A Good Plan Will Save You Time And Money

5 Things You Need To Plan Before You Start Building Your House

Every good project starts with a good plan. Building a house yourself is a huge project that is going to take a lot of time and money. You want to get it right from the start. We spent a fair amount of time planning the beginning of our build, but it wasn’t enough. You can learn from our mistake! Below are 5 things you need to plan before you build.

1. Land And A Way To Finance It

It seems obvious to start with land, but oftentimes we have our ideal property pictured in our minds only to find out that it does not exist. You will want to know the layout of your property before you can fully plan all the details of the build. I know it can be fun to look at house plans, but without a property, that dream house might not become a reality. Not every house will fit on every property. Thankfully, we bought our land the fall before our build, so that gave us time to plan.

You also need a way to finance this whole project. It’s great if you can pay cash for your land and your house and own it outright. However, that may not be possible, so if that’s you, you will need to be in contact with your bank, credit union, or mortgage company to make sure this project can become a reality. We spoke with other owner-builders in our area to find a local bank that would let us build our house on a much slower schedule than is customary. We presented our plan, and they worked with us.

2. Site Plan

Next, you will need a site plan. The first site plan can be a quick general idea of where you would like everything on your property. It doesn’t need to be official until you need your building permits. It will force you to think through where things should be, what you need access to, and how you might go about getting it. Your site plan should at least include locations for the following:

3. Permits And Inspections

You will need to research what permits and inspections you will need before you start building your house. We were able to find this information on our county’s website. There are a few departments we needed to work with when we were getting started.

First, we checked the Environmental Services Department webpage. It might be called something different for your location, but you need to find the department that handles the building or zoning permits. You may also need to contact your city if you are building in town. Thankfully, the webpage had a zoning permits fact sheet that included all of the information we needed. It has information about septic and electric permits as well as a fee structure, so we knew from the beginning what our costs for permits would be. A zoning permit in our county costs $275 which includes the septic system. Before we could obtain our zoning permit, we needed a site plan. This information was also on the fact sheet, so it was fairly easy to put together.

We knew we would need a driveway and an address, so we also needed to contact the Transportation Department. They gave us an approach application which included information about building an approach for our driveway from the county road. If your driveway approach will be from a state highway, you will need to contact your state as well. Once we had a driveway, the Environmental Services Department was able to use the county’s grid system to give us an address.

The electrical permits are handled through our state. The Labor and Industry webpage on the state’s website has all of the information we needed to get started including a way to obtain a permit online and a who our electrical inspector would be.

The well permits are also handled through our state. The Health Department has a wealth of information about constructing a well. In the end, though, our well permit was handled by the well drillers.

4. Utilities

As noted above, your site plan should include locations for all of your utilities. You will also need to plan for how these utilities are going to be installed from the road and to the house.

For example, we worked with our electrical company to decide where the electrical lines would be installed to the transformer which they would also install, but we were responsible to get the lines to the house. This may be different for your electrical company. We also needed to make a decision to have either underground or above ground lines. Thankfully, that decision didn’t change the cost. They installed our service for $6 per foot of line. We have a long driveway, so our electrical service was close to $4000 before we had it installed to the house.

You will need to contact your utility companies to learn how each of them will be installed and for which parts of the install will be your responsibility. They will also be able to give you an idea of the cost to have them installed. Think through what your needs are so you are able to have a solid plan. You will most likely need electric, water, and sewer or septic lines all run to the house, but you may need natural gas or propane and internet, cable, or telephone as well.

Here is a list of our utilities and about how much they cost us including permits in 2020 when they were installed:

5. Budget

The budget is probably the most important part of your building plan. With a budget set, you will know what your costs are and you can save money in the long run. Setting the budget is difficult and takes time. Talk to people who have built houses in your area to get an idea of some of the costs. You can also research some costs online, but getting estimates from contractors is going to give you a better idea of what your costs will be.

As you work through these 5 things you need to plan before you start building your house, you will find that they will need to work in conjunction with each other. Each step is important in creating your building plan.

You need to have a good plan in place before you start building to save you time and money in the long run. By going through these 5 things before you build, you will set yourself up for a good start to your huge project.