• Home
• Consumers

Checklist against your future needs

Good planning is essential if you want to get the best out of your new home or extension.

Imagine trying to tow your caravan or boat into the backyard of your newly built home and finding the rear access just a few centimetres too narrow, or finding that the family room isn’t as big as you had hoped. 

And how annoying is it when you don’t have enough power points in the right areas, or if you haven’t provided sufficient under-bench space for a dishwasher in your new kitchen, or that you’ve designed your kitchen cabinets around a small refrigerator and find that when you need a bigger one, or a freezer, there’s nowhere to put it?

These may sound like obvious mistakes, but many people simply overlook these small – yet essential – details when considering an extensive range of choices and possibilities as they plan their dream home or renovations. 

Good planning is essential if you want to get the best out of your new home or extension. To help people avoid frustrating and potentially costly omissions or mistakes in the planning process, HIA suggests that home owners use a checklist that will ensure fine details are not over-looked.

HIA has developed the following checklist of questions that every person building a new home or extending their existing home should consider before any building work begins:

•  Does the plan show the house to be the required distance from boundaries?
•  Is the floor level correctly shown on the plans? Will storm water drain efficiently?
•  Does the site plan show driveways, retaining walls, sewerage and service runs?
•  Are room sizes shown correctly in figures on the plan?
•  Are light switches and power points in the correct position? Are the power points sufficient for our needs and positioned appropriately? Double power points are only a few dollars more if  included in the planning stage but will cost a lot more to install once building work is completed.
• Are all your other wants and needs shown on the plans (for example, sunken floors, wardrobes, cupboards, exposed brick walls, steps, stairs etc.)?
• Are the bath and shower shown in the correct position?
• Have you made allowances to insulate any raked ceilings? Insulating this type of ceiling is difficult and expensive to do once the home is complete.
• Have we sited the house to maximise light and warmth from the sun?
• With open living areas enormously popular in new home designs, check if you have allowed sufficient doors for sound and temperature control.
• Have you allowed sufficient space for kitchen appliances such as dishwashers, microwaves or even where the kettle will stand on the bench?

It can literally pay to think ahead and visualise your future needs so they can be incorporated into any building plan to avoid later frustrations, disappointments and sometimes a lot of expense. This checklist can help you think about your lifestyle and other design and building issues before it’s too late. So if you are thinking of building or renovating, search for an HIA member at tradebuild.com.au