petesdragon

Watching the channel 4 programme 'Grand Designs' and it was about a family who built their own house out of Finnish logs(Pre-cut and designed), it looked a fantastic way to do it,quite cheap as well, i was wondering if their is a Canadian equivalent of this way to self build and any info on the whole self build set up in Canada, thanks

Cassie 10000

You could first look at the land prices on www.mls.ca, you don't say what area in Canada you are looking at but a quick search on google fires lots of info up.

You will have fun building a house from scratch my mother and father in law have just finished building here in England. Timber Frame construction which could be another option for you in Canada.

Arris

Yeah, nice looking house - can't believe he lived in a tent for 16 years

We are planning on doing a self build - we bought a 4 acre lot in 2006, you can buy up to 21 acres without being a PR.

Hubby is in the building trade & plans to do as much of the build as he can himself once we're over - we've been to the Town Office of where we'll be moving to & found out about the various permits etc.

Fort Macleod where we're moving too is only a small town but we're lucky that it has all we need with regards to building - steel place, roof truss place, cement works etc. so we've been round & introduced ourselves & got information - we've even got to know some of the guys from the local bar & hubby played golf with some of them when we were last over. We had a set of plans drawn up last trip .

RICH on here has gone through the whole self build himself - you could try looking at some of his past posts or do a search, this subject does crop up from time to time & you'll probably get some good info from past threads.

Good luck

Arris

Here's a thread that may help

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=439169

JonboyE

It is perfectly possible to build your own home in Canada - lots of people do.

First off, you need to decide if you are going to hire a general contractor to organize it all, or if you are going to do this yourself. This boils down to the questions of:

* do you know enough to be able to manage sub trades?
* do you know where to find the sub trades?

An earlier poster asked about location. This is really important because in certain areas, the lower mainland of BC is one, there is such a demand for building tradesmen that they can charge what they want and pick and chose which jobs they want to work on.

When I looked at this 7 years ago construction costs were $75 psf for standard quality and $100 psf for a high-end home. These days you would be lucky to get anything done for less than $200 psf. If you can do a lot of the work yourself you can obviously bring this cost down, but the work must be done to Canadian code in order to get an occupancy permit.

R I C H

As Arris suggests, read a few posts, then drop me a line if you've any questions

us3andthedog

We have been looking into this also, try www.viceroy.com they have some good floor plans and styles,