[buildmeahut]

I'm looking to build a home in Fairfield County--not a huge McMansion or anything like that (actually, we are focusing on ~2000 sq ft kit homes where we would be the contractors ourselves and do most of the rough construction & finishing as well).

I just have tons of questions...has anyone had experience building thier own home in Fairfield County? We're looking for about 1/5 acre anywhere from Norwalk to Byram on up...proximity to public transit is important, but even a 10-15 minute drive to the train would be a treat.

How are the building codes and permit approval process? We'd also be doing everything but plumbing, electric, and HVAC--how is it trying to get good subcontractors for those projects?

Thanks!

[geos]

I'm building a house in Norwalk. It's taken 3 months and I still don't have a permit though admittedly it isn't a typical house (www.aidomes.com) (broken link). But overall the bld dept. has been very cooperative and accessible. Lots are pretty scarce and I was lucky to get 1/4+ ac. on a slopping lot for a decent price. I've only found 1 contractor for the foundation so far. Still looking for electric & plumbing. Try www.servicemagic.com.

[uconn99]

Sorry I can't be of much help finding a contractor for electrical, however I am in the low voltage industry here in Arizona and have a few suggestions on this area.



1) Structured wiring, use a system by Honeywell, OnQ or Lutron. This will enable you to have a central hub in either a basement, Master closet, or utility room allowing you to have easy access to all cable/sat/phone/data locations.

2) Wire the heck out of the house. Run dual RG6 and Dual Cat5 for every TV location in the house. Why? Because the industry is seeing more and more needs to internet access with TV's, playstations, Xbox's, media servers, ect..... Don't bother with wireless, it still can't handle the banwidth.

3) On top of the TV locations, run cat5 every as well for computer connections and phone. Do not use Cat3 for phone.

4) Have you thought about a whole house music system? It is easy to do, especially before drywall. Run 16/4 speaker wire throughout the house to a main distribution point, usually where you are going to have all your A/V equipment. Make sure you run the speaker wire volume control locations in each room as well. Along with the speaker wire, you are going to want to run cat5 from the audio head (where all the speaker wire terminates) to each volume control in the house. You do this so that you can run amplified keypads, more than one source, ect.... Russound, and Niles some companies to look into for equipment, don't go to Bestbuy, they won't have this capability.

5) Pre-wire for flat panel TV's. Run rg6 in the wall from TV location to componet location or run conduit for later wire drops. Add power outlets where TV would be going on wall.

6) Pre-wire for security or install a wired system (Honeywell).

7) Wire for camera's in the front door, back door, garage door, basically anywhere you want. Terminate this wiring in the structured box talked about in step 1. Use RG6 or cat5 to carry video. I would run both cat5 and rg6 from each location to the structured box. In the structured box you would add a modulator so each TV in house could view camera's.

8) Central Vac? You may want to install central Vac, Beam is a good company to go with.

9) Pre-wire for surround sound where ever you think you may want it. I would suggest pre-wiring for 7.1 systems, there isnt much content out with this yet, however give it 5-10 years and it will be the norm.

10) Pre-wire for sat-tv from attic to structured box in case you want sat service in future.



If you have any question feel free to PM me.

[uconn99]

Noticed I had a bunch of spelling errors above, I rushed the post. Sorry everyone, edit doesn't seem to work for some reason.