The Occult Bot

Self-build is a phrase that is becoming ever-popular in the housing market. Hold on, what precisely is “self-build”? It’s a home you build yourself. Not quite literally by yourself, but you place yourself in the position as foreman, architect, planner of your property and let professional workers do the task you tell them to do. More and more people are doing just that – in point of fact, there are more self-builders in the UK than the total number of houses being built by any single developer. The intention of self-build is to produce a property to your precise specifications, not a template that the large developers work to.

I know what you’re thinking: “But I’m not a builder”. The pleasant news is that getting involved with a self-build project doesn’t have to involve you with the physical aspects of the property building (in fact, only around 5% of self-builders in reality take a role in the actual building of the property). Even the design aspects are often finalised by a professional designer. Self-build, generally, is about you articulating (in plain English), what you want to the house designer – who then produces a plan dependent on your demands. This plan then becomes the draft the developers follow. Easy, eh? You don’t need to have any active involvement in self-build. Having said all that, the DIY fantatic can use self-build as an opportunity to save some money by contributing toward the tasks of self-build they have experience in – it’s your shout as to how much involvement you want during the build.

Since you get complete control over the details of the construction, you can select the latest in technology, while commercial developers lag behind because they’re developing to rigid template designs. You can install things like cost-saving lighting, automated climate, underfloor heating, and entertainment facilities throughout your home.

You must make sure the group of workers you select are total professionals and that they build well together. For sure, you will require builders with experience of some rather potentially dangerous machinery used in construction, such as concrete cutting chainsaws, block and slab splitters, power / disc cutters, floor saws, and wood saws. Not only do they need to be safe with such equipment, they of course must do their job well too!

This article is simply an introduction to self-build, and I hope it will encourage those of you who are intimidated by the thought of running a task of this kind of size. It needn’t take up all of your time, and you won’t need house building / designing skills, but you will need to be careful as to who you hire, and you will need to carefully work out the overall cost of the project.

Comments Off