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Ask HN: Have you built a house?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you built a house?

#221

Post by alpinemeadow »

lh7777 wrote: post #115
alpinemeadow wrote: post #86

Hi, I build two homes in WA state in a rural area (more on this later) while I was working as a webmaster and all around sysadmin for a small wood distributor co. First house: 2600sq ft, Full size basement with 2 stories on top of a traditional timber frame structure, wrapped in S.I.Ps (structural insulated panels). We had plans drawn by architects and we went BIG. I ended up acting as the general contractor as the g…

I'd be very interested to hear more about your 2nd house experience as I'm currently considering building a similar-sized house using SIPs in rural Washington state. Ideally, I'd use a GC (if I can find a good one!) to get the building dried-in and then do the bulk of the finishing work myself. Do you have a recommendation for a SIP vendor?

Hi, this was back in 2009 and we used Insulspan, would imagine they are still around but you should check.

The good thing was that we used their structural calculations on the wall and the three beams that held the roof panels to have an Engineer stamp the plans at a reduced price (he simply checked that their calculations were OK). The RASTRA blocks to do the perimeter foundation was a great solution as we did the floor with OSB I beams, very fast and cheap!

Re: Ask HN: Have you built a house?

#222

Post by openfuture »

jm_l wrote: post #55
openfuture wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you recommend resources for the topics you mention as good to learn?

My landlord's son-in-law was telling me about his adventures building a house. He seems very capable and takes on a general philosophy of "this is actually not that hard" which makes everything seem more accessible. He's been blogging about it at http://www.savingsustainably.com and you can see the whole process up until now (house is still under construction, I believe).

Thanks that's really useful!

Re: Ask HN: Have you built a house?

#223

Post by openfuture »

koliber wrote: post #9
openfuture wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you recommend resources for the topics you mention as good to learn?

I moved to Poland and built a house there. I can recommend some Polish-language resources here. Where are you planning on building the house?

Ah, I'm not the op but I'd like to build a house some day, as of now Africa feels like a likely suspect.

Re: Ask HN: Have you built a house?

#224

Post by gwbas1c »

mmsimanga wrote: post #186
gwbas1c wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a construction technique is unusual in a particular area, it's usually unusual for a good reason - cost or impracticality or both Or it's new technology. Concrete has a lot of heat mass, which means that it can be a way to build a lower-energy home. In my case, heat pumps are new technology where I live. Also, some contractors just don't get it when you ask them to put a switch somewhere or an outlet at a partic…

Back home I noticed contractors continue to only one or two electric plug sockets per room. This may have been fine 20 years ago but the number of electrical devices people have has really gone up. A plug socket only adds a couple of dollars to the cost but adds so much convenience in the long run. Its the sort of thing you have to engage you contrator on.

No... It's just what happens when the contractor refuses to write things down and you need the house. I couldn't raise a stink about details that I normally raise when I can slow something down until it's done correctly.

Or, to put it mildly, in this part of the world, people just refuse to pay their contractor until little details are fixed.

Re: Ask HN: Have you built a house?

#225

Post by briffle »

I have never seen an autonomously built concrete house, but building with ICF forms is basically like stacking giant Styrofoam legos, and the pouring concrete in the middle. And insulation values of R40 are common! There was an interesting blog series to follow from Ana White about building an ICF home in Alaska for their moms.

http://www.ana-white.com/2013/03/momplex/building-momplex-ic...

Re: Ask HN: Have you built a house?

#226

Post by joconnor7113 »

Hello! I have built my own house from scratch. I worked with a couple of friends on the weekends for about 2 years building it. I put together a YouTube series documenting the whole process. I am not an expirenced builder, we just figured it all out as we went along. The house is about 1000 square feet with 18 foot ceilings in the living room. As mentioned by others in this thread keep the design simple such as a single roof line. Consider your HVAC need well ahead of time as this nearly bit me later. Also keep plumbing out of exterior walls. Here is a playlist of the build -http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8s_XcXa7A6z2Je2v56Xjp...

Re: Ask HN: Have you built a house?

#227

Post by koliber »

koliber wrote: post #193
libria wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you spout that last paragraph off the top of your head? That is a staggering bullet list that I suspect has several layers of unwritten sub-bullets. I have a whole new respect for home builders.

I looked around my house and tried to remember the decisions I needed to make along the way. Some things did not apply, like seismic considerations. Once you've built a house, you realize that every single little thing you see, and every thing you don't see because it is covered, involved a decision about technology, materials, crew, method, minor adjustments, and sometimes fixups. I mean, EVERY ONE. Each square inch…

You can build an app that allows you to post 140 character messages on a feed in a couple of hours of work. Building Twitter took years, countless man-hours, and a mind-boggling amount of money.

What kind of house do you want to build?

Re: Ask HN: Have you built a house?

#229

Post by gmiller123456 »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #89
gmiller123456 wrote: post #25

While I haven't built a house, I have built a few smaller structures (3 astronomical observatories, several sheds and gazebos, decks). My main advice would be to give the permitting process a lot of attention before starting. You might be required (or better off) to design the whole thing before starting. To me, it seems easier to build and design in stages, like building the whole outer structure with only a rough i…

For someone interested in building a shed (or many sheds) would you recommend something smaller than 25'x20'. Is post and beam construction a poor choice too?

20' is wider than any shed I've built. Two of the observatories were wider and we used trusses on those. I am far from a structural engineer and mostly based my plans off of others'.
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