Do you build new houses?

The site decides more than the plan does

A house plan can be drawn anywhere. Whether it can be built on your particular piece of ground is a separate question, and it is settled by things you cannot see from the road.

What is under the topsoil: in this state, often ledge, which turns excavation for a foundation or a utility trench into a different kind of work. How high the water table sits, which decides whether a basement is sensible. Whether any part of the parcel is wet in a way that brings a buffer and a separate approval with it. How the ground falls, which drives foundation design, driveway grade and where water ends up.

None of that is exotic and all of it is knowable early. The mistake is to design first and survey second, because the survey then becomes a list of reasons the design has to change.

Design first and survey second, and the survey becomes a list of reasons the design must change.

Water in, waste out

Two questions that decide a great deal about a house, and both of them are answered off the property rather than on it.

Water: town supply, or a well. A well has to be sited, drilled, tested and kept a required distance from anything that could contaminate it, and what it yields is not knowable in advance.

Waste: town sewer, or an on-site system. Where there is no sewer, the ground has to be tested to establish what kind of system it will support, the system has to be designed and approved, and that design then governs the house — most directly, how many bedrooms it may have. It is entirely possible for a lot to support a smaller house than the one somebody had in mind, and it is far better to learn that before the architect than after.

If you are buying land rather than building on land you own, these are the questions to settle before you close, not after.

Access, power and where the water goes

A driveway is not a detail. It has to meet the road somewhere the town will allow, at a grade that works in ice, with sight lines that satisfy whoever governs the road, and it has to carry a concrete truck and a lumber delivery before it ever carries your car.

Power, and any other service, has to get from where it is to where the house will be, and the length of that run is a real cost that has nothing to do with the house.

And there is stormwater. Putting a roof, a driveway and a patio on a lot changes what happens to rain that used to soak in. Towns increasingly want to see where it goes, and a design that ignores it tends to produce a wet basement or an unhappy neighbour, sometimes both.

What a permit needs before it will issue

More than a floor plan, and the list varies by town, which is why it is confirmed for your address rather than assumed.

Typically a site plan showing the building located on the parcel with its setbacks and grades; construction drawings, stamped by a design professional where the work requires it; structural information; energy code compliance for the envelope and the systems; and evidence that the separate approvals — septic, wetlands, coastal, a district review — are in hand where they apply.

The registration of whoever is doing the work is recorded on the permit. Rhode Island requires contractors and most subcontractors to be registered with the state board, and a town will not issue a permit without it, which is the mechanism that turns "is this person legitimate" into something you can check rather than something you have to feel.

Build it in the order the weather allows

On a ground-up build the calendar is part of the design.

Foundations want ground that is not frozen. Concrete has a real temperature floor and will not cure properly over frozen ground. Framing goes on in most weather but the sooner the building is roofed and wrapped, the sooner everything else stops depending on the forecast. Exterior finishes, coatings and site work have their own conditions.

So the sensible target on any build started in the second half of the year is to be closed in before the cold, and to run the interior through the winter. That is a way of planning rather than a promise about dates — weather stops exterior work at some point on every job, and what you are owed then is a call and a revised date rather than an assurance it will not happen.

What to bring to the first conversation

Where it is

The town and the address or the lot reference. The town determines the rules, the fees and the timetable, so it is the first thing anyone needs.

Anything on paper

A deed, a plot plan, a survey, a soil or perc result, a previous approval. Even an old one tells you something.

Sewer or septic, town water or well

If you do not know, say so — it is the first thing to find out and it is findable.

What the house has to do

How many people, how they live, what has to be on one floor, what you cannot compromise on. More useful at this stage than a style.

Whether you own it yet

If you are still buying, the feasibility questions belong before you close rather than after.

How it is being funded

If any of it is borrowed, say so at the start — lenders bring their own paperwork and release money in draws that have to line up with the payment schedule.