There are many ways to save money when building or renovating a house. This includes:

• Eliminating waste. Which means:
  • Ordering the correct quantity of building materials.
  • Protecting construction materials from damage. Breakages often occur because of poor installation methods, or while moving the materials on the building site. Always use the correct tools and adhesives to cut and fix the materials in position. Handle breakable materials with care.
  • Order construction materials in the correct lengths and sizes where the off-cuts are minimised, or where the off-cuts can be used elsewhere.
  • Double check measurements. Frequently items are built wrongly or cut the wrong length and have to be replaced.
  • Store items where they won’t be damaged.
  • Only mix the quantity that you can easily use before the product sets hard or goes off.
• Ensure quality is good and elements are installed and built in the correct position. Frequently substandard work has to be demolished, resulting in additional cost to get rid of the rubbish and to rebuild the item.
• Theft is a problem on building sites. Ensure that valuable items are locked in secure stores and that the building is lockable before expensive items are installed.
• Incorporate recycled building materials where possible.
• Make use of standard elements – this applies to windows, doors and cupboard. Purpose built units are more expensive.
• You can consider purchasing end of the range products (products on sale) such as tiles and appliances. With tiles make sure that you have sufficient stock to cover breakages and cutting as well as stock for future repairs because the end of the range usually means that there’s limited stock and you probably won’t find more should you run short of materials before the work is complete. Check that suppliers will stock parts for appliances that are being discontinued.
• Negotiate with suppliers for the best rates. Often suppliers will give discounts for earlier payment or when buying in bulk.
• Don’t employ expensive tradespeople to do manual labourer work.
• Check all accounts before paying them and keep a record of what’s been paid so that bills aren’t paid twice.
• Check all deliveries and report missing or broken items immediately to the supplier.
• When using hired construction equipment put the item off hire as soon as it's not needed. Often hired items lie forgotten on projects long after they aren't required while they rack up hire charges.
• Plan building work so that hired equipment is on the project for the shortest possible time. Hired access scaffolding for instance can be very expensive if it's kept on the building site for a long period. Importantly, also plan work so items don't have to be brought back to the project to finish installations which were forgotten. This is particularly a problem with high installations which require access scaffold or access equipment to reach. Plan the work so all the elevated work can be done together in the shortest time, then carefully inspect the work to ensure there aren't any problems or defects that need fixing before the access equipment is removed.
• Protect finished work and existing installations. Repairing damaged work is expensive.

​Unfortunately some will be tempted to save money the wrong way. Never be tempted to:

• Use inferior materials.
• Use building materials of a lesser specification or strength.
• Incorporate damaged building materials.
• Omit items included on the drawing, such as reinforcing steel, waterproofing membranes, brick ties, etc.
• Not compact concrete and soil adequately.
• Perform construction tasks which you aren’t licensed to do.
• Ignore, or cover up, bad quality work.
• Take short cuts which could endanger your life, like working at heights without proper and safe access, using the incorrect tools, or lifting heavy items by hand. No cost saving is worth risking your life for.
• Use construction materials beyond their expiry date.
• Use mismatched materials, like ceramic tiles, roof coverings, doors, etc.
• Deviate from the suppliers installation guidelines.
• Purchase sale items which aren’t suitable for your house.

It's imperative to carefully control costs. Many home building projects go over budget because of wasted costs and efforts. Importantly though, always ensure that your home build and renovation project results in a quality project which will be safe and endure for many years.

I've written 2 easy to read books 'An Introduction to Building and Renovating Houses - Volumes 1 and 2'. An Introduction to Building and Renovating Houses Volume 1 deals with Hiring Contractors, Managing Construction and Finishing Your Home.  and Designing your ideal home Volume 2 deals with Finding Your Ideal Property and Designing Your Dream Home. 
​("Great for those that DIY. Very helpful in home renovations!" said a Reader on Amazon.com 5*****)
These books are available from Amazon and other online bookstores in paper and ebook.
The tips and advice in these books will save you money, they will minimise issues building your new home, and they will help you design and build your dream home. For as little as $20 you could save yourself thousands of dollars.
© 2019 This article is not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission from the author.
​As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases

If you're building or renovating your home you'll be purchasing all the building materials if you're doing the work yourself. Even if you employ a contractor you may elect to purchase some of the materials and hand them to your contractor to install. This’s often done because if the contractor purchases the material you pay for the material plus the contractor’s profit and mark-up.
​
However, there are pitfalls for purchasing the materials which the contractor will incorporate into the building. These include:

• If the materials arrive late it will delay the contractor and result in a delay variation claim from them.
• If the quantity you order is insufficient the contractor will run short of materials, resulting in them standing waiting for the missing items, incurring additional costs and delaying the project which will be for your account.
• If you order too much material this’s a wasted cost. In some cases you may be able to return unused material for a refund but you’ll have to arrange this.
• You may have to offload and store the product until the contractor needs it, unless you’ve previously negotiated that this’s their responsibility, in which case you must timeously warn them of when the material will be delivered.
• If a problem later occurs with the product it’s your responsibility to fix it. The problem may be as a result of poor installation, but you’re going to have to argue the case with the contractor whether it’s the product you supplied or their installation.
• Often, when ordering products like floor and wall tiles and timber, an extra quantity must be ordered to allow for wastage, breakages and off-cuts. You need to find out what the norm is for this and allow for it. However, there’s little incentive for the contractor to take care with the product, or to plan their cutting to minimise waste because they haven’t paid for the material. This could result in materials running out with the consequent costs and delays. It should be noted, that some products such as ceramic tiles and bricks can have colour variations between batches, so you should try and order the full quantity and not part quantities as required. When placing the order it may be possible to request that the material is delivered in batches at a time to suite the construction progress.
• Usually contractors can purchase materials at cheaper rates than you can, or they get preferential discounts from their regular suppliers.
• When purchasing materials on sales or at a discount, make enquiries to understand if the item is on sale because it has a defect or been damaged, or perhaps because it’s the end of the range. Particular care must be taken when purchasing tiles which are the end of the range because if you need more of that product later it may no longer be available. There’s nothing worse than the tiler running out of tiles before the job is complete. There could only be a couple of tiles short, but if there are no tiles that are exactly the same the tiler may end up ripping up all the tiles and replacing them with other available tiles at great cost and inconvenience. The alternative is that you’ll be left with mismatched tiles to fill the gaps.

​Unfortunately purchasing materials to save the contractor adding their mark-up to the items doesn’t mean that the contractor won’t add this lost mark-up and profit elsewhere. As a contractor, for each project we executed we had overheads which had to be recouped in our price, and we also had an amount of profit we needed, which was usually based on the amount of effort we had to put into the project. If these overheads and the profit couldn’t be added to the cost of materials because our client elected to purchase them then we had to add them elsewhere – so ultimately the client didn’t always save much by purchasing the materials themselves.
​
I'll discuss purchasing materials in more detail in another article.

​I've written 2 easy to read books 'An Introduction to Building and Renovating Houses - Volumes 1 and 2'. An Introduction to Building and Renovating Houses Volume 1 deals with Hiring Contractors, Managing Construction and Finishing Your Home.  and Designing your ideal home Volume 2 deals with Finding Your Ideal Property and Designing Your Dream Home. 
​("Great for those that DIY. Very helpful in home renovations!" said a Reader on Amazon.com 5*****)
These books are available from Amazon and other online bookstores in paper and ebook.
The tips and advice in these books will save you money, they will minimise issues building your new home, and they will help you design and build your dream home. For as little as $20 you could save yourself thousands of dollars.
© 2019 This article is not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission from the author.
​As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases

If you’re going to build a new house it’s important to select the best property. Often people buy a property for their dream house only to find that they haven’t done their research properly and there are unforeseen costs, or the property isn’t suitable for their needs, or the area’s character is changing, or isn’t as expected and it isn’t such a desirable place to live. Buying property is a major investment. There are often transaction costs and fees to pay, so it isn’t as simple as making the wrong purchase from the shops and being able to take it back for a refund. In this case, selling a property that’s unsuitable will almost certainly lead to large additional wasted costs.

It’s essential not to purchase on impulse, but rather to do your homework.

Buying into new suburbs far from the city and with limited infrastructure (such as schools, shops and transport networks) could be a mistake, even leading to the value of your property decreasing and additional inconvenience, extra travel costs and long commute times. For more on the consequences to some people Read this Article.

​There are many things to consider when buying property, which I'll discuss in future articles. My book An Introduction to Building and Renovating Houses Vol 2 finding Your Ideal Property and Designing Your Dream Home discusses this subject in more detail.

​I've written 2 easy to read books 'An Introduction to Building and Renovating Houses - Volumes 1 and 2'. Volume 1 deals with Hiring Contractors, Managing Construction and Finishing Your Home.  and Volume 2 deals with Finding Your Ideal Property and Designing Your Dream Home. 
​("Great for those that DIY. Very helpful in home renovations!" said a Reader on Amazon.com 5*****)
These books are available from Amazon and other online bookstores in paper and ebook.
The tips and advice in these books will save you money, they will minimise issues building your new home, and they will help you design and build your dream home. For as little as $20 you could save yourself thousands of dollars.
© 2019 This article is not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission from the author.

​How easily can your house be built? Constructability of your house will depend on:

• If you’re doing most of the construction work yourself, then the house should be easily constructed by you. A house that requires complex construction processes, or skills which you don’t possess, might not be constructible for you.
• The methods that local contractors are familiar with. A house design or construction materials used commonly elsewhere might not be familiar for the local contractors, so it may take longer and cost extra money.
• The complexity of the design. Having extra-large windows, cantilevers, houses hanging over the edge of cliffs, curved shapes, complex roofs and intricately detailed finishes adds to the difficulty of constructing the house.
• The actual site. Small, narrow, crowded or steeply sloping properties provide construction challenges to set-up cranes, to place materials and to excavate deep foundations.
• If your house is on the boundary with your neighbour consider how you’ll be able to access the work areas on the boundary. Your neighbour won’t want you building a scaffold in their property to access your wall, especially if their pool, or much loved rose garden is right where your scaffold needs to be. They also wouldn’t want you walking on their roof. Your neighbour certainly doesn’t want building rubble, including cement mortar, falling into their property, on their garden, in their pool, or where they could be walking. It’s important to consider how you’ll construct the walls and roof that are right on the boundary.
• Access to the site. Consider if it’s possible for that module, pre-made pool, prefabricated wall or floor, large window or roof section to get to the site.

Having a house that’s difficult to construct will make it more expensive and invariably add to the construction duration. In some cases it might even cause quality problems when difficult work isn’t done properly.

​I've written 2 easy to read books 'An Introduction to Building and Renovating Houses - Volumes 1 and 2'. Volume 1 deals with Hiring Contractors, Managing Construction and Finishing Your Home.  and Volume 2 deals with Finding Your Ideal Property and Designing Your Dream Home. 
​("Great for those that DIY. Very helpful in home renovations!" said a Reader on Amazon.com 5*****)
These books are available from Amazon and other online bookstores in paper and ebook.
The tips and advice in these books will save you money, they will minimise issues building your new home, and they will help you design and build your dream home. For as little as $20 you could save yourself thousands of dollars.
© 2019 This article is not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission from the author.

Sometimes it’s possible to construct portions, or even your complete house as a module, which can then be delivered and quickly assembled on your property. This is particularly useful when adding second floor additions to an existing house. Modules are usually fabricated in factory conditions where quality can be better controlled and where weather won’t impact construction. It's also often quicker since construction of the modules can happen while the site and foundations are being prepared.

Module construction can be very useful for remote sites where construction skills and building materials aren't readily available. They are also sometimes cheaper if the modules are from a standard range.

These modules could be just a shell, of walls, floor and roof, which then are finished off on once the unit is fixed in position. Alternatively they could be a complete home, or a portion of the house, with all the fittings, fixtures and finishes - literally place the home down and connect it to the utilities and it's fit to live in.

Obviously the modules have to be designed such that they can be easily transported, lifted into place, assembled and completed. These sizes will be dictated by the access roads to the project site (bridges and overhead power lines could limit their height), access around the site to position cranes, the availability of cranes (it’s pointless building a module that’s too big to be lifted by cranes available locally meaning that a larger crane has to be mobilised from elsewhere at enormous costs), the available transport vehicles and the local road regulations which could limit the size of loads.

The modules have to be designed to include suitable lifting points and take account of how they’ll be fixed to the foundations, how they’ll join together and how they can be made watertight. The modules need to be made of lightweight materials so they can easily be lifted. The modules have to be rigid so they don’t distort while being lifted, which could damage fittings and fixtures.

Modules must be protected in transit so they don't get water damaged, be twisted causing fittings and fixtures inside to crack and break from walls and floors, or become bumped, scratched and bashed. Some modules may be difficult to repair on site and manufacturing a complete replacement module will be costly and result in delays.

If the house is made of more than one module then the modules or sections must be joined so that they are watertight and there won't be any leaks.

Some houses are even designed as 'flat-pack' units with the walls, floor and roof arriving in flat pieces, which are then lifted and joined in position. The finishes, fixtures and fittings are then added afterwards.

Using modules may make it difficult to change the house later, for instance move walls or make windows bigger. If the modules aren't designed properly the house can look very box like and cheap and unappealing.

For more insights on module construction Read this article.

​Do you want to learn more about renovating and building houses? I've written 2 easy to read books 'An Introduction to Building and Renovating Houses - Volumes 1 and 2'. Volume 1 deals with Hiring Contractors, Managing Construction and Finishing Your Home.  and Volume 2 deals with Finding Your Ideal Property and Designing Your Dream Home. 
​("Great for those that DIY. Very helpful in home renovations!" said a Reader on Amazon.com 5*****)
These books are available from Amazon and other online bookstores in paper and ebook.
The tips and advice in these books will save you money, they will minimise issues building your new home, and they will help you design and build your dream home. For as little as $20 you could save yourself thousands of dollars.
© 2019 This article is not to be reproduced for commercial purposes without written permission from the author.