Hello everyone,
My wife and I are considering building a new home and are looking for some advice. We are going to be general contracting it ourselves. I'm well versed in the mechanical trades and costs but not skeleton and structure. Our plan is to build a slab on grade home, 1800sqft footprint with roughly 2400sqft finished space. Area has high rock table. Looking for any advice on budgeting, we wont be going high end with any finishes and the floors will be the finished concrete from the slab. Ive budgeted around 250k-275k completely finished, added some extra costs for difficulties with high rock, 40k for septic installed, 10k to extend existing electrical and well from existing house. I will be doing all of the mechanical in the house and as many finishing things as I can.
My costs:
20000 Mechanical my cost, no labor
40000 2 kitchens, 3 baths, my cost no labor
Subbed out work with my guesstimates:
20000 slab on grade foundation with finishing
20000 structural/framing
15000 roofing
8000 siding
10000 spray foam
5000 drywall finishing
20000 Windows
7500 doors
10000 Demo existing house after
300000 Permits/drawings/consulting
Any advice would be great. I realize these are tough to judge but this will be a simple home, nothing fancy.
Hi,
Good that you are a Trades person and doing it your self.
I would like to draw your attention if you are building it from ground up - Now its extremely important to think of building a "Passive House" for your self. It would cost a little higher may be 7 to 10% initially but your energy bills will be 80 to 90 % low which is GOING TO GO ROCKET high in future electrical and gas, as our Politicians have done some Big mistakes, like Power plant by Mr. Dalton McGuinty and others inviting refugees opening charity in Ontario. We all are going to pay for years to come. So start thinking of building low maintenance and running cost to maintain a house.
Thanks,
Nick
Hi Mike
A couple of things to consider from the electrical side of the house.
I would budget $10K for the electrical not including the cost of extending from the house unless you are going to wire it all your self.
Consider putting in a service rated transfer switch even if you don't plan on putting in a generator. You may want one in the future and it is cost effective to put it in during the new service installation then after the fact.
Consider some sort of solar installation to offset costs, even if it is only net metering. You can plan for the increased structural in the design stage and maintain the building envelope from the beginning.
Despite all the wireless out there, I would still recommended roughing in all the network, CATV, Tele, Alarm, CCTV, etc. For the extra costs, it will save you time and money in the end when you decide to use / or need these connections.
Plan for an prep all your entertainment items, speaker, base, mids, etc as well as all your equipment.
That's about it for me.
Good luck with your project.
Cheers
John Kuehnl-Cadwell
Master Electrician
Datawise Solutions Inc
Hi Mike,
You budget seems very tight for such project and your requirements.
Cost to build a home addition vary from $250 per square foot on the cheapest end to $450 / sq. ft. or even more for custom top notch work. Accurate estimated can be provided only after analyzing architectural drawings with all technical details, calculating number of man-hours for completing the project and determining the total expenses for materials, fixtures and finishing products.
Building an addition is a complex task. Along with considerations about savings, a right person should be hired to perform such work. Homeowners might consider the option of acting like a general contractor hiring subcontractors for every specific part of a project in order to keep the contractor's profit. But before running into conclusion consideration of realistic ability to organize the work should be given a priority.
Hi Mike,
You need to up your prices a bit as alone to have someone frame it alone, is about 25-30k including, installing shinglews you supply by you must realize an average build can run you from 200.00 sq ft to 525.00 sq ft
depending on products your materials alone will be fairly pricey usually aroung 160 -190 k, plus a septic system is minimum 25k, and well is around 15-18k plus labour and excavating - excavating is 150hr avg.
Hope this helps.
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