Homing Instinct: Using Your Lifestyle to Design and Build Your Home

by John Connell

An illustrated guide to home planning, design, and construction demystifies the process and takes readers step-by-step through each stage in the creation of a house, including framing, roofing, window installation, and electricity

Genres: Architecture, Design

404 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1993

About the author

John Connell's work has been published in Granta's New Irish Writing issue. His memoir, The Farmer's Son, was a #1 bestseller in Ireland. He lives on his family farm, Birchview, in County Longford, Ireland

Reviews

[Tish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really great ideas to be sifted from a verbose, conversational style prose (took 60 pages to say what Building Green said in 3). Insights definitely helpful, and good charts. Despite the rather annoying chit-chat to instruction ratio, it's worth a read for anyone thinking of building their own.

[Sarah Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little dated, but helpful in thinking about how you live and what you want your home to be like

[Erika RS · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the introduction, the author calls this "Your First How-To Book". The book provides very basic information on how to design and build a house. Connell covers how to evaluate your site, how to develop your program, and introduces you to pouring foundations, framing, temperature and moisture control, roof design, door and window design and placement, thermal comfort, energy for power and heating, and plumbing and drainage.

Obviously, in only a bit over 400 pages (including appendices) the book only provides a rudimentary introduction to those topics. However, the author made that decision intentionally. This book does not aim to teach you how to build a house. There are many existing books to do this (Homing Instinct includes a bibliography). Instead, the author wants to accomplish two things. First, set up a framework on which design/builders can hang additional knowledge. Second, show how every aspect of the design/build process influences every other. The site influences the framing system influences the plumbing influences the power sources influences the site and round and around again.

The book succeeds. I do not know how to pour a foundation, but I now know the general features of a well designed foundation and how it influences my home's ability to stay upright. I do not know how to build a frame, but I understand the basic constraints that traditional stick framing puts on structure.

Even though we are not building our house with our own hands, this book was worthwhile. It provided me with a better understanding as I go into the design process, and it provided me with the beginnings of a vocabulary for talking with my builder. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who hopes to be at all involved with designing and building their own home someday.