Ask the Builder: Contemplating a DIY house build? Be careful!

As I look back on the decades of giving advice to homeowners like you, one thing stands out in my mind. I’ve always tried my best to tell you the truth about how hard or easy some task might be. That’s the opposite tact of most of home improvement entertainment shows I see on TV. Most share half truths. I’m sure you’re aware that a half truth is a whole lie.

Over the past year, I’ve been hired as a consultant to guide several people through new home construction projects. Using technology, I can do this quite effectively, as video calls put me at a job site thousands of miles away. Should you be thinking of tackling a new home build by yourself, I thought you might benefit from a few short stories about these other homeowners I’ve worked with.

Fifteen months ago, a woman hired me to be her virtual general contractor. (GC). She told me she was going to be the on-site GC but figured she needed someone with actual experience to provide backup assistance. Six months ago, I discovered there was a second GC on the job she hadn’t told me about. As you might imagine, things got awkward in a flash.

The woman made critical mistakes early in the process long before she hired me. She and her husband had bought an existing home and decided to tear it down, building a new house on the existing foundation. They hired an architect. Using the homeowners’ dreams and ideas, this architect toiled on a plan that had several major flaws. The biggest one was the roof design.

The roof was to be a huge slanted surface that mimicked the house’s steep driveway. The massive beams, thick sheathing that doubled as a finished interior ceiling, and the thick closed-cell foam required to insulate the roof cost more than $100,000. That price doesn’t include the huge crane required to position the beams or later to build the roof.

A crack in the existing foundation was not spotted until days before the framing was to begin. The floor trusses ordered for the job were placed too close to one another. The list of mistakes that caused major issues continued to grow by the day. A first-floor bathroom had to be redesigned on the fly because the layout put a toilet directly on top of one of the floor trusses.

All of this could have been avoided if the woman had hired me before she even thought of talking to an architect. Fortunately, the woman’s husband was a very successful businessman. It was made clear to me they had an unlimited budget to take care of fixing mistakes as they pop up.

My guess is you don’t have an unlimited budget.

Next up is a man building a house in the great state of Idaho. He’s on a tight budget and decided to do all of the plumbing on the job. He discovered I’ve been a master plumber since 1981 and felt I could help long distance. I drew his riser diagram so he could get a permit. We then started to do regular video calls so I could tell him exactly how to install the pipes under his concrete slab.

This homeowner was using a general contractor, but just in the last week we discovered the foundation was poured out of square by 2 inches. While you may think this is no big deal, it can lead to serious issues. In this man’s case, quite a few of the pipes poking up through the concrete slab are no longer in the center of the exterior and interior walls where they should be.

How could this have been prevented? If you decide to roll up your sleeves and get involved in a home building project, you need to be very careful about placing trust in people you’ve never worked with before. This man and his wife could have determined that the foundation was out of square when the footing was poured. It would have taken them about 30 minutes to establish the square corners of the foundation on top of the hard concrete footing.

Using a simple calculator or a free one online, this man could have calculated the diagonal measurements that ensure the foundation is square. He could have purchased a 100-foot tape measure and in minutes marked on the footings the precise corners of the foundation.

Then, once the foundation forms were set, he could have once again checked them before the concrete was poured. Had he hired me months before he did, I would have given him a checklist of things to do at these early stages of construction.

One of the things on the checklist is making sure the top of the foundation is correct. Most builders place foundations too deep into the ground. When this happens, it’s very hard for the grade to slope away from the house in all directions.

The building code is quite clear and the ground must slope away from the foundation a minimum of 6 inches in the first 10 horizontal feet away from the house. What’s more, you should have a minimum of 6 inches of foundation exposed all the way around the house.

Is it starting to make sense? Think of all the things you don’t know what to do or look for before you get into a very deep financial mess.

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