Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: community design

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

Rob says
> It would be interesting to add to the list above of what are the cost 
> saving design features which can be generally incorporated.  For 
> example, are there design solutions for electrical fixture wiring to 
> minimize the costs? Are their techniques for doing foundations which 
> save money? How about roofing savings by designing simple roofs?  These 
> are all incremental savings which can add up, especially over the whole 
> project.

There are a number of books oriented towards custom home-builders which 
discuss these things.  Two which I happen to own are 

Plan, Contract, and Build your own Home, Scutella, R.M. and Heberle, D. 
TAB books.  1991 ISBN 0-8306-3584-X (pbk.)

and 

The Well-Built House, Locke, J. Houghton Mifflin.  ISBN 0-395-47808-1 (pbk.)

I like both of these books, and both have a lot of discussion of very 
specific design/construction points.  I particularly like the second - it's 
written by a contractor and his hands-on, day to day experience of doing 
the job really comes through.

I would have thought that folks building a place would really want to read 
books like these to get familiar with the process before it started.

Disclaimer - I haven't actually tried to build a house after reading these 
books - that could change my opinion about them.  There may be other books 
just as good or better.

Stuart.
N St Cohousing
stanifor [at] cs.ucdavis.edu
http://everest.cs.ucdavis.edu/~stanifor/cohousing.html