# Anyone build their own barndominium? Living quarters in a metal



## Weagle weagle!

I am looking for tips and suggestions from anyone that has built living quarters within a metal building. Hubby and I have decided we want to get out on our land asap and thisroute would be the quickest, most cost efficient way. We are have sketched out a floorplan for a 40 x48 x10 with 40 x 30 enclosed 3 bed/11/2 bath with a "ceiling" just over bed and bathrooms. Zoning and codes are not an issue. Thanks!


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## FunnyRiverFarm

I don't have any personal experience but saw a local real estate listing of a steel barn home. You may be able to get some ideas from the photos. http://www.century21.com/property/14900-woodbridge-road-32-acres-camden-mi-49232-C2137235474?k=1


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## BigHenTinyBrain

I think your location will make a really big difference in your plan- do you have cold winters or very hot summers? 
I always thought a quonset hut home seemed awesome.


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## AngieM2

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/ge...mesteading-questions/404308-barndominium.html

Here's a thread from 2011 that is about the same thing. Maybe you'll pick up some information from it.


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## opportunity

My husbands uncle has been building one for as long as I have known them they are planning on retiring to it in about 5-10 years. They used 1/3 of their shop but I'm not sure how big it is I would guess 25x50 for the whole thing. They have a man door and as you enter you are in the living room they have a nice kitchen off to the left and in the far back left is a bathroom. They have a loft as the bedroom, it really increased the space without much more cost


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## Batt

We did something similar back in 2002 when we first moved to the farm. We built a 30 x 40 x 10 ft shop/garage with a 24 x 30 x 8 ft living area attached. We insulated well and had no heating or cooling problems. However because of the metal exterior walls the insurance and real estate appraisals considered it the same as a mobile home.

In 2006 when my DW mentioned that "there would be a whole lot more room if there were only one person living here", I got busy and added on and additional 900+ s/f. While doing the add-on, I replaced the metal on the living quarters with vinyl siding. Now it is considered a regular home and the original metal siding has found new homes as chicken houses and other structures.

While our house still appears somewhat "unconventional", we love it. There is no building restrictions or code enforcement at this location. The only permit we had to get was for the septic tank, and then only because we are less than 1/4 mile from the lake.

By the way WW, a general idea of where you are located would be helpful.


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## Helena

How long do you plan to even live in it. have you thought of a yurt, a tent suitable to take an Alaska winter..an older mobile home. Thinking these would cost less than a new metal building. Or even a one room cabin.


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## Weagle weagle!

I am in North AL so not extremely hot or cold....but insulation would be a neutralizer anyhow 

We have pretty much decided this will be a permanent home for a variety of reasons including the only temp site would require separate septic etc due to distance. We had planned on mobile home until building a house, but I do not see any sense in it plus we need storage for tractor and tools anyhow. We have been camping there on weekends in a pop up.


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## Lisa in WA

Not yet, but I have a barn that we built for horses and no longer use that looks remarkably similar to this one. I see a barn conversion in our future!


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## tatanka

We did that just across the Tennessee line in 2001. We built a 40 X 60 concrete floor structure with wood studded walls and metal on the outside. We insulated all the walls and ceilings with extra to keep it warm in the winter and cooler in the summer. We made four bedrooms, a bathroom/laundry room, kitchen/dining room, living room, storage room and a shop space. We made part of the walls to be moveable for gutting in the future to have a huge shop space with two bedrooms, bath and kitchen area. We sheetrocked the interior and tiled the bath/laundry. We left it with 10 foot ceilings. We put in two window units for cooling. One of them was a heating/AC unit that we could warm the bathroom with in the winter. We used a wood stove in the dead of winter only. Was quite comfy.


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## ET1 SS

We live in a steel building.

60' X 40' with 12' eave and 14' peak. Basically a small airplane hanger.

I bought it as a pre-engineered kit. It arrived as a big pile of parts on a truck. I spent most of one year assembling it. I hired the foundation built, and I hired a guy with a crane for 3 hours to help me to stand up the four arches.

Otherwise it was a one person task.

I started in '05, and we moved into it in '06.


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## hiddensprings

We did this about 2 years ago. Its just hubby and I and we love it. We have all of the comforts of a regular house without the mortgage payment. We did 85% of the work ourselves. We have 2 bedrooms, 1 bath. Central heat and air, wood & tile floors, etc. I think it is about 1,100 square feet total. Storage was a slight problem because we moved out of a 3,000 sq. ft house. But since we spend so much time outside anyways, we totally down-sized.


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## Chad

My Parents did this for 3 years while building their home. They always intended it to be a shop so did not use extra insulation HUGE MISTAKE!! Hot as hell in the summer, cold cold cold in the winter. Also it was VERY loud in the rain and wind. 

Having said that, had they taken the steps to prevent that (they thought they would be done building in 8 months) they would have been quite comfortable.


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## geo in mi

Looks like it is just a matter of time before all of Alabama adopts a building code....you may want to check it out first.

http://www.builderonline.com/codes-...adopts-its-first-statewide-building-code.aspx

geo


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## Big Dave

Awhile back some one posted about this and they had pictures of what they did. They built the barn and parked a travel trailer inside. It was big. They will sell the travel trailer when they were done with it and be quit comfortable while fulfilling their plans


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## NamasteMama

A Quonset Hut might be a goo cheap option.


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## willow_girl

DH#2 and I lived in half of a pole barn for a year while we built a house. It was pretty spartan -- we did not put much energy into fixing it up, as all our time and money were going into the house -- but this is a totally do-able option, IMO, especially in a warmer climate. (In northern Michigan, where we were, that cold cement floor was a real bummer in the winter!) 

The tall sides on a pole barn might create headroom that is useless to heat and cool, though. I'd have it engineered from the get-go so you can eventually put in ceilings and an attic or loft for storage in case you need it.


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## ET1 SS

NamasteMama said:


> A Quonset Hut might be a goo cheap option.


Square-footage wise the quonset hut type structure costs about the same as a rectangular structure.

Once the shell is completed, then how you finish out the interior may be different.

It is harder to deal with the curve walls of a quonset hut.

With our shell, I installed twelve 6' wide triple-pane argon-filled windows, and eleven 3' wide opening windows. Then I sprayed 2" of urethane foam, and I hung 9" of fiberglass batting, woodgrain paneling and dark trim.


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## sdnapier

LisaInN.Idaho said:


> Not yet, but I have a barn that we built for horses and no longer use that looks remarkably similar to this one. I see a barn conversion in our future!


Wow!! How beautiful...I'd live in that in a minute!


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## Esprit

Your idea is certainly doable. I built a 20X32 workshop from a do it yourself kit (the company was called Future Steel). It took three of us 5 days to put together. The trick will be proper insulation. I'm in Ontario, Canada and our winters can dip down to -22C. I had the shop spray foam insulated. If you go this route be sure to degrease the inside of the building walls first or the foam will not stick! I am so glad I used the foam. It is super efficient. I use a 20ft Schwank natural gas radiant heater and it does not come on very often and when it does it only runs for about 7 minutes.

Todd


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## Weagle weagle!

Thanks everyone for the encouragement and suggestions. To clarify some of the heating ac concerns, the entire living quarters willl be enclosed, and we had planned to only have a " normal" ceiling height for beds and baths upon further thought though it may be less costly to just build the walls full height to the building roof.

Planning on going the spray foam route for walls and possibly roof. The standard building we looked at does not do plywood under the roof metal, should we plan to put plywood under the living quarters part? Also, we are planning a crawlspace type floor rather than concrete just for ease of any plumbing problems...anyone see a problem with that? 

Wish we could go smaller to save money, but alas we still will have 3 kids in the home for several years


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## Weagle weagle!

geo in mi said:


> Looks like it is just a matter of time before all of Alabama adopts a building code....you may want to check it out first.
> 
> http://www.builderonline.com/codes-...adopts-its-first-statewide-building-code.aspx
> 
> geo


 Yeah, I am aware of the codes, but they are mainly common sense building codes and the only inspection and permit in out county is septic


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## ET1 SS

Weagle weagle! said:


> Thanks everyone for the encouragement and suggestions. To clarify some of the heating ac concerns, the entire living quarters will be enclosed, and we had planned to only have a " normal" ceiling height for beds and baths upon further thought though it may be less costly to just build the walls full height to the building roof.
> 
> Planning on going the spray foam route for walls and possibly roof. The standard building we looked at does not do plywood under the roof metal, should we plan to put plywood under the living quarters part? Also, we are planning a crawlspace type floor rather than concrete just for ease of any plumbing problems...anyone see a problem with that?
> 
> Wish we could go smaller to save money, but alas we still will have 3 kids in the home for several years


Our home has a high ceiling. We like it 

Our shower stall is three sheets of plywood. So it is 8' high. We found a drain pan that is 4' by 3', which is large enough to allow two people to shower together with two separate faucet/shower-heads. So both people can adjust their own water temps.

I made a series of 8' tall X 4' wide X 2' deep free-standing: closets and cupboards. When lined-up in rows they form partitions, like in an office cubicle, to delineate each bedroom. With one closet facing left, the next facing right, etc; they give each bedroom a closet, and multiple large cupboards for clothing storage. These are movable, so at any later date, if my Dw decides to re-arrange the 'walls', she can do so.

The only rooms that we have partitioned off are the bathroom and children's bedrooms. 

Our home's 12' to 14' ceiling is the common ceiling to all.

Our roof is metal sheeting on metal purlins. No wood. It is a steel warehouse afterall. We have no attic. Our ceiling is insulated to R-60.

I see no purpose to plywood under the living quarters part.

Our ceiling is finished in light wood grain paneling with dark trim.

We wanted a full basement. But when the sitework contractor was digging he hit hard-pan for about half of it. So for about half of our footprint, we have a 4 foot crawlspace, the other half it is deeper.

We have wood flooring with radiant heat. Our woodstove sits in the center. It throws out a lot of direct radiant heat. It also heats water. The heated water circulates into a thermal bank in the crawl space. From the thermal bank we circulate heated water through our floor. 

Steel buildings need the support of concrete for the foundation. But they do not require a slab.

Due to our snowload requirement, there was a need for each side of the foundation to be tied to the opposite side. Which was done with rebar. Our county snowload code is 80psf, our state's highest snowload code is 100 psf. For the building's engineering stamp, they wanted to double this state's snowload requirement, so it was designed for 200psf. Which then required opposite sidewalls to be tied together with rebar. There is still no need for a slab.


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## Weagle weagle!

Hubby was a concrete finisher in a former life so we are covered on the foundation and he is disappointed that I am firm on the no slab part...lol. Obviously we really do not have much a concern for snow loads since we usually do not even see snow most winters...which is why I moved here fro,m MI  I am researching the spray foam insulation now as keeping a metal building cool is top priority to us. The high here today is forecasted as 91. 

I have recycled materials for many of the finishes that are freebies such as old barn wood for wainscoting, barn metal and large heavy duty pallets and shiping containers for cabinets and cupboards, etc. I'm pretty crafty and my dad remodels homes so he rubbed off on me building wise.

Trying to keep costs minimized since we are not selling our house for a few years due to market, we are going to rent it out and have to able to still cover that payment just in case.


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## ET1 SS

I agree with you on wanting to avoid slabs. Having a basement and wood floor offers a lot more benefit, as compared to a slab.

Insulation works for both heating and for cooling.

At one point, I had 400' of surplus pex tubing on hand. I laid it in the ground, to form a cooling loop. To circulate water through it to cool water, and then to circ that through the flooring, would help to cool the house. But I have never plumbed in the pump to make it work.

When comparing the price of buildings, in a square-foot comparison. Steel buildings do tend to be much lower priced, as compared to wood stick construction.


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## Lisa in WA

If we convert our barn, DH would like to insulate over the slab and put a floating hardwood floor down over it. (If I'm remembering correctly).


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