blocks or Lincoln Logs, one piece at a time. Many of vou already have the basic skills needed to build a simple house. Just look at the thousands of people who flood places like Home Depot and Lowe’s to buy tools and materials for working around their homes.

If you’re considering building your own home, keep in mind that it is also possible to build a home that is beautiful but, in the long

run, is neither decent nor affordable. Decent housing, for example, coesn’t have leaks that can cause mold and rot, compromising both vonr health and your home. Neither is decent housing full of toxic fumes, which can come from paint, carpet, and a host of other com­mon, seemingly innocuous, materials. A decent, affordable home is energy efficient, well ventilated, and comfortable; built from safe, health-preserving materials; and requires a minimum of upkeep or maintenance. It can also be built from forest products and other materials that are sustainable, so that we don’t further lay waste to our homeland. Building such a home isn’t impossible, but it does take some careful planning.

So, where do you start? There is an old saving, "You can hear a ot just by listening. M Talk to neighbors, contractors, carpenters, building inspectors, and the staff at your local building-supply store. Contact your local Habitat affiliate or HFH International for information. Read the how-to information that comes with many building materials; study this book and others; check out the numerous how-to-build sites on the Web (see Resources on p. 278). Ask questions, work out details and ideas on paper, and gradually the big picture will start to get clearer. Although no single book can answer all the questions you’re likely to have on the subject, it’s my intent to provide a step oy-step guide that will take you from basic planning and design through the actual construction of a simple, decent, affordable house.

BUILDING A HOUSE IS A LONG JOURNEY, and one of the most important characteristics you can possess is optimism. In this context, 1 often think about president Jimmy Carter, who has done so much to promote the work of Habitat for Humanity. Over the years, he has helped build hundreds of houses in the sincere belief that decent housing can be made available to every human being. As you take your first steps toward building a house, remember Mr. Carters optimistic altitude, and make it your own.

The homebuilding process can be intimidating, especially if you haven’t been through a house construction project from start to finish. This book is here to help you. By gaining a good understanding of when, why, and how things are done, you’ll also gain confidence in your ability to build a house that’s comfortable, functional, and affordable. Take care, and hold on to your optimistic attitude. Enjoy the step-by – step journey and all the people who help out along the way.

1 Obtain a Site

2 Prepare the Site

3 Design the House

4 Secure the Building Permits

5 Get Organized to Build

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