building a home

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My husband and I are of the homestead mentality. We are living in our 5th wheel (old and paid for) because of the cheap rent. He is a woodwright and starting his business. We are saving and planning to buy a plot of land to homestead on. We are looking for good information about how to design our home. We do not want to pay anyone to do this for us (no way- much more fun to do it ourselves!), but need advice for floor plans, etc. We will build it ourselves and want to do a half-timber house. My concern is the layout and making it economical. Any advice from such practical and creative people that read this magazine and this site is welcome!

-- Lisa (lgh@rmci.net), February 21, 2000

Answers

First we need more information. 1. What part of the country do you plan to build in? 2. What materials do you plan to build with? Why? 3. How large of a house do you need? Basement, 2nd floor, root cellar,etc? 4. Will it be solar heated, and if not, why not?? 5. What are your building related skills, and what kind of money do you plan to spend on it? I am assuming that you wouldn't be borrowing money but would build as you go, paying cash. 6. Have you given any thought to sources of water, electricity, back up heat, waste disposal (septic or composting toilet or outhouse), relationship of house to garden, livestock buildings, garage, workshop, etc?

I would recommend reading "The Owner Built Home" by Ken Kern, "The Well-Tempered House" by Robert Argue, "Shelter II" by Shelter Publications, and "Sun/Earth Buffering and Superinsulation" by Don Booth, etc., and also "A Pattern Language" (forget the authors at the moment). These are just a few books that I recommend to start with to get ideas about house design. See if the local library has them and other similar books, or if they can get them through interlibrary loan.

You really need to have the piece of land that you are going to build on before you can get too detailed with your plans, although you can start figuring out how much room you really need and how you want the rooms and spaces to relate to each other, even before you have the land.

Good luck and keep us posted on what you are doing.

-- Jim (jiminwis@yahoo.com), February 21, 2000.


Lisa, I learned the hard way, mostly by trial and error. Sure, I had a little knowledge. But I was too proud to admit that I didn't know everything, and didn't ask many folks for information.

I am now a semi retired builder, and I have learned a lot, but I wouldn't advise this method at all. Don't be too proud to ask. And read lots of books.

How to design a house is way too big a subject for any one person to cover; it would take weeks to do the subject justice. But it can be done. And remember, if you start feeling overwhelmed; a house, while it is a big project, is only a series of small steps. When you start feeling overwhelmed, just focus on what you need to do the next day or two. Don't worry about ALL the things remaining to be done.

Good luck; building your own home can be one of life's greatest joys.

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.net), February 22, 2000.


I always heard that if a marriage can survive building a house, it can survive anything. My husband and I built two (with no previous experience) and we are still together and happy! Building a home is no doubt probably the biggest job you will undertake but also very rewarding. It requires careful planning. I designed both of our homes. Look at house plans in magazines, etc. to get an idea what you want. Draw up plans to scale and mentally place furniture in them and walk thru them. You will make many changes before you decide on a plan. Don't over look plenty of closet space. Keeping all you plumbing in one area will cut costs. We put all our plumbing in inside walls to prevent freezing. A rectangular or square house is much easier and cheaper to build than one with a lot of fancy roof lines. Keep in mind the dimensions. Most everything comes in 4' widths, plywood, drywall etc. so keeping everything divisable by 4 especially the outside dimensions keeps cost down. Above all, read, read, and read some more. There is a lot to learn. We learned as we went. The house we are in now we moved in to the basement as soon as the block was up and it was covered. We lived in it while we finished the upstairs. We found that gave us more time than commuting back and forth to work on it. Also, don't forget to take a break now and then. It took us over a year to build our first house with both of us working full time jobs. This house took us about 6 months with both of us working. It is a big undertaking but certainly well worth it!

-- barbara (barbaraj@mis.net), February 22, 2000.

A year!? That's fantastic! We're going on our third year and there's no end in sight. But I wouldn't trade the experience for anything, I LOVE it.My one piece of advice is to build a little model of what you think you want. Make the pieces moveable, and as you refine the plan mentally walk around in it. I "walked around in" our house for a couple of years before we started building. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the plan. But there are always a few things... I would do things just a little differently if I did it again. Much luck.

-- Peg (jnjohnsn@pressenter.com), February 22, 2000.

All of the advice given above seems like good advice and I'm not as experienced as the others but I would suggest trying to avoid hallways as much as you can in your planning. To me they seem like a big waste of space that can be avoided if the bedrooms etc are acessible from the main living space.

-- john leake (natlivent@pcpros.net), February 22, 2000.


Lisa, I just thought of a couple of things to pass along. First, visit lots of "open houses" to get ideas. Start looking at rooms you're in with a critical eye. Are they spaces that feel comfortable? Nice shape? Big enough? Bright enough? Are the rooms in the house you are visiting, whether an open house or the house of a friend you are visiting, laid out in an efficient and pleasing manner?

Second, assuming you are in an area where you need heat in the winter, and,possibly, cooling in the summer, here is my advice for something to STRIVE for. Most folks will not be able to do everything I suggest, due to various design constraints, topography, room layout desires, etc. Try to orient the house with the long axis running east and west, with all, or most, of your rooms having southern exposure, with plenty of windows on that side. This will give you solar gain in the winter, when the sun is low, (by the way, this is for northern hemisphere; if you live in the southern hemisphere, replace "south" with "north") and still not pick up too much sun during the winter when the sun is high in the sky. The only time of year when there will be appreciable solar gain through these south windows, when you don't want it, is in the fall, when the sun has the same basic path as it does in early spring.

Also, avoid, if possible, windows in north, east, and west walls. The north walls won't pick up any solar gain at all in the winter, will be heat losses in the winter, and will actually pick up some solar gain in the summer, when you don't want it. The east and west windows will pick up SOME solar gain in the winter, but not much, and will pick up too much solar gain in the summer, and won't be as easily protected from the direct sun as the south walls are, because they are blasted by the morning and afternoon sun, when the sun is low.

In my house, we have lots of west windows, because there is an awesome view in that direction. We weighed the pros and cons, and decided to have the view at the expense of the summer sun. To ameliorate the problem, we have six foot and four foot overhangs and balconies shading these windows. This helps a lot, and we have only run the air con a total of between 15 and 20 hours in two summers.

Another pointer; if you are in a wooded setting, leave as many trees as possible on east west and north sides of the house. All of these help shelter the house against the cold during the winter. The beauty of having trees on east and west sides is that they don't shade the house much at all during the winter, as the sun rises in the southeast and sets in the southwest. In the summer, however, the sun rises in the northeast, and sets in the northwest, which means that the trees on the east and west sides of the house will give you excellent shading.

I'm sure you have already thought about leaving any deciduous trees around the house, for winter sun and summer shade.

If you can incorporate any shutters or other device to insulate your windows at night during the winter, it will make a huge difference in your heating costs.

If you happen to live in an area with low summer humidity, as I do, a whole house fan, aka attic fan, will enable you to cool the house down in the early morning. Mine is capable of dropping the interior temp of the house ten or fifteen degrees in less than an hour.

If you live in an area of high summer humidity, as I used to :( the attic fan can provide enough of a breeze inside the house to avoid the need for airconditioning to a degree.

If you can design an attached greenhouse to the south side of your home, it can not only enable you to grow plants, and heat your house during sunny winter days, but also acts as a buffer at night and on cloudy days. Mine's temperature is generally about halfway between the outside air temp and the house temp during cloudy weather, which saves a lot of heat loss along that side of the house.

If you have the money, earth sheltering can be very important in comfort and heating and cooling.

Have fun designing your house, and take your time, if you can. I spent over a year designing my present house, and I've designed and built quite a few houses over the years. This one's the first one I've designed which didn't have at least a few design problems show up in the finished product--mostly rooms that could have been bigger, and not enough closet space.

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.net), February 23, 2000.


Just thought of a couple of other things. While I agree that hallways are a waste of space, they can be lined with bookshelves, which makes them less wasted. Also, both hallways and stairways can be sited along north walls, where they can be buffers against the cold, and not take up valuable southern exposed living space.

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.net), February 23, 2000.

Lisa, I have to agree with much of what Joe says. We always check out the local tour of homes when we can, look over the house plans in the paper, etc., and my wife says she starts remodeling (in her head) any house we walk into. We are always sketching house plans ideas, and keep them in a couple of notebooks and in a file drawer for clippings, etc. So, if we ever decide to build a new house, we will have lots of ideas already considered and noted down, to give us a place to start plans for a new house to fit on a new piece of land. One problem that we have always had is lack of wall space for bookshelves, and in fact in the past we actually divided up a large room to gain more wall space for bookshelves. But not everyone has many thousands of books that they want to keep handy.

-- Jim (jiminwis@yahoo.com), February 23, 2000.

Lisa, I just thought of the book that influenced me more than anything else. "The Have-More Plan" by Ed and Carolyn Robinson. The book isn't very big, doesn't take forever to read, and all of it is practical information about laying out not only your kitchen, in particular, but the entire homestead. They had only 3 1/2 acres of land and did very well. It's an old book but still invaluable reading. I can't think of any of it that wouldn't pertain today. Countryside sells it and our library has it-maybe yours does too.

-- Peg (jnjohnsn@pressenter.com), February 23, 2000.

Wow! Thank you all for your advice! This was great. My husband and I are so pleased. I first have to mention to Peg, the "Have More Plan" was the book that first inspired us to homesteading. We love it! Brian and I have 3-5 years before we will have the money we need to buy our land and start building our home, so we do have plenty of time. Our location is not fixed, but perhaps in the Okanagan area of BC, Canada. Joe, you gave us so much to think about and some really great advice we never thought of, like the axis of the house and the greenhouse against the south side and putting the hallways and stairs at the north side. Jim, thank you for all the book references, we will definately get them and start reading. We also love visiting open houses, a way to keep dreaming about a better life (and not get bogged down with the daily grind). John, I like your idea about not having too many hallways. They are a waste in many homes I see. I do also like the idea of using them for bookshelves. We do have tons of books we like to keep handy. Barbara, thank you for the plumbing idea of keeping it stacked and indoors to keep it from freezing. I think with our current idea, we can easily rearrange it to do this. Brian has had some experiance building (but not designing) homes. Primarily he was trained as a shipwright and went on to work with wood in any form. He also has experience with other trades like electrical and plumbing. Together we will make this happen!! We have a lot more research ahead, especially about electric, heating and cooling methods we will use. We do not know much, but the resource of this forum and this magazine seem endless. Thank you all so very much.

-- Lisa (lgh@rmci.net), February 24, 2000.


We finished our house a year ago and it works! We started with the square feet we needed, then chose the dimensions for the best heating/cooling efficiency. I looked through plans in magazines from the grocery store and found a house the size and shape we needed in a low price range. We changed some walls and a draftsman specializing in homes drew up our plans. We chose materials for durability and lack of toxicity as well as use of local materials. By starting with magazine plans we knew the dimensions would be structurally sound.

-- Patricia Campbell (treemom_99@yahoo.com), February 28, 2000.

Lisa,

See you in the Okanogan (or as in BC: OkanAgan!). We have property north of Tonasket, and will be there in a few years. Great climate, eh?

Good luck on your house. We have built one house, and hope to do at least one more! I had my first optical migraine building! Watch the stress, but the fun's worth it.

-- sheepish (rborgo@gte.net), February 28, 2000.


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