Planning and House Design
Most of the respondents had some form of assistance to design their house. State housing authority architects were responsible for the design of all houses in the state group self build program. None of these self builders have any design input. One of the individual state housing authority self builders had an architect friend design the house

"The state housing authority only allowed $400 for a draftsperson so I put in extra from my own funds because I knew that I had to get this right initially. I wanted passive solar."

Another woman said that she had some help from an architect initially but went on to complete the design herself. This woman said she did lots and lots of drawing to make sure she did things in the right order so as not to have to do things more than once. She also said that most of the big difficulties with designing came from problems with the original design done by the architect. For one woman her form of design assistance was a book on building.

The other four women designed their houses themselves. One said,

"I designed the house so I could do most of the work alone so ceiling and some internal walls are timber and other internal walls are mudbrick."

This woman also said that she hired a draftsperson, who was recommended by the state housing authority, to draw up her design so it would conform to the building standards.

Only one self builder was not satisfied with the design. She said that as she was not very confident she kept the design very simple. In retrospect she felt the house would have been better if she had been more creative. The same woman said that she had some difficulty designing the roof. She was one of only two who found designing the house difficult.

Structural workings and other calculations were done for those houses which were part of state housing authority programs by state housing authority designers, or private consulting engineers. None of the privately funded self build houses were subject to such scrutiny in the design phase. Respondents reported that they consulted construction standards manuals, took advice and made other decisions based on their own estimates.

As they were the only participants to apply for building approval only the state housing authority supported self builders were subject to town planning regulations. One of the other self builders was aware of the regulations and decided to comply. The state housing authority group self builder said that as she had no part in the design she was not aware whether the regulations had been an influence. The other state housing authority self builders both reported influence to aspects of their designs in the choice of sewerage disposal system and types of cladding material.

None of the respondents reported any trouble with scaling or any "technical" aspect. The only reported difficulty was with visualising the building. This was attributed by one woman to the fact that she had never had the chance to "do technical stuff" at school.

Both the privately funded individual self build women have since moved out of the houses they built but report that the houses are still occupied. One of the privately funded group self build women uses her house more as a weekender now. She said that there are no jobs in the area and that she could only live there if she were independently wealthy.

Two of the other women said that the house currently meets their needs and that they expect that it will continue to do so. Another agreed that the house met her needs with a small proviso that the only thing she still wanted was a hot water service. The remaining self builder also said the house currently met her needs but wasn't sure it would continue to do so. This may relate to the fact that the state housing authority program homes are all quite small.