How to obtain building plan/blueprint of the house

[YumMuminda]

Hello All,
I wanted to know how do I get building plan/blueprint of the house I'm buying. Original house was built about 100 years ago. I was doing a search on how to get it but to my surprise it's not so easy. I was under assumption that I could get it easily online? After all building plan has to be submitted to the authorities so they should have it?

Any help?

I’m confused. Are you in the UK? There’s no database of house floor plans, certainly not dating back to the 1920s

Planning permission didn't exist before the 1940s.

If the plans were about 100 years old, who on earth would have made the effort to digitise them?

😂😂😂😂 surely this is a joke! No one can be this clueless!

You wait until you've bought it and get someone to draw them. This is what we did when we bought a house that was 120 years old. We wanted to do an extension so the architect did floor plans for us.

And blueprints would imply that you are after the actual construction details? Timber sizes etc. There is no database in the UK for those for a house of that age. If you were buying a new house, you might be able to get some details from the builder but that would be it.

Our old house was built in 1903 and I was able to find building plans at the local archive.
It took some researching and definitely not a quick thing. I'm in the UK, maybe look at your local branch of the National Archives and send them a message

Didn't they need blueprint for the original house when it was built 100 years ago? I'm sure architect would have been involved and they must have building plan which may have been passed down to subsequent owners.

Someone will only have had plans drawn if they did building work to the house and sought planning permission.

If this has happened and was relatively recent then the local council website may have the plans.

If there has never been a planning permission application on the house, or it was long ago, there’s unlikely to be online plans.

Estate agents also usually do floorplans when selling, so you could look for old sale details, but these are not necessarily that accurate.

@YumMuminda

Didn't they need blueprint for the original house when it was built 100 years ago? I'm sure architect would have been involved and they must have building plan which may have been passed down to subsequent owners.

You think every document from 100 years ago has been saved?

Also, many many houses were built without the involvement of an architect.

Have you written 100 when you mean 10?

Immediate after WW1?

If you want the plans just for interest then your local archive might have a copy. It’s sometimes hard to find because house names and numbering might have been changed. It would be much easier to find for an individually designed house than e.g. a Victorian terrace.

If you want it because you want plans for your house in order to do work, then you will need to have them drawn. Building regulations and planning weren’t held to the same standards 100 years ago. We have the plans for our house, but the final house wasn’t built to quite the same design. They’re nice to have and interesting but not useful.

So you have few options:

1.Local archives and plenty (and time consuming) research, and you may get lucky.. but it's a long shot due to the time passed and for reasons said above...(is this a listed building by the way or unusual in anyway as these are more likely to have been documented..)

1. Look at previous planning applications online as they might have drawings. But if you want the whole house, with elevations etc than...

1. Get a building survey company to draw it or an Architect.

Depends on the purpose.. are you remodelling or just want to have it for the record, as the former will come with a full set of drawings anyway.

There are some bloody rude people on here.

Manage to get some drawings which was submitted during extension.

@YumMuminda

Didn't they need blueprint for the original house when it was built 100 years ago? I'm sure architect would have been involved and they must have building plan which may have been passed down to subsequent owners.

That is of course possible, but you would have to ask the current owners. It would be rare that this kind of plan would be available publicly. There is no central record of this kind of thing.

Why would you need it?

They can be available, it depends where you live. Our house was built in 1923 and we have the original plans as Edinburgh holds all building plans since 1880. www.edinburgh.gov.uk/building-warrant-records/building-standards-plan-store

My parents lived in a 1920s house. When they moved in in 1979 they were the second family to own it, and the previous owners happened to have the original plans from when they had it built.

This is exceptionally unlikely to happen though. There was no such thing as planning permission and there were no building regulations a century ago. The local authority wouldn't have been given a copy of anything as a matter of routine, even if a nice set of plans was ever produced.

The closest you will probably come is by getting a measured survey. We recently had one done, it was £1,500 + VAT, but the price will depend on your area, the house size, etc.

@CasperGutman not quite true. Modern building regs didn’t happen until the 1980s, but there were many laws set out in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that cover planning, usually on urban areas though. These were locally defined and variable until 1919, when all towns >20k people were mandated to start plans for housing in post WW1. This is closely aligned with the ‘garden city’ movement, and the well-planned layouts of streets of that time. Of course, it was different, focus was more on how many houses could be built in one place, than the specific and detailed approach we take today where there is scrutiny on size, exact position, look/appearance from all sides, but plans from the early 20th century did exist, some are very detailed. They don’t necessarily represent what was actually built though: our house is an approximation of the plan, it’s definitely our house, just not quite the same. And they didn’t all survive, only the best examples were kept in the archives generally, or one or two examples from a particular area perhaps. Usually this means bigger houses in wealthier areas can be found, but they are not easy to track down. As much detail about the property as possible helps the archivist: when was it built, who commissioned the plans?

I live in a house that was extended in the 1980s and I can see the planning permission on the council's online site. But I'm not allowed to have the plans because it isn't my name on them, even though I own the house.

I don't think you have any chance even if the plans exist.

I think your only hope is if it's a house of special merit. All those terraces were just built, I don't think there were formal plans for most of them.
It's an interesting project though - like that program about the history of one particular house (though they were more interested in the occupiers).
If you know the year it was built your library is a better place to start than online as I bet if anything exists it's not digitised.

They do sometimes exist. I have the original original plans for the house next door, since demolished.

They are more of a general guide for the builder. I doubt that they have been anywhere near an architect.

I have paperwork for our house going back 300 years. There are no plans at all and I doubt any were used during the build. There isn't a right angle anywhere in the house.

Ask the bloke that drew the plan. First you need to find their phone number, then as they will probably be somewhere between 125 and 175 years old so you will need to speak loudly.