Best/Free online house plan designer/creator

[Foggy_Goggles]

Sorry for being overly pissy earlier in the thread. Long couple of weeks. Stupid profession.

Window wall - 2 issues. Controlling heat gain from sun, controlling heat loss from cold outside. Heat gain is fairly easily controlled with coatings, and those aren't that expensive. Check with the manufacturers for options, they all call the coating something different, but the coating comes from the glass manufacturers, and there are only a few glass companies, so they are really the same thing despite different names. Heat loss doesn't get helped much by coatings. To really help with that it's about quality frames and how many glass/film layers (panes) the window has.

A really good cost effective midpoint in all these options is an insulated, low e2 double pane fiberglass, fibrex or vinyl window with cardinal 366 glass (which will have a different "proprietary" name from each manufacturer.) I just used Anderson 100 series fiberglass windows in my house. Low e2, but did not upgrade to the 366 as we don't have big window walls and with our deep overhangs I was not too worried about summer heat gain (and in the winter you often actually WANT heat gain.)

On decks, don't do a waterproof surface coating that you actually walk on. Those really have a bad track record of failure - like Vulcam or something. Do a slightly sloped roof with an epdm roofing layer, then put in a wood or trex type deck (I prefer trex type due to longetivity) on sleepers to get the deck flat. Water goes through the deck on to the epdm and drains out. Deck just sits on top so you have no punctures in your roof.

I would agree with this only to add the BASF MasterSeal has proven over about 5 years to be great product. Something like $38/sq. ft. installed plus the substrate has to be ACX ply.

[Iowagriz]

Had a chance to get back to this thread and catch-up to the comments. Appreciate all of the insight. I'll keep ya posted as I progress thru the plans and build.

[Iowagriz]

An update to share. We went back "home" to Montana for the Christmas/New Years Holiday and spend 3 weeks between Missoula and Kalispell. Visiting open houses, viewing neighborhoods both old and new. Ultimately deciding on a development in Missoula.

We returned in Feb to make the final decision on a lot and to meet with builders. I had my mock-ups in hand to give them an idea of what main ideas we wanted in a home and had a list of design ideas. We were open to house plans that they may have had in their inventory, but ultimately decided to go semi-custom. The builder we chose has an in-house draftsman and a relationship with an architect to review plans. After a lot of remote back and forth and another trip to Missoula in April, we have a final plan, have a purchased lot and hope to break ground in the coming weeks.

Iowa house is sold, we leave in 2 weeks and will be in town while the house is built. Looking forward to getting back to the mountains and changing my username to remove "Iowa".

Thanks to everyone for the input on this thread. It really helped narrow down what we wanted in a home, why we wanted it and what was important to us. The builders team said that we were one of the easiest customers to work with as we had already made the hard decisions beforehand.