Anyone live in a metal "shed"? (real estate, houses)

[countrygurl1]

i think i might know what you want i saw this sort of thing at the San Antonio stockshow.... it literally was a metal shed but it was fully furnished with kithen bedroom and bathroom... i am also looking for one of these and i can not seem to find the website and i lost my business card from them... but if you do find these buildings please let me know

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by jimj

Our friends were just about to buy a steel 50x60 shop and wall off some of it for living quarters until they found another house. So yes it's possible and in fact I do believe there was just a septic permit fight just outside of Kalispell last year over someone doing just the same thing.
Use spray on foam insulation, cover it with sheetrock and build interior walls, why wouldn't it work. Naturally you'd want to lay plumbing in the pad and wire the walls before insulating and pouring.

Watch out with the spray-on foam. It works absolutely great for insulation, but you may not be able to insure the building because the stuff throws out toxic smoke if it burns.

Plumbing can be rigged after the fact -- run pipes along with baseboard heating. In fact hot-water heat might be a good option if the concrete is already in place. You can get a system now that uses your regular water heater as the heat source for the house. Since the water heater runs all the time anyway, but you only use it a few times a day, why not use the heated water the rest of the time to heat your house, instead of "wasting" that heat? Anyway that's how my heating-and-A/C guy described it to me. I'd think you could rig most of it yourself if you're handy with plumbing and can get some radiator fins and vented panels to cover the pipes with (if you care how it looks Or run it through parallel arrangements of 1/4" copper pipe, that should radiate heat well enough.

Also, some home insurance is picky about inspections, and a former barn may not pass muster. And I know that State Farm will NOT insure a steel-frame house, at least not here in SoCal (I asked 'em). Which makes no sense -- especially in a termite and wildfire area, wouldn't something that's termite-proof and fireproof be less risky and therefore more desirable as a client??

If you have a home loan your bank will probably demand insurance. If not, and you can assume the risk yourself, then no problem

But as to doability... I don't see why not. In fact there are a lot of properties listed for sale in MT right now, that don't have a house, but DO have some sort of steel farm building that's been insulated and had living quarters built into it -- probably because that's very cost-effective, if you don't mind "living in a barn". (I certainly wouldn't, for the huge price differential. And actually, I prefer the look of a barn to the look of a McMansion or most modulars.)

I'd check with whoever does barns in your area... betcha they've done this before.

One thing about those steel barns, you can put interior walls wherever you want. No need to worry about load-bearing walls.

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There's a house not too far from me that started life as a cow shed of some sort. I've thought about converting my shop building into a house. Ain't like it's never been done.

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by SouthernStar

Here is one. They are in Arkansas but I'm sure you could find others.
Kodiak Steel Homes | Metal Houses, Prefabricated Homes, Pre Engineered | Home Page
You could buy the package and do it yourself, if you're so inclined. Or I guess you could contract out to have the work done.

Wow, the price for their houses is pretty good, even if it's essentially just the sealed shell. And they look good, and I'd bet would have a lot more lasting value than a modular. However, see my other post for potential snags in getting homeowners insurance.

I don't know how much the contractor crew would cost to put it up, tho, and I think you'd want someone with experience to get it right the first time. Anyone got any info on this? cuz they do look promising for a do-it-yerself tin shack.

Now that I see 'em, I think the A-frame down the road from me might be one of theirs. It's the right size and same pitch, which is a little steeper than average for an A-frame.

Of course if you're really cheap, as well as handy, old house trailers can always be found for not much more than the price to haul 'em off The roofs are usually goners but if you build a simple carport type thing over 'em that takes care of the leaking roof problem. Someone down the way from me took an old double-wide modular that had been burned (half the roof gone) and built a roof over it with big wide overhangs on both sides, and you can't tell by looking that it didn't start life as a new house.

As to roll-up doors... they'd be tough to insulate, and prone to leak at the base (and could get warped when it freezes), and I assure you, you'd regret it. I've been trying to come up with something that would let in direct sun and open air in summer, but could be closed up and insulated in winter, and so far no brilliant notions (despite having a tribe of architects in the family! Well, no notions that wouldn't cost an arm, a leg, and three teeth.)

[Jbechtel]

I saw an extended horse trailer at a home show once, fully decked out with wet bar, kitchen, bathroom, and living quarters made of steel.

[Redraven]

I knew a guy years ago who made a garage/shop out of an old oil field storage tank. It worked great!
Not long ago, they had a program on the Discovery channel(IIRC) about making houses out of old ocean shipping containers. They cut the window and door openings with a plasma cutter, then built a house in that big steel box. It looked quite nice when done.
Check your local building codes, and if the gummint will allow it, go for it!

[Broz]

I have seen many steel buildings or "pole barn if you will " converted or built for homes or part of them as a home. These were mostly back when we lived in Iowa and they seemed to work out nicely. We did build a steel sheeted building using lamiated 5 1/2" square poles and framed with 2x6's in a book shelf manner on 24" centers. This made it easy to insulate with 24" rolls and we blew in the attic area. Inside and ceilings were lined with white steel as well. Even with 12' ceilings and below zero at times it was easy to heat. I often thought it would be an inexpensive way to build a home. This was about 7 years ago. With a 6" poured floor the build cost was under $50K for a 38x56 building. That is about $23.50 a square foot and included a furnace and two insulated 10x12 doors with openers. It did not include interior walls, plunbing etc.

Not sure how this would hold up to the climate of Montana but it would be worth looking into.

.

[ElkHunter]

I used to own my own business building Post Frame Steel buildings. I built several of them with living quarters and they worked out well.

There are two types of Post Frame Steel. Turn Gert and Regular Gert. Turn Gert, like mentioned, is putting up glue lam posts at 8 ft centers. Then lay a 2x6 flat between posts on a 24 inch center. This allows insulating with whatever kind of insulation you want and it allows putting up sheetrock, paneling and such on the inside. Regular Gert was putting the 2x6's flat up against the outside of the posts.

On some of the buildings, we built both styles into the building (to save costs per customer request). The garage/shop/barn area in Regular Gert and the house or living quarters as Turn Gert.

Not sure of the prices today, but I used to build a 30x40 building, 2 overhead doors, 2 windows, 1 walk door. Turn Gert was $5,900 and Regular was $3,900. That was a lot of building for that price. But that was no floor, no insulation, etc.

At that time building a house run about $80 a sq ft. I could build the same size house, plumbed, insulated, sheetrocked, furnace, kitchen cupboards, everthing, ready to move into, for around $49 a sq ft. But again, that was a few years ago.

As far as holding up to weather? I built my buildings standard to withstand a 105 mph wind flat on any surface and a 40 lb per sq ft snow load. You'll never see conditions get worse then that. Least I hope not.

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by ElkHunter

I used to own my own business building Post Frame Steel buildings. I built several of them with living quarters and they worked out well.

There are two types of Post Frame Steel. Turn Gert and Regular Gert. Turn Gert, like mentioned, is putting up glue lam posts at 8 ft centers. Then lay a 2x6 flat between posts on a 24 inch center. This allows insulating with whatever kind of insulation you want and it allows putting up sheetrock, paneling and such on the inside. Regular Gert was putting the 2x6's flat up against the outside of the posts.

On some of the buildings, we built both styles into the building (to save costs per customer request). The garage/shop/barn area in Regular Gert and the house or living quarters as Turn Gert.

Not sure of the prices today, but I used to build a 30x40 building, 2 overhead doors, 2 windows, 1 walk door. Turn Gert was $5,900 and Regular was $3,900. That was a lot of building for that price. But that was no floor, no insulation, etc.

Excellent info, thanks!

8 years ago I poured 1700 square feet of concrete for $4300, SoCal prices. Dunno what it would be today or in MT, but call it double for a load-bearing slab and it's likely in the ballpark.

So we're still down well below the cost of a good used modular.

And now I'm thinking this tin shack thing ain't a bad idea at all.

[Habu]

Originally Posted by GLS

I see a lot of metal storage buildings for farm equipment, hay storage, etc.
I want to build a huge garage/storage area, two bedrooms, 2 baths, and one big area for a kitchen-living room-dining room, However, I priced a "stickbuilt" house and it's too expensive.

I know you can get these steel buildings with insulation. Has anyone combined living quarters with storage by just partitioning off some interior walls? I don't care what it looks like on the outside.

A few years back I was looking through the newspaper and saw an ad for a 3 bdrm 2 bath on 11 acres. When I got there, it was a converted metal building that looked shabby from the outside. But the inside was awesome. Rough sawed wood for paneling, peaked ceiling, cast iron wood heater and an excellent heat dispersion system. It had a huge metal patio cover than ran the length of the house and about 12 feet wide. The owner paid for the materials and I painted the building and roof. It was a great country home.

[GLS]

I would like to thank everyone for the valuable info. It's kind of funny. I started this thread about a year ago as part of my retirement planning. After a year of the stock market crash and plummeting home values, now I'll be lucky to save enough money to live in a metal shed.