steel building house revisited

Hi Everyone. I posted a while back about the 5000sqft basement and got a lot of good answers. I have a few more now But first some background and an update.

We're sort of in a blue-sky brainstorming out-of-the-box thinking mode now. We have nine kids and have decided that traditional houses just aren't cutting it for us. The space is used inefficiently and the layout is totally wrong for our needs.

When I say steel building, I mean a large factory made steel building shell with steel paneling on the outside and inside with 6" of insulation between them. We'll have some windows and doors to start, but will probably add more later.

We decided against the basement (yea!). We'll probably build some sort of concrete tornado room or something instead. Haven't given it much thought yet.

The size is now probably 50x80.

The idea is to get into the house as cheaply as possible up front, then have a lot of flexability and options to partition the space later. By doing it this way, we can pay cash for everything and add rooms or features as we have the money. No mortgage. And we would end up with an industrial loft type house with a lot of space and with our unusual requirements for a house.

So I have a few new questions.

First, instead of the basement I'm thinking we'll opt for an 18-20 foot eve height. The idea is that we'll have really high ceilings now, and add a free-standing second floor later inside the shell. I figure we'll start with some normal 1st floor type rooms, but make the ceilings in these rooms out of appropriate floor joists for a second floor, so like 2x6s or 2x8s, at the normal 8 or 9 feet off the ground. Later, I would just climb up there, put in a staircase, throw down some plywood, flooring, and whatever else to make a second floor. I think I'll have to treat these like load bearing walls. I can't transfer the weight of the second floor to the shell. So they'll have to be free-standing. Would I need a footer under the slab under all these walls? I'd like to have the freedom to rearrange the locations of the new walls after we've moved in. So maybe rebar in the slab instead of wire mesh or a thicker slab would make the footers under the interior walls unnecessary?

What if I made a post and beam type structure, footers under the posts?

I've seen these free-standing steel structures in industrial settings. Maybe that would be better? What about footers under those? Can you point me at someone who sells such things?

The second question is assuming a mostly flat grade to start, how much can I expect the footer and slab to cost?

And lastly, we're thinking of doing this in a rural part of northern illinois or southern wisconsin. What can I expect the well and septic to cost, planning for a dozen people?

From steelbuildings.com, I'm estimating $35,000 for the shell. So here

are the costs so far:

shell - 35,000 footer/slab - 16,000 building assembly, 4 guys, a crane, and a week - 15,000 (this is a guess) windows and doors - 10,000 well/septic - 10,000 (this is a guess) hvac - 10,000 (this is a guess) plumbing - 5,000 (this is a guess) electrical - 5,000 (this is a guess) general contractor crazy enough to do this - 20,000 (another guess) stuff we didn't think of - 20,000

or 146,000.

Does anyone have any interesting ideas?

brian

Reply to
brianlanning
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Yes! Abandon this idea. Making a pre-engineered steel building into a code-acceptable habitable space will take more time and money than you think.

You can accomplish some of your ideas (large open spaces) with wood construction that will be easier to install and easier to modify in the future.

With 50x80 you could very easily run a beam line down the middle and span the 25 feet with I-joists. 50-foot span for wood roof trusses isn't out of the question. Exterior walls would be 2x6 bearing walls.

You would then have a structure that can be customized and modified over time and still look like a house. You do want to sell this thing some time in the future don't you?

Insulation and wiring will be more easily accomplished in a wood building than in an industrial steel building. With this type of framing system you can even put a basement in all or part.

Reply to
Bob Morrison

there are companies that already do this,. I have seen flyers. I think you could get a lot more than you think for 150k. try to find a floor plan / kit from one of those companies. google pole barn houses

Reply to
longshot

There is a world of difference between "Pole Barns" and pre-engineered rigid frame metal buildings.

Neither one makes a very good house. Yes, you can turn them into residential structures, but that is not the purpose for which they were designed. Why do it? It is much easier to build with wood, especially if you intend to modify the building over the years.

I have worked on several pole building to residence conversion projects over the years. They almost never work out as well as promoted. This is particularly true if you want the building to be energy efficient. In order to work efficiently you must build energy efficient walls and ceilings inside the skin of the pole building. For all that work you could just skip the pole building and build a conventional wood frame structure. In the end you will have something that looks like a house and can easily be re-sold. Not many people want to live in a house that looks like a barn.

Reply to
Bob Morrison

Bob Morrison wrote:

How can I say this? I've made it my mission in life to ignore people who tell me I can't do things. Now, you may be completely right. If someone gives me good supporting arguments for why something can't be done, then I'm open to listening to their ideas. But my knee-jerk reaction to knee-jerk reactions is to simply ignore people. People think I'm nuts for making my own furniture, yet they tell me how nice it is and complain about the junk in the store. People think I'm nuts for doing my own car repairs, yet they complain to me about how much the repairs cost and wish they could get $50 brake jobs. People tell me I'm nuts for being a consultant and hopping around rather than getting a nice "stable" job, yet they wish they could get away from their dead-end job and make more money and have more freedom like I do. People tell me I'm nuts for having nine children, and for adopting five of them from three different countries, yet I have interesting life experiences and a big loving family. People tell me they wish they had more children, but never do because they decided they can't afford them. People think we're nuts for renting the house we're in now and "throwing money away" every month instead of buying, until I tell them how the $12,000 a year property taxes mean the house has to appreciate that much every year just to break even. Most people are confined to a prison of conformity, unwilling to try new or different things, limiting their options, because it's not perceived to be normal or proper. In short, my wife and I have built a life around walking to a different beat, thinking outside the box, doing things that other people think are nuts.

So why, specifically, shouldn't I consider this?

What if I want to accomplish all of my ideas? And who would wood construction be easier for? I'm not ruling out wood construction. I'm just considering all my options.

I'm sure there's a wood frame solution to this. Whether it's more cost-effective to do wood vs steel is debatable. The only advantage to wood frame I see so far is that I may be able to tie the second floor into the outside walls. But that may not matter.

Do I need for this to look like a house? What do you mean by "look like a house"? What does a house look like? Do you mean the cookie-cutter tract housing polluting our nation? Does a normal house have vinyl siding or bricks instead of painted steel? Or maybe you mean a "normal" house just like everyone else. If that's what you mean then I definitly don't want it to look like a house.

Houses today have an "open" floor plan. I don't necessarily want this. For example, I have to limit access to the kitchen. I have to be able to lock the kitchen and pantry. I need a kitchen larger than most. And I need a pantry the size of most bedrooms. I have three refridgerators. Most "normal" houses today have a large open kitchen in the middle with 8 different ways to get there. Look at your kitchen and tell me how many baby gates you would need to totally block it off. And are some openings even impossible to block? Could your three year old pull the gate down or climb over?

What if I told you that I don't want closets in the children's bedrooms? (oh, the horror!) I want one large combination closet/laundry room with three sets of washers and dryers. They can have dressers and armoires in their rooms if they need them. And if it's really an issue, we can add closets later.

What if I told you I wanted an outdoor bathroom? Or the ability to open an entire wall of the livingroom to a garden outside? How about roll my computer desk into this courtyard?

What if I said we hate drywall and don't want it in our house?

No. I don't ever want to move again. We've built several houses. And it's always a compromise. A compromise between what we want and what the builder is willing to do. And also a compromise between what we want and what has resale value. No more. We're building what we want how we want it. We're tired of neighbors or the city telling us what we can and can't do. We're also paying for it how we want. We're tired of mortgages and worrying about equity and whether we are upsidedown or not, being tied to this payment until we're 100. We don't get the mortgage deduction anymore anyway so there's no advantage left. (as if that's really an advantage)

I disagree. Insulation could be done at the factory. Or it could be installed when the building has no interior walls. I expect that all the conduit will be surface-mounted around the perimiter. I'll run it through the interior walls like normal.

We sort of decided against that in the last thread. But that decision was based on cost because of the size, not because of wood vs steel. If we made the building small enough, we could have a basement just fine in the steel building.

I was sort of hoping for ideas and not judgement.

brian

Reply to
brianlanning

But my

The man gave you good advice. FREE. If you don't want it, why are you still here? Looking for someone to agree with you even though you are wrong? As I said before, the nice thing about NG's is you don't have to take suggestions.

Reply to
Glenn

Okay! Don't take my advice. I don't care.

I do structural design on perhaps 20 houses per year and have done so for more than 30 years. But I'm no expert.

If you choose to build a house that has very little resale value in the future then that's your choice. I'm most certainly not going to stop you.

If you really want inexpensive, why not buy a bunch of shipping containers, put them in a stack and cut a few holes for windows and doors. That, in effect, is what you are proposing.

Reply to
Bob Morrison

Well, you've been given quite a number of reasons, some of which may have no bearing (if you really never have need to sell the property, for example, then resale value obviously is not a consideration. That, however, is certainly not the norm and at an age where you still have (apparently) quite young children, it would seem at least somewhat difficult to be able to determine that you won't possibly ever have to relocate). Others, based on experience of what it takes to actually make the necessary modifications, contra-indicate that starting with a _commercial_ steel structure would be cost-effective.

Again, however, if you (and your family who have to put up with the result) are willing to live in the type of environment you describe and through the inconvenience, nobody said you "can't". Suggesting alternatives is the same thing. ...

OTOH, have you asked the children what _they_ want? :(

Don't see that has any bearing at all on the question of what the outer structure is--so what _do_ you want?

But can you positively predict the future well enough to know you will never have to, want or no want? Seems only prudent to at least plan for such expediencies.

...

Well, the general idea is and judgement of the group is what you're thinking isn't going to be nearly as cost-effective as you say you would like to believe. Of course, again, if you're determined to live in a warehouse, build a warehouse.

Reply to
dpb

You're right. I should have just not responded. I guess I was just trying to clarify my position. I was annoyed because it sounded like he was being judgemental. It's like I asked, "I have this new (for me) idea, can anyone help me explore it?" and his response was, "Your idea sucks. Use this old idea that's been beaten to death." And it's true that the old idea may still have merit. But it doesn't help me explore the new idea.

brian

Reply to
brianlanning

You're like the Ford dealer telling me that Ford is the best while the Checy dealer tells me that Chevy is the best. You don't exactly have an unbiased opinion. You're promoting the methods and materials that are tried and true in your industry. It's easy and comfortable for you because that's what you know. It's not bad advice, and I'm sure you know what you're talking about. But it doesn't help me explore my ideas.

That's debatable. It depends on a lot of variables. If you watch some of these show that talk about unusual houses, you'll see some really strange stuff. A lot of people would never be caught dead in some of those houses. But others would like it a lot. So the market isn't really uniform. I guess you have to find the right buyer. In a normal tract house, everyone agrees that they're normal. So the people looking for a normal house, which is most people, would value that house. We don't. Some of the houses on these shows are really strange, yet are valued quite high. You can't just make a summary judgement about the value of a house you've never seen simply because it doesn't sound like something you'd want to live in, or look like the buildings you work on.

You saw that show too? :-) Actually, we considered that. We deciced against it because of the inflexability of the layout. Every room would be shaped like a shipping container. We didn't want to be constrained that way. It's a good idea though.

I actually considered buying four used single-wide trailers and arranging them in a square with a deck and courtyard connecting them. We would gut an entire trailer and make it one big kitchen and dining room, another for just bedrooms, and so on. The build quality of the trailers made us turn this one down. The shipping containers would work in this arrangement also. :-)

brian

Reply to
brianlanning

Brian:

I assumed you were asking for the best professional advice I could give. I responded accordingly. Your idea to use a pre-engineered metal building for housing is most certainly a "new" idea. However, there are reasons people don't attempt to make housing out of these type of buildings. If I didn't give you enough then here's a quick summary:

  1. Energy efficiency - metal buildings are not efficient.
  2. Modifications at some later date are more difficult.
  3. Egress - each bedroom or sleeping room must have 2 exits.
  4. Plumbing and wiring are more difficult than with stud construction.
  5. Resale value - you or your family will need to sell the building sometime.

Wood framed buildings have been used for hundreds of years because they are efficient, can be easily modified and if maintained tend to hold their value.

Are there other options to conventional stud construction? Certainly.

Think about SIPs, or steel studs, or logs, or some combination.

Here's a rule of thumb I use for commercial metal buildings:

Cost for the shell with slab on grade and minimal wiring and plumbing is about $75.00/SF.

To get the space to be habitable you should think about doubling the cost to $150/SF. For that kind of money you can build yourself a pretty nice house.

Reply to
Bob Morrison

I didn't ask for reasons for or against a steel building, unless he were to come back and tell me that the wood frame shell would be cheaper. He says this, but I don't think he's right. Everything I've seen says the opposite. Maybe he could point me to a modular builder who could beat steel building prices? I really doubt a stick builder could even come close.

What ever happened to people living in the same house for their entire lives?

What's the difference between comercial and residential construction? (this is rhetorical, i know there's a pedantic answer) Am I not allowed to use comercial type construction materials in a home?

And knowing whether something is cost-effective relies on knowing what the final costs will be. And that requires a good picture of what the final building will be. And I'm still trying to figure this out. He may be making assumptions about the types of materials or types of labor needed whereas I would do things like buy tile on clearance and install it myself. So who knows what the final costs will be. I'm just sort of guessing. But I think things like the well and septic will be the same cost no matter what. So it would be nice to have a better approximate price for things like that.

Another goal we have is to pay for this as we go without a mortgage or construction loan. Without a mortgage payment, we should be able to pull this off nicely. Instead of paying $3000 a month (plus $1000 a month in taxes) to a bank, we could put that $4000 toward new features in the house. A new bathroom here or a new window there. Whatever we want. And at any moment, we own it and owe nothing. Even if after 5 or 10 years of work, it would have been cheaper to build the same thing stick built from the start, I'd rather pay as we go. With the long term cost savings from not having a mortgage, I think we would come out way ahead.

To me, there's a huge difference between "hey you could build this building for bla% cheaper by using this method or these materials, go to this website or call this company to hear about it" and "your idea is terrible. I won't even consider it. mine is cheaper anyway. use what I've been blindly using for the last 30 years"

Yes. They like the idea. They don't care about closets, they're more interested in making the laundry situation easier and finding their clothes. All of this leads to fewer chores for them. And believe me they're totally on board with that.

By the way, there are millions of europeans who have bedrooms with no closets.

My point was that he was placing value judgements on a type of house that I don't plan to build. Who knows? Maybe he was assuming that I would drywall the entire interior of a steel building because that would be "normal". My goal here isn't to turn a steel building into a normal house. It's to create a unique house that fits our unique needs. I made the what-if statements to demonstrate that we're clearly not after a normal house.

Why would I *have* to? I don't want to live like that. And why are you assuming that no one would buy the house? You have no idea what the end result will be. We're planning to do this on 5-10 acres. The land will have value no matter what. With property values around here, I doubt it will be long before the land is worth far more than what it costs to put up the building.

I listed cost estimates, shoot them down. That was what I wanted from the original post. Some things like plumbing and electrical are impossible to estimate, but the well and septic, or the cost to erect the buildings, those should be easy to figure out.

Believe it or not, I'm not the first person to have this idea. If you watch the home shows on tv, you'll see one of these every 5 to 10 episodes or so. One guy had a steel building in kentucky with all-glass rollup garage doors. The outside looked like a warehouse, but the inside looked like a nice house to me. Another one I saw was about half garage to house his car collection, while they lived in the other half. They had maybe 6000sqft. There were a few others. Some were a little odd, but others were very nice places. And I think you could make the outside look less warehousey with the right choice of colors, good maintenance, and good landscaping.

I think you guys are constrained by an utter lack of imagination.

brian

Reply to
brianlanning

Hell that's OK. We think you are a nut.

Reply to
Glenn

thanks. i respect your experience.

I'd say it's unconventional, but I'm certainly not the first. I have half a dozen examples from tv shows alone. I'm sure there are many more.

The website i'm looking at says 6" of insulation in the walls and roof. I don't remember the R value off hand, but 6" in the walls is more than most stick built houses. After that, it's all about BTUs and air movement. We're also thinking about geothermal. It costs a lot more up front, but it makes the monthly heating and cooling costs really low.

hole in the metal and put it in. You don't need to frame up a header since the building isn't supported by the wall panels. And as far as inside is concerned, there's nothing there. Put the walls where you want them.

yep. that's planned in. Everyone gets a door and a window, just like a normal house.

Plumbing unfortunately will most likely have to be under the slab. But that's true for a stick built house on a slab as well. Electrical will be surface-mounted on the exterior walls which is fine with me. Interior walls would be stick-built so we can run the conduit inside them if we want.

Maybe. Maybe we retire in the building and give it to our children. The resale could be lower if the execution is poor. What if it's not? What if it's unique and worth more? Where else can you get an 11 bedroom house? I don't really care.

Have you ever left the country? Wood framed buildings are used *here* because of the natural resource situation. Many builders own the forests where the SPF comes from. I'd say they have a vested interest in using wood. In places like greece for example, wood framing isn't used at all, it's all stone and concrete. Marble is considered cheap and common, whereas wood floors are considered really expensive and high-end. It's all about what's close by.

We have. And we still haven't ruled them out.

That's making *a lot* of assumptions about what's going in to the building.

brian

Reply to
brianlanning

I also know metal buildings and all their attendant problems.

I'm not telling not to use a metal building for the shell of your house. I'm simply trying to point out that it won't be as easy or as inexpensive as you seem to think. If it were, more people would be doing it.

As I said before, don't take my advice. I don't care if you do or you don't. Just don't complain that it doesn't match your pre-conceived notions about what you want to do. If you have your mind already made up, then don't ask for advice. It's that simple.

Reply to
Bob Morrison

I don't think he said the shell would be cheaper but that by the time you finished converting the metal to a compliant structure it would be at least equivalent, so why not start the other way?

prices? ...

IIRC, there were a couple of modular builders and metal-for-residential builders provided in the previous thread.

...

The Industrial Revolution? :)

IF (the "big if") you can make your living in one place and be 100% assured of that in a changing world, maybe you can, too. It's only been suggested that the prospect is worth serious consideration.

The big difference in the type of building you're speaking of (or at least I think you are) is that for the size to meet occupancy codes is going to require a bunch of openings and other modifications not present in the (priced) shell. I agree w/ Bob those retrofit costs are going to be quite a bit higer than you're estimating. (One thing that comes to me is the elsewhere-mentioned egress rules--to do that in a building the size you've mentioned essentially means the bedrooms will have to line the exterior walls, leaving a big hole in the middle. Granted a large family is going to need a significant amount of room, but the big rectangle doesn't seem to make for the best layout.)

Well, the same thing is true on this end...without a whole lot more in specifications, it's essentially impossible to price materials and labor.

...

Well, I don't know how you're going to get the taxes to disappear, so that's $1000 that's not going to be available...

What this neglects is with a construction loan, you have the money to actually build the house--where's that going to come from, otherwise, unless you have deep pockets? ...

...

If you've been around a.b.c for any length of time, you should by now have come to the awareness that the fella' that gave you the advice is far more astute than the average bear and doesn't respond to anything here off the cuff. If he has advice, you can rest assured it's based on real world experience.

As noted, there are modular home builders of both conventional materials as well as some who do metal buildings w/ residential use in mind. I'd seek some of them out. If you're really wanting to explore the off-the-beaten-path options, there's the straw house, earth berm, poured, etc., etc., ... Each has some strengths (and quite a few disadvantages). There is a reason the conventional frame house continues to be the leader by far in the US and it isn't because it's the most expensive possible alternative. On the comparative costs of the TV-show demo houses and the off-beat things in many of the magazines, a great percentage of the ones I've seen have had significant subsidization in their construction from one or more sources.

Granted, but it doesn't _necessarily_ make it convenient... :)

...

I don't know what "like that" means, but--

See above...if you can provide a living for you and the family where you are, no problem. Not everyone can do that without having to relocate (at least to the level required/desired, obviously one can subsist on minimum wage virtually anywhere but not with a large family). As for resale, it would mostly depend on what you finally ended up with, what the local market actually is (a highly populated area would be a lot less risky than rural, simply because there are more possible buyers), and within those generalities the immediate market trends. In general, for something the size you're talking of, the market is going to be pretty small to begin with one would suspect. If you're in a fast-growing area, you're right that it's possible the land could become valuable enough somebody would by it simply for the land itself irrespective of what's on it. Whether that would occur by the time circumstances changed is anybody's guess. Again, it's something for consideration, not a hard and fast rule.

...

...

None of it is possible to really "shoot down" with hard figures as there is simply far too little in the way of specifications to do more than generalize. Bob has given $/sf numbers from his experience for his area. The only way to really get comparative costs is to actually have at least conceptual designs and essentially go through the equivalent of what the bid-making process would be for a contractor as if you were the gc.

Reply to
dpb

I think it depends on how you structure your life. Conventional wisdom is that your house is "good debt" and "your most valuable asset". (I contend that no debt is good debt and your house is a liability, not an asset.) So most people go out and get a big mortgage because it's good for your taxes. This ties them to a certain job or area. If the factory closes or something happens to your job, you suddenly have to move in order to follow the dollars. Maybe you can't afford the mortgage anymore. I'm not setup that way anymore. We have no debt at the moment and the though of taking on a mortgage is killing us. So we're thinking about other alternatives to the standard way of doing things. This is just a thought exercise to see if we can come up with an interesting house and an interesting way to get it. We're also planning a location that gives me access to several markets. And regardless, our expenses are low enough that I can do a lot of things and be just fine.

When we finished the basement in our last house, we were allowed to make as many rooms as we wanted, but if we wanted to call them bedrooms, we had to have the egress window. Most of the building code seems like common sense to me. So our plan was to have normal windows in all the bedrooms anyway, just more bedrooms. Before they're there though, they wouldn't be bedrooms. Just open space. So there wouldn't be a need for egress windows since there would be many other ways to get out of the big area.

I put together a design in visio laying out all the interior walls and what would fit where. The bedrooms do line all the exterior walls, and they ended up being about 12x14 which is normal for the houses in this area anyway. That did make sort of a large livingroom type area in the middle, but it wasn't that much bigger.

I agree. But some things should be fixed cost or easy to estimate. Things like the well and septic or the cost of pouring the slab.

Where we're going doesn't have the huge tax. But where we are now does. That's why we didn't buy a house here.

No construction loan. We'll have to save for about a year, maybe two.

That's probably true. But I have a number of sources contradicting things he said. Who's right? Probably both are right depending on the location and a thousand other variables.

They just use armoires and other furniture instead of closets.

living such that it's possble to be forced to move because of money.

(snipped stuff about market values)

We're considering all the possabilities. We're just more focused on what we want this time since the plan is to stay there long term.

I was hoping for things like estimates for digging wells where we are. Or how much is concrete in lower wisconsin? How many dollars a square for flatwork? How thick should the slab be? When are footers required under load bearing interior walls? Did you hear about this or that product, or see that show, or see that website about a house that's similar? Or talk about types of insulation that would work, or what people did in their shops. Or building manufacturers who have done this before, or who to stay away from. Or how thick the steel should be. Things like this. Instead I got something entirely different. None of it wrong, just not what I was looking for.

brian

Reply to
brianlanning

Always? I'm not an engineer, but the basic idea is that the load ultimately has to be transferred to the soil beneath the foundation. So if your interior load bearing wall is to transfer that load down, it will need a footer to spread the load out over the soil.

Cheers, Wayne

Reply to
Wayne Whitney

Why build a tornado room when you can build a tornado proof house at about the same cost as stickframe? What happens if a tornado comes along at night and you're not sleeping in the basement? As long as you're thinking out of the box look at these:

Monolithic Domes. The ultimate in strength, low maintenance, energy efficiency.Virtually fireproof, tornado proof, hurricane proof, earthquake proof.

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AI Domes. I'm building one of these in Norwalk, CT. Most of the benefits of Monolithic Domes at 75% the cost.
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Fiberglass. Cheap, no maintenance, most of the benefits of the above.
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Reply to
solarsell

You are asking for an engineered design. I don't give that advice away for free since that's what I do for living.

Reply to
Bob Morrison

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