Designing a House.

  Did you ever wonder what it takes to design a house to your specifications?  What it takes to plan the budget for the house?  How math is involved?  I'm at a point in my life that I want to design and build my own house. So this got me to wondering about the math involved in designing and building a house.

So according to a lesson in Hot Chalk Lesson Plans, it involves a budget, area, and financing.  The lesson is set for middle school but it could easily be adjusted.  The nice thing about financing is that a small difference in the percent rate can make a huge difference in the final amount paid for the house.  In addition, it uses the I = PRT or I = e^(prt) depending on the level of mathematics needed.

This site requires students to plan a house using geometric shapes. It requires students to keep track of the money they spend for building supplies so they stay within the given budget.  You might need to adjust the budget depending on the part of the country you live in.

Math-kitecture has a lovely set of lesson plans available for the classroom.  One of the activities on the page requires students to create a floor plan of their classroom using an online software.  They end up using estimation, measuring skills, proportion, and ratios to create the floor plan. They include a huge list of resources to help teach this unit and they include apps for the ipad that work.

Another site with great lesson plans is the Dream House page.  The page included the important information on the cost of land, the price of building, etc.  It shows the standards and requires a write up.  Its got a lot of great information.

This site looks at mathematics of financing a house.  It shows several different ways of calculating the mortgage and figuring the monthly payment. 

Any of these activities could be set up to include students using a computer program to show the house.  This free site, Home Styler, allows people to create a floor plan on the computer. The program can provide a 2D or 3D view, shopping list, or have the measurements in feet or meters. In addition, after creating the floor plan, you can add furnishings, decorate the rooms and finish off with landscaping.

Students can easily use the computer to create a spread sheet for the costs, a brochure to sell the house, create a report for a perspective buyer of financing options and other such activities.