Wow, am I envious! I live in the Tampa Bay area and we are hoping to come in somewhere about $110-120/ft. Average prices are between $175-300/ft. The main thing to consider is that our building codes are probably some of the strictest in the country due to the hurricanes. The home is built to withstand 130mph winds. It is built from concrete block which definitely increases our cost substantially. As we are the GC, we did hire a manager to over see the entire project (he also did the slab/block/frame). But the money we are paying him to manage is definetly worth the peace of mind! He is very reputable in our area and has many many contacts so we are able to get his pricing. In the end, his management fee will probably wash with the savings. We are also going pretty high end with everything else from windows to appliances to flooring and so forth. In the end, it will all be worth it. However, our cost to build does not include what we paid for the lot. Land is NOT abundant here and you pay for it - ALOT. Our lot had a home which we initially wanted to add on to. But after talking with our architect and engineer, the cost was more to do that (by going up a floor) than it was to demo and start over. We went that route since then we are not limited to the footprint and could then have exactly what we wanted. Our new home is 4000 sq ft living/8900 sq ft under roof incl 1500 sq ft covered lanai/3 car garage/semi-detached 4 car garage. So, with all of this, in the end we should be about $450K (not including pool). For Florida, this is not bad at all.

I am a woman and the GC on our house. We had a GC to start, but ended up being our own. You are capable of doing it, it's more a matter of whether you really want to once you know more about it. Live Wire Oak's comments were spot on. If you know good subs, are willing to spend a lot of time researching the correct way things should be done and have a lot of time to babysit and enough assertiveness to stay on subs, you will be successful. You will also spend more money than you think - you will find out the best way to do things and want to go that route for more $ and you won't get all the same price breaks GC's get. I do not work outside the home and do not have young children, have the help of my parents and husband, yet am very busy, exhausted and stressed. You have to be up early and at the site to make sure deliveries are correct, workers have shown up and that they are doing a good job. You have to line up the next subs and be organized, but at the same time flexible. There will be delays due to weather, in material delivery, in subs (sickness, "emergency jobs", injury, etc.) If you are very organized that is good, but you must be just as good at being flexible. If one sub can't make it, can you have a different sub come in earlier without messing things up? For instance, my original GC wanted to keep the inside of the house on schedule so wanted insulation and drywall to go up before the exterior brick was installed and before heat was in (winter time). We said no, which was one reason we parted ways. If you can get a really good GC (which was hard in our small town), you can turn over all these types of issues to them. We got the best in our small town, but that is relative when there is not much competition. We like the control we have over the project now, but things have taken a lot longer than if we had a GC throughout the whole project. The good subs are busy, many of them for GCs, so we are a side job that they work in. Therefore we have to be flexible, but we are almost two years into the build and we aren't done. We had to wait six months for a chimney leak to be fixed (weather dependent) and then for the mason to work us in to fix it when weather allowed. If we had to do it again, we would definitely prefer a competent GC vs doing it ourselves - some days. :-) Some days the fee is worth it - it's hard enough just keeping up with appliance, cabinet, trim, flooring, paint choices, let alone the actual building process. Other days there is a feeling of accomplishment that yes, I can do this. To address some things more specifically: As far as knowing how things should be done, it's true you don't have to know everything, but you must know enough to make sure you have a competant GC/Subs and inspector. For instance, we had three really important things that our GC did not ensure was done, nor did our building inspector. 1) Of all our small town masons, only one knew how to put in weep holes and that it was necessary. Although building code required it, in our small town the inspectors did not enforce it. Our GC didn't even know it was code until I brought it to his attention. 2) Our foundation is concrete block. We are built into a hill. We did not know until later that the concrete blocks were supposed to have rebar attached to the footer and then cement poured in every 4 feet. When we became our own GC and had the perimeter drain redone, the structural engineer for that job noted the pressure against the blocks and asked about reinforcement. It cost an arm and a leg to fix it. When we talked to the inspector, he said rebar and cement was only required if you had uneven backfill and/or the blocks are over 5 feet high. Our GC did not tell the inspector where the backfill was going to be ahead of time and not until we realized later that we had too much pressure on one foundation wall section, did we have to pay for a "retrofit" to install rebar and cement. It however isn't as good because the rebar is not attached to the footer. This is an example of needing to know what should be done and not relying on inspectors (or our GC for that matter). 3) It ended up our bricked chimney had a massive leak from the mason laying the brick in hot weather, without pre-wetting the brick, so the mortar flash dried creating small cracks. He also didn't install thru the wall flashing. The blueprint called for thru the wall flashing around windows and on the chimney. The GC did not tell our masons to do this. When I called the mason back to come do the chimney because of leaking, he said just spray a sealant on it - he had never done thru the wall flashing. We ended up having to call in a commercial mason to install thru the wall flashing. All of these things were learned AFTER we became the GC and read the blueprints. (You need to know how to read them and interpret them.) In addition, all these things were inspected and passed by our building inspector. You cannot rely on your inspector - you must know it. When we talked to our inspector about these issues, he said his job is to enforce code that his county is enforcing. These are MINIMUM standards - not best practices. Regarding a loan, we fortunately have a loan through Farm Credit and they allow owners to be their own GC, but most banks do not. In addition, we don't have a separate construction loan. It was a regular mortgage loan that incorporated the construction part. Therefore we don't technically have a time limit, but we do have to make progress and keep them informed of the progress. Most banks have a 1 year limit, which unless you have everyone lined up and contracted and will not change your mind on anything substantial during the build, it may be possible, but it will be hard if you are doing it all yourself. Also, you do have to be assertive, be willing to fire subs if they are doing a poor job and basically babysit - especially if they quoted by the hour then by the job. However, sometimes when they quote by the job, they cut corners, so you have to watch that too. Also, some subs require payment right away (down payment, then when the job is over). In our small town, sometimes they want money early. It can be stressful coming up with money ahead of time before getting the next draw from the bank. Plus you have to make sure they sign lien waivers when work is done so you don't have liens put against your house by unscrupulous people. You must also remember to make sure you obtain certificates of liabilities from everyone BEFORE they start work. If they don't have insurance, don't hire them. If I had trouble with a sub (just a few), my husband would step in to be the heavy, but in general I didn't have a problem. If I interviewed someone that treated me strange or made a comment about me being a woman GC, I didn't hire them unless I really wanted them based on their reputation. I think that only happened once, but I made sure my husband made an appearance every now and then. Since you have family nearby, have a male member be on call if needed. You are doing the right thing by getting advice and researching first. It may seem simple in theory - just hire good subs, but there is more to it and finding good subs, isn't always easy. If you hire people that have done work for people you know, that is best. Reading BBB or Angie's list reviews isn't always reliable. If you decide to do it, be sure to ask GW for any advice along the way or just for researching. We have found GW, John Bridge, HVAC Talk, Contractor Talk, Roofing Talk, Terry Love, Building Science, NAIMA, the Brick Industry Assoc and a few other forums/informational sites that I don't remember now very helpful and willing to answer questions from novices. At least bouncing things off the pros is helpful. Reading technical journals and instructions isn't always reliable when it comes to real-life applications. Some instructions are for specific regions also, so your weather and climate may affect what is done. Good luck! This post was edited by RQHome on Mon, May 26, 14 at 12:35

I guess I qualify as an OB now although I didn't start out that way. We wound up firing our contractor halfway through the job due to his massive incompetence and dishonesty. It then took us several months to convince our bank to let us finish the job ourselves rather than risking getting involved with another crooked builder. Being a general contractor is far more about project management than it is about construction. The GC lines up sub-contractors, makes sure they show up and do the work they're supposed to, handles paperwork, and makes sure everybody gets paid when they're suppoesed to be paid. Many GCs probably couldn't hammer a nail in straight if they had to. To be a GC you need business skills and project management skills, and you need to know (or be willing to find out) what a construction job should look like when it is finished. It helps in dealing with subs to learn the lingo but you don't have to be able to hammer, saw, hang sheetrock, run electrical lines, or anything else. If you OB, plan to spend at least 20 hours per week and possibly more than that on the job. I just WISH we had just gone the owner-builder route right from the start. Neither DH nor I have any construction experience whatsoever but we had looked into being our own general contractors before we hired our builder. We even took a class on building your own home but then decided that we just didn't have the necessary time to devote to the task. Was that a mistake! I had done my homework and had spent a huge amount of time on this board before we ever broke ground - so I had a good idea of what to look for in quality work. It quickly became evident that my builder didn't have a clue and apparently he couldn't have cared less. His subs were obviously the cheapest he could find and often, I suspect, were undocumented day laborers. They didn't follow installation specifications for installed materials like Tyvek sheathing, my Jeld-wen windows, or the roofing shingles. I know because when things didn't look right to me, I got the specs from the manufacturers and checked their work myself. They also often didn't follow building codes - which I found out because I had put it in my contract that I would separately hire a third-party inspector to inspect all stages and that any work not meeting code would have to be redone at the builder's expense. The framer hired by my builder used I-beam trusses between the first and second floors instead of the open-web trusses I had specified. The framing was completed while I was out of town for two weeks and by the time I got back, the house was already sheathed and the roofer had started work. So it was too late (eg., economically unfeasible) to make the builder have the entire roof and second floor taken down so that the right trusses could be put in. My plans called for the HVAC units and all ductwork to be within the heated/cooled envelope of the house. When I demanded that my builder check with his engineer to ensure that holes could be cut through the i-beams large enough to accomodate the HVAC ducts, he assured me that would be "no problem." That was a lie. Even the holes that had to be cut through the i-beam trusses for plumbing drain lines weakened them enough that my third-party inspector insisted that extra trusses be installed to bear part of the load. No doubt putting those in was a major expense that the builder had to eat. There was no way HVAC ductwork could be run between the floors as designed. Instead, the HVAC units were put in the unairconditioned attic along with massive amounts of flexible ductwork. Instead of an attic that could someday be finished out to add a couple more bedrooms, I have two big HVAC units and what looks like a massive silver spiderweb totally filling the attic space. I also lost closet space in all my bedroom closets because ductwork chases down to the first floor had to be put somewhere. When I exploded about the lost usable square footage and the additional on-going costs associated with having the HVAC and ductwork up in the attic (we live in central Texas!) my builder tried to tell me that EVEN IF the framer had used open-web trusses, the ductwork still would not have been able to be run through the trusses and that "everybody puts HVAC units in the attic." DUH? Open web trusses are designed to allow ductwork and plumbing to be run them!! Had the man NEVER read anything about energy efficient building practices? Nope. He just trusted that his framer - who hardly spoke English - knew what he was doing. Despite all this, my builder kept telling me that he was a "professional" and that I should just relax and let him do his job. HAH! I can't think of a single task that ever he actually handled completely correctly from start to finish. Then, shortly after the HVAC units were installed, I got hit with a $54,000 lien because builder had not paid for my windows and patio doors even though he had been given draw money specifically for that purpose! That lien was immediately followed up by threats of two smaller liens from two other subcontractors (the portapotty provider and the exterior paint contractor)! And the builder admitted he didn't have the money to pay any of the three. At that point I was more than ready to fire him but my bank insisted that I could NOT do so. We paid off the liens and the unpaid subcontractors and I took over handling ALL monies and paying the subcontractors and suppliers directly instead of having draws go to the builder to pay them. No more money was going to flow into the builder's hands until my house was completed, at which point anything that was still left of the original contract price would be his "profit." By that point, the only thing the builder was doing was hiring subs and ordering materials. I was paying a third party inspector separately to check all work that I didn't feel competant to inspect myself. I was handling all the paperwork and making sure everybody got paid. But then the kicker... I discovered that builder was having materials delivered to my build - which I was paying for - and then having his subs (whom I was also paying!) move them to a spec house that he was building and install them there. I had had enough. I fired him. After taking over as GC, I had to spend as much time/effort on UNDOING some of the mistakes he made as on moving forward to finish the build. And the money he wasted/stole from us has forced us to cut back on the level of finishes that we had originally planned to have. My advice: Go take a course on building your own home. Spend time reading and learning everything you can about the building process. Learn the language. If you are reasonably intelligent and willing to devote the time, you CAN build your own home. Plus, there are businesses (Owner-Builder Network and UBuildIt.com are two that I know about although I've not used either one) that will help you by providing you with pre-vetted lists of sub-contractors and guiding you step by step through the process. If your state or your bank requires you to have a licensed builder, these organizations will be the builder-of-record for you. Of course they charge a fee for their services. I don't know how much but it is significantly less than a builder's profit margin. You can also hire a third-party inspector to make sure that you're getting everything built to code. Just make sure that all your subcontractors know that they don't get paid until your third party inspector signs off that the work is up to code. I designed my plan myself and I would love to see the house built as designed. The house we are in the process of finishing will eventually be "okay" but it will never be the house I dreamed of. So there is some chance that when we get this house built we will sell it and rebuild the same design in a new location. But next time I will definitely OB from the get go.

There are different types of clay, some are extremely expansive and others are actually fairly stable. It is hard to say what caused the popping in the photo without more info. Most stories of popped pools are due to the pool being empty and then the water table rises due to excessive rains. When that happens it basically floats the pool right out of the hole. But since your neighbor's pool had water in it when it popped, I'm guessing you're sitting on some very expansive clays and possibly his pool was installed during dry conditions and it rose 4" after some wetter weather as the clays expanded. Then when he emptied it, it made things worse because the water table was so high it just floated the pool. If you are on highly expansive clays, you need to be very concerned about the subgrade prep regardless of what kind of pool you put in. There are things that can be done such as installing the pool on piers, moisture treating the subgrade, installing a drainage system and/ or over-excavating the dig and putting in select fill. I would highly recommend getting a structural engineer involved through the PB. If the PB says not to worry about it, they do this all the time and it will be fine; then look for another PB! Good luck!