Cheap efficient DIY home?

Don't forget the Katrina Cottage collection, well worth a look - they used to advertise $50.00 per square foot including appliances but I notice they don't now, now it's -prices and materials vary, consult local dealership etc.

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?actio...naCottage.html

My vote would be a Yurt with maybe a root cellar/place to hide in a severe storm. Or, maybe a pole barn convert.

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How big a house are you talking?
a simple fairly cheap salt box on a slab can be built fairly easily.
consider radiant floor heating you can start buy using a high gain gas water heater and later switch to an outside wood burning boiler(or be smart and start with the boiler which can not only supply the houses heat but also hot water, opt for DC pump motors with battery back up )

The shell can be standard wood frame or metal .
if the land allows a bermed house has advantages in passive solar and insulation

You can also do the shipping container method.
Seatrain house
12 container house (note: Video in link)
ContainerBay

I was also going to suggest the Yurt. There are some great ideas.

If you have the land for it, Earth sheltered would be good too.

Zoning and building codes are going to play a part in what you can build, and what you can use. Some codes are requiring that all structural lumber has to be grade stamped, which for all practical purposes, rules out using lumber from a local saw mill (unless it has enough busiiness to inspect and stamp the lumber). We built our first house (in Wisconsin) in the 1970s using local sawmill lumber, but might not be able to do that today because of building code changes. Personally, I would consider a straw bale home for low material cost and insulation value, but there again, codes may affect what you can build.

What we did back in the 70s was to have a company do the basement/foundation after we had a relative do the initial excavation. Then we capped over the basement, putting in the floor joists and subfloor, covered with tarpaper, so we could back fill around the basement for the first winter. Then we built a simple frame structure on top, and ended up making it a super insulated double wall building, 24 by 36 feet, with walk out basement and an attic area that was about 50% usable as bedroom space. It worked out well for our family of 5 until we moved 12 years later. By then we had added a porch on the main floor ground level, a deck off the kitchen, and small entry ways at the basement level and the kitchen entry. It had oak or tile floors throughout the main level.

I'd stay away from an old trailer. Trying to make anything decent by adding to it is mostly a waste of materials. Building a home from cement blocks will create an energy hog that'll not grow in value. Using a pole type structure would work as a summer place, but you'll have way too much invested trying to retrofit it into an efficient structure.
The basic structure, logs, studs/drywall/insulation/siding/ cement blocks, metal siding/ insulation/posts isn't the main expense in building a home. If you chose to go real cheap here, you'll spend more later in trying to make it work.
I'd suggest a well insulated basement. Walk out if you have the slope for it. Either lay up blocks and ridgid insulation on the outside and rigid insulation on the inside or the newer do it yourself styro forms that you pour cement into/around (several styles on the market). Once you are living in the basement, a standard stud wall, OSB sheeting, 6:12 Attic truss, OSB sheeting, metal roof will give you the enclosure that you can work on year around. Housing trends move very slow. We are at the begining of high heating costs. Cheap oil isn't coming back. Over insulate. It makes you a better person for the environment, allows you to spend less on heat and more on living and makes your home more saleable if you decide to move on.

That guy is estimating the cost of his quick house to be $184,000. Not cheap!

Cindyc.

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You can pick up used containers for about 1000 each. After shipping, You will need some basic tools and something to lift them into place. I have a PDF on how to do it if you are interested. Depending on the work and style the basic structure can be low cost. You can also get various sizes of lengths, but the basic dimensions are standard worldwide.

Also buried right or placed right it is a great SHTF shelter/storage.

Try looking at a SIP package home. They go up quick and some good deals can be had.
http://www.valubuild.net/ is on company.

If you can do all the construction your self, it is a quick dried in building. energy efficient and you can take your time finishing it.

http://www.baihomes.com/models.asp?pageid=2

IMO, if you go with a pole barn or steel building and put a house in it your basically building a building inside another building, depending on what one wants, it may or may not be a cost effective way,

block or masonry buildings are had to insulate,

the Alternative buildings, Straw bale, earth ship type, rammed earth, have a place and advantages and disadvantages, (most are very labor intensive),

trailers IMO are jsut a disaster in progress,
(This I may suggest, if you can find a cheap one to move into and live while you build that may be a worth wile investment), living and working in construction zone is a very trying way to live, and had done more than one marriage in.

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If I was starting out, and did not have any buildings,
first I would consider a temporary trailer to live in, or a 40' storage container and some type of good temporary kitchen and bath, possibly a lean to shed to the container housing the kitchen and the bath area, toilet and shower at least.
(I know we have wished that we would have had a "canning kitchen" in the summer many times, similar to a screen in porch that you could have some good burners in for doing two or three canners at once, and to prepare the produce to be canned, with our destroying the house, and to keep the heat out side, big sinks and tables and large burners, and having a rest room on the side would be nice as well).

then I would consider or build from scratch a "garage type building" 24' x 30' or so, with a steep roof and conventional roof framing so the attic is open, (no trusses, unless there is a room area built in the trusses),

and would build a small home in that building, by being a conventional building easy to insulate, easily to add onto as a core building, with a slab floor, reasonably low cost, plumb in kitchen and bath, and with the attic open you have a loft or upstairs bed rooms, if properly planed one could expand it fairly easily by adding wings or length on to it, if you draw out the plan and the finished ideas, you can develop the core to make the add ons easy and workable, with out living in a total mess of construction dirt and transitions,

Plan your heating system and plumbing accordingly, this may mean running some stubs, that dead end for easily hook up later.

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if the pole barn Idea is the plan, build your pole barn in such a way (that if the living quarters are temporary), that they can be converted to a heated shop or office area, in the future, (temporary walls not permanently attached to the ceiling or floors, (removable lag bolts or similar) not drywalled in to the ceiling with corner tape, (use trim if you want a cleaner look) build the open main building inside and then add the walls, for divisions.

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If you run a slab floor on either use a separate foundation border and then insulate the floor from the foundation with some type of foundation foam insulation,

If you put in plumbing in the floor, and it is a temporary building, consider a corner of the building so if or when it is changed to another use, the bath room is out of the way of the new use,
keep the kitchen or other pluming either in separate slab (that can be tore back out easily), or out of the way of any future use.

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these are a few suggestions and some things I have seen that would have helped a few neighbors, with there remodeling or building of there homesteads, and would have save one marriage if they would have followed the trailer idea, (building is stressful),

Had another look at earthships last night with hubby, to labor intensive, would prefer an earth berm concrete construction. SIP got a close look too, I really like those, and we both loved the Katrina cottages! I keep thinking that we could do just fine in a shell of a house and finish as we go. Hubby is now thinking used modular instead of trailer, but those seem hard to find. OH< I should have posted earlier, we have four kids, we lived in a 780 ft2 house until three years ago, and it was not a happy place!!! We are thinking we need at least 1500ft2, but cost may prohibit that.

Someone on HT once posted this link to First Day Cottage

http://www.firstdaycottage.com/

You build them yourself. I always thought they were nice looking homes.

Pauline

Great progress. We are in!

http://homesteadingtoday.com/showthr...15#post2744315

We moved into our tiny cottage on Christmas Eve. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2007/12/moving-in.html

We don't have everything yet, no plumbing or electric, but we're sleeping there and not in the old drafty farm house. Today I'm finishing up the last bit of parge on the bathtub and then no more cement work for a long time as we wait out the winter and then do form construction and fencing in the spring.

As to the roof, what we did was build a wooden form work on top of wooden scaffolding. We layered that with 661010 Welded Wire Mesh and then put expanded metal lath on top of that. We parged a thin layer of concrete to stiffen it and then a 1.5" thick total layer to make the barrel vault roof. After it had cured I went inside and knocked the shims out of the scaffolding to drop the formwork. Voila! A cathedral ceiling.

Here is a diagram of the design for the roof looking south from the north wall:


In the February blizzard it got tested with 34" of heavy wet snow and came through with flying colors. Check out this for details on the roof:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/11...g-trusses.html


http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/11...s-wire-up.html


http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/12...ction-pan.html


http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/12...y-weather.html

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/12...f-roof-on.html

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/12...closed-in.html

Here's the cottage as it now stands:



The exterior scaffolding was for upper exterior parge and roof work.

That latest roofish thing is the master bedroom ceiling where I inlaid stones. To do that ceiling I built a form work of 2xX scaffolding and then pink foam forms into which we poured a PVA-ECC white concrete.

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2007/12...-ceiling.html]


Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

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We went with a steel building. Pre-engineered.

40 foot by 60 foot, with 14 foot peak and 12 foot eaves. It looks like a warehouse. 2400 square foot. With no interior load bearing walls.

It cost us about $16,000.

Plus $10,000 for the foundation, then a bunch to insulate it up to R-40, etc.

The foundation I contracted out. The building I erected [I did hire one guy with a crane for three hours to help me to stand up the arches]. and I have done the rest pretty much by myself.

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http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

R-40? Wow! That must be thicker than a bed mattress! LOL

I did my floors with R-19 and the rest of the house with R-13, but I guess northern Nevada doesn't get as cold as it gets where you are.

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The foundation is a foot thick, the steel wall panels rest on an angle iron which is lined up on the outer edge of that foundation wall. So from the inside of the wall panels I could easily go a foot inward when constructing my interior walls.

The load bearing girders form a series of arches, the vertical beams which support those arches is mounted onto the foundation, and again there is a foot of clearance between these beams and the wall panels.

So it was entirely up to me and my imagination, to determine how thick I desired the walls to be.

I went with nine inch thick walls. There are horizontal purlins that support the walls, at seven foot high, and again up at twelve foot high. These purlins are about nine inches wide.

Then when I began cutting holes in the walls for windows, I made window frames and trimmed the window frames to be flush on the outside, with only the trim sticking out. Pricing 1 inch flat stock the difference in price between 1 X 10s and 1X12s was a big difference. So I went with the 1 X 10s. Framing the windows with 1X10s gave me roughly nine inch thick walls.

One inch of spray-on foam sealed the wall panels, made them 'solid' and completely stopped all air drafts. The Styrofoam provides the first layer of insulation at R-8 to R-9 per inch. Then I hung R-37 fiberglass batting. Covered it with light-coloured wood-grain paneling and trimmed it with dark stained 1X2s.

When you're looking to save money on building, you consider "resources" :
- labour, yours is the cheapest
- materials, the "value" of the different types of materials (wood, concrete, block, steel, etc.) can vary widely depending on where you are and what is "available" at that time.

You'll also want to keep the building as small and simple as practical - cheaper/easier to build, cheaper to maintain and cheaper energy requirements. Instead of building bigger, build smarter.

Actually that is cheap for L.A. G&S

All things are relative.

My 2400 square foot house will end up running about $50,000.

But then again I live in an obvious 'warehouse'. It is hard to hide the lines and shape of the building. I do not care, and no neighbor can see it.

His taxes are likely higher too.

At roughly $1 per acre for riverfrontage around here, we should be fine

But to other folks that would appear to be low taxes. Many people would argue that Maine's taxes are the highest in the nation. but again all things are relative.

Build a garage and move into that while you build the house. I like cheap. $5,000 should buy the meterial for a garage shell. Cheaper yet if you can find scrap or recycled meterial.

My Amish neighbors start with a bsasement. The contract the floor and footer. Then they lay the blocks, wait about a week and build the sub floor for the upper part of the house, cover that with tar paper, and move in.