# here is what I am thinking for affordable housing



## Bottleneck (Apr 22, 2014)

http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/aben-plans/7187.pdf

I have been sorting through small house plans under 600 sqft, and have even drew up a few ideas, but then today I found this and i think it is the best I have seen so far for a basic small affordable and easy to build house.

-its square, 
-sits on piers
-plumbing grouped together
-good use of space
-can be added onto in the future if needed 

only changes I have come up with so far isdelete the carport and porch, engineered trusses, swap the door and the window in the kitchen, pull the furnace and put the washing machine in its place and put a wood stove in the living room.

what do you guys think?


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## Guest (Jan 30, 2015)

Oh, that's a cute little thing!


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## pengyou (Jun 22, 2009)

Cute...but it is hard for me to offer an opinion because I don't know what price range you are looking at, how much sweat equity you willing to put into it, what your building skills are and where you want to build it.


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## Jo (May 11, 2002)

You don't say where you are located? The pitch of the roof should be higher if in snow country......boughtmanufacturehomeand it was 3/12 pitch and the snow won't slide off. Also need to know snow load for your area. When we build our new house we went a 5/12 pitch, we later put metal roofing on it. 
Hope you get to build, we love our place. I loved picking everything out. Relatives and friends help us build. Got pre made trusses. Since your doing piers, I would think that would be easier than pouring foundation. 
Get your blueprints in early because it may take time to go thru the building department and you don't want to waste good working days waiting on paper work.


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## Skandi (Oct 21, 2014)

I find it interesting how things are different in different countries, here you could not hope to build ANY house for the price you can buy one. the "average" house in this area is running at $1820 per sqm/10.7sqft (yeah yeah random number.. it's from the m lol) average house size is 107 sqm/1151 ft BUT we bought our house on the open market (it had been for sale for over a year for $13687 which works out at $110 per m/10.7sqft!

Good luck with your build and be glad you live in a country it is possible in! I'm so glad I do not live in the UK anylonger, there.. sure you can build the house, but no way can you buy land with planning permision to put it on without winning the lottery pretty much!


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## Bottleneck (Apr 22, 2014)

i'm in the nebraska panhandle in one of those mystical places that doesn't have building codes. and yep, I will need a higher pitched roof.

oh, and I run maintenance at the local school district, one of those "jack of all trades" type, but I also have a contractor (brother in law) and plumber (good friend) on my team. all of the sweat into it will be from us three and the occasional helper, nephew type.

I having been working on a material list, and have come up with the basic shell at just under 5k. once I am sure of the plans I will start collecting materials, and start building once I know i can finish the basic shell. I am going to attempt this without financing.


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## painterswife (Jun 7, 2004)

Snow comes of the roof and blocks carport and door. Not a good design.


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## Bottleneck (Apr 22, 2014)

There is a walkway from the carport to the front door, and the back door opens into the carport, so really just the carport, but sarcasm aside, I do see what you mean, but I'm not sure if it's enough to condemn the whole thing


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## painterswife (Jun 7, 2004)

No sarcasm. Snow coming off a roof over where a car or person drives in, is a hazard and a lot of work. The drip line also causes ice in the winter forming where you walk. You could bo much better.


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

Roofline would work fine here as we don't get much snow. I like the door from kitchen, carport makes a good place to eat and get out of the sun on hot summer days. BBQ out there, easy access to kitchen. Check out storage trusses for upstairs. We put a short 30 gallon water heater up there with a drain to ground. Gives a lot of storage for a small house. 8' width, length of house. Access through door in end gable under carport roof....James


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## Bottleneck (Apr 22, 2014)

A gable entry or moving the door from the front to the left and the left to where the rear kitchen window is. Also, I don't plan on having the carport. I like the idea of storage trusses though, never thought of putting a small water heater up there.


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## Jo (May 11, 2002)

That's good no permits. 
Seeing the house is square, you can have your roof sloop from any side.
Good you have help, we closed our house in the 1st year. Roof on and doors and windows in. We started with $10,000 but we had a cement foundation. ours was 26x34. 24' is better, you don't have so much cutting. I had bought a propane fake fireplace to heat the house. If you get some used materials beside new, you should be OK. Wood has gone up a lot since we built.
Get lots of books on building, lots of time I had a book in one hand reading to my husband how to get in done. My brother and wife came almost every week end to help us. 
I love hearing people doing their own house building.


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## TnAndy (Sep 15, 2005)

Reminds me a lot of our first house, also self built. It was 24x40 with nearly the same layout.

Using piers is no doubt the cheapest way to go, but I'm not sure I'd do that. A concrete block (4 courses or so high) isn't that much more to do, and will result in a much better house. 

The record low for Nebraska (just looked it up) is -47, both in 1899 and in 1986. So about once per 100 years. But my guess is zero or below isn't that uncommon. And I'd imagine you get a fair amount of wind out there.

That means a lot of cold under that floor. Not only makes it harder to heat, but you'll have to insulate the heck out of your plumbing or find it freezing quite a bit.

When we sold that first house above, and moved to our farm, we bought a mobile home to live in while we built the current house. Since I knew we weren't going to be in it but a year or so, I was going cheap, and NOT gonna 'underpin' it. Even though it came with insulation and a heavy kraft type felt under it from the factory, the first winter we had several below zero instances, and the water froze. SO, Christmas day, we're out crawling around in -5 degree weather, underpinning the fool thing.

We moved into the current house the next winter, on New Year's Day, 1985. It was sunny and nearly 70 degrees. Three weeks later, we had a record breaking low of -25 ! The weather can certainly change, huh ?

Also, in the mobile home....one night after we first put it in (which was September, '84), we woke up to the most God awful smell.....like somebody had set some tires on fire ! Nope....dogs chased a skunk up under the thing, directly under out bedroom, and it sprayed. If you've never had the eye watering experience of waking up to skunk spray within about 6 feet of you, it happens to smell a LOT like burning tires....ahahahaaa.

Point being, you'll about HAVE to 'underpin' the house due to weather and critter problems....meaning you will spend more than just the pier costs you're looking at initially....and there really isn't a good way to underpin things.....yeah, I know trailers do it all the time, but if you really look at them, there isn't much there. You can't simply attach something to the ground side that isn't fairly flimsy. And if you get into much, you'd have been better off to have laid a 'real' foundation to begin with.

SO solve the problem by going with a block foundation. Put some vents in it you can close off in the winter, and put a good, tight access door that will keep out the larger critters. ( it ain't THAT hard to learn to lay them....we did our own on the first house and had never laid a block before...you can't mess up TOO bad in a few courses).....you'll be glad you did.


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## MichaelZ (May 21, 2013)

Make sure you can insulate that crawl space somehow or you will some very cold floors. Even in Nebraska it can get pretty cold. Ability to add on is a big plus.


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## Bottleneck (Apr 22, 2014)

i grew up in a trailer house, so I understand the importance of skirting, and have been planning as such. also me and my brother in law have discussed packing the floor full of insulation, although I have thought about adding some storage spaces in the floor

plus I already own some trailer house skirting. and I have a dug greenhouse i need to use the blocks for!

the thing about the piers vs a block or poured foundation is that given time and a family (hopefully), i have another, slightly better (for aesthetics) spot that i could pour a basement, then slide the house over onto. then i can add on as needed. and since i actually looked into buying a 2 story house and moving it onto the property, this little place should be no problem.

and as far as heat is concerned, i have a small woodstove that i have considered putting in, but I also have been reading about a grid tied/solar powered ductless heat pump (the acdc12) in the one ton size. we used alot of the ductless heat pumps in afghanistan and they worked pretty good, the wood stove would help out with heat and give some "ambiance". Now if i used a small wind generator on top of the solar panels I would be set...

another benefit that i have at my disposal is that i own just about every woodworking tool there is other than a nail guns, but brother in law has those!


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## Gray Wolf (Jan 25, 2013)

If there is a logical direction you might expand, I'd frame the window(s) as a 3' door. Then you could easily remove the window and knock out the dummy wall for the door. Route wiring over the window/door now.


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## Bottleneck (Apr 22, 2014)

ok, guys finally got the property closed on and got some change saved up, so i'm returning to this.

anybody have good ideas or tips of some handy or forward thinking stuff to design in? i'm thinking about ventilation for some more natural cooling, and i have been thinking about splitting up the wiring so that half of the house could be wired for alternative energy sources, stuff like that.


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## Fishindude (May 19, 2015)

I think this is a pretty darned nice cabin plan. I had one laid out just about like this.


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## farminghandyman (Mar 4, 2005)

consider basement if water table allows,, even if it only out side access, it is not a lot of fun but if a basement floor is not in the budget one can do it later if you have an out side access,

you will have double the space and normally it is the lowest cost footage one can get, 

I suggest a full 8 foot basement, head room is nice,
(it will just make life easer) furnace, Water heater, plumbing and other.

one could use dry stack block, and the fibered stucco, (I my self do not like the dry stack methods, no real reason, but have always used mortared block, use rebar and fill the cores, and then water proof the outside, finish stucco is fairly water resistance , could use the fibered stucco on the outside, of the mortared block,


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## Bearfootfarm (Jul 13, 2006)

> I like the idea of storage trusses though, never thought of putting a small water heater up there.


I'd keep the water down low so when there's a leak ( and there eventually will be a leak) it won't be on your head


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## beenaround (Mar 2, 2015)

I've built similar before. It's small comparatively, but not. If you want a home that won't cost what a mobile home costs to operate (this is what your proposing, they are on "stilts") then it will cost.

For example I would use an insulation in the floor made for your situation called Roxul. It isn't cheap, but I wouldn't use anything else. I wouldn't use truss's, I cut my own rafters. I would build the exterior walls so they ended up a 2x8 wall. Picture 2 2x4 walls where the studs are offset. When 1 side is insulated the stud on the outside is in the middle of the insulation, A true thermal break is the result. I'd use triple pane windows (I have in the past). One job I did used those windows (a lot more was done, but). The year before they used 1700 cu.ft. of natural gas keeping the home at 69, the year after they used 600 keeping the home at 71 degree's. You do the math.

A smaller-ish home can allow a person to beef things up. Remember this, it is never cheap by the time everything is figured in even if you do it yourself, which I have.


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