Do you want to control your homebuilding costs? Do you have electrical plans for your new house? Many stock plans show some electrical information, i.e. the location of switches, light fixtures and electrical outlets. Chances are this layout will not meet your needs, if you have a plan at all. One of the primary sources of homebuilding cost overruns is in the electrical work. If you do not have a well defined, complete plan that shows every switch, which lights each one controls, every electrical outlet, every telephone jack and every television jack, you will not have a guarantee that the contractor is planning on providing what you want in his contract price. I’ve seen people add numerous additional devices only to be shocked when the electrician tallies up the final total and presents the customers with a bill for the extras. Even if the cost is only $30 or $40 per device, they can add up fast and you’ll find yourself with thousands of dollars of homebuilding costs you never anticipated.

      Many electricians base their price on the number of junction boxes they install. Each switch, each electrical outlet and each light fixture counts as one box. So if you add an overhead light and a wall switch, this counts as two boxes. Usually, the location of the boxes does not matter. It is the number of boxes that is critical to your homebuilding costs.

      The preventive medicine to avoid this cost calamity is to have a good, well though through electrical plan drawn up prior to the builder preparing his price. Your architect or residential designer can help you with this. They can show you what you need and help you avoid “over-lighting” your house. Over-lighting is a real peril and can really add homebuilding costs quickly. Many times I see people put a light above the vanity in a powder room and also include a ceiling light. In real life, the light above the mirror will light the small powder room quite sufficiently. The ceiling light will never be used. Be sure every light is essential before you toss it in to the plan. These things add up. If you really want to control your homebuilding costs, you need to place lights with care.

      Also, try to avoid over-controlling the lights. It’s easy to start adding switches to control every light from every entry point to a room. Try to be prudent about this. You will want to provide what is called a lighted “path of travel.” This is a path that takes you through the house with switches along the way so you can turn on the light ahead of you and turn it off after you have passed. A simple example is a hallway with a switch at each end that operates the hall light. Rooms like dining rooms that have two entry points should have one of the light in the room operated from both entry points. These are called three-way switches in the construction world. But the other lights in the dining room do not have to have three way switches. Only place those switches near the primary entry point. If you come into the room from the other direction, you will have to walk across the room if you want to turn on the other lights, but you will save a lot of construction money by using this switching strategy in every room and you also won’t end up with a bunch of unsightly switches all across your walls.

      Control your lighting impulses and prepare a good lighting plan and you will gain control over your homebuilding costs.

Bill Hirsch AIA

www.williamhirsch.com

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

    Now is a great time to build! Builders are hungry, prices of many construction materials are low, and the vendors are making deals to get business. If you have the resources, don’t wait. Build now and capture the savings. Right now, Warren Buffett is buying U.S. stocks because he sees them as a low-priced opportunity. Construction costs represent the very same opportunity. You can cash in big time if you act now. 

    I got a note from a prospective client recently asking for my advice on what construction costs might be for a new house. They were in the early stages of planning and wanted to get an idea of how much their new house might cost. Here is my answer:

    I have recently had a house price out at $170 per foot and another as high as $275 per s.f. There are a lot of variable that can affect the cost, as you can imagine. The formula I use is to include all of the “heated” square feet. I do not count the garage and/or porches. This formula is sort of the industry standard. For budgeting purposes, I would suggest using $200 per s.f. as the low end and $250 as the higher end. Of course, it is possible to go considerably higher. The variability of cost is due to different exterior materials, the shape of the house, the appointments within the house, and the site considerations. But above $250 per s.f., the added cost is attributed to particular items, like very expensive cabinetry or particular site conditions, and things like that. It’s hard to get more definitive than that until the house is designed and those numerous variables are known.

    My suggestion for calculating your square footage is to list out the rooms and spaces you want, including staircases, closets and hallways, if you can. Then assign target sizes to those spaces. It can help to use your current house and its rooms as guidelines for the target room sizes. Then multiply out the areas of each room, total it up, and then add ten or fifteen percent to the total. That added percentage is to account for the area used up by the walls themselves. Three running feet of a typical interior wall takes up one square foot! And the percentage accounts for inefficiencies in the actual house layout. Not every room will end up exactly at the target size. Then multiply the total by $200 and also by $250. That should give you a high and low number and a feel for where your construction cost will be.

    Incidentally, when stating these costs of construction, I am including all of the sitework, like landscaping, driveway, irrigation, etc. These costs estimates also anticipate a three car garage, a front porch, a screened porch, and things like that. The figures also include all permits and inspection fees. They include everything that would be in you contract with the builder.

    I will say that right now is a terrific time to build because the marketplace is hungry and prices are good. Lumber is very low, vendors are anxious to make deals, and even the builders are trimming their markup to get projects signed up. I think that in a couple of years we will look back at today and say, “Wasn’t that a great time to build? Everything was such a bargain.” Once the economy improves, the prices will surely go up quickly. Now that oil prices are going back down, some of the materials that went up due to the very high oil prices, like shingles, will likely go down sometime soon because of the slowdown in demand for construction products.

    Take advantage of this Golden Opportunity to get your dream house built at a price you will never see again. The woes of Wall Street can be a bonanza for you.

Bill Hirsch

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

www.williamhirsch.com