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Comment by twelvechairs | Hacker News Reader

Consider:

- buying some architectural books. Many (good ones) have plans in them from excellent architects. A sample from a good one is at [0]. If your tastes are not so 'architecture school' there are others.

- looking at the development approvals in your local area. Plans are often open to all. And they will (assumedly) be up to code in your area today.

Imo the concept of 'open source' doesn't translate to houses as well because regulation, construction approaches and tastes can be so locally specific and also change over time.

[0] https://issuu.com/birkhauser.ch/docs/floor_plan_manual_housi...

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> Imo the concept of 'open source' doesn't translate to houses as well because regulation, construction approaches and tastes can be so locally specific and also change over time.

I think that's the biggest problem. You can draw up a house in free apps in a couple of minutes or hours but that doesn't mean it's structurally sound or that the walls will have the right dimensions for the pipes and cables that need to run through them or that they're the right size for the kind of insulation you want or that the windows meet your country's/state's legal regulations or that the house meets the code for where you want to build (which can literally depend on the part of the road the building will be on).

We approached our architect with pretty much a full floorplan in hand but it still took us months to pin down something that would get fast-tracked for approval and even then the floor plans had to be modified by the construction company to account for the placement of things like toilets and showers. Even without changing any of these details we couldn't take the floorplans and just submit them for a different part of town as they would likely not match the requirements there.

Otoh, if your house was built by a developer, the plans on file may have only a vague relation to the as built.

My first house was a Seattle skinny, garage off the alley. The plans on file were for a garage in front, different upper floor layout, and a different roof shape.

Your last sentence is super important, having a sketch of a house is far from enough. Googling "construction detail drawings" will bring up endless drawings of all the small, but critical, things you need to take into account.

A large part of differences between towns is pure corruption! Material strength is physical facts. Water runs down hill. Many other such things. Many towns are in one of a couple national form based codes plans where if you follow the rules as laid out there is no need for approval as the engineering was already done for any generic house. If your town/state is not, or is but provides extras on top it is corruption: either the industry is trying to create a local monopoly via legal means; or your town board is trying to increase their power. Either way it is only making housing more expensive without serving any public good.

Not all houses need to meet the form based codes. If you want to do something different then you need a professional engineer to stamp and approve the plans - once stamped the town needs no more input.

Apartments and commercial buildings start to get more complex (but even then many meet form based codes as it is cheaper than calculating out all the stresses). However again professional engineer needs to approve the plans not the town.

My reference in this case is Germany, not the US, so the processes are a bit different but the point stands: it's difficult to use the exact same plans for two different houses in different places, let alone if you want to make any modifications as those may have knock-on effects you're not aware of. To be fair, a lot of those were not in the architect's plans in our case.

But you're right that you can basically get a permit for nearly anything if your pockets are deep enough and the restrictions are often arbitrary. That's why I mentioned fast-tracking: the area we built in had fairly strict requirements compared to houses only a few blocks away and any deviation would have required a costly and lengthy approval process (measured in months rather than weeks) so staying within the requirements was primarily a financial decision.

> lengthy approval process

This is corruption. The process of approval should not be lengthy of costly.

It is arguably the opposite of corruption. Everyone is treated the same and everything is checked in order. The option to pay for a faster approval would be corruption. This is just government offices being chronically understaffed.

Well, the problem is that putting a price tag on government services makes them exclusionary to those who can't (or can barely) afford it while making no difference to those who easily can. It's like the old saying about fines: if you punish a crime with a fine, you only make it illegal for poor people.

That said, the processing time is probably more costly than the direct expenses because having to wait longer means you likely already pay a part of the mortage rate (most banks have start-up costs on these loans and you are generally expected to secure the loan before you have the approval). The entire process is expensive enough for the actual fees not to be a meaningful issue.

I would add that an architect’s job is to find the little details that make your big investment better. One thing I associate with off the rack house plans in big developments is having the shades drawn all day because otherwise the sun will shine right in your face. An architect looks at the site and the sun and adjusts window heights and overhangs to suit. Amongst many other details. A house being such a big investment, hiring an architect seems wise.

We do have prefabs. They tend to be built in a way that's compatible with a lot of jurisdictions (some would say better than traditional homes because of this).

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