New home build: stuff to consider?

[twitchyzero]

do steel studs hold up better or worse in earthquake?

[6793026]

I'm doing a build now and lesson I've learned.

1) you get what you pay for. If the engineer is good, he/she will discuss material being used as well as how cabinets, doors and trims being done.

2) Office + bedroom wiring. having a plug at desk height + kitchen island and bedside table as well as vaccum was really good on our end to ensure we map out where we put out stuff

3) Your GC doesn't care. They care about efficiency and quality of work. It's your money. Don't always trust their quote.

4) Always have a backup of a backup and a backup budget... cause we of course went overbudget as my wife has "standards" LOL.
i just need a bed and a kitchen and a garage. who cares if anything matches. LOL

[Manic!]

Originally Posted by jcmaz

If I were designing a custom home, I'd pipe all of my LV runs in PVC to a central data/server room. I'd also add additional pipe runs for speaker wiring and HDMI wiring as well. I would aim for two 200A panels (for in-floor heating, multiple EV chargers, and rental suit) and subpanels in each "zone" of the house for future additions.

I would add valved/zone ducting HVAC for gas furnace and electric AC unit for optimal temperature control. All the thermostats would be piped as well I want gas stoves, and gas outlets for outdoor BBQ and fires.

I don't know how it would be built, but I would want to use concrete for the entire house. Metal studs would be offset for maximum sound proofing with proper insulation. Double drywall would be used.

Run a rope in the pipe so you can pull a cable later on. Use smurf tube instead of pvc pipe so yo don't have sharp bends. https://carlonsales.com/flexplusblueent.php

Using concrete is going to cost way more like 2x the price of a wood frame.

[Hondaracer]

Running conduit of any sort from a central hub to each individual outlet is pretty much a pipe dream, pardon the pun.

Even flexible tubing etc. you’re not gonna be using a hole saw 300 times to cut your floor joists etc. so you can run conduit. The better idea is to use junctions and have 1-2 backup runs in each box.

I’m not even sure you could pull a new Ethernet run through a 50 foot 2” conduit that had 2-3 90’s. It would be VERY stiff

[Manic!]

I would not run smurf tube for speaker wire or Ethernet because speaker wire has never changed and cat6e will be good for 25 years plus but I would run it for HDMI. The HDMI spec has changed multiple times in the last 10 years.

[SSM_DC5]

Originally Posted by 6793026

I'm doing a build now and lesson I've learned.

1) you get what you pay for. If the engineer is good, he/she will discuss material being used as well as how cabinets, doors and trims being done.

2) Office + bedroom wiring. having a plug at desk height + kitchen island and bedside table as well as vaccum was really good on our end to ensure we map out where we put out stuff

3) Your GC doesn't care. They care about efficiency and quality of work. It's your money. Don't always trust their quote.

4) Always have a backup of a backup and a backup budget... cause we of course went overbudget as my wife has "standards" LOL.
i just need a bed and a kitchen and a garage. who cares if anything matches. LOL

Your engineer cares about the trims + cabinet materials? I would have imagined that up to the GC and the sub they hire, but I haven't come across any GC that will go that details to tell you ahead of time what the materials will be during the estimate stage. Bid low, win the job and tell the customer later that they quoted for the bottom of the barrel material and the actual material you want is a surcharge.

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Running conduit of any sort from a central hub to each individual outlet is pretty much a pipe dream, pardon the pun.

Even flexible tubing etc. you’re not gonna be using a hole saw 300 times to cut your floor joists etc. so you can run conduit. The better idea is to use junctions and have 1-2 backup runs in each box.

I’m not even sure you could pull a new Ethernet run through a 50 foot 2” conduit that had 2-3 90’s. It would be VERY stiff

What if he built a chute of some sort at the corner of the house or within the fireplace area that reaches roof to basement, then in between each floor do a drop ceiling and run everything through that? turning your joists into swiss cheese to run extra conduit and wiring may not be the greatest idea if you take structural integrity and labour hours into consideration. Using a milwaukee holehawg is pretty sweet, but not when the worker needs to keep climbing up and down ladders to accommodate people's desire for 12 foot ceilings everywhere. With central AC and requirements for large ducting, are drop ceilings more common than cutting joists now?

[Hondaracer]

Very few new builds seem to use a drop ceiling g anymore but yea, that obviously adds a lot of flexibility. What you’re talking about is what I did, I actually used our old chimney to pull a bunch of runs up through from basement to attic.

A great trick I learned for pulling new cables etc. is using the old cable as the pull through, so like hdmi etc. cut the ends off the old hdmi, tape the new hdmi to the end of the old one, and use the old one to pull the new one through, also might as well tape a new pull string to the new HDMI while you’re at it

[blkgsr]

hot and cold water to exterior hose bibs, or at least one with a mixing valve in the garage

[Hehe]

I have been working on a design plan to re-build/major reno my place.

Here is the few things that I would recommend:

1. If you are going custom, the idea is to get everything *you* want. Don't worry too much about resale down the road. Assuming you are going to stay in there for a few decades, whatever crazy plan you come up with would affect little in term of resale value in the long term.

2. Plan ahead. Think not just about the things you want/need. But also what's going to be in the future. Wiring for Ethernet, for example, just get the Cat6. The cost difference is marginal in the grand scheme of things. And go as far as you can afford in term of everything from faucet/pipes to plugs. It's a lot cheaper to do things when you have everything wide open. One of the custom-built a buddy worked on gave me a lot of inspiration. The owner wired the crap out of the place and left panels where he'd have easy access for things like in-wall HDMI cable and whatnot. Done properly (as in design stage), it should not cost a whole lot more other than cost of panels or whatever cosmetic to hide those things out of sight. One of the very clever thing he did also was to mark everything where they are in a PDF before the drywall were put on. He went as far as all the studs. So much so that as long as he's got a tape measure in hand, he doesn't even need a stud-finder.

3. If there's any preference, find an appropriate contractor. Say if you want a concrete/steel beam build, talk to contractors/designers who has experience with them to price properly. Very often we hear that x is more expensive than y... it's really because they can't find the proper people to do them. In the house mentioned above, he's got a few steel beams to hold the structure on all 3 floors. And because those beams can hold so much more weight, the final price actually wasn't all that much different.

4. Coming back to the "plan ahead" thing... some stuff might be cheaper at first, but since it's going to be a complete new-build, there are many things that make more sense to just put in from the get-go. Things like passive housing. You don't need to go all out to meet enough to have it certified as such since that's $$$, but just some elements, like a very high insulation can start payback very early given it's a new build. Also someone already mentioned... get more than enough on things like power. 2x200amp service is not a whole lot more than 1x200amp service if you are doing new build. But the possibility that such a decision opens up down the road can be priceless.

One of my neighbors built an enormous house (12000sqft) a few house down from us, and the one thing that he regrets was to cheap out on his insulation and HVAC. It costs less for him on paper... but now it costs him over $2500 a month to heat the place and it's not all that comfortable. Sure he could afford paying $2k+ a month on heating bills, but compared to his in-law's place, who was built with high insulation and a geothermal system... pays less than half for heating/cooling for a similar size home out in Chilliwack, which tends to be colder/hotter than us and it's actually comfortable throughout the house.

[Hondaracer]

“Finding the appropriate contractor” is easier said than done

High end builders aren’t going to build a sub 10 million dollar home unless you’re best friends with the builder. They don’t want the headache or hassle of dealing with small time clients who nickel and dime everything. Hence the reason why almost every build now is buddy guy or Chinese builders.

[donk.]

I can picture it now:

RabidRat to his GC: "So i was talking to some guys on a car forum about my house build and i think that........"
GC "oh fuck not another one"

[Hehe]

Originally Posted by donk.

I can picture it now:

RabidRat to his GC: "So i was talking to some guys on a car forum about my house build and i think that........"
GC "oh fuck not another one"

That's exactly the thing... most builders are doing what they are comfortable with.

If a builder has done wood framing all his life, he's not going to price a steel/concrete build appropriately. He either won't do it or price it into the stratosphere because he's just going to go with a high figure and make sure he can get it done while making money and just sub-out whatever the work is.

The idea is that, if you are building a steel/concrete home, find a builder that had a lot of experience building those specific type of house.

Same thing goes for things like HVAC. My dad recently installed a geothermal system at his place. When I started doing quotes for him... prices were all over. They were as high as 100k and starts at 80k using a mediocre system.

I then found a HVAC guy who had been doing geothermal pretty much exclusively. He priced out everything using the best hardware available in Canada for every piece of equipment in the equation... from the geothermal heat pump itself to the fan coil that retrofits the system. 100% state of the art. Going as far as replacing our pool heater using the same system and a new DHW... all for less than any quote that I had before.

[unit]

from my experience you really have to be involved with so many small details or else don't expect it to turn out your way. you can trust the gc all you want but even if he's a good one, he will do things the proper way but not necessarily the way you want them to be done. the moment you go autopilot on the construction, especially with the stuff you see like finishings, is when things get done differently than the way you want. when you ask them to change it then you have to pay for those changes.

[underscore]

You have to watch them even on bigger stuff. When my parents had a place built they built the staircase completely the wrong way around. They were checking on it a lot because they were able to, so it was still just framing when they pointed it out, but if they weren't able to be doing that it would've been a big pain.

[6793026]

^ at least your parents knew what's right and whats wrong. cause a normal perosn won't know at all.

[TypeRNammer]

Originally Posted by unit

from my experience you really have to be involved with so many small details or else don't expect it to turn out your way. you can trust the gc all you want but even if he's a good one, he will do things the proper way but not necessarily the way you want them to be done. the moment you go autopilot on the construction, especially with the stuff you see like finishings, is when things get done differently than the way you want. when you ask them to change it then you have to pay for those changes.

Also another good thing to note is make sure the home is nicely sealed and tight.

Being in my laneway for my first winter, my main door and bi folding patio door has a cold draft blowing into the home

And another cold draft is coming through the dish washer and bottom corner cabinetry

Upstairs sliding balcony doors had drafts coming in too but they've been fixed.

Definitely gonna give the GC an earful to rectify the situation.

[SSM_DC5]

No blow test was required for the build?