Building your house-How do you start?

Designing and building a house require systematic planning preferably with professional assistance
First step is to formulate your requirements for the house like how many rooms and other facilities you are looking for or dreaming for the house
When you communicate these to the Architect, he will have many more questions to you to get a better picture on your needs and dreams for the house.
A site visit by the architect is essential as just any other plan of the house taken from websites or builder sites may not necessarily suit your plot and your needs. Information on which direction house will face, nearby roads and surrounding nature can be collected by the Architect during site visit
Above all, Architect will have to dream and visualise your future house in the plot selected so that you will get the best possible plan ideally suited to your plot.
It will be good if the Architect can consider Vasthu aspects, Structural engineering aspects in additional to modern architectural features and of course good elements of traditional Kerala Architecture.
Cost of the house is one aspect that cannot be estimated simply by knowing that you are going to construct a house. Before any approximate estimate can be worked out, following data is essential even to guess the possible cost.
1. Basic plan of the house
2. Soil nature and features of land where building will come up
Square feet cost is a vague term which is not an accurate indicator for the expected cost of building. At best it can be a guess. Your Architect will be able to work out a more correct cost indication after the Basic Plan is prepared using Engineering estimate method.

Basic Plan is the most important document for construction of your house. Your Architect can  bring in his expertise, years of experience, creative talent and lots and lots of common sense along with his knowledge in structural engineering and Vasthu factors to get you the best and most appropriate basic Plan ideally suited  to your requirements and exactly suited to your plot and surroundings.

As a professional, your Architect will be more interested in giving you best value for your money and the best house which you can truly call as your dream home.Not so qualified or experienced persons will be able to give you a plan of the house possibly without even charges possibly as a bait to get contract for house construction.But remember a proper professional plan from a good architect can not only save you lakhs of rupees but the space saving better utility design features he will be bringing in will be understood and appreciated by you only when you start living in the house.

Similarly defects and lack of good features of  good design by using a non professional plan and building a house without professional assistance will be known to you only after you start living in the house.At that time you simply will not be able to do anything about it.So better be pound wise rather than being penny foolish.I have just used the old saying”penny wise pound foolish” in the reverse.