TodaysPlans.net > About this Website, the Plans, Products and Building Guides

 

About this Website, the Plans, Books, Projects, Products and Guides

Copyright, 2019 - This web site and its designs, plans and guides are protected by U.S. and International copyright law.

About the Plans, eBooks, How-To Guides and Videos

Many of the free plans available on this web site were designed or commissioned specifically for Today's Plans and are not available any place else. In addition, we try to find the best free plans and how-to guides on the Internet. We review them carefully to try to make sure that they provide information that you can trust. The free plans, books and building guides linked from this website are offered as resources by their publishers. They are generally intended for private, one-time use by individuals, and not for reproduction. Contact their publishers for more information and for permission for any other use.

Most of the plans and building guides presented on TodaysPlans.net are designed for use in North America and use Imperial (foot and inch) measurements.

Copyrights and Permissions
We've attempted to secure authors', publishers' and designers' permission to post the plans, books, articles and guides that are downloadable from this web site. We use photos as helpful links and pointers to other web sites, to downloadable works and to our own reviews of those web sites and downloadable works. We try to attribute photos to their correct source. Because some of the photos and materials are provided by third parties and not credited to their originators, we can't be absolutely sure of the authenticity of rights and permissions. If you are the creator or copyright owner of any photos or material that are not properly presented or credited on this website, please email info@todaysplans.net. We'll either secure your permission or remove your material promptly. Please review our Digital Millennium Copyright Statement for more information.

Image Thumbnails and Collages

We've created low-resolution thumbnails and collages of screenshots from some of the best building designs and how-to guides found on the Internet. The images are here to lead you to information that we've found to be educational and that we hope will be helpful to you too. The images transform some beautiful original photographs, drawings and renderings. Please follow the links to view the originals at their source. The thumbnails and collages, and our words about the material that they illustrate, are critiques of the works: they are helpful, and that's why they are included and reviewed on this site. If you are the originator or copyright owner of any image that you'd like not to appear on this site, please let us know. We'll remove it promptly. Please review our Digital Millennium Copyright Statement for more information.

Using Free Building Plans

It isn't best to build from plans just because they are free. The cost of even the most expensive blueprints are just a tiny fraction of what your overall building cost will be. All stock plans, including the ones that you can download at no cost, need some modification to work perfectly on your site and for your building and zoning code requirements. That means that you, your builder, or an architect or construction engineer who you hire, will have to put in some work time on the plans. Include that, and no plan that you build from is really free.

The most important thing is to find the design that's just right for your needs, regardless of cost. If you build something that doesn't look perfect to you, you'll be regretting it for years, every time you look at it. If you build something that's just ten square feet bigger than you need, you'll have wasted the cost of a better set of plans. If you build something that doesn't add to the appearance and usefulness of your property you'll be reducing its resale value by much more than the expense of the costliest set of plans. Building anything is expensive, in the cost of materials, in a contractor's cost, or in the time and labor you put into it. Don't throw your investment away on poor plans.

The Internet gives you the ability to find just about all of the plans that are available. Take your time and search everywhere. Searches are free. Just a few years back, you'd have to pay a fortune to purchase catalogs and magazines to find a reasonable selection. TodaysPlans.net will be presenting new reviews of blueprints and building kits all of the time. So, check back often.

Of course, there's no reason to exclude free plans from your search. Some are pretty good. There are probably just a few thousand of those available, compared to tens of thousands that you can buy. Still, you may just find what you are looking for. It should be easy to search through all of the free plans. Unfortunately, they are scattered across the Internet. Some plan services offer one or two as samples of their offerings. Lumber suppliers and building trade associations have some more. Magazines, like Popular Mechanics and Mother Earth News offer some as "how-to" articles. This website tries to help by listing only the best free plans and organizing them into categories, to make it a little easier for you.

Downloadable plan files, guides and books are usually Adobe's PDF file type. That means that you'll have to have the latest version of the Adobe's Reader program on your computer. You can download a free copy of that below. PDF files also mean that the plans will print on the 8 1/2" x 11" paper that's in your printer. Since most building departments require plans that are scaled to 1/4" to the foot, most downloadable plans are for small buildings.


Building Codes and Standards
Building codes, materials and standards are always evolving and changing. Today's best building methods, and the best methods for building in your climate, are not always what are shown on the material presented on this website.
Have all plans, material lists, products, prefabs, kits and construction methods reviewed by your building department or by an experienced building professional who knows local conditions before you purchase anything or start to build. The plans, products, prefabs, kits and material lists presented here may have to be modified by a local professional to suit your site's conditions, building and zoning codes and weather requirements.

Safety

The information provided on this website is intended for adults with knowledge of the use and safety requirements of the tools and implements needed to complete all projects. Children should not attempt any of the projects presented on this web site without adult guidance.

How to Download the Plans, Guides and Books

You'll have almost immediate access to most of the free project plans, lessons, books and guides listed on TodaysPlans.net. They are Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files that you can print on your computer's printer. Make sure that your computer has an up-to-date copy of Adobe Reader installed. Most new computers do. To get a free copy or to update your old version, just click on this button: 

 

 

Download a Free Copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader

 

Many of the guides and plans are multi-page files. Allow a few minutes for them to download to your computer.

Please Suggest Plans and Websites for Our Review
If you've had a good experience building from free plans that you found on the Internet, please let us know. We'll check them out, write a review, and let readers know about them. Please email info@todaysplans.net.

Please Link to this Website
If you are a webmaster or blogger and think that the material on TodaysPlans.net would be of interest to your readers, please let them know about it. Please feel free to link to any of our web pages. And, thank you very much. We appreciate your site's visitors and will try to keep them entertained and informed.

Please don't link directly to any downloadable (PDF) files of the plans or building guides. Those files are protected by their designers' and authors' copyrights, and many copyright owners require that their files be downloaded only from their own websites.

Sponsors, Listings and Reviews
This website is sponsored by more than a dozen independent services and retailers. Although we try to work only with the best companies and websites, we can't be responsible for others' content, products or policies. 

Other plans, products, books, websites, prefabs and guides are listed and reviewed on this site, for free, at the discretion of the editor, in the hope that information about them is useful to readers. Listings on this website are not endorsements of any websites, products, lessons, demonstrations, books, advice or plans.

About the Editor
Don Berg, an architect and member of the American Institute of Architects, has published fifteen books on traditional American building, gardening and landscaping. He has degrees in Architecture and Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design. Don has been a guest and consultant on HGTV. His designs, articles and interviews have appeared in Home Magazine, Country Life, The Old-House Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, Grit, Yankee Magazine, Mother Earth News, Period Home Magazine, Traditional Building and many other publications. Don designed many of the building plans that you'll find on TodaysPlans.net.

 

 Contact Us

 

For more information, please contact:

 

Donald J. Berg, AIA

PO Box 698

Rockville Centre, NY 11571-0698 

516-766-5585

 

or e-mail: info@todaysplans.net

 

 

Our Privacy Policy

Your privacy is important to us.

This is the web site of Donald J. Berg, AIA.
Our postal address is:
PO Box 698, Rockville Centre, NY 11571
Our office is located at:
150 Harvard Ave., Rockville Centre, NY 11570

We can be reached via e-mail at
info@todaysplans.net or you can reach us by telephone at 516 766-5585.

 

This website does not automatically recognize or record information regarding you, your domain or your e-mail address. We do collect aggregate information on what pages consumers access or visit and user-specific information on what pages consumers access or visit. We do not, knowingly collect any information or sell to children.

 

Use of "Cookies" or "Web Beacons" and Interest-based ads:

 

Cookies are small files that a website may place on your hard drive to allow a website to identify you. The use of cookies is a common practice on many website's. For example, if you allow a website to remember your login name or password, the website places a cookie on your computer. Cookies cannot read any other information on your hard drive. We may place cookies on your computer to measure web traffic If you do not wish to receive cookies or would like to be notified when a website is placing a cookie on your system, your Internet browser may allow you to do so.
 

A web beacon is a transparent image file used to monitor your journey around a single website or collection of sites. They are also referred to as web bugs and are commonly used by sites that hire third-party services to monitor traffic. They may be used in association with cookies to understand how visitors interact with the pages and content on the pages of a web site.
 

To try and bring you offers that are of interest to you, we have relationships with third-party companies that we allow to place banners or ads on our Web pages. As a result of your visit to our site, ad server companies may use cookies and web beacons to collect information such as your domain type, your IP address and your click preferences. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click on the links below.

 

https://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html
https://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html

https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads
http://www.cj.com/privacy.html
https://www.clickbank.com/privacy.html

 

Browsers can be set to accept or reject cookies or notify you when a cookie is being sent. Privacy software can be used to override web beacons. Taking either of these actions shouldn't cause a problem with our site, should you so choose.
 

Persons who supply us with their email addresses will only receive email contact from us with information regarding their questions and interests. If you do not want to receive e-mail from us in the future, please let us know by sending us e-mail at the above address.

 

If you supply us with your postal address on-line you will only receive the information for which you provided us your address. Persons who supply us with their telephone numbers on-line will only receive telephone contact from us with information regarding questions or orders they have placed on-line.
 

From time to time, we may use customer information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in our privacy notice. If our information practices change at some time in the future we will post the policy changes to our Web site to notify you of these changes and provide you with the ability to opt out of these new uses. If you are concerned about how your information is used, you should check back at this page periodically. Customers may prevent their information from being used for purposes other than those for which it was originally collected by e-mailing us at the above address.
 

With respect to security, we have appropriate security measures in place in our physical facilities to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of information that we have collected from you at our site.
 

If you feel that this site is not following its stated information policy, you may contact us at the above addresses or phone number.

 

 
 
 

Site designed by Christopher Berg