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Building your new home can be both exciting and tedious. You have to understand the process works and overcome the difficulties & hassles while building your dream home. Keep in mind that the home building process vary from region to region and builder to builder.
You should be careful about Considering that you already own the piece of land in a residential zone and with all the necessary documents, The following is a step-to-step guide for your House Construction.
Step By Step Guide to Start With House Construction
1. Get Your House Designed
The best way to design your house is to hire an Architect or a Construction Company who provide end-to-end services. Architects usually understand the guidelines for building construction laid down by the local authorities. They design the building as per the local regulations. Some of the regulations include FSI (Floor Space Index), Setbacks etc.,
Apart from the local regulations, Architects will also consider the following details to design the house based on your inputs.
- Design Living spaces as per your requirement (i.e, number of bedrooms required, Sizes of Bedroom, Kitchen, Living room & Special Function Rooms)
- Ventilation (Windows and doors to improve efficiency)
- Aesthetics
- Vastu
- Water Drainage
2. Submit Plans for Government Approval (local Authorities)
Once the plans are created, Submit the plans with the local authorities for approval. The local authority depends on based on the location you choose to construct your building.
For municipalities, you should submit to Town planning department and for villages, you need to submit in Village Panchayat. You need to pay an amount of the area you are constructing for approval. Get approvals on all the plans before construction.
3. Get Structural, Plumbing & Electrical Drawings Prepared:
Consult a Structural Consultant and an MEP (Mechanical, Electrical & Plumbing) engineer and get the said drawing prepared. Most of the times individual home owners don’t go for Structural designs. This is a problem because of 2 reasons:
- Most of the times, Contractors over design structures wasting construction materials. A proper design would optimise the material consumption based on your need.
- Designs are made based on user inputs while contractors work on thumb rules. So if you have plans for future expansion, a designer can give you the best solution according to your need.
4. Get Quotes for Construction
Once you are done with the drawing approvals, you need to contact construction contractors who can construct the building as per the drawing. Be careful about the quotes you receive. Although Civil Engineering is a basic science, there are a lot of materials, brands & techniques available in the market due to which construction cost might vary.
For example, MS steel shuttering costs less because the contractor can use the shuttering multiple times whereas a plywood shuttering cannot be used after 16 repetitions. Although Plywood shuttering costs more than MS shuttering, Plywood shuttering gives a smoother finish as compared to MS shuttering.
So, while comparing the quotes you have to very careful and compare quotes with same specifications. I have written an article on the 10 mistakes to be avoided while hiring a building contractor. Read our article to avoid mistakes while obtaining quotes and finalizing a contractor.
There are umpteen construction materials and brands available in the market. Selecting a right material is one of the most hectic tasks. Each of these materials has its own advantages and disadvantages. These materials widely vary in cost also. So choosing the right material might be quite difficult sometimes.
Take an expert advice for buying the right materials. Explain them your requirement and budget so that they can suggest the right materials. You can also optimise the cost of construction up to 10% by buying right materials.
Here is a chart showing material consumption for a 1000 Sqft bungalow (Considering budget specifications).
You can extrapolate that material requirement based on the built-up area you are constructing.
It is strongly advised that you buy the materials required for your building construction based on the detailed drawing finalized by the architect. The above mentioned info-graphic is calculated by averaging the material requirement of multiple low rise construction projects and should be only used for estimation purposes.
6. Source the funding
Now that you have the total cost of construction, you can start sourcing the funds required for the project. Your source might be personal savings or loan from banks/ friends. Although this sounds like a naive step to write here, lack of resources during the project stage might sometime over shoot the budget.
Contractors will charge for De / Re-Mobilisation. Some of the construction materials like Cement etc. might expire/loose its strength if stored for long periods of time (more than 6 months from date of manufacture). So sourcing the funding before the start of the project is a just as important to step as any others mentioned above.
7. Signed Contract
Issue a written contract with your contractor and have the contract signed by both the parties. You should cover all the details in this contract to avoid any future conflicts. Will share a link to the contractual document in next 2 days.
Usually, the contract rate includes labour and materials. This is done to avoid wastage and pilferage. In case you can monitor day to day operations effectively, you can go for labour rate contract and procure the materials yourself.
The contracts are usually lump sum or based on the Built-up area constructed. Don’t give a unit rate contract unless you are sure about the quantities and rates of individual work.
8. Arrange temporary water and Electricity
Temporary water and electricity are the most important amenities required for a contractor before he mobilises his workforce. Usually, the plot owner has to provide these amenities to the contractor. So owners should plan for these
9. mobilize Contractor to Site
After ensuring that the detailed drawings has been prepared and approved, you can start mobilizing your contractor to site for commencement of works.
Before commencement, make sure that you have a detailed understand of the various materials that are required during the construction stages, activities involved in construction and quality checks to ensure that the construction of your house is upto mark. You need to have this understanding to ensure.
10. Construct temporary source Store for Material Storage (if required)
Materials like cement cannot be stored in open areas for a long duration. So a temporary storage space has to be built to ensure that the materials don’t get exposed to the atmosphere and get damaged. Once the first floor slab is constructed, these materials can be store in a place inside the building itself.