ᐅ Building an End-Terrace House as a Self-Managed Project with a General Contractor
Created on: 27 May 2019 10:48
G
goalkeeper
Hello everyone,
some of you might have already followed one of my threads about us having to or being allowed to build our end-terrace house on our own responsibility – depending on how you look at it. This means that we are buying an end-terrace plot (215 sqm (2315 sq ft)) in a new development area in the Rhein-Neckar district and will be building on it ourselves – but in coordination with our two terrace neighbors.
The municipality, which sold the plots through a local resident model, ideally wanted applicants to apply as a complete housing group with several families and then build accordingly with a general contractor, construction manager, or architect. Of course, that didn’t really work out, so now there are only individual applicants and also homeowners.
After we were awarded the plot, the addresses of the other terrace neighbors were shared to discuss certain matters, such as roof style, whether or not to have a basement, etc. It was immediately clear that everyone preferred to do their own thing. However, we were still able to agree that the housing group will have a gable roof with a pitch of 35 to 40 degrees (within this 5-degree range).
As the end house, we will build without a basement, while the middle house and the other end house will have basements. This obviously presents a challenge as we would have to make a deep foundation or simply skip it, and the middle house would have to support us, as we will start construction first. The current agreement with the middle house is that we will build a deeper foundation at his expense, as supporting our house later on would be considerably more expensive for him.
We are currently close to signing with the construction manager, the notarization appointment for the plot is at the end of June, and we hope to start construction in the fall of this year. Meanwhile, several other freely planned housing groups are being built around us, which might get in the way with their cranes.
I will document the progress here from time to time – such a self-planned terraced house doesn’t come along very often.
some of you might have already followed one of my threads about us having to or being allowed to build our end-terrace house on our own responsibility – depending on how you look at it. This means that we are buying an end-terrace plot (215 sqm (2315 sq ft)) in a new development area in the Rhein-Neckar district and will be building on it ourselves – but in coordination with our two terrace neighbors.
The municipality, which sold the plots through a local resident model, ideally wanted applicants to apply as a complete housing group with several families and then build accordingly with a general contractor, construction manager, or architect. Of course, that didn’t really work out, so now there are only individual applicants and also homeowners.
After we were awarded the plot, the addresses of the other terrace neighbors were shared to discuss certain matters, such as roof style, whether or not to have a basement, etc. It was immediately clear that everyone preferred to do their own thing. However, we were still able to agree that the housing group will have a gable roof with a pitch of 35 to 40 degrees (within this 5-degree range).
As the end house, we will build without a basement, while the middle house and the other end house will have basements. This obviously presents a challenge as we would have to make a deep foundation or simply skip it, and the middle house would have to support us, as we will start construction first. The current agreement with the middle house is that we will build a deeper foundation at his expense, as supporting our house later on would be considerably more expensive for him.
We are currently close to signing with the construction manager, the notarization appointment for the plot is at the end of June, and we hope to start construction in the fall of this year. Meanwhile, several other freely planned housing groups are being built around us, which might get in the way with their cranes.
I will document the progress here from time to time – such a self-planned terraced house doesn’t come along very often.
G
goalkeeper22 Oct 2019 23:07Yosan schrieb:
We also built the walls without a crane. The only time I saw a crane on the site was during the delivery of the roof components (a crane mounted on a truck), and there was probably a crane briefly used for the precast concrete floor elements as well.It will probably be similar for us.
As I said, we were actually a bit lucky to be able to use a crane for the foundation work. That probably saved us about a week.
Otherwise, we will soon get to see how to properly set up a crane, since two middle houses on our street have started excavating the basements – the chief building inspector of the municipality will surely be watching closely.
goalkeeper schrieb:
Otherwise, we might soon see how to correctly position a crane, since two middle houses on our street have started excavating their basements – the head crane supervisor of the municipality will surely be paying close attention. Is there really no opposition party in Schilda’s local council and no local tabloid with letter writers?
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
11ant schrieb:
Is there really no opposition party in the municipal council in Schilda and no local tabloid with letter writers? Detached from reality. Why paint a target on your forehead? Especially since the problem has been resolved and construction is underway. I would avoid doing anything that might change that.
There will be plenty of inexperienced homeowners left to struggle with this issue.
Besides, I still believe this was just a warning shot. Other cranes will be successfully and legally installed.
Especially for terraced houses, it is also hard to understand why there isn’t one crane per row. For example, three cranes side by side simply couldn’t be allowed anywhere, even outside Schilda.
G
goalkeeper23 Oct 2019 07:36guckuck2 schrieb:
It’s hard to understand why there isn’t a crane placed for each block of terraced houses.Because these are actually three or even four different construction projects with three different schedules. The municipality would have liked it that way, but it is totally unrealistic in terms of implementation and planning.
11ant schrieb:
Is there no opposition party in the town council of Schilda, and no local tabloid with letter writers?For us, the problem is basically over for now: dwelling on it won’t bring me anything except costing me time and nerves. And right now, I need to manage both carefully.
guckuck2 schrieb:
There can’t be, for example, three cranes side by side—definitely not in Schilda. But only in Schilda is even the building official not aware of that.
goalkeeper schrieb:
For us, the problem is over for now: lashing out won’t do me any good at the moment. I didn’t mean that you should lash out. I’m just surprised how much naivety the community can afford. I know towns where, after such botched work, the opposition leader (or the head of the complainers’ group) would become a strong candidate for mayor in a new election—and the local newspaper would be read by more than just retirees for once.
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
11ant schrieb:
But only in Schilda is this not clear even to the head of the building department.Hmm, I find that hard to believe.
In my experience, elected officials often try to get involved in areas they don’t understand. For example, marketing a residential development of terraced houses to private builders without being aware of the consequences. Whatever the motivation was, maybe they wanted to keep the contracts very locally within the community instead of handing over the entire project to a large developer.