How to Manage The Construction of Your Home

When you are building a home there are many things that you should do to prepare your property as well as everything to always keep things in order. You should not just rely on your contractors to do all the work for you. You should try to help out as much as you can in order that the building process will come out all right and on time.

A good thing for you to learn about is how to follow a certain homebuilding sequence that will ensure that everything is done efficiently and without much hassle. Here is an example of such a building sequence used on a home built with a full basement in mind:

Try to arrange for a temporary electric service to the building site and a portable toilet for the workers if needed.

Check out the house in preparation for the excavation. Make sure that utility pipes and wirings would not be damaged in any way during the course of the digging. Have a temporary driveway built if needed for the heavy machinery that may be needed to do some work on your property.

Try to have any trees, bushes or debris removed as necessary that may interfere with the work in progress in the vicinity of the building site. You can instruct the excavator driver to remove hindrances if it is required.

Verify when the excavator will be able to complete the digging. You can then have the footings and foundation walls arranged to be poured in immediately. Have the forms for the home's footings inspected before the actual pouring to ensure that they are in good condition. This will help ensure that you will be building up a stable foundation for your home and prevent redoing the job all over again.

If you have started work on the a septic system, have a sleeve for the sewer  installed into the foundation wall. Try to have the same thing done for any other utility openings that may be required. Also make sure that gas, electric and telephone arrangements have been made and the trenches for these utilities already prepared along with the right design in mind.

Once the footings and foundation walls have been completely poured into your soon-to-be basement, you can now go on to install any steel beams that may be required for it. Do not forget to have drain tiles install and waterproofing applied to the outer portions of the foundation walls.

Allow about 28 days for the poured concrete to cure before you ever attempt to backfill. But if in case you can not wait for the concrete to fully cure you should have the first floor framing, including sub-floor installed before backfilling in order to brace the walls and keep them from cracking up under the pressure.

Next thing that you do after backfilling is to try and frame the floors, walls, ceilings and roof. Install the roofing structure and then house wrap. At this point you can also begin work with the rough plumbing while at the same time windows, exterior doors and sidings installed. You can also have any masonry chimneys and fireplaces built at the same time.

Have the heat ducts installed immediately after the rough plumbing work has been set in place. It may also be possible to have the same contractor install the gutters at this point.

Have your contractors begin some rough work on the electricals of your home.

You can then have the concrete basement and garage floors poured once the work on the roof, windows and rough plumbing has been done and inspected. Before the pouring, also make sure that the sewer and water lines already run into the basement. 

Do not forget to have all the initial inspections on your home completed before you cover any interior walls.  You may also have your home's insulation inspected if required.

After a positive result on your rough inspections, you can have work started on the drywall installation. Have it taped, sanded and sprayed with primer.

Have the underpayment, ceramic tile and hardwood flooring of your home installed. Next in line are the cabinets, trim, assorted home accessories and other built in appliances.

Have the finishing touches on your plumbing and electrical done as well as finish up on installing the fixtures. You can then have the furnace as well as the A/C installed . Your home's telephone service can now be hooked up.

You can have some work done on rough landscaping at this point, if there is still some backfill, culverts, sidewalks to be done. The driveway can now be completed at this time as most delivery trucks may have finished coming and going on your property.

Have the painting and staining work commenced and the final inspections done.

Finish up on the landscaping including placement of the top soil, sod, seed etc.

Have the carpet, linoleum and vinyl tile installed.

Have the final cleaning done.