14 Tips on Building a Home Maui Hawaii

14 Tips on Building a Home Maui Hawaii

K & S Construction

Phone: 808-283-1982

www.kscmaui.com

Home building has many different tasks, elements, parts, etc. How many do you think it takes to build a house from start to finish? How many decisions do you think you need to make to ensure that your new home construction is as near to perfect as possible? Add all of these things together and you undoubtedly have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of things that combine together to create the warm, comfortable home you have envisioned for the past few months.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you surely have heard more than one horror story from your parents, relatives, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. about a problem or group of problems they might have had when they built their last home. If you hear enough of these stories, you might be inclined to avoid building a home.

I am here to tell you that building your own home is a job can go smoothly and the entire process can be one of very happy memories instead of bitterness. The key to having a pleasant building experience is identifying processes or materials that are hard-to-fix or expensive-to-fix when things go bad. Concentrate on those and you can avoid the major disappointments other people suffer when they base too many decisions on hope instead of sound facts.

Block Foundations Maui Hawaii

The house foundation is extremely important. If the foundation of a house is poorly built, long-term and expensive structural problems can haunt your new home. Many parts of the USA still use concrete block to build both full height walls as well as shorter foundations that create a crawl space.

The mortar that holds each block together has only a fraction of the strength that poured-in-place concrete or the actual concrete block. Add to this a typical concrete block is quite hollow.

With a little extra work and some expense you can install both horizontal welded-wire reinforcing steel into every other course of block and you can install vertical steel reinforcing steel rods up through the block from the footer to the last row. If you then fill the voids of the block with a mixture of pea-gravel concrete and / or coarse sand and cement mortar, you will have a concrete block foundation that will indeed stand the test of time.

Change Orders Maui Hawaii

Change orders are written instructions that tell the builder you have switched gears. They are to be avoided like the Black Plague. A change order or series of them can wreak havoc on your budget and they can slow or completely halt the construction progress of your new home.

If you have the misfortune of working with a builder that is not honest and fair, a change order opens up a window for him to extract vast sums of extra money from you. Asking for a price of extra work or work to be changed when there is no competition, puts you at an enormous disadvantage.

Before the contract is signed to build your new home, make all of your decisions about what products you are using. When you are in the bidding phases of your new home, request that each builder state the hourly charge for the different craftspeople who would work on the job, including unskilled labor. Make the bidders quote what percentage of overhead and profit is added to the labor and material prices in any future change orders. This data may help you decide who really has the best overall package for you.

Communicating with the Builder Maui Hawaii

Once you have selected a builder with fine homebuilding skills, it is time to get really serious. Yes, you are happy and excited, but you are talking about a large sum of money. At every meeting, take written notes. Digital voice recorders are very inexpensive and allow you to capture the entire meeting. Save the recording and make a written transcript of the meeting to circulate back to all who attended. Board meetings, public meetings, clubs, PTAs, etc. all do this and the meeting minutes are verified as accurate by the parties who participated.

Why is this important? If your builder makes a verbal promise that is not in the written specifications or plans, your digital notes and the follow-up summary that he is asked to sign, helps ascertain just what was said at the meeting. This extra work on your part puts in writing all of the important spoken words. Without the signed summary, an argument or disagreement can easily degrade into a he said she said confrontation.

Once again, you only need to summarize in writing the things in the meeting that are important to you. You do not need a complete written word-for-word transcript of each and every meeting.

Cost Overruns Maui Hawaii

Very few people have unlimited funds to build a new home. I have seen houses go over-budget by tens of thousands of dollars. What many people forget is the construction loan and permanent home financing is already in place. It can be difficult if not impossible to borrow additional money. The cost overrun has to come from another source such as your savings account or a cash advance on a credit card. This type of financial stress needs to be avoided at all costs.

You can avoid cost overruns easily. The first step is to eliminate all allowances from your plans, specifications and contracts. Take the time now to select each and every item that will be in your new home. This process forces the bidding contractors to tell you the final and exact cost of your home. Using this method, there will be no surprises that turn into financial headaches.

Home Improvement Maui Hawaii

Are there things in your current home that drive you crazy? Maybe it is a dimly lit narrow hallway? Perhaps it is a lack of storage space on your first floor. Take some time and you might generate a list of 50 things that you do not like about your existing home. Let's not make the same mistakes in your new home! This is the time to incorporate those home improvement ideas.

Pocket doors are often underused today. They are very practical and high-quality, pocket door hardware ensures the doors never rub nor fall off the track. A window seat makes a great place to sit and enjoy a view. Incorporate doors in your window set plans for hidden storage under them.

If you plan to have a laundry room near your garage entrance, be sure the washer and dryer are placed so that you do not have to walk across piles of dirty laundry on the floor to bring in the groceries.

Don't overlook your patio and deck plans. All too often these spaces are too small to accommodate enough patio furniture for a party of six to sit, sip some wine and waste the night away.

Driveway Problems Maui Hawaii

You may not give a second thought to the driveway at your new home. This is an item that is not easy to change, but has a profound impact on your everyday life and that of your visitors. Many driveways are too narrow, even ones that are two cars wide.

Think about the typical parking stall at the mall lot. Those lanes are often only 9 feet or ten feet wide. Imagine for a moment if wet grass was on the other side of the painted line instead of blacktop! Make sure you allow a minimum of 11 feet of space for each lane width of a driveway.

Would you like a very unique nearly maintenance-free paving material? If you are lucky, your builder may be able to install a tar and chips driveway. You could end up with a brown driveway like mine that puts all of my visitors heads on a swivel. To dress up your driveway even more, think about a nice edging of granite cobblestone or a local fieldstone.

Electrical Must-Haves Maui Hawaii

I am quite sure you will discuss your electrical outlets and switch locations with your builder or planner and some of these are minimum electrical code requirements. But there are new products that can minimize electrical fire hazards called arc-fault circuit breakers. These are required in some rooms of your home, but it might be a good idea to install them in many of the circuits.

If you like to install holiday lighting around your home, now is the time to install plenty of outdoor outlets that are controlled by interior switches. If you work with power tools outside of your garage, then make sure one or two outlets are just outside of your garage.

Consider using 12 gauge wiring to minimize voltage drop on circuits that extend the greatest distance from the electrical panel or that will be used with tools and appliances that draw lots of current.

Extra Height Foundations Maui Hawaii

A tremendous amount of homes are built that have basements. Basements are some of the best and least costly space you can create in a new home. The trouble is, all too often the basement walls are too low.

The typical poured concrete foundation height in many areas is 7 feet 10 inches as the concrete forms are eight feet tall. By the time you pour the basement floor, the distance between the floor is just 7 feet 7.5 inches. If there is a center beam in the middle of the basement, a tall person has to duck to clear it!

You have but one chance to cost-effectively add height to your basement walls. Your builder can add another 18 inches of height with little effort. In certain instances you can create this extra height by building short walls on top of the foundation. Ask your builder to offer you several options.

Garage Plans Maui Hawaii

Many garages, I see in the average home, are far too small. When you see them empty as you walk through the model homes, they look enormous. But by the time you put your car, SUV, lawn equipment, garbage cans, sports equipment, etc., you barely have a place to move.

If at all possible, try to design your home so the garage has a ceiling height of 12 or even 13 feet. I realize this seems impossible or out of proportion, but this height allows you to create a loft that extends over the hoods of the cars. If you are less than 6 feet tall, you can walk around the loft without hitting your head.

Be sure there is at least 4 feet of space between the edge of the garage door opening and an interior wall of the garage. This will allow plenty of room to store things along the wall and still allow you to comfortably open a car door once in the garage.

Consider your garage doors also. Do you want one garage door or separate doors for each car? Garage door openers have special features such as vacation settings and motion detection for interior lighting.

Be sure to plan for a central vacuum system now and plan to have the actual central vacuum power unit in the garage so that all noise is outside of the living area. It is also easy to empty the dirt directly into the garbage cans.

Grade Around The House Maui Hawaii

I can't begin to tell you how many homes I see that are built too deeply into the ground. The soil around the house is nearly flat. It is no wonder the yards are like swamps after a heavy rain or that basements leak. What's more, these houses rarely, if ever, meet the minimum building code requirements with respect to the slope of the soil around the house foundation.

In many respects, a house can't have too much slope away from its foundation. I prefer to set a foundation such that the top of the foundation is about 18 inches higher than any point within 10 feet of the foundation.

This allows me to keep six inches of foundation exposed and create a generous slope of 12 inches of fall in the first twelve feet of run away from the foundation.

HVAC Sizing Maui Hawaii

The heating and air conditioning system in your new house is very important. It creates and maintains a comfortable and artificial environment within the walls of your home when the outdoor weather is within seasonal average limitations. To simply that, your central air conditioning unit is supposed to keep all rooms of your house cool so long as the outside high temperature is at or just slightly above the average high temperature.

To keep all rooms comfortable, the heating and cooling contractor has to do a heat gain and a heat loss calculation. This tells them how much heat or cooling to pipe into each room and it also tells them the overall size of the heating and cooling equipment.

These heat loss and heat gain calculations are so precise that two identical homes on the same street might need different sized heating and cooling equipment! Why? The one house that has the most glass surface facing west will need a larger air conditioner.

Lot Selection Maui Hawaii

Before you build a house, you need a lot. The differences between lots can be a varied as faces in a crowd. You need to make sure your lot fits your lifestyle. If you love to relax on a patio after work, then maybe it is a good idea to have a lot where your patio is on the east side of your home so you don't cook in the hot sunshine. But if you like watching sunsets, then perhaps your patio needs to face west.

Often there is extensive grading done when a subdivision is built. Was your lot a ravine that now has 15 feet of fill dirt under it? You can determine this by looking at before and after topographic maps.

Consider avoiding lots that are located at the bottom of hills or are in low valleys. These lots may become inundated with water in periods of heavy rainfall.

Panhandle lots can be troublesome as your backyard might be tucked right up against the front yard of another house. Privacy can become a real issue.

Home Inspection Maui Hawaii

Issues about the level of quality of both the labor and products used in new homes is something you need to know about before a problem arises. You may not possess the knowledge and skill to make determinations as to what is acceptable and what is not.

It may be in your best interests to meet with a certified home inspector before you sign a contract to build a new home. Discuss with the home inspector the top problem areas, and ask the inspector if he can assist you with writing up some basic specifications and visit the new home to check on the quality as the home is built. These basic specifications will probably be based on his home inspection checklist.

Include the written specifications in your bidding documents and in the final contract between you and the builder. Also include the language in the contract that permits the inspector to make periodic visits as the construction progresses.

Photographs And Videos Maui Hawaii

As your new home is built, visit it often. Take numerous home videos and photos of the work in progress. Take photos of all walls and of all the new things that happened since you last visited. Close up photos are very important.

Photographs of things such as flashings that will be covered by brick or stone, air and water infiltration barrier tears or seams that are not taped, holes in wall sheathing, etc. are very important to document.

Photographs of all of the structural elements that will get covered with drywall are very helpful. They can help remind you of what might be involved at a later date should you decide to move a wall or enlarge an opening.

These photos might also be worth their weight in gold should you become entangled in a legal dispute with your builder. Photos do not lie and you may have 20 or more photos that clearly define building code violations. Videos will allow you to photograph the construction and make comments while you are taping.

Follow these guidelines and you will build that new home with little, or no, problems. Getting everything in the house plans will ensure everyone is on the same page during the entire home construction.

K & S Construction

808-283-1982

www.kscmaui.com

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