The part no other site will have
Members' builds
Documented builds from people here, photos, receipts, mistakes, and the actual final cost.
Fifty linked plans are worth less than one build documented honestly.
Anyone can aggregate PDFs. What no other building site has is a named person in a known climate saying: this is what I built, this is what it cost, this is the week it rained and I lost a wall, and this is what I would do differently.
What a useful build record contains
Not a photo essay. Six things:
- Where. County and climate. A wall detail that works in Arizona can rot in Tennessee.
- What. Dimensions, method, and which plan or drawing you started from.
- Receipts. What things actually cost, including the second trip for the thing you got wrong.
- Hours. Roughly, and how many people. This is the number every estimate omits and every reader needs.
- What went wrong. The genuinely useful part. Weather, a failed mix, a footing that moved, an inspection that did not go as expected.
- What you would change. Written after a full year of living with it, not on the day you finished.
Permitting notes are their own contribution
If you took a building through a permit process, especially anything earthen, and especially under Appendix U, write down which county, which code edition, who you spoke to, what they asked for, and whether it was approved. No public record of which jurisdictions have adopted Appendix U exists. Members building one, county by county, would be a real service to people far outside this community.
Posting a build
Build records are shared in the assembly rather than posted publicly, so that people can give real numbers and describe real mistakes without it following them around.
Joining is not open yet. See the standards for what the assembly is and what it asks. When it opens, this page will index the builds that members choose to make public.