Budgeting Your New Kit Home

What this episode covers

Show Notes: Budgeting your new Kit Home!  What if a building department asks for more information than they initially requested.  Do building departments need HVAC, electrical, plumbing and gas piping design?  How is a foundation designed? Transcript: Interviewer: Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 38 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me in the studio is the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993, and that man is Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing, amigo? Steve Tuma: Doing well. Staying busy as always. Having a good time helping customers get through permitting processes, design issues, interesting land situations so … Interviewer: All the usual stuff. Steve Tuma: Yeah, keeping on our toes and we are having some fun. Interviewer: Good. I thought today, we might get back to something we like to do every third or fourth episode or so is look at some interesting inquiries and questions from customers that we received. So why don’t we just get right into it? Steve Tuma: Yeah. Throw some questions at me. Interviewer: I thoroughly throw you for a loop there. Steve Tuma: Yeah, I thought you were going to say more and then you leave me hanging. It’s like OK. Interviewer: I just like to keep you on your toes like you just said. So let’s talk about – let’s talk about quotes for a sec. Now, how do customers know if a quote for let’s say, a heating or an air conditioning system that they are having installed, how do they know that the quote they are getting is correct and they are done right and equally, apples to apples? How do I know the quote I get for a system such as that is good for a properly designed house? Steve Tuma: Well, that’s an interesting situation because it’s not just like heating and air conditioning system. It could be your foundation, your electric, your roof. And what we always suggest is make sure that you’ve got an accurate set of plans to go through and get quotes. Now initially, you might work off of just rough concepts and get rough ideas to make sure that a house is going to fit in your general budget, kind of a target situation. But when you are actually going through and getting the quotes that you need to actually go through and execute the building processes, it’s good to have a good set of plans. The reason being is the set of plans is a communication tool. We could draw the house up that you want and then you could use those plans for permit applications so the Building Department knows what you want to build. But also, the contractors know what’s to be built so that you don’t end up in a situation where sometimes people work in other ways and say, “Hey, I bought these plans but do this change. Do this 2000-square-foot home but make the garage bigger.” What does make the garage bigger mean? Is it a foot bigger? Is it 10 feet? Is it 10-car garage instead of 2-car? So it gets rid of the nebulous ideas and miscommunications so that contractors can do their jobs. And that way, it’s very clear as to what is to be estimated and then you could verify that the estimate comes back accurately. It also limits the errors. And sometimes people taking advantage of the situation where they say, “Well, I didn’t know you wanted that.” Well, in this case, it’s right on the plans. It would show, “Hey, you want cement board siding or you’re going to need a foundation for a 1200-sqaure-foot ranch with a 3-car garage.” It would be very accurate. Now in some cases, there are technical sides to this. So you brought up the heating and air conditioning systems, sometimes people work off of rules of thumb. And someone might say, “Well, I’ve been in the heating business for 30 years and this is how we do this.” Well, that’s great. But 30 years ago,