Do lots of forward planning
One of the keys to a successful project is the ability to forward plan.
Now you may know what this means, you may not. Throughout Multi Generational Living Spaces I will, using real examples help to show you.
Whilst researching this area I found that forward planning comes in everywhere. It is not essential but done well it can save you time, money and improve the quality of what you build.
Even the idea of thinking about extending your living space is forward planning. And there are lots of other ways to do it.
A good example I worked on involved a guy building a new large double garage. He wanted an annex for future use or to help sell his house but only got permission for a garage.
So together we discussed ways to make the garage changeable in the future to an annex. This required subtle changes.
The floor had insulation laid in it – not required in a garage.
The windows went in, in such away that with the garage divided up by walls in the future meant each room had a window.
Hot and cold water pipes run in the walls and in the loft.
Underground drainage pipes buried in the ground, but capped of and were not visible.
What this mean’t was that in future the guy could apply for a change of use for the garage. If successful it would be quick and cheap to convert the garage into an annex. This is forward planning.
Another friend building a new house has done similar things to the above. Hiding pipes in walls, thinking about where light switches go, socket positions. All sorts of thinking so that they were in the right place when new walls went up.
A space was also allowed for in the floor so a lift could be put in, in the future if needed.
When building a new extension onto an existing building there are lots of things to think of. Where are the new drains going to run and can they connect up with the old ones.
Make sure kitchens and bathrooms in the old property can get to the drains ok. We forgot a gully for the new kitchen waste pipes and it had to be dug out at the end of the job. Again time and money wasted here.
Our boiler flue to the outside was right where we wanted to extend. So a different position had to be found for the boiler, which was not easy.
Deciding where it was going at drawing stage made this simpler. We had forward planned.
Early on we put a loft ladder in because I new lots of people would be wanting to go in the loft. Simple but saves time.
If you are working in an old house there are probably lots of new services to run and you will need to find somewhere for these to go. We used cupboards to run electric cables in instead of chasing them into walls. The same happened with hot and cold water pipes.
A new shower went against the wall of a cupboard due to the easy route for hot and cold pipes from the loft space.
Under baths are also useful to get pipes from one side of a room to the other. Removing the need to chase up concrete floors.
If you are fitting new doors it might be worth fitting locks in case you have to section of parts of the house to do work in. Helps keep children out.
We also had to put some pipes in the old walls which meant cutting into them. Called chasing it is a messy, dirty and noisy job and if you are going to do it best get it all done in one go.
What I mean is mark out all the pipe positions with your heating guy and chase them in one go. It keeps the mess down to one day not over a period of days meaning only one day of tidying up, not lots.
Now don’t read the above and think how am I going to organise all this, you don’t have to do all this on your own.
Use professionals and they should do most of this for you. You can add stuff as and when you want to.
What I am trying to show you is that there is a lot of planning required in a project.
With forward planning if done well it will save you time, money and make sure your project is completed in the best way possible.
thanks
Recent Comments