Designing your custom home in the country: Positioning

Series: Tips on designing a country home.

n this multi-part series I will help give you tips on how to go about having a custom home built in the country, where it should sit, what it should look like, how it should function and what type of home performs the best and fits in with the surrounding country side.

Positioning the home on the property

You have purchased a piece of property in the country and you want to build a home on it. One of the main things that you should do before you even start designing the home is figure out where on the property it is going to be built.

There are a number of things that you need to consider when you are working out the placement;

Are there existing structures on the property? A lot of country properties come with buildings already on them, buildings such as barns, drive sheds and even older homes that need to be torn down or removed before you start building a new one. You want to place your new home in a position that will help complement the existing structures (if they are worth keeping). When you have a barn on your property you usually don’t build a house near it, the barn is usually positioned behind the house some distance away.

Is there an existing driveway? If there is an existing driveway or even an existing entrance to the property then it is more cost effective to use it then try and build a new one. But if the existing one just doesn’t work for you then you can have it removed and a new proper gravel driveway installed. Make sure that you build your new driveway wider than normal, country properties always have wider driveways because they have the space for them. This makes getting in and out of a long driveway easier and helps keep people from driving and parking on your lawn.

Existing well? If your property has an existing well then it’s usually a good idea to position the house so that it can be easily piped into the house. If you don’t have a well on the property then you should decide where you want to place the well. It’s usually a good idea when drilling a new well to pick several locations for the placement of it, sometimes when they drill you a well they don’t get enough water and have to try in a different spot.

Use the natural topography of the land. If you have a hill on your property then you might want to position the house near the top of the hill, placing the house on the edge of the hill at the start of the down slope will allow you to have a walkout basement and will give you the farthest views. There are other factors you should think about, you should position the home so that it looks out on the nicest views as well. You don’t want to position the house so that it looks directly at your neighbours, or a large wind turbine or the farmers pig barn across the road. One of the main reasons that people build in the country is so that they don’t have to look at a lot of other buildings. Rolling fields, ponds, rivers and old growth trees are what most people want for their views.

Since you have the ability to position the house anyway that you want, then you should try and position it so that it receives the most amount of sunshine. The more you can turn the house south into the sun the warmer and brighter the house will become.

Things to remember when you are positioning the house;

• Leave enough room to install a septic system with full drainage tile.

• Leave enough room for a geothermal heat in-ground loop.

• Leave enough room so that you can have a turn-around in your driveway. Turn arounds are important in the country because most people have long driveways and it can be difficult to back out of them if you are not able to turn-around.

• Separate garages need to be placed close enough to the house so that you don’t have to travel too far to get to your vehicle and far enough away so that it doesn’t crowd the house and restrict the driveway.

• Position the house so that you can take full advantage of the natural drainage of the land. You don’t want to build your home so that it is at the bottom of a hill or in a shallow part of the property. This can lead to problems with water and moisture in the home, especially during and after severe rain and snow storms.

This is the first step of many when you want to build a custom home in the country. In the next part I will talk about what type of homes that are designed and built in the country.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.

Why you should start building your home in the spring

Why you should start your custom home project in the spring

If you are thinking about building a custom home, you should be doing your planning and designing in the winter so that you can get your building permit before the spring. There are a couple of reasons for this;

·         Designers, contractors and the local municipal building departments are not as busy in the winter months. Even through things have changed with the construction industry being a 12 month of the year business, the high volume time is in the warmer months.

·         This will allow you to choose your contractor without any pressure. In the spring time when contractors are starting to get busier and picking up building projects you could end up being rushed to make decisions if the contractor that you want to build your house is filling up his work load for the whole year quickly.

·         You will be able to get a lot of the choosing of fireplaces, plumbing fixtures, lighting fixtures, floor coverings, kitchen layouts, bathroom layouts and trim details out of the way. This will help you later in the build process because even with all those choices made you will be asked by the contractor to make constant decisions. It’s called a custom home for a reason; it’s customized to the homeowner and the homeowner’s budget.

·         Choosing and signing a contractor in the winter before the spring will allow the contractor to book important sub-trades so that your project can be developed in a timely manner. For example; in spring time when you go to dig the foundation your contractor will hire an excavator company, if they don’t know about the project until the spring then they might have a hard time getting the excavator company in a timely manner since everyone will be calling and asking for digging services.

Building in a cold climate means that you should start the building process as soon as the ground thaws. Most custom homes take a full year to build so you are pretty much guaranteed to be building the house through the winter months. The difference is that if you start in the spring then by the time the weather turns to rainy in the fall and then snowy in the winter the house will be enclosed with the siding or stone installed already on the outside. The only work then should be on the inside out of the elements in an environment where you are able to control the temperature.

Building in the cold always takes longer and ends up costing more. Workers and tools do not work as well in the cold and the act of having to shovel snow ends up costing the home owner money. There are also certain things that cannot be done in the winter (like stoning the outside of a house) without adding large amounts of heat which costs money.

There are more man days lost in the winter because of equipment freeze ups and hazardous driving then in any other part of the year. Also the day light hours in the winter are shorter which shortens the day for people working on the outside. This slows the process of building the house and usually adds cost because in the construction industry time costs money.

If you start a house in the fall or the end of the fall you could end up in a situation where the weather gets unusually cold and you have to insulate the ground, footings or foundation against freezing. This is usually accomplished with straw or thermal blankets. This process ends up costing the homeowner more money, something that can be avoided by starting the foundation earlier in the year like summer or spring.

In a lot of rural locations they have spring road restrictions called “half loads”. This is when the frost is coming out of the ground making the roads softer and more vulnerable to damage. In “half load” restricted area’s you are only aloud to fill trucks such as concrete, lumber and delivery half full to keep the weight from ruining the road bed. This also means that important things like cranes cannot access a job site. If you do all your planning and permits in the winter then the contractor has the ability to start your project before the half loads are placed on the roads. The contractor can get all the digging and concrete out of the way so that the project isn’t slowed down with the road restrictions. This will also save you money as having trucks do delivery half full will double your delivery charges.

The earlier you start your custom home project the better the chance that you will have access to important in demand sub trades. Certain sub trades depending on their reputation are busier than others. For example; good drywallers are in high demand and are almost impossible to get on time depending on certain times of the year. But if you start your custom home in the spring then you will need drywallers in the fall or early winter. If you start early then you have the flexibility to wait any extra week or two for the good quality trades. It makes your project more flexible and allows you to do all the finishing’s in the house in the winter after Christmas when trades are looking for work.

If you want help with the building or designing project feel free to email me at robabbott@villagebuilders.ca or stop in and see us at 3 Caroline St. Creemore.

Rob Abbott

Operations Manager

Village Builders Inc.

Custom homes: some do's and don't when designing and building your home

Some do’s and don’ts when building and designing your custom home

Don’t make the mistake of designing your new home around your existing furniture.

Many people these days make the mistake of designing their new home around there existing furniture, instead of designing the furniture around there new home. I have witnessed people spend thousands and thousands of dollars having plans redrawn and buildings changed when they are being framed so that their existing furniture will fit. This is people not seeing the forest for the trees. You’re building your dream home so that you can live in it for the next 30 to 40 years. Your furniture usually will not last that long. With changing trends and with overall wear on furniture items it doesn’t make sense to spend any extra money when the house is destined to outlast the furniture. Especially these days when there is countless custom furniture makers that can make you whatever you want if you can’t find it at a normal retail outlet.

Don’t micro manage a custom home build when you have a contractor. If you did your proper research and due diligence on your contractor then they are the right company for the job. They do not require you helping them organizing things. They need you to make decisions on a timely manner and pay your bill when asked. As long as you’re happy with the quality of their work then they really don’t require you to show up on the job site everyday to oversee them. This can be a major distraction for the employee’s working on the project; it can actually cost you money because you could slow them down. Most foremen on projects have been trained to stay with the client the whole time that they are on the site. This is so that the foremen can answer any questions the client might have and it is also a safety issue. Construction sites can be very dangerous places when you don’t understand what is going on. You can not only put yourself in danger but the workers too who have to keep an eye out in relation to where you’re standing.

Don’t assume that the contractor knows everything that you are thinking about. Make sure to ask questions. Questions are what contractors like, they would rather you asked a question when you don’t know something, then having you make an assumptions that could be wrong. Good contractors will strive to educate their clients, the more the client learns about how their house is put together the easier the building process becomes on the homeowner and on the contractor.

Don’t always settle for the normal product. In today’s fast evolving construction world you need a contractor that is comfortable using new products that they deem worthy of your project. If you want to build the walls out of concrete instead of wood, find a contractor that is comfortable doing that. If you want bamboo floors instead of North American hardwood then you should be able to work with the builder to find the right kind of bamboo. As long as you understand that sometimes the materials you want can take longer to get and might cost you more money then you first budgeted then you should be able to have it.

Do try to hire a contractor that has an interior designer on staff. If you unable to do this then hire an interior designer that you believe can work with you and the contractor. This can be very important because it can take people months to pick plumbing fixtures. Without someone to help weed out what you do not need or want in your house you can end up lost in the plumbing fixture world not knowing what you should choose. Also your interior designer should know the boundaries of what she has been hired to do. A lot of interior designers believe that once they have been hired it is there job to manage or oversee the project. This can cause major problems with contractor. I have seen the interior designer make major changes to the house that cause the home owner thousands of dollars just so that they can put their personnel stamp on the project. You have to make sure that when hiring a designer that you define the parameters of what they are being hired to assist upon.

Do make sure that you have a financial budget that reflects what you can afford. A good contractor will present you with either a bid or a budget for the project, but that doesn’t mean this will be the total cost of your project. There are a lot of factors that come into a major renovation or home building project, factors that the builder will not be able to foresee. So there will be extra’s depending on certain things like ground condition and design flaws. Also its human nature to change things, so when the average house build takes 8 to 12 months your mind will change on a lot of things. A lot of these things will be upgrades on what you originally choose your budget. From more expensive flooring to upgraded kitchen appliances. These chooses raise your budget from the original cost to a new higher budget. You do not want to end up in the situation where you can’t afford to finish the house because you didn’t borrow enough money.

Don’t get over focused on one part of the house to the point of down grading the rest of the house. If you are solely focused on having high end finishes in your house, so you down grade on the insulation and the overall construction of the house. High end finishes look nice but if you cheapen out on everything else like the insulation, heating system, windows and exterior finishing’s your house will not look that good after a few years. Also you will have higher maintenance costs and heating and cooling costs that could add up to massive amounts of money over time. It also will affect the resale value of your house in the future. Especially in a world where energy costs keep going up and up. Make sure that you balance your budget so that you get a house that you can save you money in the future. It’s easier to upgrade the finishes later. It’s not easy to upgrade the insulation in the walls later.

 Don’t get caught in the cycle of keeping up with the neighbours. If the neighbours build a house that is 4000 sqft that doesn’t mean that you have to build a house that is 5000 sqft. Many a person have ended up house rich and cash poor because they convinced themselves that they needed to keep up with the neighbours or friends. A lot of people end up with overly large houses and can’t afford to finish the house inside to what it deserves. If you want to spend a million dollars on a house you don’t have to build a 5000 sqft house. You should be looking at what you want to pay per sqft that will tell you what size of house you have to build. If you want an amazing house with the most expensive of everything you could end up spending 400sqft! That means that your million dollars only builds you a 2500 sqft house. So figure out what you want in the house and then you can figure out how big the house should be.

These are just some helpful  do’s and don’ts to help people and their contractors get you what you really want, your dream home!

If you are looking for a contractor or want to see what we do at Village Builders Inc then go to www.villagebuilders.ca

Rob Abbott

Operations Manager

Village builders Inc.