House building for nerds - experiences wanted!

Thank you very much for the many interesting responses.

Perhaps I will try to present my thoughts a little more precisely. Owning my own house has always been a lifelong dream / life goal of mine. For that, I am (!) willing to endure restrictions and disadvantages, even for a certain period of time.

I really find it exciting to inform myself and to get involved in the technology (I like physics...).
One example of my way of thinking: the heating topic. Normally, one would probably choose a LLWP or an air-to-water heat pump. Those who want to spend more money would choose a geothermal heat pump. But that requires drilling. These options are offered to me by the heating installer or [GÜ]. Since money is tight, I therefore decide on one of the cheaper pumps. But then I read about the possibility of a trench collector. Interesting, no professional has told me about this solution. Maybe I could afford that with my own effort.
And that’s exactly how I think about many, especially technical, topics. Especially in times of a shortage of craftsmen, I often do not feel that I am being advised objectively. And so the idea grows more and more to educate myself and to know exactly what it’s about, especially in contact with experts.

The time required, also for organizational tasks, does not deter me in the least. Due to a long planning time, I hope to be able to make many decisions calmly. I simply imagine that through very precise, critical, and early planning, I will have great financial transparency. It is something else whether I realize during the planning phase that I cannot afford the flooring or only during the construction phase and then have the stress of finding something else satisfactory (of course! That can happen anyway!).

Regarding the construction time question: I would actually move into a semi-finished house (e.g., only one finished floor with [bathroom!] and kitchen!) and then continue to expand the house. For some unimaginable, for me acceptable.

I understand everyone who does not like it that way. Especially those who are extremely busy professionally. In my job, there are probably simply more free times.

I like your approach of thinking outside the box. Good planning is already more than half the battle. Time is an advantage here. Other rarely promoted heating systems are ice storage heating (build the storage yourself), wood gasifier (split wood), Stirling engine...

Generating heat from the fermentation of biomass, as a friend of mine in northern Germany does, is also interesting but requires some space and access to raw materials, e.g. a small cornfield...

With a good east-west photovoltaic system, you can generate electricity very cheaply, and there’s also a lot you can do yourself there.

My sister and brother-in-law had the idea to run all installation lines on an exterior wall of the house. The rooms were planned accordingly. The house turned out to be quite amazing! However, they don’t freeze there either. The installation was simple and could be done by themselves.

Clay construction is suitable for self-building. The climate in such a house is simply brilliant, energy costs are extremely low. You will have to fight a bit with the authorities...

Reading up and informing oneself is definitely good in order to make a well-founded decision – also to not necessarily always follow the mainstream. There are many good solutions that simply are not offered because the craftsmen do not know them, do not want to, or are not convinced of them. Then you have to keep looking for someone until you find one who does it the way you want.

However, it is far from that to actually carry it out – with all due respect to physics. Just looking at the cable mess we end up with (and we have NO BUS), I am glad that someone who does this every day and knows what they're doing is doing it.

Heating construction and installation are nowadays highly complex trades that I personally would only have done by someone who has the appropriate expertise. Not to mention the warranty...

So, as I said: inform yourself, read up, get all kinds of input, weigh it up, make your own decision – I agree with you on that. But when it comes to execution, I would always fall back on an expert.

Let me guess, you did little to no work yourself?

For example, cable clutter: why do you think electricians label the cables? For no problem, there's no solution

You learn a lot quickly by doing it yourself, and the threadstarter has the expertise nearby. Once the biggest obstacle (daring to tackle the task) is overcome, a lot is possible.

The only downside is sometimes the guarantee. My neighbor, for example, has the same floor area (ok, 1 sqm more ...) and the same heating as we do. He saves a good 11.5 K (which is 50%) because he does the entire installation himself with friends. The boss of both signs off on the burner guarantee because they get the materials through him. The only risk is that everything is sealed under the screed. If something went wrong there, it would be expensive. They offered it to me too. I didn’t want it. Why? Guarantee. Was it right to buy peace of mind for 10k? No idea.

highly complex trades that I would personally only have done by someone who has the appropriate expertise. Not to mention the warranty...

When you get familiar with it, the courage to take risks yourself eventually comes. Where you manage that, it also gets better because you are doing it for yourself. I find that desirable, as well as the reduction of complexity and dependencies.

I can briefly report how I did it 20 years ago: Back then, I was still living in my parents' house, and there was still plenty of space on the property. At some point, my self-employment (I am a film producer and filmmaker) expanded to the extent that I began to think about having my own premises. At that time, there was no talk of having my own family yet. Part of my films deals with large railway construction projects, so I was quite well versed in the topic of "organization of construction projects" and also already spoke the language of engineers and craftsmen to some extent.

Since I like to have everything under control myself and am also willing to learn, I started drawing. With a cheap graphics program. I wanted to design a house that would fit well into the surroundings, ideally looking as if it had always been there, and that would also offer optimal rooms for me, my self-employment, and potential family growth. An architect gave me some advice, but ultimately all the documents came from me. I also made sure not to make the design unnecessarily complicated. So I only planned things that I knew in detail how to implement.

From the beginning of the consideration to submitting the building application, it took just under a year. Then another three months until the start. I found all the executing companies myself. Because I know many people and companies through filmmaking, I was able to cover almost everything through personal recommendations, just as I get 100 percent of my assignments through personal recommendations.

If you maintain a good relationship with the contractors from the beginning, they were mostly small companies, then you ultimately get very good results for acceptable money. I assume that my house would have cost at least 50 percent more in this quality and size if a construction shark had been involved. There were also two companies that honestly told me that their economic situation was not good, and that they could not finance materials upfront. Therefore, in one or another case, I procured the materials myself and they processed them. Sometimes we also agreed on very tight payment terms, for example weekly according to construction progress, so on the one hand they got money faster, but I didn’t carry too much risk.

I also did quite a bit myself, for example pulling cables, and there are a lot of cables in my house. Together with my father and a buddy, we covered the roof and did the insulation and drywall under the roof. There was one thing we didn’t have: time pressure. After all, I lived next door and could take care of things daily. At the end of the first summer, the shell was standing and in autumn the roof was covered. The windows came in only the following summer, so the shell could dry out well. I put the first rooms into operation in the second year; I really moved in the third year. That was 19 years ago now, the house has had no problems so far and meanwhile not only I live in it, but together with my wife and child...

Of course, you can’t apply my approach arbitrarily to others, but if you realize a relatively large house with relatively special requirements (watertight concrete basin, studio rooms with acoustic measures), and everything works out without hassle and problems, and the chosen solutions still prove to be right after 20 years, then you can’t have done that much wrong...

Matthias