How To Choose A House Plan

"How To Choose A House Plan"," The often-neglected rule is this: not every house plans fits - or can easily be made to fit - on every site.
 In the Midwestern and Southern United States it'll be supported on stacks and stacks of concrete block; in the California hills it's even worse - houses on stilts! But it does make for great video when a mudslide or earthquake takes one into the ravine below.
 But many house plan buyers have more challenging properties and these lots require a design that responds appropriately.


The Four ""S's"" of Siting a House - Slope, Sun, Soil, and Sewer

Slope The slope of the property can have a big effect on the cost of your project - a house placed on a slope will most definitely cost more to build than on a flat lot.


Many owners of sloping lots want to take advantage of that situation by including a ""walk-out"" basement in the plan.
 The steepness of the slope will partly determine how much excavation and/or fill is necessary to create the walkout.
 Be sure your plan includes such provisions for a walk-out, or have someone make the necessary revisions to the plans for you.


Looks for plans designed for sloped lots - they're usually multi-level plans and are usually listed as ""sloped lot plans"" on house plan websites.
 Choose a house plan that's appropriate for the lot without expensive modifications or construction techniques.
 These are the rooms you want sunlight in; the rooms with all the expensive windows.
 That's where the sun is, remember? If your lot is on the south side of the street, great.
 Or worse, your lot faces east, and the afternoon sun pours through that wall of west facing glass like a blast furnace - heating up the house and fading the furniture and carpeting.
 If the plan you've chosen is drawn on CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) software, then flipping the plan is easy.
 ""Buy The ""Right"" Set Of Plans"", we'll talk more about flipping floor plans.
 Houses use energy to keep heat in, and to keep heat out.
 The easiest way to keep heat in is to reduce the number of windows - so pay close attention to the number and location of windows in your house plan.


Soil It's amazing, every time a backhoe starts a new house foundation, how different soils can be from one building site to another.
 Even if you know a lot about the underground conditions on your site, it's a good idea to keep a little cash in reserve to deal with potential surprises lurking under the turf.
 You might also contact builders and excavators with experience in the area and ask them what they've encountered on other projects they've built near you.
 Some Southeastern plans, for example, have neither crawl spaces nor basements; they're designed with foundations on multiple piers because of the low bearing capacity of the sandy soil.


A few of the plan services in the Great Plains and Texas design their homes on concrete slabs - there's almost no foundation at all.
 Typical practice in many areas is poured concrete walls - a potentially expensive option if your plans call for concrete block.


But even a house with the proper type of foundation for your site may need significant re-engineering to accommodate the local soils and the local building department.
 In most areas, you'll have to show the building department that your foundation is designed for the local soils conditions.


Sewer The Plumber's Credo - ""everything flows downhill"" is extremely important to remember when selecting a plan.
 The height of this pipe will determine the depth below grade of the basement slab since the effluent from the house must ""flow downhill"" to the sewer line.
 In such cases a ""grinder"" or ""ejector"" pump may be required to lift waste to the sewer height - at a cost of several thousand dollars.
 On larger undeveloped properties there may not be any public sanitary sewer to connect to at all.


Several types of private sanitation systems are in use today including the traditional septic tank and leach field, aeration systems, and ""mound"" systems.
 The choice of system will also be heavily weighted by the soil type and slope of the lot, and the available area(s) for the system.


Since a private sanitation system is more expensive than connecting to a public system, the cost isn't typically considered in the ""base"" cost of building a house.


Put 'em all together At this point you've probably begun to guess that all of the four critical site selection factors above can affect the same site.
 A heavily-wooded, steeply-sloping property on the north side of the street with loose, sandy soil will require a very particular house plan indeed.


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