Plan, Plan, Plan, before you purchase a House Plan

One of the most exciting times in your life is the realization that you are going to build your dream house. Looking through house plans designs can be fun and finally choosing the perfect house for your needs is a satisfying feeling. The search is over let the building begin.
So what do you do?
You buy the plan, send it to a contractor for a bid and send it to your local permit office for a building permit. Easy right. Everything is going great, then all of a sudden boom!
You get the builder's cost estimate to build, what, it is going to cost how much, or your local permitting office tells you your plan is not going to get an approved permit to build?
What happened?
These two road blocks happen more often then not when the proper preparation is not adhered to.
First, builder's cost estimates can be obtained a lot of times with a study set of the house plans, a cheaper version of the full set of working plans. These study sets can be sent in a PDF format so it is easy to send to builders for a cost to build estimate.
Second, to avoid permitting problems, a visit to the local planning and zoning department can be very helpful in determining what needs to be addressed on the plans. Sometime local codes are more stringent than National codes and these code issues need to be addressed before you purchase your plans. If you are searching for plans on the big super market type websites, where they offer thousands of plans, know that what you are buying may not work where you are building. Just remember a lot of plans are drawn locally and do not work well in other regions of the country. So, have a plan on how you are going to make the plans you purchase work if you run into difficulty.
On that note, Standard Homes can customize our plans to meet local codes, of course there may be an added design fee but this is better than purchasing a set of plans that you are unable to build. Standard Homes has been in the house plan business for over 98 years, let us put that experience to test for you.

USDA Rural Development Certification of Standard Homes House Plans

Certification for Rural Development house plans and specifications for submission to the Rural Development program (USDA-RD), is provided by Standard Homes registered Professional Building Designer, Charles Strickland, certified by the American Institute of Building Design. He is qualified to evaluate the technical sufficiency of construction documents for residential properties.

Standard Homes can certify any of our stock house plans for the above mentioned program. In addition, we can certify any of our custom designs or stock plans with custom modifications.

Due to liability for technical sufficiency of construction, house plans not designed by Standard Homes can not be certified by Standard Homes.

Certification includes US Department of Agriculture Rural Development Farm Service Agency Plan Certification form RD 1924-25 and Description of Materials, or generically known as specifications.

Standard Homes has been certifying house plans for the USDA Rural development program since 1989, trust the leader in house plan certification, Standard Homes.

Monolithic or Floating Slab Foundation

One of our popular foundations is the monolithic slab also referred to as a floating slab foundation. This type of foundation is ideal for level lots or lots with a soil bearing problems. The basic idea is to pour your footings or footers (which are created where load bearing walls will be located) and the slab floor at the same time thus creating a monolithic slab.

Care needs to be taken to make sure your plumbing and electrical lines are located in the correct areas before you pour the concrete slab. Otherwise you may have to break out the jack-hammer to correct the problem.
 

See Standard Homes Construction Detail below: