Visualising your House

Mazotasan

I thought I'd share something with you, might be helpful. 2 years ago when we got our plans from the architect I suppose I could see in my minds eye how it was going to work apart from one or two areas of the roof. My other half was a little unsure of how exactly it was going to look. So as we had some issues with planning and the site I had some time to build a simple model...

I used a sheet of 3mm foam board, a scalpel, scale ruler, steel ruler, pencil and a glue gun. I used a scale off the scale ruler and for the life of me I can remember. Essentially using the architects drawings and draw the outline of the footprint of the house and then start with the walls and finally the roof. I marked out and constructed all the interior walls also. Was a great exercise as you really get to understand whats going with your house also it allowed us to spot a few issues and resolve them before starting!

If I was doing this again I advise a slightly different approach...Get a set of drawings (or 2) from your architect to the scale of which you want your model. Use 6mm foam board for your external walls and 3mm for internal walls. Get a spray adhesive to stick the plans to the foam board. Then start cutting with scalpel and steel ruler...It took me about 40 hrs fecking hrs over 6 weeks to do mine (measuring and drawing all the lines) and of course when I was finished I realized I would have done it in maybe half the time the other way...its a bit of fun too!!

Carlow52

nice one, with the added benefit of being able to look at proper site orientation and shading etc.
Whats the BER on the model?:D

jasgrif11

I've seen similar models on House programs on Tv. I'm wondering is there a company that provides this service and at what cost?

Dont know if I'd have the time and patience for 6 weeks of model making.

It looks impressive though!

Mazotasan

Lol...Insulation is v good but airtightness v bad!!!

I am sure there are companies out there who can do it but I'd estimate it may not financially viable, now I suppose it depends on size and more so the complexity of the design or architecture...

Another option may be to build a 3D model. I started this recently using Google Sketch Up...which is a free Cad tool from google. I cant believe the amount of functionality in it! Its fairly easy to use/teach yourself. I imported the architects '.dwg' file and started it from there. Within a few hours you can build a pretty decent model. With the actual house started I cant find the time to finish it (although if the rain doesn't stop will have loads of time!!!)

focus_mad

Fair play lad it looks the business!!

Mellor

Mazotasan wrote: »

Was a great exercise as you really get to understand whats going with your house also it allowed us to spot a few issues and resolve them before starting!

Any examples to share?




And I'd take computer modeling over foamboard any day

Mazotasan

The main one would be the location of the door into the master bedroom in relation to a valley at the front of the house and in relation to the stairs. When we looked at the section through the house in side elevation it appeared that the valley was going to take a sizeable slice out of the top corner of the door. In reality it wont be as bad because in side elevation we weren't looking at the true angle of the valley (not at 90deg). Checking this in the model and reverting to Cad allowed us to move the doorway slightly.

Also it allowed me to see clearly where we have two overhanging walls which will need to be studded which primed conversations with block layers and carpenters very early on.

Carpenters in general found it very useful when referring to the roof with possible solutions and potential problems.

Another small issue was that it allowed us to look at where a good location would be for a service duct from downstairs to upstairs.

Lastly we changed the location and size of one of the windows in the kitchen, I mocked up a few kitchen layouts and realized we had more options by changing size and location of one of the windows.

The reality I suppose is alot of this stuff is probably sorted onsite as they arise but its no harm to try and foresee as much as possible. As a first time self builder th[/U]eres so much to take in and manage something will get through the cracks!