Building a house. Questions I should ask at the pre-construction mtg. Updated post 1

[beaucoup]

You many not watch cable tv in bedrooms, but what about cable Internet? For resale, I would absolutely need cable in every room whether it be tv or Internet. Even the kitchen.

You might not be thinking resale right now, but what if you meet Mr Right on the dating site and for some reason, you end up needing to move? That could be just 2 yrs from now.

 

[beaucoup]

DH has had to add cable to every place in this house that didn't have it. Cable company didn't even want to try. He even has it in the garage. And he has had to add phone jacks too. Stresses me out to see holes in my walls and ceilings to run wires while he is doing it. And we also have ceiling fans in every room, so some of those needed to be wired in later too because they were not there.

3 story condo not all that easy to run wires between floors sometimes.

 

[beaucoup]

What room would be the office? Needs cable.

 

[HM]

I haven't read replies but here's some of the thing you might not think about but will mean a lot in how the house lives for you:

locations of outlets and switches?
Do you have any outlets outside the house?
Will some lights be on outlets (living room lamps)? Will some lights be tied into the same switch (hallways) or will they have separate switches?
Will you have any outdoor lighting/spot lights at roof?
Where will the returns for the air system be located?
Is shelving for the closets included? can you design it?
Where is the hot water heater? Will it be insulated? The pipes insulated?
Is there a wiring system in the house for cable/internet/audio? where will the outlets be? (important when deciding where your desk or stereo cabinet will be).

 

[beaucoup]

Lights inside of certain closets? With wall switches. That was another we had to add in later. Master closet didn't have a light. Seriously. Large closet under stairs didn't have a light and we can't get one there without ripping house apart so we have skipped that one. Bugs me. I have a really large bathroom closet big enough for a washer and dryer. It too didn't have a light. Ugh.

 

[StitchFanZ]

Make the garage bigger! Square footage in the garage is less expensive and you can always use more storage space.
If it is a two-car garage, what would it be to make it a three-car. Or can you make it a few feet wider so there is room for cabinets or a workshop? Make one of the garage doors wider so a larger vehicle could be parked inside.
Put a special plug in the garage so you have option of putting a fridge or freezer out there.

 

[abdmom]

Closets - shelving and clothes rods or closet organizer. These are not always standard. My closets have automatic lights that turn on when the door is opened. Do you have enough closets on the floor plan?

Electrical outlets. Are there enough? Particularly in the kitchen.

Rough-ins are not worth the money. Either put it in or don't. You won't save any money down the line by doing a rough in.

Heated floors are wonderful.

Don't forget to leave money in the budget for window coverings.

 

[thehowells]

I updated my post. lol We don't watch TV in the bedrooms. There will be jacks in the LR and the loft. It is $150 per jack ""

wow, that's expensive
I am building a house right now, as well, i'm in Canada and the tv or phone jacks were $57 each for extras

length of build will be a big one as well

 

[sam_gordon]

Make the garage bigger! Square footage in the garage is less expensive and you can always use more storage space.
If it is a two-car garage, what would it be to make it a three-car. Or can you make it a few feet wider so there is room for cabinets or a workshop? Make one of the garage doors wider so a larger vehicle could be parked inside.
Put a special plug in the garage so you have option of putting a fridge or freezer out there.

Good one! I wish I had gotten about five extra feet (at least) added to my garage width.

 

[sam_gordon]

You many not watch cable tv in bedrooms, but what about cable Internet? For resale, I would absolutely need cable in every room whether it be tv or Internet. Even the kitchen.

You might not be thinking resale right now, but what if you meet Mr Right on the dating site and for some reason, you end up needing to move? That could be just 2 yrs from now.

For cable internet, you just need an entry point. That's where the cable modem goes. You can put a wireless router there. You don't need cable in every room to utilize cable internet.

 

[Buckalew11]

Yeah, outside water spigots--we have about 4 or 5 plus we ran it for an outside shower with hot and cold water--glorious!!

 

[justussix]

There's never enough money in your flooring, cabinet, lighting, appliance, plumbing fixtures allowances to get anything halfway decent. Find out who their suppliers are for these items and get a realistic idea of how much you will be going over. Better yet - if they have a spec (not as common anymore) - and you like the materials used there - find out how much they went over their own allowances for that model. The spec is a showcase. They typically have a lot of upgrades.

They also will typically tell you where you can go to use their allowances. They'll likely have accounts with certain stores. Look for clearance/discontinued items at these stores. So what if it's last years stuff? It'll be last years stuff next year if you get all the latest items anyway. Look for remant flooring or cabinets for your smaller rooms and baths.

If you're not adding central air, make sure they at least include the coil so it's easy and less expensive to add later if you want. And it's a 220 circuit. Make sure the circuit board as room to expand.

Check into either an on-demand water heater or a 50 gallon or larger tank. 3 ladies in the same house, somebodies getting a cold shower with a standard 40 gallon.

People are right about the wiring. This is your best chance to do it. If you want to save money on something easy to do later, look into the central air (you can find local guys far more affordable than the companies most builders use - our guy saved us $400) or maybe paint the walls yourself when the house is done. A lot of the landscaping can be done yourself later too as long as you mark out your flower beds and make sure they don't hydroseed or sod in those spots. It's a pain to dig up later.

No matter what you do - when you're all done and moved in there will be something that makes you wonder why you didn't think of that while you were building. Don't sweat it.

 

[ironpig70]

I would ask for a set of floor plans to include the electrical plan. A problem I have with my house is receptacles. By code any wall over 2 feet needs a receptacle and also by code at no point along a wall can you be more than 6 feet from a plug.

Well if you have a 12 x 12 bedroom you can put a plug in the center of each wall and be code compliant. Problem with this is when you put in a bed it goes in the center of the room and hides the plug. Only way to see this is with the electrical plan. You can take card stock and scale your furniture and then put it in each room to see any issues.

Now be warned if you add plugs you are adding cost as its more wire, plugs and possibly circuit breakers. But its easier to do now then years down the road.

You should ask about your service it should be 200 amps.

Personally I use the garage as a work shop and would get the plugs in there at 20 amps where the house is 15 amps.

Ask about plumbing are they using PEX or copper?

For floors for squeak free they should use glue and ring shank nails.

I would ask for credits on anything that you don't like such as toilets. And have them install customer purchased toilets. Just make sure that the size of piping they install and toilet you buy are the same.

Not only toilets can be customer purchased but anything you want that they will not/cannot upgrade.

If they will not/cannot do customer purchased upgrades then simply ask for a credit and have it left out and hire somebody to do it.

As for the cable and phone install they are selling points so get a price now from contractor and also cable company. But let me tell you if you can get under house or in attic it is real simple to do later.

Lastly ask about the R values for windows, doors, walls and attics. Better the R the cooler/warmer it will stay.

 

[Skippy918]

Don't forget to wire for surround sound. When we built out house, we also had extra cat5e cable installed and additional conduits so we could wire it later.

Have you thought about central vacuum?

In the master bedroom, we had them put the shower head a foot higher. Standard height is 6 ft and DH hates having to duck.

I wish we would have thought about wiring for additional lighting, like accent lighting along the walls.

Recessed cans in the kitchen look much nicer than the fluorescent boxes.

Make sure that all the rooms have some kind of overhead lighting. Sometimes the formal living room is left out. We made our formal living room the office and wired it later for a ceiling fan but it was a pain.
Ceiling fan blocks in all rooms is a plus especially if you live down south.

An outlet in the pantry is handy. We were able to mount our DustBuster in the pantry and out of sight.

Not sure if you will have natural gas hookup, but if you do, have them install an outlet outside for your grill. I love not worrying about having to fill propane tanks.

I also recommend doing upgrades that would be too costly/inconvenient to do later. Bay windows or fancy banisters come to mind.

Hope this helps.

 

[Buckalew11]

What I did with my electrician was meet him at the house and walked through the house and he had me tell him where I wanted every outlet and every switch. Therefore I had to know how each door would open so I knew where to put the switch.

He also had me tell him where every canned light would be. He then marked the floor below it. When the sheet rock went up on my walls and ceilings, I remember a little pang of panic because I could not remember where every switch (etc.) was supposed to be. When I spoke to him he said that's why they marked all those spots. I had no idea that's what all his markings meant.

 

[Skippy918]

Our builder didn't allow customer purchased upgrades. You cannot leave certain items out (kitchen appliances sinks, counters, etc)because then you won't pass final inspection. We had wanted to do the higher end double oven and purchase ourselves, but they had to install an oven otherwise we wouldn't have been able to close. It was cheaper to have the basic oven put in and then upgrade later. Same goes for countertops. We didn't want to pay the markup for granite so we kept the laminate and still have it 8 years later.

I also recommend getting an independent inspection done before drywall is up. Our inspector caught a few structural things which the builder then fixed.

We were able to buy our own fridge.

You should also check and see how the washer /dryer hook ups are arranged and get them reversed if need be. If you have front loaders, you want the doors to open away from one another so you have a space in the middle to work. In our case the washer is on the left when facing them, but the hookup is where the dryer sits. We had to get a dryer exhaust extension in order to reverse the machines. Not a huge inconvenience but something to think about.

Water softener loop if you have hard water. You can install it later.

Hot water recirc if your water heaters are far from the master bath. This was one of our best upgrades. It's a 30 second wait versus 5 minutes which is wasteful especially in this drought. We set it on a timer so it only runs during the times we shower.

 

[luvflorida]

We have had two houses built in the past two years. The second one is almost finished. Everyone will have a different experience, but I can tell you about ours. Both houses were built by the same builder, but in different communities. Both communities have HOAs. Most of the homes have three different elevations (various differences in outside features) though some have has many as four or five.

In our case, many of the basics of the home could not be changed by the buyer. We couldn't decide, for example, to have the kitchen appliances installed after closing, or do our own wiring, or our own front yard landscaping. However, there were many, many things that we could change or upgrade if we wanted to. And that was fine with us, especially since neither one of us is at all handy when it comes to any type of do-it-yourself construction or renovating.

As far as options, we spent hours (and hours!) at a home design center where we could pick and choose paint colors, granite, flooring, carpeting, upgrades on appliances, cabinets, light fixtures, bathroom fixtures, and so on.

It was also at the design center that we sat with a wiring/electrical guy (I'm sure he had some sort of title, I just can't recall what it was) and decided things like hook-ups and wiring for outlets, phone and cable jacks, security systems, internet, ceiling fans, etc.

As far as asking questions, you're smart to keep a list so you don't leave anything out! You'll probably find that some things you won't be able to change, but there will be a lot that you will have options for. And you'll come up with many more questions each step of the way. Like others have said on this thread, I think it's important to think ahead to how you will use each room and where furniture might go. That way you can have your cable hook-ups where they make the most sense. We put cable jacks in every bedroom, the office, tv room, kitchen, and even one outside on the patio. We might not use them all, but they're there in case we do. We also wired for a wall mount tv in the living room and for direct tv.

Having said all that, I think the biggest piece of advice I could give to anyone having a house built is this: Visit the site of construction on a regular basis! I think it is so important to see each step of construction, not only so you can see the inner workings of your house, but to catch anything that might not be the way you wanted it.

It is SO much easier to catch a mistake and have the crew fix it right away, then to catch it further along in construction when it might be more difficult to fix. On both houses, my husband and I tried to visit the site at least twice a week. Sometimes we went more often, depending on what was being done to the house. When we went on vacation, our sales rep made sure to go to the house and take photos for us. On our first house, our sales rep even walked through the house and did a video for us!

We were careful never to bother the construction crew, and made sure to visit the site after hours. Toward the end of construction, when the house was locked up for the day, the sales office always gladly gave us a key so we could go inside the house to see what had been done.

By visiting as often as we did, we were able to catch a mix-up in the washer/dryer hook-ups, have a pre-wired fan box moved to a more central location in one room, have a dining room light fixture moved, and had a door (from the master bedroom to the master bathroom) put in where the builders thought there wasn't one. The builders also installed sliding patio doors instead of french doors in the most recent house. We told the construction supervisor, but he supposedly caught the mistake the same day we saw it. Either way, it was fixed at a point in construction when it was easier to fix it.

You've gotten a lot of good suggestions from people on this thread. Congratulations on your new house! We have thoroughly enjoyed having a house (or two!) built! I have loved watching each stage of construction and documenting it along the way. Oh yeah, take LOTS of pictures! How could I have forgotten that piece of advice!

ETA: Many of your questions will be answered at your pre-construction meeting. We met at various stages of construction with our supervisor. We did walk-throughs after all the wiring was in place and before the sheetrock went up, then several times again before our final walk-through a few days before closing.

 

[trip]

Make the garage bigger! Square footage in the garage is less expensive and you can always use more storage space.
If it is a two-car garage, what would it be to make it a three-car. Or can you make it a few feet wider so there is room for cabinets or a workshop? Make one of the garage doors wider so a larger vehicle could be parked inside.
Put a special plug in the garage so you have option of putting a fridge or freezer out there.

I so agree with making the garage bigger! Our lot wasn't wide enough for a 3rd stall but we were able to make it 4 feet wider and 4 feet longer. What a difference it makes. We kept the double garage door in the original location, that gave us plenty of room along one side for our garbage and recycling cans, our lawn mower and snow blower with some room left over. Also, by making it deeper, we had plenty of room for a frig, storage shelve and an area to hang our bikes.