Grand Designs

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Originally Posted by Sir Stinkalot

I cant understand why the architect didn't do a site measure before starting any drawings. When Kevin was on site explaining that the floor wasn't level it seems simple enough to see. The owner / project manager seemed to asked the architect for the most basic of services and then had the nerve to then continually request further advice for free.

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I could not for the life of me figure that one out...you would have thought that the architect would have done the most basic measurements - like slope of the land! I think this was due to the fact that the woman in question was cutting costs...tch tch...ended up costing her a lot more than the price of an architect.

What I also could not fathom is that they started the project before understanding the current state of the building site ie. there were no foundations!

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I laughed when she got the price from the first builder at about 400K pound ...... she thought he was a twat and could get it done for 250K pound so she fired him. After all the problems that she went through, compromising the quality of the project, it ended up coming smack bang on the original estimate, if not over.

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Just goes to show you does it not that builders are not always out to rip you off.

Despite her incompetency the place looked fantastic...but that was mostly down to the builder and architect. And she was pretty rude in pointing the finger at the architect when he had provided the services that she contracted him for - I hope he charged her double for all the extras.

I watch the show and shake my head. As far as I can see, most of the places they build are just plain ugly. That is to say nothing about being inappropriate for the climate, wasteful of energy and materials and often highly "unlivable". They left some words out of the title, "GRAND waste on stupid DESIGNS". Yeah, there is room for good design in architecture and in some cases they have some good ideas, but it is all lost in these monstrosities.

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Originally Posted by burraboy

I watch the show and shake my head.

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Like this?
:no::no::no::no::no::no::no::no::no: :D

:2tsup:

I tend to watch it intermittently... love the show!! Bloody brilliant :2tsup:

In the most recent one with the couple with a couple of boys that had been aid workers and had the block in sunny Scotland on a heck of a slope facing Loch Lomen (sp?) great spot!!... shame about the house... I mean who wants to live in a square block?... dumb... but apparently the architect did a great job with the save the environment side of things and it was passive whatever to keep it warm and cosy.

The bloke reckoned having 2 project managers would work... yep thats right that will work... having one project manager to do the ground floor concrete walls then another to do the timber kit build upstairs THEN to have the first builder being reliant on the second builder to finish his work on time so he can come back and finish his work was bloody amazing... and an incredibly unreasonable time schedule GIVEN that most of the materials were being IMPORTED from Canada Sweden etc... funny they were goin on about how tight things were and yet they flew to Canada to the forest then the mill to watch the ceder being downed and milled into they shingles must be cheep to do that?

I have looked around a fair bit for something "different" or "unique" for us to build here and now weve exhausted our options we are considering a visit to an archetect... Im usually an optimistic sorta bloke but I dont see going this way (grand designs) staying within budget... unless we win lotto were gonna end up back at square one again with the kit homes and then the project builders... sadly its a fact that if you dont go the project home route and dont go the kit home route you are very rapidly priced out of the market totally... simply because your in West Aussie... thats not whingin or whining its a fact.

But love that show... and same here with the news thing :roll: but thats no worries in my book

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Originally Posted by Wild Dingo

The bloke reckoned having 2 project managers would work... yep thats right that will work... having one project manager to do the ground floor concrete walls then another to do the timber kit build upstairs THEN to have the first builder being reliant on the second builder to finish his work on time so he can come back and finish his work was bloody amazing... and an incredibly unreasonable time schedule GIVEN that most of the materials were being IMPORTED from Canada Sweden etc...

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Yeh, I thought it was unreasonable that the presenter said that it caused problems. The problems weren't with the separate contractors working together. As far as I could tell, there were no problems with the frames fitting on the basement. The problems were with the ordering and supplying of the windows. The second contractor would have made the same errors if he'd tackled the entire job, and who knows whether the first contractor would have had the same problems if the windows were his responsibility. Perhaps he would have run the entire job flawlessly, but that type of prefabricated framework was not his specialty, so he may have had a different set of errors to deal with.

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Originally Posted by Wild Dingo

funny they were goin on about how tight things were and yet they flew to Canada to the forest then the mill to watch the ceder being downed and milled into they shingles must be cheep to do that?

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I thought that was a bit odd as well.
Good excuse to take a holiday anyway. :D

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Originally Posted by pawnhead

I thought that was a bit odd as well.
Good excuse to take a holiday anyway. :D

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I expect that the trip to Canada was paid for by the TV show as their cameraman went with them.

Anyway the airfares from Scotland to Canada isn't expensive.


Peter.

I watch it whenever I can, however I tend to agree with Burraboy that the external design on the last couple of projects were bloody terrible, just a series of boxes. The open plans would create an expensive headache to heat/cool. The massively high ceilings would be about as cosy as living in a concert hall.

I chuckle at the unrealistic time limits, that are never reached, by owners who have zero idea about building and just grumble into the camera. It Should be compulsive viewing for those who think they can simply breeze through being owner builders.

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Originally Posted by Jacksin

The open plans would create an expensive headache to heat/cool. The massively high ceilings would be about as cosy as living in a concert hall.

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It's a bit ironic considering how much they kept stressing that the place was sustainable, and eco-friendly. Especially when you consider the footprint they left across the Atlantic when they checked out their 'eco-shingles'.

Reminds me a bit Al Gore, our latest Nobel Peace Prize winner for his 'environmental achievements'. :hahaha:

The whole idea od avante garde architecture is that its not following but leading design and taste. Even Federation homes were very modern when they came out as a style - buggared if I can understand why anyone would want to build something like it now, but each to his own...

dingo - finding an architect that has experience in res is a key, and one that understands costs and what causes them -= the tough part is if you want to spend 250k on a building is paying 10, to 20 k in architect fess seems like a waste of money - well it is if sq meters per dollar is your only criteria.

Secondly, you have to be confident in yourself, and not care for others opinions, given that a modern home will invariably be hated and considered ugly by a good percentage of the population who are still happy to build circa 1950 style bungalows.

As to grand designs, I think the most disapointing thing is how much interference they seem to get from planning authorities on matters of asthetics - having to build within the style of an area whne you are nowhere near anyone else is a truly bizarre and backward concept

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Originally Posted by pharmaboy2

As to grand designs, I think the most disapointing thing is how much interference they seem to get from planning authorities on matters of asthetics - having to build within the style of an area whne you are nowhere near anyone else is a truly bizarre and backward concept

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Now that quote is a whole new thread! Planning authorities have a part to play but sometimes they can be a tad non-sensical. I have found that it is quite dependent on the town planner that you engage with.

My first round of renovations went through town planning without a hitch (and in record time I might add - the female town planner I had was brilliant).

The second round of renovation, which was much less impact than the first, ran into an obstacle - the idiot town planner (a male). How much of an idiot was this guy? read on...

The planning submission I presented for a new carport was sympathetic to the character of the house (replacing an extremely ugly 1960's wrought iron job). The submission had a number of pictures of other houses in the area that had done similar, house-sympathetic carports. The town planner told me that there was no such thing as precedent when it comes to getting a planning submission through. After more discussion he said "if I let you build this then it will set a precedent"...but...but...oh forget it...I hung up the phone after that and called my psychiatrist.

The video walk-thru shown at the beginning of the program of how the house will look when finished is amazing.
Does anyone know what software they use to make that or do you need a degree in computer science?? :doh:

Hi,

This may be the wrong place to post this. I'm sorry if it is. I looked and couldn't see an obvious "off topic" area, and it's kind of on topic.

In the ABC, Thursday evenings at 6:16 pm is a series called Grand Designs. It's an architect following the building of custom houses in Britain. E and I find it funny because the owners are often hopeless and, well, there's an architect involved which has got to be funny.

The reason I'm posting this is last Thursday's program. The chap building was a carpenter, but not just any carpenter. He kneeled down on a door he'd just made and with a router and carved out a superb likeness of 3 heads of wheat, as good as anything I've ever seen done with a chisel. The whole house was a bit "hobbit" so not necessarily to my taste, but the execution, the details, the handwork was astounding. All through the show I saw again and again him doing framing etc to cabinet maker standards.

So if you get a chance to see the show for anyone interested in woodwork that episode would be a joy to watch IMO.

it was a work of great skill. and was with in his budget
i always watch the show. to me it was the best one i have seen on the program

I saw him do the door, some of the workmanship was very good. Not to my taste, but well constructed.

Robert

First things first. Thank you to the admin who moved my post. I'm sorry I hadn't found the existing thread nor the correct area to post. I did try :)

Couple of things.

First there is plenty of house design software around. My personal fav is 3D home architect version 4 (I think). Version 5 and on changed system and aren't well thought of. V4 and earlier use similar systems to Chief Architect which is an expensive professional system. The simpler version comes up on ebay very occasionally and is very cheap. If you buy it PM me and I'll give you a quick start.

I have to say I'm surprised by many of the previous comments. Some of the owners on Grand Designes are awful people who happily abuse the tradespeople and make their neighbours lives miserable. The Architect like most Architects is an idiot, pretentious and clueless. Some of the owners mean well but are just so stupid I can't feel for the problems they create for themselves, and some of the resulting houses are both ugly and impractical. However amongst this chaos and awfullness there are some really talented people and some great stories.

Typically about 2/3 the cost of a conventional house is labour. 1/3 is materials. Beautiful quality homes needn't be that much more labour intensive than spec homes, but you have to have a design that's quick to build and materials that are sensible. Then a great team of tradespeople can build you something wonderful. It can be different but it has to be thought through, and since nearly all Architects are arts fags who couldn't hammer a nail straight they tend not to consider the practicalities.

I'm sorry that's so negative, but this is something I feel strongly about. I'm a mechanic by trade and engineer by profession. I've never built a house but I've had to deal with idiots like this all my working life. My girlfriend comes from a family of cabinet makers and builders. Her father and friends can throw up a house in a couple of weeks that would stun you in it's quality. We sit up in bed together just reeling from horror to laughter watching this show. A few of the clients have been really inspiring, like that carpenter, but gee it's not hard to pick people who've had some experience and actually respect the skills that are required to build a house.

Anyway...

Damien, perhaps there is a message in the shows title - its not about building houses well, or people who understand the building process etc, its about houses that are out of the oprdinary and mundane.

Sometimes that throws up different people and professions - but that is a necessary part of the shows reason for being. Average people of average tastes arent going to make for an interesting building let alone TV show I suspect.

The only one I've seen where the neighbours have copped it was in the roof top conversion a few weeks ago, the rest of the neighbours in other projects are effected jus6t as any new building does, and often their sensibilities as well (after all avant garde design isnt avant garde unless most dont like it really?)

I just completed a ceiling that I panelled in hoop pine ply sheets with revealed joints and stainless steel downlights - the conservative vistiors to the house dont know what to make of it, and the modern lovers are excited - if the cleaning lady loved it I would have been concerned, so all is as it should be, if a good number say "eeeew, it looks like an office!" (OK they say it much nicer than that, but i know what they are thinking) LOL!

Your right of course, but one episode that sticks in my mind was a nasty little man who thought he could overcome any obstacle by abusing people. That flat was another example, the house boat, even the chap who built the low house between two others on a narrow block. The inspector kept comming back expecting drawings and getting nothing. Here he would have just shut the site until the engineering was done, end of story.

Your roof sounds nice, and besides I'd be an arrogant sod to dictate style to anyone, but I get rather annoyed when someone has specified some hairbrain idea then complains when it costs the earth or goes wrong, or they change their minds half a dozen times through the project, whinge because (what appears to me to be) a perfactly reasonable heritage or structural inspector won't let them have their way.

It's one thing to have an imagination, it's another to trample everyone around you. I know people who do most creative things with house building/renovating and others who just do magnificent quality. They achive this with planning and consideration, and I don't see enough of that in the show.

Anyway to each their own :D

LOL the house boat was stunningly ugly, and could easily be used as the prime example of why a archititect should be mandatory for some peopel! LOL

If you are talking about the low house as the one with the opening roof, personally I thought it was a great outcome, but there was a major lack of plans - though he seemed to have an idea of how it was to be finished. i must admit having totally renovated and changed our home, I got a set of plans drawn up for council, but all the detailing was done on the run with the end look in mind - things like deciding how to mount 5m wide sliders that have a 230mm frame - there's a std way that has reveals attahced and architraving etc, but I wanted a flush finish - those sorts of problems are only sorted once the frame is delivered, and you have to try and figure out water proofing methods to get the finished detail to match the perfromance side of things.

I agree about the changes, sometimes for change sake, but it seems to me they deliberately choose people who are owner building, thus creating astory behind it, and owner builders have the flexibility to change things as they go, but these people arent actually doing the work, so they are changing things after they have been done, which is simply a recipe for blowing the budget.

It would be a bit boring if they simply chose good designs where the builder tended to the architect a fixed price, the architect oversaw the project and delievered the finished product to the client! Interesting for me still, but probably not for lots of people who like to see the odd barney, and stupidity of normal people delving into things they know little of.

PS - have noticed that the latter shows have a whole let less of the smart house wiring going in - I suspect that might be a short lived trend, of 1000 miles of cable going into a home so you dont have to switch off the light s with your forefinger! ;)

Last night was a classic example of what I mean. That guy had real vision and was doing it himself and haddn't built a house before, but all through the process he was considering how stuff would be done rather than just the result, he went out of his way to consider his neighbours, he never lost his temper (got cranky with himself but..), abused anyone etc. THAT is the difference between a tradesman and an arrogant onlooker.

I guess what I was trying to say is some of the previous people didn't seem to respect the skill and experience of the people they were hiring to build the houses. They didn't anticipate the problems that were pretty inevitable, nor the additional ones they created, nor often did they seem to care. The houseboat guy casually wandered in with oversize windows after the frame was built, then he wonders why his builder dropped him. Then he wonders why he gets kicked out of the dock when his second builder MOVED SOMEONE ELSE'S BOAT WITHOUT PERMISSION. I wasn't surprised when he ended up in an ugly standoff with the second dock owner.

The cabinet maker last night was just a joy to watch (of course! he is a cabinetmaker :) ). Sure he had issues, but he dealt with them, and all the while considering people around him. I wasn't impressed with the architects :) was it 2 months to do calcs ? seriously ?

As I said in my origional post, E and I find the catastrophies amusing, and I'm sure others do also, I just don't like a lot of the people driving the builds.

Anyway, good fun.

Is that the one where the guy carves the staircase support out of a tree trunk with a chainsaw? I also like the OH&S on the job when he was lifting the timber poles into the corners with his tractor.:oo:

HH.

LOL - last nights was the first one of watched that when they described the house at the beginning I thought yuck and the result at the end was fantastic - totally at odds with my expectations.

The windows were just hilarious, i mean did those architects think their job was? spec on the run?

To me there seemed to be a post in the glass wall anyway in which case the glass didnt need to be structural except for self support - given the stuff you see in commercial all the time, I'm absolutely amazed they managed to use up 2 months on 'calculations'? calculations of what?????

Nice guy - sounded aussie to me, but with penchant for wasting money - all the lighting was LED, and would have comfortably cost 20 or 30k - imagine how many trees he could have had planted for that kind of money and used a more mature technology for lighting.

The other bad planning aspect was the height, when I built a house with a view, i calculated the height off the plans, and brought a stepladder to find the view from floor height - seemed a rather basic concept to me, spoke to the buidler about cost per brick height, and changed it before we had turned a sod
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Mind you, i still want to know how the hell those stairs worked!

Damian
re last nights one
How do they clean all that Glass (long ladders ) ??

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Originally Posted by pharmaboy2

To me there seemed to be a post in the glass wall anyway in which case the glass didnt need to be structural except for self support - given the stuff you see in commercial all the time, I'm absolutely amazed they managed to use up 2 months on 'calculations'? calculations of what?????

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The poms do make heavy going of glazing, but we don't use double glazing of that size either and we don't have to worry about the thermal calcs.

In those courtyards, sometimes the solar load was reduced by four or five thicknesses of glass as the sun entered, left and re-entered the building. If you are fairdinkum about properly designed heating and climate control, and no-one here is, you'll do the calcs.

Don't forget the sun is constantly moving, and the heat loads/cooling effect will be different at different times and different seasons.

I'm surprised that the architects could even do them. I'll bet there was a mech engineer there somewhere scratching his head. Here, most people would just bung in a bigger air-conditioner (which would cost more than the architects fee anyway) and blame the "bloody architect" when they came home and the house was hot/cold, even if as most don't, they didn't have an architect do the work!

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Nice guy - sounded aussie to me, but with penchant for wasting money - all the lighting was LED, and would have comfortably cost 20 or 30k - imagine how many trees he could have had planted for that kind of money and used a more mature technology for lighting.

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Please inform us what a more "mature" technology is that's going to use less 'lectricity? I'd love to know.

Also tell us how he wasted any money? Seems to me he ended up with a free house worth 800k, that's close enough to 2million Oz. I wish I could waste money like that.

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The other bad planning aspect was the height,

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You've lost me there? The house was two stories, and obviously flat roofed to get around the planning regs to keep it below the heights of the adjoining slums. The windows were really carefully placed to frame views, but there was no overlooking of the daggy bits. What was bad?

Just curious.

P
:)

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Originally Posted by ptc

Damian
re last nights one
How do they clean all that Glass (long ladders ) ??

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When you own a couple of million's worth of house, you get a chap in to do it.

Most glazing installations of that type (and cost) use a derivative of http://www.pilkingtonselfcleaningglass.co.uk/

If you were building anything with large glass panels, particularly in roofs, you just wouldn't do without it.

cheers,

P
:D

more mature technology?

well, I didnt put int he previso that it needed to lose less energy, so cf's would be a good start, and maybe even some IRC halogens for task lighting. I just speculate that at over $100 per sqm lights, that a much cheaper option could be had, with a better outcome for the environment if you bought carbon credits so someone plants trees somewhere for you., no?

The wasted money was how abudget that starts at 450k somehow gets to 800k - cant possibly be ALL sensible spends can it??

The height revolved around the first over spend of 10k quid - it was after they had put the foottings in and then decided the floor height was 500mm too low for the views to work (assume lower floor looking into the fence rather than over it) - when you know the ground level, thats a pretty bad mistake after you've done the footings at a specified height.

I am a keen watcher of Grand Designs.

Having been in the UK for 8 months now I can tell you that the houses you see on that show are far from normal. Most of the newer estates are built with the same type and colour of brick, same roof tiles and you can choose between no more than a handful of floor plans. One builder will build a block of 100-1000+ homes.

It makes for a very dull horizon. We have built several homes in Perth and the choice there is mind boggling, if not quite cutting edge.

Doing it the UK way might solve Perth's building problems, but I wouldn't recommend it.

As they tell you in the program so many of the grand design projects are built on oddly shaped blocks, in difficult locations. The building laws here are very strict and it's very hard to build a new structure anywhere.

The towns here are very densely populated, making a lot of people miserable. Then 5 mins down the road (not in London) you hit open farm land with loads of space but none you can walk on. Its all a bit odd really.

Often people renovate barns etc at huge cost. I watched an episode yesterday were they renovated a barn it had no foundations and was on a slope. Cost £400,000 (Aus $1,000,000 ish) not including the land. All very nicely done too but not what I could call a home.

I'm looking forward to going back home to Australia and building again in a couple of years.

Cheers


Dave

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Originally Posted by pharmaboy2

more mature technology?

well, I didnt put int he previso that it needed to lose less energy, so cf's would be a good start, and maybe even some IRC halogens for task lighting. I just speculate that at over $100 per sqm lights, that a much cheaper option could be had, with a better outcome for the environment if you bought carbon credits so someone plants trees somewhere for you., no?

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No, in my view planting trees is a nonsense. Like changing your nappies after you've pooped in 'em. Learn to use the loo and you'll never have to use nappies again.

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The wasted money was how abudget that starts at 450k somehow gets to 800k - cant possibly be ALL sensible spends can it??

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But the selling price started at 400 and ended at 800 so yes, it can. If you are doing it to make a profit, then he's made double what he set out to do.

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The height revolved around the first over spend of 10k quid - it was after they had put the foottings in and then decided the floor height was 500mm too low for the views to work (assume lower floor looking into the fence rather than over it) - when you know the ground level, thats a pretty bad mistake after you've done the footings at a specified height.

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missed that bit. There are an awful lot of appalling mistakes made on that show, just like in life really!

Cheers,

P
:D

hello,

for those interested grand designs is also being shown on Tuesday 11am ABC at the moment,

they are old but havent seen them

thankyou

myla

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It can be different but it has to be thought through, and since nearly all Architects are arts fags who couldn't hammer a nail straight they tend not to consider the practicalities.

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Damien...That's a bit rough.