Steel house

JazzDad · Dec 1, 2004

..."use $50 to $60 a square foot as a general rule of thumb"

Eddie, when was that? 1965? We are on the last legs of ours, and it's closer to $90 per square foot. fun, fun, fun

As mentioned earlier, check the availablity and cost of insurance for any building that is not "conventional".

EddieWalker · Dec 1, 2004

JazzDad

Please don't take this wrong, cause I have no idea of what your doing on your house. I'm a builder, but mostly do remodels and additions.

It's real easy to run up the cost of building a house just relying on a contractor and what he charges for material and labor. Subs will pad prices if you let them, but I'm not accusing anybody of anything. You have to know the going rates for your area before building to lock them in at the going wages.

Also location has allot to do with final costs. I've worked on homes in California that cost well over $250 a foot and the owner building the houses thought he was gonna loose money selling for under $600,000.

In my area of East Texas, most new homes sell for a profit at $65 a foot. Really nice homes with granite counters and stainless appliances are still under $80 a foot.

Custom homes, unique situations and worst of all, changes once you start, all add up to huge dollars in your finished product. Resale almost becomes impossible on allot of these homes because of how much you put into them and what the compition is building homes for.

Funding is strictly based on your personal finances and credit history. The bank doesn't consider resale in their approval of these homes like it does on spec homes built to sell for a profit.

Another consideration is going up as opposed to single story. That second story will add around $10 a foot to everthing you build upstairs.

Sorry for the confusion. My prices are from this year and only months old. In fact lumber is dipping in price right now and that should lower material costs considerably, especially on deckig and siding.

sendero · Dec 1, 2004

Thanks Eddie for an informative post.

I probably didn't clarify it well in my initial post, but I'm not talking about a "steel framed home", which as far as I can tell is no real cost savings. I am talking specifically about using an "industrial" or "farm" building as a house.

Many of these have "clear span" interiors so once you put up the building you can layout the inside any way you want. I like that. The wife has already ordered a piece of home-design software that should suit our needs for coming up with a workable interior layout. She used to work for a home builder for a time and so has some good practical knowledge in this area.

There are lots of vendors of these types of buildings in the area, Mueller has a good reputation around here and they are close by.

I'm not trying to dodge taxes or anything, I just want a decent sized home without spending a fortune, and this seems like a good way to do it if you don't really care about how it looks on the outside /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

And I do have some practical concerns, such as how to insulate, whether it is possible to put window and doors wherever you want them, and things to worry about /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Bird · Dec 1, 2004

I've always thought that was the kind of home I'd like to have, Billy, big enough to have home in one end and the shop in the other, so I could just go out into the shop anytime without getting out in the weather.

( once you put up the building you can layout the inside any way you want )

Well, almost anyway. Since it would be built on a concrete slab (at least that's the way I'd want it), you need to plan a little bit in advance for plumbing in or under the slabe. That's the way we built a fire station for the Navarro Mills Volunteer Fire Department. The contractor set the forms for the slab, one of our members roughed in the plumbing, then the contractor did the slab, erected the building with three overhead doors for the trucks, and one walk door. Then we went in and built the interior walls, bathroom w/shower, kitchen with the usual appliances, and an office.

sendero · Dec 1, 2004

Well, that's pretty much what I have in mind. One end of the building will be a shop/garage and the other (bigger /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif) end the house. I will put the whole thing on one slab, under one roof.

In some ways I'd prefer to have separate buildings (perhaps spaced fairly close with a covered walkway) but I'm pretty sure when I total up the cost of doing it both ways I'll be going with the single-building approach /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

Bird · Dec 2, 2004

Oh no, Billy, you've got it backwards; the bigger end would have to be the shop. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Jimbrown · Dec 2, 2004

One of my neighbors has exactly what you describe. I am not sure how big the building is but at least 40 X60 bigger I think. The inside is all insulated with fiberglass batting and either paneled or sheet rocked. Once inside you can not tell it rom a regular house. He built the ceiling on 4x4 exposed beams and has an upstairs loft. He built a covered poarch completly around the structure. It very closely resembles what would be called a territorial style house.

Libertine · Dec 2, 2004

sendero:

three options I've considered 1) conventional home on slab 2) double-wide on slab or 3) industrial steel building on slab 

I'd like to suggest 4) - build something really unique, a work of art to live in. Something like a Frank Lloyd Wright usonian design. These are "fairly" inexpensive for what you get. I don't know how to describe being in one, but there is a constant play of light, depth of vision, "surprise" as you move about. I live in a cheapened, bastardized FLW usonian where his features were copied but without the full impact of a real one. Central masonary core for untilities and fireplace, low roofs (no attic or basement), wide overhangs (mine are 4' on one side), clerestory windows in all rooms, in floor radiant heat. I have spent hours in real ones and they offer a sense of both peace and excitment (if that makes any sense). Anyway, I am enclosing some refs to sites that you can get a little idea of his stuff. His basic philosophy was to build to a "human" scale where the sense of space creates the building, not the building creating the sense of space.

Good introduction to FLW (click on images)

Here's one you can rent (with pics)

From a PBS web page

And another on FLW

JEH

sendero · Dec 2, 2004

It's funny you should mention this because I'm quite familiar with and fascinated by the usonian style of home.

It's just that I doubt I could do much of the work myself and therefore costs would be high.

But I'm still at the dreaming phase of the project so it won't hurt to think about it /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

sendero · Dec 2, 2004

( Oh no, Billy, you've got it backwards; the bigger end would have to be the shop. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif )

Bird, you seem to forget (or missed) that the wife is going to do the layout /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I have requisitioned a preferred 800 sf garage/shop, down to a bare minimum of 600 sf.

I'll just have to live with it /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif