Most of us don’t get too many shots at creating our dream home. So it’s worth taking time at the early stages to make sure you get it right. With planning in the bag, you’re bound to be feeling excited and more than a little relieved to get past the first hurdle. But don’t put your feet up just yet. Decisions will be coming thick and fast, as you and your architectural team start to develop the technical design and make the key choices that will come to define your finished home.
You could look at this as the Building Regulations phase, as ultimately some kind of building control body will need to approve the structural drawings. But in practice, you’ll probably want to go above and beyond the bare necessities required to get the scrap of paper that confirms you have a green light to start construction. Most self builders aim to achieve a higher level of performance and finish – and realising this will involve a lot more than a set of neat structural drawings that simply beat the basic standard.
Taking the technical design forward
Paying your house designer to prepare drawings and specifications that go beyond the minimum requirements of the regs may provide good value for money. This way, you can gain more certainty about the accuracy of quotations and quality of the construction work itself.