Building a Home for Dummies

Construction site

One of the greatest weaknesses of "ask me a question, I'll give you an answer" content farms such as eHow.com – ignoring for now the incompetence of so many of their freelance "contributors" – is the open-ended nature of questions asked by some of the... less aware... information-seekers. That lets people who know as little about the topic as the OQ pretend to answer the question without bothering to provide information. Take, for instance, George N. Root III pretending to address "Activities to Build a House"¹ for Leaf Group's HomeSteady.com.

As befits someone who's never built a house, and may not have ever seen one being built, Root went straight to Google and pulled up a vanity site that was originally about the owner's dog, Spike. To be sure, there's nothing terribly useless about the site, but Root III's approach was a little lacking. You see, George only looked at page one of six pages, the page titled "Getting Started." His failure to drill down means that he left out information about foundations, framing, exterior finishing, interior finishing, plumbing, electrical, etc.

No, as far as Root seemed to be concerned, the "activities" consist of budget, layout, property, and permits. No kidding: that's all he wrote! Well, he did include some cogent advice like,

"Create a rough layout of your home so that you can easily convey your ideas to an architect or engineer. There are several computer programs available that will help you to put together a rough computer drawing of your home."

We know from experience that one of those "several computer programs" – Punch! Design – is capable of lots more than a "rough" computer drawing... In addition, George came up with this bull about the property:

"Where you build your home will determine what you can and cannot have in it. Before you purchase any property, make a list of prospective locations and then discuss them with a representative from your local zoning board."

Again, Root III's ignorance shines brightly: the zoning board doesn't give a rat's hiney about most aspects² of the design: it's the architectural control committee of the local HOA that lays down most of the rules. Speaking of "zoning boards," George also claims that,

"Once you have your building permit in hand you can expect regular visits from the zoning board to monitor construction."

Not really, George: building permits aren't usually issued or enforced by the zoning commission...

When you come right down to it, Root III did a lousy job of describing the "activities to build a house." All he did was blather briefly about the planning stages, in the process making some glaring errors. He said zip about actual building "activities," and in our book that omission is more than enough to qualify George for the Dumbass of the Day award. Several times, in fact...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/list_6163883_activities-build-house.html
² OK, zoning does control a few design aspects such as minimum setback, drainage, maximum height, minimum or maximum size, etc. – but covenants on the property are likely to be more restrictive than zoning.

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