Your house won't fit on your section! Your front rooms plus garage add up to 23m wide, and that's not allowing for the thicknesses of the walls and cladding, plus any eaves. Before you start designing, you will need to find out about setbacks and recession planes so you know how much of your section you can actually build on. You also need to consider things like the path of the sun, prevailing winds, climate, views, proximity to neighbours, privacy, flow (both through the house and outside), placement of utility areas etc. You also need a clear idea of the style of house you would like and you need to design to suit the way you live now, plus think really hard about how you are likely to live in the future (to give just one example, I can almost guarantee that kids won't use that toy room, as they like being close to Mum and Dad when they are little). Beyond that, you need to give thought to sustainable building, and how far down that path you will choose to go. There are many things such as passive solar design that are effectively free to do at the design stage, which will make your house cheaper to run and more comfortable to live in, and these should absolutely be part of your brief. There may be minor extra costs for things like better insulation, low- or no-VOC products and finishes, energy efficient appliances and fittings etc, which could pay for themselves in a short space of time and/or make your home more pleasant to inhabit. Other features such as solar power and grey water recycling may fall outside your budget now, but it may be wise to allow for these to be easily retrofitted in the future. This is a HUGE house - why do you want it to be so big? I'm not sure what average building costs are where you live but that would be a million dollar house in NZ, with only average features and finishings (e.g. acrylic, rather than tiled showers, laminate kitchen etc). As the global trend seems to be moving towards smaller but better quality houses, it might be worth considering resale potential in the future. It is not easy to design a home, and it is such a massive investment that you want to be really sure you've got it just right. You'd probably be better to employ an architect if you want a unique home, unless you are prepared to spend months or even years educating yourself to a point that you can confidently design a house that takes into consideration all the issues I've raised above (and that's only just scratching the surface of the many decisions you will need to make). Good luck!

Hi there. I’m currently assessing quotes to have a 7x4 concrete pool and spa 2x2 installed in Melbourne. Roughly the same nation wide, Ballpark to get a quality job done, you should allow $90k+. We have poor access though which adds man hour cost. Might sound like a lot of $ but jump online, find some builders with gallery of previous work you like and get them to do an inspection of your site, and advise quote. So many variables to factor in: excavation access, tiling, space for filtering equipment, pool heating. I wouldn’t go near a vinyl option if it’s your long term home. Maybe a fibreglass if budget is a factor

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No idea in terms of pricing company vs company. All brands we’ve looked at so far have had three or four tiers with their pricing. So each product falls into a category eg. Essentials (cheapest), Premium (dearer), Luxury (dearer again) and Exclusive (most expensive). I wouldn’t limit yourself to a particular company, I’d be looking at the ones you like best and seeing what category they fall in. Have several options so you can get several quotes.