Construction & Contractors Blog
Adding a room to your home can be a good alternative to moving into a larger home. You can stay in the home that you currently live in and love, but you'll have more space. One thing that most people worry about and come up against with room additions is cost. You can easily end up spending tens of thousands of dollars just adding a single room to your house. Thankfully, though, there are a few ways to reduce costs and keep your room addition on-budget.
If you need plumbing, put it on the inside wall.
The cheapest solution is not to plumb your room addition at all, but of course, if the room you're adding will be a bathroom, kitchen, or laundry room, plumbing is a necessity. You can keep costs down by putting all plumbing and water-using appliances on the inside wall — the one that the room addition joins with your existing home. This means the plumbers won't have to run as much pipe, which will save you money on materials and labor.
Consider including a separate HVAC system.
Most people assume that tying the new room into their current HVAC system will be the cheapest option, but this is not often the case. Your current furnace and AC unit may not be powerful enough to heat and cool the new space, which means you may have to upgrade them. You'll also have to have ducts run to the new room, which may require a lot of modification to your existing ducts. The cheapest solution is usually to have a separate heat pump installed in the room addition. A heat pump can both heat and cool the space.
Don't extend your basement or crawlspace.
The new room will need some sort of foundation to support it. If your home currently has a basement or crawlspace as a foundation, you may assume you should just have that extended. But this comes at a high cost. It tends to be far more affordable to simply put the new room on a concrete slab foundation. It may look a little disconnected next to a larger foundation, but you can use bushes or other landscaping to mask the transition spot.
Adding a room to your home is not cheap, but it does not have to break the bank, either. Follow the advice above, and talk to your contractor about other ways to keep costs down on your specific project. For more information about adding a room addition, contact a local building company, like Thomas Builders, LLC.
Share24 February 2021
My name is Debbie Greenberg. I’m a single woman who owns her home, and like most homeowners I dread home repairs. I’m not very handy with do-it-yourself projects around the house. I can do a few minor repairs when necessary, but for the most part I have to call in a professional. Last year I had a leak in my roof. When it rained, water would leak into my kitchen. What appeared to be a simple fix turned out to be anything but simple. It took over four months to finally identify the problem, and double the money I was initially quoted to fix it. The problem ended up being that the flat part of my roof didn't have shingles, but a sheeting material. I learned a bit about home roofs along the way, and that is what I want to share with you.
