Best 8 Ways to Cheaply Build a House in 2022

How to build a house cheaply: With proper planning and implementation, it is possible to build within your budget. As 2022 kicks off, we highlight some of the ways on how to build a house cheaply for your family.

1. Adopting simple house designs

Deciding the plan for your intended is the first step in your homeownership journey. Ideally, the more complex a house plan is, the harder and costly it would be to implement. It is therefore advisable to minimise the number of corners and non essential features inorder to build your house cheaply.

Doing so would save on costs of labour and materials. You can choose a simple house plan with simple and short roof lines rather than the complex steep roofs. The complex roofing styles causes to wastages of materials and pushes the labour costs higher.

2. Embracing new technology

Since construction of the conventional houses remains to be expensive, new technologies have emerged. Technologies like the use of interlocking blocks and the prefabricated panels are now gaining popularity. More house builders are opting for the interlocking blocks. The blocks require less cement usage and labour compared to the conventional blocks and bricks. The interlocking blocks also speeds up the house construction drastically. Speeding up the construction helps you build the house cheaply.

The other technology promoting the building of houses cheaply is the Prefabricated EPS panels. The panels are made at the factory and just brought to the site for erection as pillars. The general costs are highly controlled since such houses can be pieced together within a week or less. One of the companies specialized in these panels is Global Precast Panels.

3. Sourcing materials by yourself

The biggest advantage of doing self sourcing is that you be in control of the material costs. Unlike relying on your foremen and fundis, you can easily bargain with suppliers on materials and save where possible. The bargains would increase your value for money and enable you build the house cheaply.

Some of the foremen have devised a habit where they collude with suppliers to inflate the prices of materials. The house project owner ends up getting conned in the process. Others may even be tempted to buy low quality materials that are cheaper and falsify the receipts as well.

4. Hiring reusable building tools

When building a house, your main aim should be to save maximumly during the construction phase. As such, it is recommended that you hire tools that are not necessarily going onto the house. Tools such as spades, wheelbarrows, hammers and wood for scaffolding and support can be hired more cheaply than buying.

According to Construction Kenya, doing comparative analysis between hiring and buying the tools shows that you could save as much as 70%. You should remember that once the house is built, you may not need these kind of tools beyond landscaping.

5. Picking tasks you can do yourself

When time allows, prospective homeowners pick out some tasks that they can do themselves. This saves them extra labour costs. Generally, landscaping, painting of walls and watering freshly cemented walls and floors can be fun activities to do. Meanwhile, you will successfully build your house cheaply.

The laying of tiles can as well be done with some help from the contractor or fundis on site. Engaging in some tasks during the construction also increases the sentimental value and ownership of the house.

6. Doing the supervision yourself

Commonly, most foremen and masons are paid an agreed amount per day of working. It is not therefore surprising to see foremen and masons building slowly so as to increase the days worked. The slow working consequently pushes the labour costs even higher.

Doing own supervision enables you to track the progress of the project and the usage of the materials. The close supervision would reduce the incidences of materials getting wasted or lost from the worksite. You would therefore manage to keep within budget and build your house as cheaply as you possibly can.

Close supervision helps keep within budget

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7. Avoiding to build on hilly areas

The topography of the land you intend to build is a major factor in determining the costs of your house. When you intend to build the house cheaply, consider building on the area with red soils and murram. The murram and red soils help in compacting the foundation while the black soils are removed during the foundation excavation.

The other challenge of the hilly areas is the accessibility factor. To build your house as cheaply as possible, you need to keep the costs of transportation of materials low. You therefore need to consider the topography before embarking on your housing project.

Read also: Joska is the talk of town

8. Maintaining water usage points together

Lastly, the plumbing costs can be kept at the minimum by having the bathrooms, kitchen and the laundry area closer together. You can achieve this by maximizing the spaces horizontally or vertically if it’s a multistorey building. If you can possible, you can detach the laundry area and have it outside with a tap instead.

In conclusion, as long as the aim is to build the house cheaply within a specified budget, you can do it. All you have to focus on is where you can save on costs while maintaining the main house plan.

With this, I hope you can now embark on your house building project this year with confidence.

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