Cost Estimation of House Construction

Suppose that you are going to have your new house built by a home construction company, and you have just received from an architect or a house designer a number of drawings of your new house. These drawings are floor plan, general arrangement of the house with front and side views, detail drawings of foundation, windows and doors, ceiling and roof.

The next step is consulting the cost of construction with the architect or a home builder. If you appoint an architect to do the design, the cost estimation and the construction of the new house, you don't have to find a home construction company by yourself. All you have to do is pay the cost and receive the keys of your newly built house.

If you want to minimize the cost, after receiving the design drawings of your house, you will consult them with a home builder. He will make the cost estimation for the construction of your house. In general the cost estimation is devided into two main subjects. The cost of materials and the cost of building the house.

You might probably be confused with all these terms. To help you understand them, I will give you the scope and sequence of calculating the house construction. The followings are types of works which have to be performed for building a conventional house.

1. Preparation works

2. Foundation and concrete works

3. Wall works

4. Floor and ceramic works

5. Roof works

6. Roof of the garage works

7. Ceiling works

8. Windows and door works

9. Sanitair works

10. Clean water and dirty water works

11. Electrical installation works

12. Painting works

13. Cleaning works

There are many points which a cost estimator needs to calculate for each number or type of works. For instance, for preparatory works, the works which a home builder has to perform are the clearing of land, the measurement and installation of marking or profile boards, the excavation for foundation works, earth removing.

After calculating the volumes of each of the works of the above list, they have to be multiplied with the unit cost of material to obtain the cost of material. Then the amount of cost for each type of work have to be summed to obtain the total sum of the cost of the material of the new house.

Similarly, the volume of works for each type of works of the above list have to be multiplied with the man-hour factors to obtain the labor cost for the construction of the house.

The price of house material is different from one place or country to another. This also applies to the labor cost.

If you are serious about building your own house the cheaper way, I suggest that you read some books related to this subject. One of the titles which I recommend is
Fundamental Building Technology
written by Andrew Charlett. Also read: How to add column and beam to a house using Archicad and Wooden house of Minahasa an earthquake resistant construction

by Charles Roring in Manokwari of West Papua Indonesia