Thinking Of Copying Plans?

If you go around a display Home the builder’s representative will usually give you a brochure with a floor plan.

If you look on the net you can often download their plans, or you can even copy them from a newspaper article.

How hard would it be to get a different builder to build your new house using the same floor plan and save money?

You could even combine the front of one floor plan with the back of another so it wasn’t an exact copy.

The best advice I can give you is DON’T.

Why Not?

Some of the reasons are:

  • Most builders spend large sums of money developing their designs and guard their copyright jealously. If you get caught you could be up for thousands of dollars for breach of copyright. Tens of thousands if you go to court.
  • A court won’t only consider the whole plan, they can still find in the builders favour if substantial amount is the same.
  • Most reputable builders know the risks of breach of copyright and being made a co-defendant in a legal case and won’t want to build your house.
  • If you find a builder who will build to the plan he is unlikely to be reputable. Do you really want your house built by a dodgy builder?
  • If you copy a standard layout it will still cost several hundred dollars to get all the remaining plans drawn up to a level where you can get building permits and approvals.

Here are some of the ways people have been caught:

  • They asked the builder for a price on the house on a particular block. When the builder didn’t get the job they checked on the design of the house as it was built.
  • The contractors laying the concrete base recognised the layout as the big builder was a major customer of theirs.
  • The frame fabricators recognised the layout as the big builder was a major customer of theirs.

Buying a set of plans can cost from a few hundred dollars if you use a standard plan,

if you use an architect it could be thousands.

Here are a couple of websites that are worth a look.

http://www.ozehouseplans.com.au/
http://www.homebuildersaustralia.com.au/house-plans.html

 

For other posts see House Design

The Best House Shape

When you are looking at builders web sites the main things you can look at besides Facades are Floor Plans………But what is the best shape for the overall house?

Making good use of Winter Sun

If you have a Well Orientated site (Longest dimension runs East West) and you are not Shaded by tall trees or other properties the best shape will normally be a rectangle.

This will provide a long wall with North Facing Windows where most of the rooms can be warmed in the window. As the other dimension will be shorter the sun will penetrate well into the house. Just make sure you have proper eaves or a pergola to avoid the summer sun.

If you have got either a South or North facing site it’s probably best to go for as wide a house as you can fit on the block.

No Winter Sun

You should aim to provide the maximum amount of internal space compared to wall space. This is both economic in terms of wall materials and minimisation of heat transfer (Less heat lost in winter, less heat gain in summer)

The shape that fits provides the most internal space for minimum walls is a circle…….but not everyone wants to live in a yurt.

A couple of practical problems are:

  • Getting furniture to fit
  • Although the space is efficient the diameter is fairly large so larger round houses won’t fit into most rectangular blocks.

Don’t want a round house, then the next best thing is to make the shape as close to a square as possible.

Have you got a yurt or other type of round house?…….. What do you like about it?

 

See Bubble Diagrams if you want to design your own home plan

 

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