In the construction of your new home you will come in contact with many disciplines such as developers, design and planning professionals, builders, inspectors, and all the disciplines in between such as plumbers, electricians, excavators, etc.

It is a common belief by a lot of people that by eliminating some of these essential processes that somehow money will be saved. One of the most targeted areas for people believing they will save money is the elimination of plans from the process.

Most areas of the country require construction plans to obtain a building permit.

A building official’s responsibility is to ensure the safety, energy efficiency, and accessibility of the project. We demand these basic things in every automobile we purchase, so why do some people go to great lengths to avoid these same basic safety, efficiency, and accessibility standards in our homes by not having quality professionally prepared plans?

During the construction process, simply put, quality plans pay for themselves many times over.

Material estimates are next to impossible to do from simple sketches on graph paper or napkins. Clients with sketches on napkins for plans! Estimating materials without any plan detail amounts to one thing, A GUESS. And you can be certain that the “guess” will not be in your favor or save you any money.

Tens of thousands of dollars are wasted in this area by not having a competently detailed set of log home plans, with lost dollars increasing in magnitude with the cost of the project.

Builders rely on log home plans to do their job which is assembly. Without competent log home design a builder like the estimator has to “guess” on how to assemble your home. Guessing costs YOU money.

Imagine the floor system in your new home. There are numerous ways to build a floor and the costs could range from $4,000.00 to $10,000.00. A builder without a set of plans assembles the floor at a cost to you of $10,000.00. However, a professionally prepared set of plans could have detailed a way to assemble that same floor for $4,000.00 saving you $6,000.00! Would you pay $3,000.00 for a set of plans that saves you $6,000.00? You bet you would! Now multiply those efficiencies in design throughout every component in the home!

Imagine a builder having to guess how you want your home to look and function. You either live with the builder’s interpretation of your home or you make the builder change what you don’t like through a change order. Change orders cost YOU an enormous amount of money, thousands of dollars in expense, all of which could be eliminated in the log home design process prior to construction!

There has always been a huge misconception in residential construction that because a builder can assemble a home, log home design and plans become trivial and unnecessary. Think about the individuals that assemble automobiles on an assembly line. Sure these individuals can assemble and build cars just as a builder can assemble and build homes. But imagine an automobile plant with no design team or plans to follow, where each assembler decides how to put the parts together.

Tags: Construction, House, Log Home Design

This entry was posted on May 11, 2009 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.