Using "off the shelf house plans" yes or no?

[Olly P]

Hi all. Currently we are about to apply for Outline Planning at our site so I am (and have been for the last 9 months) doing a lot of research on Planning Policies and house design  etc.  

In the 1960's my father and his brother built around 10 brick bungalows that he said he bought the bungalow plans out of a magazine in a newsagent..  Literally off the shelf!! He then took the building plans to a local architect who positioned them on to the site plan ready for submitting to LPA. This saved a significant amount of money on custom house design as they were happy with the off the shelf design albeit they did tweak them.

My question is have many of you had success in buying off the shelf plans? Such as what www.houseplansdirect.co.uk provide? 

Best Regards Oliver 

[PeterW]

I was born in a similar bungalow ..! Block work and render off the shelf plans ..! 

 

I’m not sure how many people use that sort of plan vs an off the shelf design that includes a build element such as those from the likes of Design & Materials (D&M) or similar. 

 

The pure plan suppliers still need a lot of work from what I’ve seen as they also need more detailed plans for building regs unless they have changed the packages so you’ve got an element of design still needed and you’re starting from a compromise design anyway. 

 

An AT should be able to produce a draft design fairly cheaply for you if it’s just for OPP. 

[Ferdinand]

It really depends on whether the Bought-in Plan, or a suitable small modification of it, meets your need sufficiently to cover the opportunity cost of not designing your own, and if it actually good, and if it meets your requirements technically (eg heating costs, comfort), and if it *is* actually cheaper as a whole.

 

If it does - good, but you need to do an appropriate amount of due diligence to make sure your decision is correct (unless it is not very important to you).

 

I think the further back the plan goes, the more care needs to be taken ... since lifestyles have changed over say half a century.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by Ferdinand

[jack]

Personally, unless you're developing at minimal cost to flog to a mainstream buyer who won't really think too hard about what they're buying, I'd avoid off-the-peg plans. At the very least, what you build needs to take into account where the sun is, and the impact of neighbours, driveway, and landscaping needs. Beyond that, you should be thinking about whether the house suits its surroundings.

 

If you can find a plan that does all that and suits your particular requirements for living, then in theory there's nothing wrong with this approach.

[MikeSharp01]

There are a load of books of house plans you can look at the design is there but not the detail - they all tend to be a bit 'house' like so if you want something a bit edgy you may need to look further. If its details you want, such as might be needed for building control, then I doubt there are many plan sets out there at that level.

 

[Mr Punter]

In the past we bought a site with outline consent for 3 houses with plans just showing a rectangle where each house is proposed on the site and where the access was.  The final size, layout, height, elevations, materials etc were done later by our architect in a Reserved Matters application.

[Onoff]

It'd be nice if on here we had a "Gallery" of finished builds with a rough location and maybe a very brief construction method; TF, ICF etc

[dpmiller]

We've used one of the local "off the shelf" designers, but had a full redesign of the standard plan to suit our requirements. Still ended up being pretty inexpensive.

[caliwag]

Well, I put together a book (now an Amazon E-book)...'self build home...the last thing you need is an architect' to assist the family in brief making. I agree with Jack that if it's a 'let's build it and see how it goes' type of build, then go for it. However if you want to make it personal, create value and give it personality and character, then the fun exercise must be to design your own with all the must-haves, nice to haves and needs satisfied, to say nothing of repose relative to site. If you read my design book, and no doubt others out there, that should jog your mind into to 'why didn't we think about that' mode...as does a forum like this.

 

I must say that, unless it's for a quick turnaround, you'll never be satisfied with an 'off-the shelf' scheme. Creating your own brief, before the designers fee-clock starts ticking, is most satisfying.

[Onoff]

5 minutes ago, caliwag said:

Well, I put together a book (now an Amazon E-book)...'self build home...the last thing you need is an architect' to assist the family in brief making. I agree with Jack that if it's a 'let's build it and see how it goes' type of build, then go for it. However if you want to make it personal, create value and give it personality and character, then the fun exercise must be to design your own with all the must-haves, nice to haves and needs satisfied, to say nothing of repose relative to site. If you read my design book, and no doubt others out there, that should jog your mind into to 'why didn't we think about that' mode...as does a forum like this.

 

I must say that, unless it's for a quick turnaround, you'll never be satisfied with an 'off-the shelf' scheme. Creating your own brief, before the designers fee-clock starts ticking, is most satisfying.

 

No offence but companies who advertise on here get shot down but you as an author can self promote? A bit "double standards" tbh.

[epsilonGreedy]

I find myself holding a contrarian view as is typical.

 

Selfbuilding is scary for many and as a result folks try to wrap themselves up in a comfort blanket comprised of expensive middle class professionals, this equates to spending serious money early on in the building process on things that do not get materially incorporated into the property structure. In contrast the pro builders I know loath spending money on peripheral activities or things that do not enhance value during a 30 minute sales viewing.

 

For the OP it depends on the plot and the optimum value that can be realized through building something right for the plot. If the OP's plot is on a hillside overlooking a sea loch with dolphins jumping for joy and in the opposite direction is the Serengeti with herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically to the horizon, then the plot deserves some top notch architectural creativity.

 

Having looked at a book of plans I felt it was stuffed with dated designs from the 1970's that had been discarded as having no further commercial value. I suggest if money is tight the OP looks at designs from outfits selling modern kit home designs and then with an outline sketch hand it over to an Architectural Technician to knock into something ready to build.

[MikeSharp01]

3 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

Selfbuilding is scary for many and as a result folks try to wrap themselves up in a comfort blanket comprised of expensive middle class professionals

Hmmm - not sure where to start with this one - so lets just say I am not sure this view is wholly accurate and may mislead people dangerously. I feel it very much depends on what and where you are building but primarily why you are building and your background. Coupled to this the concept of 'expense' is just a world view thing and has little interplay with the cost / value equation you will need to deploy across the whole build.

 

If building for oneself then getting it right for you probably moves the cost / value equation about quite a bit in terms of professional support as would building in a sensitive location / conservation area / green belt etc. There are some aspects of professional support it is very  hard to avoid. Structural engineer (I am not one so have no axe to grind here) for a start although a set of plans may contain all the calculations the building control people will need to be convinced that they are relevant today and that any alterations as might be required to meet current building regs have been reworked by a competent person and at the very least the roof structure will need a set of stability calcs.

 

The architect question is also tied up here, and they are a costly aspect but the value balance in the equation is critical. I can only speak from personal experience as in the three build cases I have been involved with we have always used one to ensure that in getting what we wanted, not what we thought of, and we swept out all the corners of the possibilities by relying on their professional experience and challenging them to match our expectations. In the first two cases we did and we are happy with the result. In the third case we won't know until we get the building finished but I suspect that its going to be good - I can build it well I think but designing it is a whole other ball game - speak to @caliwag he will have a view I am sure. There are of course some lucky clever people who can design and build a house without any professional support at the design end (SE accepted) but you can never know just what a difference that professional front end work would have made - engineering optimisation is after all not aesthetic optimisation and a home / house is a machine for living in but there are a lot of aspects to living.

 

 

[newhome]

My scenario wasn’t quite like that but we bought a plot with full PP for 2 houses and the first house had already been built.  There had been an architect involved but as far as we could tell the design was based on a standard house plan from a TF company. We ended up using the PP and apart from a couple of minor tweaks we were unable to change the PP, so externally we were tied in unless we wanted to start the PP from scratch. We then asked the TF company to replan the internal layout and some structural elements to suit what we had in mind. They produced both the drawings and the SE reports and we avoided using our own architect completely. So you could go to a TF company and look at one of their standard designs I guess. 

[Jeremy Harris]

I've said this before, but although we couldn't find an architect we could work with at the time were were looking around, I did find that the aesthetic design of our house was far and away the hardest part, and even now I'm absolutely convinced that an architect could have added some real value (if we could have found one that had a clue about low energy design, which was our primary problem at the time).

 

I found the engineering aspects, in terms of modelling performance, defining the sizes, specifications and locations of glazing and shading, working out the relative advantages and disadvantages of the many different construction methods and materials available, etc, was pretty straightforward.  It was far from easy, especially when so much is also impacted by building regulation requirements (primarily the access requirements elements of part M and the fire egress requirements of Part B), but was something that I found I could learn.

 

No amount of study would ever have given me the artistic and design skills of a good architect, though, and I still can't help but wonder if we'd have had a better designed house if we'd been able to find a good architect we could have worked with.

[MikeSharp01]

1 minute ago, newhome said:

They produced both the drawings and the SE reports and we avoided using our own architect completely. So you could go to a TF company and look at one of their standard designs I guess

Yes our neighbors did that and got a great home, highly insulated, lovely to live in I suspect but there were compromises they had to make. I suspect that compromise is what its all about in the end. We gave our architect a brief and then free rein until they started coming up with options then we started helping them close in on one we were happy with, features came and went - critical features stayed and in the end we arrived at with the design we have. Interestingly although we started with this as a house for us and our old age (a long way off I hope - but scrabbling around this morning doing some plumbing does make me wonder) we did hold in our minds the idea that if our children needed to sell it how would prospective buyers see it but we didn't let it control much - its for us to live in an entertain in nobody else - if you want it when we are gone, or can no longer live there, then you take it as it is.

[Onoff]

Bastards!  Sitting here with a pen and paper thinking how this place could be redone. Got as far as putting North on the paper! However one of the 11 year old sleepover lot wants to be an architect, maybe I'll ask her!

[joe90]

1 hour ago, epsilonGreedy said:

For the OP it depends on the plot and the optimum value that can be realized through building something right for the plot. If the OP's plot is on a hillside overlooking a sea loch with dolphins jumping for joy and in the opposite direction is the Serengeti with herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically to the horizon, then the plot deserves some top notch architectural creativity.

 

I disagree. Yes sure if you want to sell it and make maximum bucks but most of us self builders here want something we are comfortable in. For me it’s a brick cottage, we have nice views over open countryside but an “architectural creativity”, no way hosay.

[MikeSharp01]

6 minutes ago, Onoff said:

However one of the 11 year old sleepover lot wants to be an architect, maybe I'll ask her!

Makes perfect sense - she is now 11, so in 7 years she will head off to university to do a 7 year architecture programme - complete with the matching section and then she will be ready to give you a hand - does 14 years feel like your kind of timeframe?

[Onoff]

6 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

Makes perfect sense - she is now 11, so in 7 years she will head off to university to do a 7 year architecture programme - complete with the matching section and then she will be ready to give you a hand - does 14 years feel like your kind of timeframe?

 

I'm just about to go ask if any of them fancy tiling!

[newhome]

3 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

Interestingly although we started with this as a house for us and our old age 

 

That’s one of the things that defines what you build I guess. If it’s a house you intend to live in for the rest of your days then to an extent it doesn’t much matter if you have endless bells and whistles that make it unique to you, and how you want to use the space. I was very conscious however that there was a likelihood that I might want to move one day (only live in my current location due to my job) so I wanted to build a house that came in at what I could sell it for. I knew what next door had sold for (similar size) so set the budget at that. It came in on budget and cost to build what next door cost although I have better insulation, MVHR, full UFH, an extra room and a better garden etc IMO. As things turned out it’s a certainty that I will move at some point so I’m glad that I didn’t spend more than that. So there were some compromises I guess and a few things that I would change in hindsight, but none that I regret to a huge extent. I think I would have regretted building a house that cost more than it was worth more, but again this was never likely to be my forever home. 

[newhome]

19 minutes ago, Onoff said:

However one of the 11 year old sleepover lot wants to be an architect, maybe I'll ask her!

 

Well you know what they say ... out of the mouths of babes. 

 

Yes i know there is a lot more to it than that such as modelling performance etc as @JSHarris noted above, but always encourage creativeness regardless of age. 

 

And this forum revised @ultramods‘ upstairs layout to make it more practical in one evening on the forum lol. 

[Carrerahill]

2 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

Selfbuilding is scary for many and as a result folks try to wrap themselves up in a comfort blanket comprised of expensive middle class professionals, this equates to spending serious money early on in the building process on things that do not get materially incorporated into the property structure. In contrast the pro builders I know loath spending money on peripheral activities or things that do not enhance value during a 30 minute sales viewing.

 

Odd comment, frankly very odd! Bit of a chip?

 

It seems you have an issue with professionals in the construction industry, the professionals who design aspects of of the built environment. 

 

I was approached a couple of weeks ago by a women who wishes to build a large extension, she is unsure how to go about it and the way to get best value for money. I suggested that I would have her planning permission drawings produced and I would have various details drawn up by our structural engineer and the building warrant drawings I would produce using the material produced from various sources including the "standard text" which is part of our library (roof makeup, renders, fire stops, drainage etc. which as you know is not detailed as a drawing but often just provided as text which specs the makeup). We would then obtain her permission/warrant.

 

This will give her a full design and PP and building warrant when complete and will cost her little more than £1500.00 for our fee. She is not buying a comfort blanket, she is buying security and she is buying detail that we will insist her extension is built to. This gives her a high quality well designed build without "professional builders" erecting some cheap tat with poorly or non-designed aspects. If anything goes wrong due to the detail provided then it is our practises liability, for which we have insurances which will protect her and she is aware of this. We as a firm would protect her and would even step in to cover costs if we made a mistake that cost her or her appointed builder due to our negligence - we will also plan to PM the build for her and provide a site PM who will keep an eye on details as the build commences and allow for variations to be produced if anything must change due to our error or factors beyond our control which we may or may not change for. 

 

What you possibly don't understand is the RIBA/CIBSE stages and how a building design evolves. Clients will have ideas and this allows a design brief to be produced, the client will then agree or disagree with this and it is revised until the client is happy - this then may end our involvement and gives them something to go and tender the design stages to several firms. Then the original or new firm will undertake a concept design which as the name suggests is just the concept then the process goes through similar stages as the DB and if all is approved will go onto detailed design - at this stage it is entirely possible things will be designed and detailed that will never make it to the final building but that is due to many many factors, almost always the client seeing something new they want during the design stages. What may end up on construction drawings may not resemble the concept design at all but that is how buildings evolve, if everyone knew what they wanted from stage one then we would go directly to construction drawings but the chances of us designing exactly what the client wants would be slim, therefore we have stages. We do not aim to rip people off and often trades resent professionals because they don't like being told how to do their trade - I can see this from both sides of the fence, but a consultant engineer sitting with for example with a DuPont technical representative and discussing precise use of a product and specifying all the sundry products to go with it will often ruffle the feathers of your roofer who wants to go and use Fakro Eurotop because that is what he uses and he can get a deal on it at his favourite merchants. The client then may end up with a mongrel of a roof. The roofer may be a brilliant tradesman with excellent skills but they might not actually know how all the materials precisely go together for that guaranteed 30 year roof. Pro's might not be able to fit it, but the chances are we know damn well how it should go together. The roofer can go about this the correct way and ask if they can apply for a variation but they often don't and if they are met with resistance by the engineer due to DuPont being used for a particular reason they go in a huff. 

 

It's an age old issue. Designed detailed building built to spec should and in almost all cases will work properly, most issues we read about on this forum and see in shows like Grand Designs you will often note are due to lack of design and planning.

 

Pro's and trades will never see eye to eye, simple as that. I argue with very skilled electricians weekly - usually because they didn't read a spec properly and or made a colossal mistake. Look at Grenfell, penetrations in service riser fire stopping... 1 of two things happened here: 1. Someone didn't read the spec or neglected the spec, written by an engineer. 2. A "pro builder" decided to undertake it himself with no design and decided not to carry out remedial work on the penetrations or simply didn't understand what it was for.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by Carrerahill
spelling

[Mr Punter]

6 minutes ago, Carrerahill said:

We as a firm would protect her and would even step in to cover costs if we made a mistake that cost her or her appointed builder due to our negligence

 

Agreed as we once had an issue with a staircase opening built to drawing and the architect offered immediately to find suitable solution at their own expense.

[epsilonGreedy]

4 hours ago, joe90 said:

I disagree. Yes sure if you want to sell it and make maximum bucks but most of us self builders here want something we are comfortable in. For me it’s a brick cottage, we have nice views over open countryside but an “architectural creativity”, no way hosay.

 

 

"Architectural creativity" does not have to equate to an ultra modern statement home fit for a TV program. My house design is traditional but each month a spot some architectural nuance, for example I was puzzled about single story section that could have supported a master bedroom dressing room but I now realize this would have deprived the neighbouring plot of a view towards the principal hill one mile away. My house has a strange 8 degree rotation away from due south, I now realize this allows early morning sun to strike the sitting room french window at 7am and also let the sun illuminate another shaded lawn between 5pm and 7pm.

 

I think all self builders should continually cross check their plans against market reality in order to maintain some financial sanity and prevent wayward decisions becoming baked into their plans. This is not to suggest that final market value should dictate the final property but it will prompt a self builder to review and validate personal deviations from market norms. Take ensuits and utility rooms, if any self builder has created a 2000 sq ft home in the past 10 years without an ensuit bathroom and utility room then quite frankly that person has made a mistake.

Edited August 30, 2018 by epsilonGreedy

[Declan52]

1 hour ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

For the OP it depends on the plot and the optimum value that can be realized through building something right for the plot. If the OP's plot is on a hillside overlooking a sea loch with dolphins jumping for joy and in the opposite direction is the Serengeti with herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically to the horizon, then the plot deserves some top notch architectural creativity.

 

 

Do cows and sheep count??