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Did you buy a Don Gardner house plan?

10 years ago

Looking for someone who has bought a Don Gardner house plan. My quesiton is - did you have a local architect review the plan after you bought it (or some other professional - structural engineer, etc)? Or did you submit the plan as is for your building permit? Did you have problems with the plan not following local building codes?
Thanks!

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Comments (4)

mlweaving_Marji
10 years ago
In our area, and I believe we're not unique, plans need to be "stamped" by a structural engineer or architect. It is my understanding that none of the plans you can buy online are Stamped, so all need to be taken to a local professional who can review them and certify that the plans meet local codes.

From the Don Gardner website "Donald A. Gardner home plans are not stamped or sealed. At the time of creation, our house plans are designed to conform to the CABO One and Two Family Dwelling Code or the International Residential Code. National and local building codes vary with location and change from time to time. Consequently, it may be necessary for you to meet with a local builder, architect or other construction professional to review your local building codes and make any changes to the house plan these codes may require. If you are building in North Carolina or South Carolina, we offer additional sets of home plans (must purchase at least a five set package) with an engineering stamp on the structural pages. Please contact our Customer Sales & Service"

If you're considering buying one of the plans you also need to know that all the mechanicals and HVAC need to be added in. After looking at online plans and realizing all this and knowing that every plan we looked at was going to need customizing, we ended up going with a local architect.
muffn
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks for your reply mlweaving_Marji. I appreciate it!

Since we already purchased Don Gardner plans, I was just curious to hear about others' experiences who did the same. Since they've been through it, I'm sure someone has to have some valualbe input.

We are having trouble finding a reputable local architect who will take our autoCAD files and make the modifications we want. We've met with 4 architects - 3 want to start from scratch and I'm doubting the capabilities of the 4th who is willing to work with our autoCAD.

Are we taking the wrong approach? Has anyone purchased the plans and gone straight to the permitting phase? Or did you go to a structural engineer and bypass the architect? Or do we seek out a draftsman? Or continue to search for the right architect?

Feeling a bit lost.
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I recently purchased Don Gardner plans for $7600, after customizing costs and wouldn't do it again because it wasn't a pleasant experience. In fact, I just registered a complaint with the BBB after exhausted efforts to resolve my dispute with them. During the entire design process, we told our DAG designer one thing and she did another. For example, the original plan called for a bathroom near the rear entry of the room and, based on some changes we made, she relocated the bathroom to the far side of the house even though we expressed to keep it near the original location. After several versions back and forth, which you pay for by the hour, the house kept getting bigger so I had to design the downstairs to accommodate this request myself. The bathroom design was nothing like that of the pictures I sent her and it took several versions for her to get it near right. When the plans were finally finished, they charged me an additional $1400 for roof changes that I believed were a part of the original quote. Upon receiving the plans and submitting them to several general contractors for a quote, numerous errors were pointed out; some of which were quite costly mistakes. For example, in the downstairs and upstairs, we requested 9' and 10' fold away doors for our upstairs and downstairs great rooms, which overlook a gorgeous lake view, that cost $17,000 each. The designer put 8' doors in the plan and made them more narrow than we spoke about. Upon bringing this matter to her attention, she resent out a revised plan but only sent 1 copy when we purchased 5. Anyone with a brain and has built a custom home before knows that one copy of the plan is impossible to work with and, DAG does not permit you to copy their plans. To rectify the roof charges of the $1400, they gave me a credit and the CAD program so that an architect could change the plan and errors. Since then, more errors have been pointed out and, after attempting to get quotes from a number of GC's, the numbers were coming in so high that we went to speak to a local architect. He stated that DAG did not design the house to be cost effective in any way and used excessive cement driving the home price up to very high $ per square foot. When I asked DAG to make changes they wouldn't and they could care less that after spending the sort of $ I did on the plan, now I had to spend an additional $2,000 - $3,000 to be able to afford to build the home. When I learned of these issues, I asked DAG to refund me the difference between what I would have paid for the CAD program, around $3400, so that I could use the balance to fix the plan. They refused and have not responded to an email since then. I believe in this economy and for as costly it is to build a new home with inflation for commodities, they should work with their customers to not only make a home efficient and cost effective, but also make changes if problems are incurred. I will post the outcome of the BBB result, which might I add I have never gone to the BBB to register a complaint in my life. Keeping my fingers crossed that the issue will get resolved.
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mlweaving_Marji
10 years ago
Do you have a builder yet? Your builder can probably steer you to a structural engineer in your area who can do this. We were looking at a Don Gardner plan online, but went to our builder first, and he told us that he would work with their plan but would prefer if we worked with someone locally to start with. He told us that if we had the plan that it would probably cost us more than the cost of the plan to get the HVAC, plumbing and electrical added, make the mods we wanted and get it stamped, but he knew where we could get it done.
If you don't have a builder or will be your own GC, as a last resort maybe call the Don Gardner office to find out where they suggest. On their website it says they won't recommend builders but they have lists of builders who've built their plans. Undoubtedly they've encountered this issue with other customers and may have a list of pro's in every state that they can recommend to get their plans stamped.
And if you're in NC or SC you can get stamped plans right from them.
LOTO
10 years ago
We built with Don Gardner plans last year and we didn't have any problems at all getting permits with the plans...we did have to get the truss plans stamped but the truss company supplied those plans for us.
Our plans actually called for a hip roof and we went with a gable and the truss company designed accordingly and if there were any engineering fees they must have been built into the cost of the truss because as the owner/builder I paid for them.

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