House question

[rainbowbrite]

Hi everyone

I'm feeling a little bit in-over-my-head-ish. We are getting an almost 4 acre piece of land, and would really like to be able to put a house on it and move their because we think it would be alot cheaper than what we're paying now for rent. Potentially, anyways. I can't wait - I'm daydreaming about gardens and chickens and goodness only knows what else I might be able to talk dp into,

But first is the more practical matter of the house. We do not have much money, and would like it ideally to be $100,000 or less. Payments on much more than that would be more than we'd be able to comfortably handle. It has to be a decent sized house - we have 5 kids, and frequent house-guests. It also can't be too "off the wall" , dp is pretty mainstream.

Dp is in construction - he can do all the groundwork and everything for just cost. He is adept at every aspect of building a house, actually - so we won't really have any labor costs. We have been looking at log home kits, which seem like the best price...but heard that wiring them is outrageously expensive and time consuming.

So when all is said and done, and we're ready to move in, what do you all think would be our best bet? Stick-built from scratch? Modular? Log kit? Steel kit (didn't even know they made steel houses until yesterday!)? Or something I haven't come across yet?

Thank you!

[limette]

I've been looking at the same thing you are and for us here in Canada, I can't get anything for less than 150k not including land, so we'll be going with a preexisting house.

I have seen some manufactured and kit homes in the U.S that are dirt cheap. Log homes are going to be much more expensive unless you cut logs yourself.

[rainbowbrite]

We found a log home kit place online, and were considering two plans - one was 1700sq ft, the other 2200 I believe - both were $83000 for the complete kits, which include "the sub-floor, pre-cut log walls, windows, doors, complete roof system, interior framing, and T&G pine to finish, interior doors, locksets, hardware, loft system, and more." We figured with the groundwork and a basement and all the finishing stuff on no more than $120000 max, which seemed like a good deal, until we talked to someone who wires log homes

Our land is being given to us...it belonged to dp's grandmother; so buying a preexisting house isn't much of an option for us either.

[wallabi]

we have a small log house built from a kit that houses our bakery, and we love it. I hear you on the wiring issue - basically, access to the inside of the walls is a bit tricky!

BUT, some thoughts regarding the wiring situation. Is your dp able to do some wiring, or may be have connections to someone who could talk over the possibilities without automatiocally reverting to thoughts of how people usually lay out wiring homes? If there some way you can find out what is acceptable and what is not for code or insurance or such things, you might discuss, for instance, a design that included exposed wiring, limiting the paths of the cables to indoor walls or using the ceilings to house the wires. We live in a old house and the cheap (only?) solution to wiring was to make it all exposed wiring - we have cables rinning along the celing beams and down posts to outlets, which would get around the log house wall problem. You might be able to lay things out in a way that works for your family and yet doesn`t require so much going into the walls (be that exposed cables like we have or maybe limiting the locations of outlets to shared indoor walls, with none on the outermost walls of the house? maybe?) Or maybe you could do a lot of the wiring through the ceiling, I think, which would minimize the amount of going through walls you would have to do.

good luck!
sara

[kimmom]

Have you thought of cob or strawbale at all? There is also woodchip clay infill where you frame your walls in then use that as the insulation. Alot cheaper to build than standard homes these days. We are building a cob/woodchip clay infill passive solar home, we also have 4 kids with another due next winter. We are NOT building huge but I have seen alot bigger cob homes than our design. Our home will cost us about 80,000 CDN

[mattemma04]

My dh has picked up fliers from Menards,and I see nice house kits in there.

I think YURTS are really neat homes.I have read of some setting up a small yurt while they built their larger stick home.Then the yurt can become a visitor suite or whatever.

[iowaorganic]

op- have you considered buying a home to move onto your property? I didn't note your area- but it may be something to consider. Of course you will have to be pretty flexible in what you find that would be moveable.

[limette]

Originally Posted by kimmom

Have you thought of cob or strawbale at all? There is also woodchip clay infill where you frame your walls in then use that as the insulation. Alot cheaper to build than standard homes these days. We are building a cob/woodchip clay infill passive solar home, we also have 4 kids with another due next winter. We are NOT building huge but I have seen alot bigger cob homes than our design. Our home will cost us about 80,000 CDN

Where do you get plans for something (cob/woodchip) like that and how do you get it insured?

There was a house built locally in the straw bale/passive solar style and it cost just as much as a regular house, which apparently isn't uncommon.

How big is the house you're building?

[diana_of_the_dunes]

If you are open to doing a lot of the work yourselves, check out Shelter-Kit. They've been well-reviewed by Mother Earth News, and their kits are all made for owner-builders with no construction experience. Obviously with your DP's background you'd be ahead of the curve. Their kits come with everything for the outside shell, including windows, doors, and roofing. Then you can finish the interior any way you want.

My DH and I are considering building in the future, and we've found the folks at Shelter-Kit very helpful and friendly.

[lovermont]

We are in a similar situation and plan to start building next April.
We're drawn to round homes because they are more efficient and use 30% less building materials, so less waste (cost may be similar because most people aren't familiar with round construction so labor costs may be higher than they would be on a conventional house). We looked heavily in to dome homes (timberline and natural spaces were the two we really liked). These looked like straight forward kits and are inexpensive. Maybe too crazy for your dp? We were planning on putting the kit on top of a basement that we would have poured using insulation forms (ICFs, I think they are called but I can't remember for sure). In talking about it more we think we're now going to use the forms to make the whole house and do an octagonal shape. That's our current plan.

[blazer]

we live on 5 acres in the country with a Deltech home, they have pre fab framing kits that get delivered, you or your builder have to obviously install and finsih ..but something to look at.

http://www.deltechomes.com/