New House Suggestions?

[AnnaS]

Looks like I'll be putting a "real" house on my place in the next year or so- have a mobile home now. Will likely be my own design built by pros. Less than 1,000 sq feet, would like to do passive solar and use a lot of concrete (have my own sand/gravel pit), possibly a grey water system. Being in MN, heating & insulation is important. Also a little "tower" room so I can survey the kingdom...

My county doesn't have a Building Code.

I'd like to hear ideas/suggestions/advice from anyone.

[Alice In TX/MO]

My advice is don't hurry. REALLY take your time to research what you want and to find the right builder. Time taken now will reduce frustrations later.

[ibcnya]

Use insulated concrete forms. You will never regret it. Especially in MN. R-50 is soooo nice.

[Maura]

Look at books by Susan Susanka. She has one on small houses. Real small houses, not million dollar small houses.

In-floor radiant heat. Your hot water heater is your source of heat. If you have an open system, you can also use it as air conditioning in the summer.

Use 5/8 firewall for the drywall. Really research windows. Anderson are really only mediocre, you can do better. 7/8" between Panes is ideal, but 3/4 is okay.

Make your bathroom and hallways wheelchair accessible. Only a little more square footage in the bathroom gets you a really nice, upscale room.

Put enough pitch in your roof to be able to use the attic as storage. Make sure you build it strong enough to walk in.

Front porch. If it is large enough, can act as another room in the summer. Nice, wide roof to give you enough shade. It will also help to shield that side of the house inside from the sun.

[Bink]

Did you say lots of concrete? http://www.monolithicdome.com/thedome/index.html
Lots of insulation, don't know about the tower.

[Cosmic]

Some good ideas already.

1. Think out what must be accessed in future for repair and provide hatches, doors or methods to easily get into areas. Things like the shower / bath plumbing, clean out plugs in drains, wiring, piping, etc. A good practice is always locate a closet next to the shower / tub and make one wall that has a lift out hatch that gives immediate access to all the plumbing of the shower / tub, etc. Know exactly where all the cleanout plugs are in drains and make it so they can be accessed without ripping walls apart. Removal panels to get into main wiring / plumbing runs that have been designed to allow future easy expansion.

2. Think out the wiring to a super degree. Easy to add when the walls are not enclosed. Things like communications, phone, computers, music speakers, extra electrical, etc. You can not over wire a house initially. A good design will run a lot of extra wires and provide a terminal panel that can be used reroute wires / system needs without pulling more wires. Incorporating X-10 in the electrical system is dynomite for nice home control. Get the a lot of lighting everywhere.

3. Radiant heat is nice if you can get a good system installed, especially if it can also be used by a solar system. Think thru a back up electrical / heating lash-up for emergencies built in from the start.

4. Insulate, Insulate, Insulate.

5. Use all the spare space in the house interior volume. Basement, porches, attics are usually not designed for efficient use.

6. Make things like porches, decks, steps from concrete instead of wood for the flooring.

7. Consider adding snow melting to outside walks, drives, etc; areas that normally require snow removal.

8. Add your own power company either via hydro-power, solar, wind or some method that lets you generate electrical power, both for own use and to co-generate for income.

9. Design in dedicated storage. Plan on using the garage for parking cars.

10. 5/8" drywall is a super good idea. Get quote for normal 1/2" or 3/8" and 5/8". Contractors will probably charge a lot to hang 5/8". It costs more per sheet and is not really drywall. A form of birth control in sheets. After a day hanging it, you do not go home and make babies.

11. Make access to the attic a permanent normal stairway. Great for uses like computer rooms, dens, library, storage, etc. Putting bedrooms there will probably require two means of escape, usually a poor choice of use.

12. Design parking / car approaches to allow two cars to pass at the narrowest place. One should never have to move one car to get another access to anywhere.

13. Think thru how close trees, bushes, plants are to the house. Trees should not be able to shed leaves in the gutters or be blown down on the roof.

14. Think low maintenance. I like the new cement based type sidings. Formica, natural wood work, avoid painted areas as much as possible. Natural wood work ages beautiful, paint does not.

15. Consider a natural air conditioning cooling system using earth buried piping. Can be used to vent house in winter if super insulated.

16. Get one of the metal or concrete tile roofing systems. Get architectual shingles at the minimum.

17. I would always have to have a nice dedicated workshop.

[marvella]

http://countryplans.com/grandfather.html

this is what i intend to have built next year. i'll be adding a screened summer kitchen/ porch in front of the kitchen/ bathroom module, and a hearth for a woodstove somewhere, not sure where yet. also plan to make it all handicapped accessible, including the shower, no tub. my climate is far different than yours, so i am also leaving out the skylights, and finishing the attic space into a loft.

this is fun making these plans, isn't it???

[Mudwoman]

Everyone has already given great ideas.

To keep down costs, start with a simple rectangular box design. You can add more "boxes" on to that. You can even add a "box" on top of a "box". Simple lines and simple roof lines saves lots of money.

Keep outside dimensions in increments of 4 ft. Example: 20 ft x 32 ft rather than 22 ft x 30 ft. You will have very little waste of materials.

The most expensive rooms in the house are the baths and kitchen. Try having one large bath. Hallways take up lots of sq footage. Try and avoid them if at all possible. Think of how older homes had the rooms opening to other rooms. Think in terms of a large open living kitchen with bedrooms and baths off that. Outdoor porches are cheap sq footage and living space.

There are lots of alternative building ideas, but you can adapt those floorplans to conventional framing.

Make doorways at least 36 inches and give yourself plenty of room in the bath for a wheelchair.

Insulate the inside walls. Makes the house so much quieter.

Our house started as a 20 x 32 rectangle. That was divided making a 20 x 18 living room and 20 x 14 space for bedroom and bath. Next we brought the walls up to 14 ft, which allowed for a loft. By cantelevering the upstairs floor out a little, that gave us a 20 x 16 loft over the the bedroom area below that looked down into the living room. Next we added a 10 x 16 area on to the side where the bedroom was that allowed the bedroom to be larger with a sitting area and have a large walkin closet. On the other side of the main house, we added a 10 x 24 bump out that provides for the kitchen and utility area. The bath then has access from the utility room and the bedroom.

[Cabin Fever]

Sounds like alot of good ideas already. The only thing I would add is to stay away from the "storage in attic" idea in Minnesota. These situations are prone to causing ice dams in winter.

With a super insulated house make absolutely sure that you get an active (as opposeed to passive) indoor ventilation system. Otherwise, the indoor humidity will cause numerous problems with mold and mildew.

And be aware that Wadena County does issue building permits and has ordinances: Wadena County Planning and Zoning Dept.

[kabri]

For passive solar designs, the best I've found so far is SunPlans Passive solar with overhangs built correctly for our lattitude and thermal mass, plus the open floor plan design we want is all there. Check out the Mountain Atrium, or any of the atruim designs - they have the tower effect you mentioned!

[Jan Doling]

Study the lay of the land. Position the house to best take advantage of the prevailing breezes and protection from the winter blasts of wind and the solar pattern.

[William]

I enjoy the process, too. You can get a copy of CorelDraw Essentials 2 on Amazon for about $40 and draw plans to your heart's content.

[snoozy]

Strawbale!

[William]

never mind.. it didn't work

[Mid Tn Mama]

Situate the house so the longest wall faces due south (or as due south as you can) Put a lot of windows on this wall. Make sure you get the advantage of the west-east winds through the home.

Build a basement--helps cool the house in the summer, maintains consistent degrees in the winter and you can plan for a root cellar.

If you have a tower room, have ability to draw hot air up there and out (fans, exhaust, etc..) Perhaps the tower room adds passive solar light in the winter to house.

Plan for trellis on south side of house to grow grapes, etc.. that will shade windows in summer, be open to sun in winter.

Higher ceilings and fans.

Put a timer on hot water heater. Add rain barrels on gutters for the garden. Have ability to run washing machine water to garden.

[ibcnya]

Let me mention again ICF's or insulated concrete forms. I'm not a salesman for them but I did build my own house using these forms and they are simple to use, a little more expensive than other systems and considering MN winters, the only way to go. They won't get moldy or rot and you are at a very respectable R factor of 50 in your walls with 2.5 inches of insulation on each side of 6.5 inches of poured concrete. Get that with conventional constuction. Use a south facing long wall with plenty of windows and install in-floor heating whether you use it right away as your primary souce of heat or not. In my case, I built a 1500 sq ft 30x50 berm home facing south using ARXX forms. I installed infloor heating and put in a small woodstove as well. That was 3 yrs ago and I have never hooked up the infloor system yet. I burn two armloads of wood a day in the winter and the house is usually 80-85 degrees. That's how we like it, sorry. I can keep the house at 80 in the summer with a 1 room 110 volt 6,000 BTU A.C. when it's 95 degrees outside with 60 percent humidity and running 2 of these little things make the house totally comfortable although 1 running keeps the juice bill down. Oh, in case I forgot to mention, I'll never build a house by my only d#*!m self again. There were days I thought had lost my mind, but I was 100% sure of my persistence and we know what that will do for ya. Locale is S.E. Iowa by the way.

[norris]

Originally Posted by Mid Tn Mama

Situate the house so the longest wall faces due south (or as due south as you can) Put a lot of windows on this wall. Make sure you get the advantage of the west-east winds through the home.

If you are going solar with roof mounted panels, you want the ridge running east west (gable ends on east and west) so that you can mount the panels on the roof slope facing due south.

Design your home so that the chimney is near the middle, too.