Top 10 mistakes made by the Owner-Builder

So your thinking of building a house?  You are not the type to hire someone else to do it.  You need to do it yourself, or at least a significant portion of it on your own.  You remodeled the doghouse once so you know how to hit a nail with a hammer.  Maybe you built a laundry room addition onto the back of your house.  Now it’s time to join the owner-builder club.

You are not alone!  Millions have plowed ahead of you, breaking trail into the lands traditionally occupied by professional trades-people – carpenters, plumbers, electricians, roofers, drywallers, flooring installers…the list goes on.  You want to be all of them at once!

Tragically many projects come to a grinding halt or stumble horrifically along the way.  Contrary to what you may be thinking, we are not discouraging folks from embarking on this path.  We just need to shed a little tough love on the subject so you know what you will be getting into.  What follows are what we consider to be the top ten mistakes made by owner-builders.

Not Hiring a Designer or Hiring the Least Expensive One

If you have never built a home before it probably means you have also not designed one either.  The reason we tend to design our ideas before we execute them is to avoid costly errors.  If you have not been exposed to the common errors that can be encountered on a construction project, lacking a solid design, chances are you will fall into the traps that so many have avoided by spending a few extra dollars up-front.  If you think about it, your home may cost upwards of $100/sf.  A solid designer will charge $5/sf to $10/sf.  If you mess up and have to tear out your foundation, or redesign things because you forgot to include space for the mechanical room, your costs only go up.  A good designer is like insurance in these cases.  They should be able to lay things out and identify issues before they can happen on the jobsite.

Design is like anything else, you get what you pay for.  Be wary of cheap designers.  You will get the least amount of information on your plans as they can possibly give you.

Thinking You Can do Everything Yourself

Do you know how many amps feed a typical electrical panel into a home?  20 amps?  200 amps?  2,000 amps?  That’s alot of amps to be messin’ with if you are about to stick you finger in that socket!  It will take you 10 times longer to wire your house than a professional electrician.  Then, you must get it inspected.  That inspector will find plenty of things for you to redo – the right way.  The same goes for plumbing, drywall, insulation and framing.  Hmmmmmm…maybe you should have kept your day job.  Uh-oh!  You mean you quit your job to build the house thinking you could save money?

Thinking you can figure everything out, and do it yourself, is a big bite.  Even hiring a few subcontractors will help tremendously.  Believe it or not it will save you money which brings us to mistake number three…

Poor  Budgeting

We all think we can save ourselves a life worth of savings if we can just do things ourselves.  We don’t buy in to the concept of a specialized society where every person is an expert at one thing, like a carpenter or a plumber.  No, we can be all of them and spend months upon months muddling through things.  All the while, our former co-workers are busy making money doing what they know how to do.  Not only are you not working, with no income, you are spending loads of hours trying to figure things out.  Your budget is shot because the cost of materials has gone up due to the war in the rest of the world.  You thought building a straw bale house for $10/sf was doable because you read it on the back cover of a book.

There is a reason general contractors spend weeks planning their budgets for each project.  Gathering bids from professionals takes time and those bids represent what it takes in the real world to do something right the first time.  The labor cost alone for carpetry on a mid-sized residence will be in the tens of thousands of dollars.  That’s no small potatoes and represents hundreds, maybe even thousands, of man-hours of skilled labor.  Once you are done framing the walls and roof over the course of months, you can then begin to drill little holes in each stud for wires and pipes.

Remember the axiom, time is money?  It still holds true for this kind of activity.  If you can’t afford to pay someone else to do it quickly, you better have months available to do it yourself.  For a good read on hidden costs in budgeting, there is an article that appeared in The Last Straw, Issue #41 at The Last Straw Blog.

Poor Scheduling

Some folks will actually realize they need some help.  They will hire a drywall subcontractor in order to save time, not to mention their physical well-being.  They will call the drywall subcontractor and schedule their arrival at some future date.  When that date arrives will you be ready?  Will the insulation, plumbing, electrical and mechanical systems be installed and inspected?  If they are not, and you miss the window of opportunity with the drywall subcontractor, they may move on to the next paying project, leaving you with a huge gap in your schedule.  Now you must either wait for them to return, find someone else, or do it yourself.  These kinds of things compound each other and before you know it, a week behind schedule turns into a month, three months, six months…

Not Seeking Enough Solid Advice

Believe it or not, what you are attempting to do has been done thousands of times before.  If you are inventing new ways to do things, chances are you are not doing them in the most efficient way.  Asking for advice from seasoned professionals, and sometimes even paying for that advice, will save you so much time and money you will wonder why you didn’t seek advice on other things.  Watching someone build a wall on TV is not the same as having a carpenter explain it in person.  The same goes for any discipline such as plumbing, roofing, painting.

Re-Inventing the Wheel

This is so common in the alternative building realm we couldn’t leave it out.  How many different types of straw bale wall framing systems are invented each year?  Most people look at books and videos to gather information.  They then design what they think they saw, and tweak it to match what they think they want.  Chances are that someone else had the same goals and resources, and built a similar system.  What is missing are the mistakes they wish they could have avoided along the way.  If you have never built a home before, and you want to make up a system, or tweak someone else’s ideas, make sure you know what you are doing.  It is very important that we not design problems in to our buildings.

Too Much Research on Alternative Systems, Not Enough on Conventional Ones

If you are going to build your own adobe house, chances are you attended a workshop or two, read a bunch of books and maybe even bought a video on how to make adobe blocks and stack them to make a wall.  How many workshops and training videos did you watch on how to properly flash a window or install roofing?  Focusing on the alternative systems is great, but should not happen at the expense of all the other conventional systems you will use.

Ignoring the Advice of Professionals

So you sought advice, or some folks showed up on your site with a great deal of experience and insight into some of the systems you are using.  They offered some advice.  After they go away you think about what they said, determine it seemed in conflict with something else you read somewhere and decide to do it your own way.  You may be lucky and be successful, but chances are that you will make the same mistakes others have made.  Making mistakes is not a bad thing.  It is how we learn.  But when you are doing something one time, doing it the right way can save alot of time and money.

Afraid of Being Embarrassed When a Mistake is Made / Not Seeking Help to Fix a Problem

The reason straw bale construction has been such a success is because there are many folks who do it on a regular basis that are willing to share their mistakes.  Forums exist on the internet to discuss these issues (SB-R-Us, repp.org, The Last Straw Blog).  We have learned as much from failures as we have from the successful projects.

Many owner-builders can feel embarrassed when they make a mistake.  They tend to keep it to themselves for many years or sometimes forever.  This is counterproductive to a fledgling movement and can actually cause harm years down the road when a project changes hands and the problems exposed.  It is important to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge our shortcomings, even if it leads to a failure.  It is important that the wider community knows if a failure of is due to faulty design or workmanship as opposed to a system or material failure.

Underestimating the Effects on Family Life

We justify our compulsions by telling ourselves that we are doing the best thing for our families.  We can become consumed by our projects.  The rest of the world seems to fade away as we are focused only on the tasks at hand.  The family can take a back seat even though you are doing this for them.  They don’t understand why Dad and/or Mom is always tired and never home.  Your partner may feel that your new mate is your construction project.

Don’t let the family suffer.  It is easier said than done when you throw a construction project into the mix.  Make sure you a still spending time with everyone and taking a break yourself.  Working tired and making mistakes only means things will take longer.  It is better to be rested and loved than tired and hated.  Get the family involved and make it a project everyone can be proud of.

It is Not Impossible

Finally, it is possible that your project will be very successful.  Just beware of the many obstacles and plan for the unexpected.  The list above is not meant to discourage, but to make sure you or someone you know will not fall into the same traps as so many others.  Be conscious of your budget, your schedule and what you are realistically capable of doing.  Using bids from subcontractors can help you determine how many man-hours you can expect to spend on a given task.  You may find that those same bids help you decide to seek their help.  Physically, building a house is one of the most daunting tasks we could undertake as humans.

This can’t be all the biggest mistakes out there, but they are the main general ones.  Let us know of others gaffs you have made or have watched others make.  We look forward to your suggestions and comments.

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