Choosing a New Design for Your Home and Garden

If you're considering building your own home, you might want to consider 'flat-pack'. Here's why.

What's so great about flat-pack?

Many people have aspirations to build their own home. Taking the self-build route allows you to create the home of your dreams for your family, and flat-pack offers a cheaper, easier to install option to the traditional bricks and mortar construction project.

Flat-pack homes can be built in a fraction of the time it would take to build a traditional house; weeks rather than months. As fabrication is already done for you, there's no need to hire in expensive labour or spend hours building your home brick by brick yourself. Flat-pack buildings are ready-made and just require assembling on-site.

Flat-pack houses generally cost less than traditional ones as considerable savings are made on labour. Designs can be bought as standard or, for a little more outlay you can have a bespoke home made up to your own specifications.    

All flat-pack homes are made from renewable timber and fly the flag for eco-friendly construction. They are designed to be energy efficient, and are also air-tight and well insulated. Not only will your home be cheaper to build than a traditional one, it'll be more economical to run as you'll save on heating and air conditioning costs.

Building a flat pack house

When building any home, there are a number of things you must take into consideration:

The first thing you'll need is a plot of land that's suitable for your flat-pack home. The most important thing to establish before you buy the plot is that you will be able to get planning permission to build on it. Check with your local authority to make sure that planning permission will be granted before you buy the land and make sure you've actually obtained the permission before you begin work on your build. If you commence building without planning permission, the local authority may insist that what you've built is demolished!

You will probably require some sort of financing to enable you to build your new home whilst still living in your current one. There are companies who specialise in such arrangements and you should discuss this with your mortgage broker to see what options are available to you. You'll also need to take out insurance to cover the materials and workmanship on your flat-pack build. Prices vary so shop around or ask a reputable insurance broker for recommendations and advice.

Make sure that you're absolutely happy with the design of your flat-pack home before the factory begins to build it. You won't be able to make alterations mid-fabrication as you could with a more traditional build.

If you're open to new ideas and a challenge, opting for a flat-pack self-build could be a great way of achieving the home of your dreams at a fraction of the cost of a traditional build. Contact local home builders to learn more.