These sorts of inflection points and cost cliffs are everywhere in construction, and a substantial portion of the book's advice is on how to avoid running into them. For instance, if your box-shaped home exceeds 32 feet on a side, you’re past the point where you can use off-the-shelf framing materials for the floor and roof, which immediately makes your framing more expensive. Like any linear optimization problem, these cost functions are subject to various constraints and interactions that add complexity. The extent of plumbing lines can be minimized by clustering your plumbing fixtures in the same area of the house, and stacking them vertically floor to floor.Įxcavation can be minimized by running as many lines as possible (cable, sewer, gas) in the same trench.ĭriveway length can be reduced by placing your house as close to the street as possible (this also maximizes backyard space!). This means that a two-story house is generally cheaper than a one-story of the same square footage (less roof and foundation), and a box-shaped house will be cheaper than a rectangular shaped house. Much of the advice of the book is a sort of basic linear optimization - identifying an expensive material or process, figuring out the relationship between the design of your building and how much of the expensive thing is being used, and finding a way to minimize it.įor instance, the exterior wall assembly, roof, and foundations are some of the most expensive assemblies in a house, so the basic shape of your house should be one that minimizes their extents (ie: minimizes the surface area to volume ratio). The techniques mostly fall into a few basic buckets: finding low points on cost-curves, navigating code requirements, cutting superfluous features or finishes, and keeping up with advancements in building technology. The result is a fairly thorough documentation of not just money-saving techniques, but the various inefficiencies throughout the construction process. Reducing cost is a game of item-by-item optimization and streamlining. Ruiz is clear that (as we’ve seen previously ), building costs aren’t the result of one or two things, but dozens of subsystems and thousands of individual components. ![]() īut Ruiz isn’t interested in building a low-quality house - he reserves his recommendations for things that don’t impact quality, and is clear on areas where spending the extra money is worth it. According to Ruiz, the techniques in the book allow him to build houses for 15-33% less than his competitors. It goes through every portion of the house, from basic design, to the various trades, to the finishes, landscaping, etc. ![]() Ruiz used his own experience, as well as advice from builders, architects, engineers, and trades to document the various ways the low-cost builder can save money building a house. ![]() “ Building an Affordable House ” is a book written by Fernando Pages Ruiz, a builder of low-cost homes.
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