While you are not wrong, those requirements are the same for all houses.
Your typical signal family neighborhood has the following requirements: There will be room to store at least 3 cars, and at least 2 of them will be indoors. The path from the street to where the cars are stored will avoid hitting things with the car. All this means that every house will have a 3 car garage up front with a straight driveway to the road. A 3 car garage defines how wide your lot will be. All houses look the same because the car defines so much about how the house must look.
It rains everywhere, so you will account for that in all houses so you can take any plan knowing rain is accounted for. Views are the only thing that might be different, and most people don't live where the views are worth worrying about - unless you live in a rural area your view is the other houses in your neighborhood.
My house has no garage, but a semi-circular driveway plus a spur that means that we could park 9-10 full sized vehicles. There are basically no houses here with a 3 car garage, and rather few with a 2 car garage. Houses without garages are fairly common.
It rains here, but it also snows here -- so a roof that can shed water but not hold the weight of 3 feet of snow is not suitable. Putting our roof on a house in Georgia would just be a waste of money.
Some ground can deal with basements. Most of Florida can't, so they build on slabs. Then they need to put the HVAC and plumbing somewhere that isn't the basement.
A house in Florida should be designed to withstand hurricanes and floods. A house in California should expect frequent minor earthquakes.
My backyard view is great. My front view is of a road. Planning for those in the wrong direction would be bad.
Parking in the sun is an option. Everything else is something most houses can be adjusted to handle without changing the layout.
It turns out that a roof built with the basic standard components can handle a large enough snow load for most locations. Even if it can't, the roof it generally engineered separately and placed on top, so you can interchange a different one without changing the house plans.
If you don't have a basement you delete the stairs down and get a closet which is also used for a tornado shelter.
A house in Minnesota is designed to withstand hurricanes and floods - It turns out storms can momentarily get as bad as a hurricane and so houses everywhere need to handle it. Likewise MN gets minor earthquakes - it is rare, but still happens enough that unless it greatly increases costs (it doesn't that much) you take in the earthquake work someone else does.
No California does have major earthquakes that Minnesota houses probably cannot handle. California is on their own code system. However Minnesota shares codes with states that get hurricanes and floods - those states put in a little more insulation than is needed, while they build for hurricanes - and both states get better results for it. Meanwhile those designing building components can scale better (cheaper!) knowing that once their parts work in one state they can sell to others.
> Some ground can deal with basements. Most of Florida can't, so they build on slabs.
Around here every house has a basement. Flooding is an extremely minor concern given the terrain and you want the foundation to be below the frost line. The provincial building code requires a heated basement on clay soil (all nearby soil is clay) to a depth of max(1.2m, frost line).
> While you are not wrong, those requirements are the same for all houses.
Not every house needs triple-pane windows and R25 insulation in the walls, sitting on a 8-ft deep basement, with a steep roof pitch for snow to slide off of. Generally, you want to cut corners, because building to code in New York would be overkill in Texas.
You could have unique plans for each climate zone, but then the slope of the land and the shape of the lot also matters. Ideally, you'd want to be situated on a southward facing slope, beneath the road, so you could have huge windows towards the back of the house to taking in winter sun, natural insulation from the hill, and smaller windows facing the street. If you can't, you'll have to compromise on something that makes the house less pleasant to live in and/or harder to heat/cool.
At this point, we might actually have 100 distinct home designs, for each climate zone and slope. If you're lucky, these standard might actually be compliant with zoning for your lot, and maximize the allowable use of the lot. Every town is different, and who knows what silly rules your town requires.
At this point, you still need a design that local builders know how to build. Builders talk about "communities of practice", where they know how to build a certain way in response to how all of the other contractors in that area will also build, so that a subcontractor doesn't ruin another subcontractor's work. If you hire builders to build in ways they're not familiar with, they'll make mistakes. Most mistakes will be fine, but they could add up to failing to meet the code or standard for which the house was designed.
Ideally, you want to find an architect and a builder who have worked together before, to design and build the kind of house that you want using the techniques appropriate for that design, with the builder having crews of subcontractors that he/she has worked with before. If you've reached this point, you might as well take the extra step to building the perfect house for you, and customize it just a little more.
>Ideally, you'd want to be situated on a southward facing slope, beneath the road
If you casually assume everyone lives in the northern hemisphere.
Don't worry, we're already used to it with you all decorating websites with snow-themes in December, and saying "releasing this spring!" when what you actually mean is "April".
Very good points. Though I would point out that insulation is still very important for Texas houses to keep cool in the summer. I’d also add that local soil and ground conditions are going to affect how you build the house’s foundation.
> Not every house needs triple-pane windows and R25 insulation in the walls
Yes they do. Cooling is a large energy cost. Besides, you end up with that much space in your walls anyway just because for material strength reasons you need wide walls.
> sitting on a 8-ft deep basement
A basement is a line item that can be added or deleted at will. If you don't have stairs to the basement you still need that space except it gets a floor and is marked tornado shelter.
> with a steep roof pitch for snow to slide off of
They still build the same roof pitches so rain runs off.
> you want to cut corners, because building to code in New York would be overkill in Texas.
Not really because much of house design that matters is about structural matters where thickness matters. Other parts are about standard parts, you can buy a 2x4 off the self. While 2x3s exists, they cost more than a 2x4 and are generally lower quality.
> A basement is a line item that can be added or deleted at will.
If you already need a deep foundation and basements are common enough in the area so people know how to do them well, maybe. For other areas, it's a significant expense, a lot of work, might require design changes, and it'll probably leak.
Basements are always expensive. They are common where the soil demands a deep foundation as when you already need to move a lot of dirt you may as move more and get something useful out of it. Realistically though even in places that need deep foundations you are probably better off building a floor up and no basement.
Either way though, they are easy to remove from plans if you don't want one.
> you end up with that much space in your walls anyway just because for material strength reasons you need wide walls.
For material strength, walls are fine with 2x4 framing. However, 2x4 framing is limited to R19. So this is actually not true. The reason builders went to 2x6 framing is entirely to allow for a larger insulated cavity.
> They still build the same roof pitches so rain runs off.
Roofs do not require the same pitch to dispel snow as they do to shed snow. Roof pitches are genuinely steeper in areas that see particularly high snow loads.
Builders have gone back to 2x4 in cold climates. They put 2 inches of foam outside. The wood of studs is r5 even though the insulation is r19, so the continuous foam is better.
And in warm climates there were going to 2x6 as well as air conditioning needed the r value.
In most of Texas, the air outside is humid, you need a moisture barrier between your structural wall and your rainscreen/siding.
In Calgary, cold winters will have very dry air, so the humidity will be much higher inside the house. So the moisture barrier needs to be on the other side.
In either case, you don't want the insulation layer or the structural layer to be collecting condensation from the humidity / temperature differential, or you will get mold.
Disclaimer: not a builder, just deal with humid climate.
Snow and cold vs. sun and heat as the primary environmental issues to deal with, as a quick example.
But also humidity, local ordinances, matching the style of surrounding buildings, the relative value of land favoring single story (texas) or tall (Calgary) houses
Relative value of land and matching style is semi valid. However none of that prevents you from take a house from one area and building it in the other. In most cases local ordinances will allow it though it will cost slightly more as builders are not familiar with some details and some materials might not be readially available. However the design itself will still work if you want to.
Our house will have a space for one car (under a roof but not in the garage) a motorbike and some bikes (all bikes in a shed). If some of the kids will have their own car before they move out (IMHO 40 % chance), they can park on the street.
Or the town. It's very common in places that get snow for on-street parking to be prohibited during 5 or so months of the year because of the potential need for snow plowing.
Not to dispute that but just for another point of view, I've lived in four different towns, varying in population from 1,300 to 120,000, all with very long winters, and they've all allowed on street parking all winter (usually alternating sides of the street to accommodate plowing).
I've seen that as well--more commonly in cities where there otherwise just isn't enough parking if you force everyone off the streets. Suburbs, where most people have garages and driveways seem more likely to just disallow parking in the street period.
In our city, that's the responsibility of the city council and their traffic signs.
Actually, there is only an equivalent of HOA for apartment blocks. House owners are usually only bound by law and personal relationships with neighbors (I'm in CZ).
Yes, it's a nice area. The houses are very large so there usually are 2 - 5 apartments and they share the garden. That's a very interesting compromise for living with a garden close to the city center.
Where do you get this information from? Three-car garages are quite rare in Texas, and I am struggling to recall if I have ever seen a household use both carports for vehicles. At max, one car is stored in the garage while the other half is used for storage.
My wife is from Texas, and I have other family there. While older houses lack a garage, new houses all have them. It took longer for indoor parking to catch on, but it is common. Though "rednecks" are more likely to use the garage for storage of other things and park outside.
My college dorm is the only place I've ever lived that didn't have at least a two car attached garage. That's five of five houses with two or three car garages.
When I owned two cars in New England, it was a pretty big win to get both cars inside during the winter especially if a storm were coming. Always took a bunch of cleanup in the fall to deal with all the crap that had migrated out to the floor of the garage during the summer.
I feel like not having dedicated shed/storage area in the house plan is one of most common architectural mistakes, given just how often garage ends up being just that
On the other hand, I've often thought of adding a shed and it would invariably end up being a case of crap expanding to fill the space allotted to it. I don't need another 10'x13' shed to store more stuff. (I admittedly already have a workshop that sticks off the side of the garage.)
Right but separate room at least gives you a barrier. "This is place for crap, this is place for car".
And if you have house with any kind of garden, you will need a place to store some basic tools, and maybe a grill, if house doesn't come with that it will naturally clog the garage.
Your typical signal family neighborhood has the following requirements: There will be room to store at least 3 cars, and at least 2 of them will be indoors. The path from the street to where the cars are stored will avoid hitting things with the car. All this means that every house will have a 3 car garage up front with a straight driveway to the road. A 3 car garage defines how wide your lot will be. All houses look the same because the car defines so much about how the house must look.
It rains everywhere, so you will account for that in all houses so you can take any plan knowing rain is accounted for. Views are the only thing that might be different, and most people don't live where the views are worth worrying about - unless you live in a rural area your view is the other houses in your neighborhood.