Carriage House Building/Siding Technologies?

[hazmat]

While I'm still not done with my third floor meida room, It is time to start planning my carriage house (detached garage) project. I'll be hiring the work out (save maybe for final grading which I can do with my tractor ) My contractor isn't all that busy & I may be able to get it done before next winter.

So I'm looking for your thoughts & ideas on the various building technologies (stick builit, timber frame, ICF, SIPS, other?) available and also for sidiing information.

Size - 2 to 3 car (24x26 or 26x36) with loft.
Style - Traditional New England barn - board & batton, clapboard, or shingle

Other Considerations -
Reasonably affordable - budget is $50K
Desire clear span on main level - no columns to ding my doors.
Solar water heated radiant slab - structure must be well insulated to make this work I want my tractor to be warm, but I don't want any more utility bills
Low maintance - siding it would be great if I didn't have to maintain the siding
Auto Lift friendly? How much clearance do I need to get under a car? 12 feet? Wifey might veto this one...

 

[dmccarty]

Hazmat,

When I was designing the house I looked at SIPs, ICFs, and plain old stick building. ICFs and SIPs did not work price wise in my area nor was the builder experienced in their use. So we went stick with 2x6 walls, OSB sheathing, plain old building paper and one inch of ridgid foam. The exterior is brick.

I STRONGLY recommend that ANYONE building a house or structure of any importance visit Welcome to building science.com — and read what is on the website. Then go to Building Science Press, Inc. - Builder's Guides and buy/read/study/use that matches your climate.

Lstiburek is a PE that wrote these books and what he says makes sense to me. Our wall details are taken right from his book for our climate.

We wanted to put in solar water heating for both domestic use and radiant flooring. In the end it was too expensive to do either. To do both would have cost us at least $7,000 on top of what we where paying to put in a heatpump and a wood stove. With the tax breaks that are out there today we almost certainly would have been in the solar domestic water heater.

With your $500 a month heating bill solar might make sense for you but I'm afriad you $50,000 budget might be a problem. You could always put in the PEX in the slab and install the rest of the system when there is more money.

We where able to orient the house so that the rooms we spend the most awake hours are on the south side of the house. With the large windows and the proper roof overhangs we get a at least 2-3 degrees of free heat if the sun is out. I think the temperature gain is higher but it depends on the out side temperature as well. So if you can get a south facing wall and fill it with windows you can get free heat. The concrete slab will hold that heat in the space.

For no maintanence siding for me means brick, stone, stucco, or a high quality vinyl. Our house is unusual in that we have brick on all four sides. In my area if you see brick its almost always on the front. The big company builders charge usery rates for brick. The brick worked out to about $5 a square foot on the house. And that includes have a good 20 cubes of bricks left to use when we build the garage.

One of our neighbors has a Cape Cod style house. I like the looks of Cape Cods and he has wood shingle siding. Well it looks like wood. Its red and is vinyl. For YEARs I thought it was wood. I went to vist him one day and after I knocked on his door I knocked on the siding. I was rough like shingles and solid but not quite wood. He opened the door as I was knocking on the side of the house trying to figure out what was up with the shingles. He gave me a panel of left over siding he had and this stuff is dense, thick and looks real nice. Much better than the usual stuff that gets put up in the McMansions.

Later,
Dan

 

[hazmat]

Dan,

Thanks for the links.

I'll definitely put the PEX in the slab, even if I can't afford the rest of the system....

Any info on the manufacturer of the vinyl shingles?

 

[scott_vt]

Mornin Haz,
Interesting post ! OK I relent, any garage/barn project tweaks my interest ! I really like Dans' idea on the PEX in the slab, offers lots of options down the road whether solar or outside boiler amongst others !

I have always built my own stuff, but only being at my Vt property on the weekends, it would be tough to do a huge project such as this. Have you looked at this outfit and there prices. LaValley Building Supply, IncStudebaker

You can modify wall height, upgrade to 2x6 rather 2x4 const amongst a host of other stuff such as windows and doors. Im at about the half way point on cash needed for this project. Take a look at the site. They come in one weekend and pour the 6" slab and the next weekend they erect the entire structure.

BTW Im thinking of a 28' x 40' with a devoted staircase to the second floor storage area rather than pull down stairs ! One more thing, I could probablly do the site work with the tractor to save some money !

 

[hazmat]

Scotty - nice looking "barns"

The issue with all the kit barns is that they usuall don't include:

Sitework
Footings (4' frost wall required here by code)
Slab (although this one does)
insulation
energy effecient windows / doors
electric work
typically installation is extra

That said - not a bad price considering it includes installation & the slab.

 

[hazmat]

Well I think I've found a firm to help me with the design process.

As an engineer, it is always hard to let someone else do the thinking for you, but this sounds like a decent deal.

Independence Energy Homes is a architecture & engineering organization specialiazing in "zero energy" homes. It's a bunch of recent graduates of my alma mater (Cornell University) based in Boston. Seems they can do plans & engineer the envelope & heating systems for 6% of total build cost. A quick google search indicates that this is on the less expensive side of architectural fees. They are familiar with the technologies and would save me lots of research time.

Thought I'd share the info. I might have to start a blog about this project...

 

[dmccarty]

Any info on the manufacturer of the vinyl shingles?

I'll go check the siding panel I have that he gave me. I know that my neighbor does not know the manufactuers name because I asked him years ago. Hopefully the name is on the back.

The idea of a fixed stair case is a good one. I have a couple designs on our CADD program and one common feature is to have a fixed stair case that is at least 36 inches wide. The landing in front of the stairs has a set of french doors that are 50+ inches wide. We have three sets of the same doors on the house and it is VERY handly to be able to open those doors and use the pallet forks on the tractor to load/unload directly into/from the house.

The doors are in the middle of the garage with two 9' bays on each side. Stairs are expensive in terms of money and space. The stairs should be allow us access to the second floor and provide enough space to open car doors without having to worry about hitting something.

We keep changing the second floor and some aspects of the first floor design but the placement of the stairs and doors is pretty much locked into place.

Later,
Dan

 

[scott_vt]

We wanted to put in solar water heating for both domestic use and radiant flooring. In the end it was too expensive to do either. To do both would have cost us at least $7,000 on top of what we where paying to put in a heatpump and a wood stove. With the tax breaks that are out there today we almost certainly would have been in the solar domestic water heater.

Later,
Dan

Afternoon Dan,
Do you have any price per ft costs on the PEX ?

 

[Cliff_Johns]

Approx cost for timberframe (frame only) is somewhere around $20/sqft. Standard practice is to put panels which are 6" of foam with chip board inside and out and foam them together to create deep, tight full skin wall. You can get these panels with other surfaces on the inside like pine paneling or drywall. The panels go on the roof too.

There is NOTHING like a timberframe barn. Everything else is a poor (although cheaper) imitation in my opinion.

Cliff

 

[dmccarty]

Afternoon Dan,
Do you have any price per ft costs on the PEX ?

Scott,

For better or worse I was going to use Radiant Heating Systems from Radiantec to supply the system. I just checked their website and PEX was running from .42 to .69 cents a foot depending on size and type.

I did not get a chance to look at the siding panel I have. Worked my tail off building a shed shelter. It started as a real simple project two weekends back and now had taken roughly $700 and two full weekends. And the siding ain't up yet....

Later,
Dan