Building Your Home w/o A Mortgage

[Bruehound]

From the cross section it looks like very little of your exterior walls are concrete. Just the thin layer on the outside and most of the guts of your wall is the steel skeleton and spray foam insulation. Isn't the spray insulation very costly per sq/ft? I wanted to avoid using materials like drywall and wood studs. I don't want to build a concrete home so it looks like a regular stick framed house on the inside. I like the outside of your house but it seems like the interior is like a normal home. Is it not a good idea to use the ICF blocks and leave a natural concrete interior. The more I look into your moisture barrier comment the more I'm curious about sweating and moisture problems. I'm in Michigan so we get the extreme ends of the weather spectrum. I just like the look of exposed concrete. Kinda like this

:

You are correct, the ferrocement is thin but very high strength. I've had service tech's from satellite company etc get frustrated because even their masonry bits were breaking trying to drill into the material. Yes, the house is more conventional on the interior finishing(though the floorplan is unusual and the adobe walls give it great warmth and character). I like the look of what you are going for, too. Just a matter of preference and what works in your area. I was building with design considerations of hurricanes and humidity. For additional humidity control, we use a whole house desiccant wheel dehumidifier. It uses solar hot water as an energy source to regenerate the desiccant material. There is a natural balance in that design in that the load demand for dehumidification tends to track closely with the solar resources available- i.e. longer sunnier days in summer when humidity control is crucial.

Cost of closed cell is not cheap but its coming down and varies by region. That is why we only used 2.5" and finished the cavity with sprayed in fiberglass. Anytime you use a depth of over 2" with closed cell it also will act as a vapor barrier.

 

[Ninja Homer]

This is what I'd like to build: http://www.undergroundhousing.com/

His construction methods are ingenious

 

[roho76]

Mr. Proenneke would have voted for RP.



If you have the land you can build for way less than $100 per ft^2. I would suggest taking a look at a bird building a nest...

All the materials are outside your door. Just work em. Don't pay for concrete, use stone for thermal mass or look into rammed earth depending on your climate. If you are building without a mortgage, then you are building w/o a loan. Forget the inspector, forget the code. The code is a racket and a standard for those that don't know how to build. Do you think vernacular architecture that has lasted generations would pass code? Building codes have killed the beauty in residential architecture.

Don't be afraid to add on as you need it. Let it take shape.

Lastly, I would suggest using windows and doors placement as your wind tunnel to cool your home depending on your lattitude. Air tight buildings for Air Conditioning is bad for buildings and you probably don't want to be dependent on it anyway.

Although I use power tools I can also build with nothing but hand tools and timber. I would be happy to suggest some methods for you to help you realize your goal.

You might be interested in looking at Thomas Massie's site:
http://massiehouse.blogspot.com/

Talk about making a house from the earth.

 

[FrancisMarion]

You might be interested in looking at Thomas Massie's site:
http://massiehouse.blogspot.com/

Talk about making a house from the earth.

Aha! "Thomas in Kentucky". It is a small world after all. Thanks for the link.

 

[bwlibertyman]

I really like the underground idea. I've thought about building a house into a hill. It is amazing that he built it mostly underground. Very cool. Good thread.

 

[Toureg89]

im not too much into construction, but being on vacation here in Morocco/Spain, both my family's several decade old 3 story house and my cousins apartment in Spain are built from what seems to be continoues slabs of concrete, and it keeps the buildings at least 10-20 degrees cooler in the heat.

being a Florida boy with one of those "cookie cutter houses", its a HUGE difference in comfort.

 

[Toureg89]

asked my aunt, and the wall is made up of bricks, with cement/sand poured on the outside.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

So I was doing some research on the steps one might take in the pursuit of building a home without going into debt. I don't want a "small house" either so you can keep those comments out. I came across a very inspiring article found here http://www.motherearthnews.com/Modern-Homesteading/2002-02-01/Build-Your-Own-Home-and-be-Debt-Free.aspx The guy in the article says it took him about 3 years which sounds reasonable if you have a spouse. Even if it takes 5 years, It would be better to sacrifice for 5 years than end up paying way more than you borrowed for 15-25 years.

Any thoughts, comments, or complaints would be great.
P.S. No "small house" comments please, the things are not practical or made for some long term living arrangements.

My dad wants to do this. Unlike most of us, however, he has actually DONE it, since he's a construction contractor. He has completely changed both houses we have lived in. He's a carpenter, so I have no doubt he's capable. The question is, how does someone who has no knowledge of construction do something like this?

What's more, he says he can do it from the top down, so as to create an initial shelter and then just make it so that it shelters more as he goes along. If you go from the ground up, you don't have a shelter until you put the roof on.

 

[ZzzImAsleep]

Yeah, I would have no idea how to even begin a project like this. It seems way too advanced for someone with no knowledge to just start to tackle on a whim.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Just buy an old mobile home. You could have your own house for single digits per square foot, depending on your local market! Seriously.

Division of labor. Why build it yourself, when people will sell you one at such a ridiculous discount, as if it were a broken used car?

 

[Kluge]

Start building it and don't look back. But if you are in a high property tax area I would suggest building it with camouflage in mind. A friend of mine lives in a barn/home and he saves thousands every year. Our homes are close to the same square footage but I pay over three times what he pays - we're in the same county and out of the nearest city limits by 3-4 miles.

TMike

That's absolutely great! The outside could look like a crappy barn, and the inside could be like a mansion.

I re-did the exterior of the house I'm selling, and the city came along and valued it higher than I'm selling it for. 8/

 

[tmg19103]

If you are building without a mortgage, then you are building w/o a loan. Forget the inspector, forget the code. The code is a racket and a standard for those that don't know how to build. Do you think vernacular architecture that has lasted generations would pass code? Building codes have killed the beauty in residential architecture.

Agreed. However, if you ever want to sell your house, the municipality can make you bring it up to code in order to do so - assuming they keep on eye on these thongs, and if not, a buyer may rat you out.

If you build way out of code, you may have to rebuild the whole house in order to meet code in order to sell.

 

[wistfulthinker]

My folks built their own house debt free. We lived in a tipi on the property during the summer building season. Dad did a lot of demo jobs to get materials. I think I spent a couple summers of my young life pulling nails out of boards. We had an outhouse for a couple years and the house is funky, but still in great shape 20 years later. We built in stages. Once the basement was done, we would cook and so forth in there and sleep inside during the winter. From a kid's perspective, building yourself in stages and from scrounged stuff was a blast. We always had fort and tree-house material. Our friends thought we were so lucky to have a tipi and cook so much over open fires. We did this in Alaska, where it wasn't always pleasant outside.
A friend's family put up a Quonset hut and insulated really well. They lived in it while they built a big house debt free in much the same way as my family. When the big house was done, they had a quaint guest house.

 

[PatriotOne]

I knew a couple in the 90's who bought an acre of land and then parked a motor home on it and lived in it while they spent all their disposible income building the house (which was most of their income). They had 2 young kids (6 and 8ish), 2 German Shepards, cat and hamster. It took them about 2 1/2 yrs (with a combined income of ~ 75k) but they ended up with a 2 level house around 2500 square feet and no mortgage. The home cost around 100k (doing a lot of the work themselves) along with their construction savvy friends) and was worth ~ 150k when it was finished. It would sell for around 250k today.

 

[Elwar]

When I was in my 20s and single I started looking for land to settle down on figuring I would be getting married eventually.

The plan was to pay for the land and then build a garage with a living space upstairs and also set it up as a two or three car garage but close off one of the spaces for a living area as well. I figured the price would come out to about $50k for the garage and land. I had almost that much at the time saved up.

The plan was to live in the garage and then slowly build up the house from the ground up one step at a time as the money came available.

Then I got married and all of that went out the window.

 

[roho76]

http://www.budgethomekits.com/plans

Found this earlier while poking around the net. The largest unit they make is the Texan (of course, right?) 3,000sq/ft $39,000.

 

[Kluge]

http://www.budgethomekits.com/plans

Found this earlier while poking around the net. The largest unit they make is the Texan (of course, right?) 3,000sq/ft $39,000.

That's pretty nifty--wish they had pictures of what the houses look like though.

This one: MacArthur » 1080 sq ft, at $18,790 is affordable enough to buy as an in-law suite and plunk down on your property.

 

[Simple]

Any opinions of the Earthships?

 

[mtr1979]

This family figured it out and discovered what is important. Interesting video to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y15dxUZN3s

 

[Kelly.]

Any opinions of the Earthships?

they are great if you can get free labor to do the tire pounding, but if you have to pay for labor it gets expensive quick.

i would rather build a rammed earth home, in the earthship style (passive solar / thermal mass). rammed earth lends itself to being mechanized (tractor bucket to pour into the forms, air tamper to compact).

as for the design, im not a huge fan on the indoor biocells, id rather just have the green house type grow beds in the front that i control the water to. other then that i think they are a good design, especially as it relates to mortgage free / self reliant homes.