8 ms·

Build a house for less than $5000

280 points by mambodog 15y ago

Retric 15y ago
+1,000- 1500 man hours @ say 15$ / hour = a total of around 20,000 - 27,500$ + land costs. Which, is still great for such a cool house IMO.
roel_v 15y ago
What bugs me about projects like this, is that they're being presented as 'sustainable' while they're the antithesis of that. If everybody would want to live like that, there wouldn't be enough room, let alone large, undisturbed areas for forests or agriculture; plus this house may have cost the builder only 5000 pounds (if you don't count the land), but that's only possible when it's a one-of-a-kind project. If you'd have to take into account the supply network needed to build a house like this, and live in it, to a reasonably comfortable standard (meaning, at the very least: warm, dry, no vermin inside, access to sewer and running water), it would become a lot more expensive, if not downright impossible.
- anthonyb 15y ago
  I get the room part, but it cost him 5000 pounds because he built it out of logs and straw bales. There's not really a massive supply network needed for that sort of thing. Also, your idea of a decent house is (obviously) not necessarily his idea of a decent house (eg. he has a composting toilet), but it looks pretty warm and dry and vermin free to me.
  - shortlived 15y ago
    roel_v is saying that a house like this does not scale in terms of production, materials and land required when everyone would be building one.
    - dodedo 15y ago
      anthonyb is saying that logs and stray bales are available in large quantities. And he's right, there's no issue of scale here, other than labor. I have family who have built straw houses and they're cheap, straw is very plentiful, and you really can't tell the difference from a traditional drywall/fiberglass insulation home (it wasn't stylized like this one). The only thing I see being an issue with the house from the article is the composting toilet. However, running a sewer to this style of house is no different than running a sewer to a traditional house.
      - latch 15y ago
        It's more than just the building material. I live in a 65 story building..8 units per floor (I'm sure it thins out near the top though). How many people per sqft of land do you think we take? How much would be taken by free-standing (single) homes? How much do you think we save in heating and cooling given that only 2 out of 4 walls are exposed (and in some apartments, it might be 1/4)? If I wasn't tired, I'd look it up, but I have to imagine that apartment-style "dense" living, is way more sustainable than almost any type of house.
        onemoreact 15y ago
        I have seen a few studies that suggest New York City is the most environmentally friendly place to live in the US. But, mostly it comes down to transportation costs. And being that close to a harbor is actually a huge net gain.
        dodedo 15y ago
        It seems your issue is with the concept of single family homes and urban sprawl, not this particular method of building. That's a bit of a different issue -- many people don't want to live in the middle of a city (such as myself: I'm on a rather large lot in a 4 bedroom home) It's true that high density housing is efficient, but if you are going to build a single family home, strawbale is a great way to do it.
        latch 15y ago
- mseebach 15y ago
  Don't forget that 1000-1500 hours of work isn't free worth £0.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
upthedale 15y ago
I remember reading about this a long time ago. The builder's own website on the subject is a much better link, which presents the hows and whys: http://www.simondale.net/house/ http://www.simondale.net/house/ The OP is nothing more than a copy-paste job, though given how old it is, there might be some interesting discussion in the comments. I believe from what I've read in the past that this was more of an exhibition piece than a long term place to live.
smallegan 15y ago
Should be titled, live like a hobbit for $5000.
csomar 15y ago
http://www.ciracar.com/img/weird/build_a_house_for_less_than_$5000/build_a_house_for_less_than_$50004.jpg http://www.ciracar.com/img/weird/build_a_house_for_less_than... If it rains enough, I expect that the house will collapse. Also what about Electricity, Water and Internet (ok there is wifi) but electricity and water needs their proper setup. Gas is important too, if it gets too cold, and I expect they want to cook something.
- anthonyb 15y ago
  Strawbale walls + wood heater. Did you read the article at all?
elmarschraml 15y ago
I love the look of that house, seems extremely cosy and well-designed. But it's pretty hypocritical to present it as cheap and frugal. The cost of a house is land + labor + material. Land costs depend on where you want to live, but can be the biggest factor. He mentions 1500 hours of labor, which, if you were paying somebody to do it, would be somewhere around 100000 USD (full cost of a skilled craftsman is around $60/hour). And even the 5000 dollars for materials is a fool's calculation, since he mentions using scrap materials, i.e. stuff that somebody else had to pay to produce. If you want something truly sustainable, i.e. not something pseudo-green and feelgood-ecologigal, but something that anybody can afford, you'd unfortunately would have to go with a mass-produced high-rise block of flats. Not a fan of the do-gooder hypocrisy here, but as an example of an architectural style that blends into nature it's adorable and looks fantastic.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  Yeah, I'll bet a mass-produced high-rise in China costs way less than $5000 per one-room unit, and at practically zero land cost, too, given its vastly smaller footprint. That's a damn good point.
- anthonyb 15y ago
  Not hypocritical at all, if you read the background story here: http://www.simondale.net/house/family.htm http://www.simondale.net/house/family.htm Initially we had no capital and we had decided resolutely to be full time parents whilst our children were young. As you’ll appreciate to be a full time mum and part time dad our income is low, about £5,000 p.a, so a mortgage was not an option and the prospects for renting seemed grim. Providence came our way and a landowner offered us the chance to move to his woodland in west Wales to build an eco-house. There would be no formal security or long term ownership, but £2000 was available for materials, so we jumped at the idea without a backward glance. Sounds like just the sort of risk-taking, scrappy bootstrapping story that'd do well on HN, but everyone seems to be bagging it. ps. Scrap = things that other people are chucking away, or will have to pay to take away. Making use of it is a good thing.
  - dkhenry 15y ago
Vivtek 15y ago
You can get similar bang for your buck by firing your own bricks for a masonry house. Nice project!
tocomment 15y ago
I feel like you'd need to know a lot of engineering to be able to design the thing, and still be able to sleep at night knowing it won't collapse on you. Also how does something like this work with county inspectors?
- brudgers 15y ago
  Based on the photographs, it does not appear to be engineered - roof supports do not appear to be of adequate depth to support live, dead, and snow loads. People can dance on that roof and under most building standards deflection is the controlling factor for structures this size. IMO, it is highly improbably that adequate structural analysis was done on all those small twisted members because branches and stunted trunks contain so many knots and so much sapwood. On the positive side, the approach is straight out of Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, and any victims of the inadequate structural design will be due to Darwinian forces. http://www.patternlanguage.com/leveltwo/ca.htm http://www.patternlanguage.com/leveltwo/ca.htm
- drostie 15y ago
  Well, you might be impressed. Think about these massive Middle-Ages cathedrals done before we had Newton's Laws and modern notions of engineering. How did the architects do it? Well, they were hackers with a large budget. The architect usually had never built anything on this scale before and had no idea how their much-smaller-scale building experience would scale up. In particular, the fact that arches create sideways stresses which tend to bulge a large, open building outwards wasn't necessarily well-known by many of these architects. So what did they do? They just tried it and saw what worked. They hacked it together. If it doesn't start buckling and collapsing in the first month, it could probably last for a couple hundred years, maybe more if the ground doesn't shift in unexpected ways. The walls started bowing out? Then we'll build structures to buttress them back in. There's a dangerous sagging happening between these two columns? Well, place a third column in there! Of course, wood offers a lot of questions as a building material, since it's got a lot of energy in a bioactive form which lots of critters and cellular lifeforms might enjoy eating, and therefore needs to be treated in ways that might tend to prevent these critters from using it as a food source. Keeping it not-wet is an important first step which isn't discussed very well in the article. But for what it's worth, this was the way you built houses before we had engineering. You just went for it and spent a bunch of the year working on it, and it better be successful because you've got to have a place to sleep this winter.
brador 15y ago
How long is this house expected to last? did they remember to coat the wood? termites and woodlouse are going to be a pain in the ass in that location...and then there's the rain... and cold... There's a reason we use modern materials, like bricks, modern insulation and tiles, to build modern homes. They work and have proven robust (although mass production has also lowered price on some less desirable materials). Nice little project though.
- gazrogers 15y ago
  Woodlice may be a problem, but we don't have much in the way of termite infestations here in the UK.
- cullenking 15y ago
  I can assure you, straw bales are better insulation than modern fiberglass. A family member lived on a sustainable farm where they had a 40 foot diameter roundhouse with 25 foot ceilings and an upper loft. Basically, a big volume. It was easily heated, and kept incredibly cozy, by a single woodburning stove. Additionally, it was fully plumbed with water (though used composting toilets outside), as well as electricity.
roqetman 15y ago
The original link (has more detail): http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm
sodiumphosphate 15y ago
Such things are built in the woods of Southern Oregon, and in my hipper days I had the pleasure of living in some of them, and helped to build or refit a few others. It's all good until the roof fails catastrophically.
ctdonath 15y ago
While the house cute and quaint, cozy and cheap, methinks most of us are more fond of modern straight-line homes than "hobbit" habitats. For some time now I've been digging for info on building ultra-cheap housing, starting with an interest in log homes and branching into "tiny houses". Goal is to get my kids to earn and move into paid-off real estate by graduation. To keep it short, here's some interesting links: Tumbleweed Houses - http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/ http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/ (plans starting at $20; in one notable case, house built for $10K) MIT $1K house project - http://web.mit.edu/1khouse/ http://web.mit.edu/1khouse/ (seems defunct, but a noble start) Tiny House Blog - http://tinyhouseblog.com/ http://tinyhouseblog.com/ (ongoing reviews of small and/or inexpensive options) Cheap houses - https://www.google.com/search?q=cheap+houses https://www.google.com/search?q=cheap+houses (there is a lot of dirt-cheap real estate out there if you're flexible) Free land - https://www.google.com/search?q=free+land https://www.google.com/search?q=free+land (some jurisdictions will, in fact, give you land free if you'll build a house & live there a while)
- bdg 15y ago
  I couldn't find anything regarding the free land you've mentioned. Do you have any more leads?
  - ctdonath 15y ago
    Maybe Google gives us different results. One relevant link is http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/7-towns-where-land-is-free.html http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/7-towns-where-land-is-free... ...BTW, I understand sections of Detroit are super cheap, and a motivated developer might be able to leverage that.
    - freehunter 15y ago
      As a Michigan resident who has tried buying property in Detroit... many of the cheap plots of land come with huge fines and back taxes attached. The owner stopped paying taxes, and when the fines added up they skipped town. If you buy that land, it's now your responsibility. Not saying not to buy land in Detroit, there are lots of businesses making good money on cheap land (and there are quite a few startups, especially around Woodward Ave, see: Dan Gilbert). Just make sure to do your research to keep away from any nasty surprises. That $25 half-acre with a plant already built might actually cost $100,000 up front.
bdg 15y ago
I like what he's done and I'd love to do it if I could somehow work around a few issues such as: I have a job, I can't build a house 8 hours a day for 30 weeks (1500 hours) and I can't get the land deal he did. I'd be really interested in seeing an easily repeatable solution that doesn't come down to living in squalor.
- ryandvm 15y ago
  No problem. For labor, land cost, and materials just add about $100K or so. Oh wait...
- dagw 15y ago
  I like what he's done and I'd love to do it if I could somehow work around a few issues such as: I have a job: Go down to 50-60%, adjust living expenses accordingly I can't build a house 8 hours a day for 30 weeks (1500 hours) So go a bit more than 30 Weeks. Let's assume you work 3 days a week (60%). If you average 4 hours a day on the days you work and 8 hours on the days you don't, you'll be done in 60 weeks. Also there is nothing that says you have to work on the project alone. If you have just one person helping you 50% of the time, then you're down to 45 weeks. I can't get the land deal he did Have you tried? Sure you probably won't get land next door to where you're living right now, but if you're willing to relocate finding cheap or even free land is far from impossible. No one said that it was easy, and I'll be first to admit that it's not for me and I'm not even going to try. But I'm also sure that for someone who really wanted to do it and was willing to make the necessary sacrifices it's certainly an option.
- ctdonath 15y ago
  The whole point of having that job is you can generate more value doing that than, say, spending the better part of a year building a house full-time. By spending 8 hours a day for 30 weeks writing software (or whatever you do besides HN), you can support yourself, dependents, and laborers who in turn will build you a house - that's a pretty darned good deal on your part. Good job on adding so much wealth to society! Sure his solution isn't "easily repeatable" and involves living in squalor. He's not giving up productivity to build the house, but you would be. As such, it's a step up for him, and a step down for you. If it was "easily repeatable" it wouldn't entail 1500 hours of labor, or ~$100K to buy it. What does resemble an "easily repeatable" solution is http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/plans http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/plans where you can start with the plans for a really minimal home for $17, little box bungalows for $99, or more normal looking houses (albeit tiny) for a few hundred. Most are designed for small trailer frames, so you can build one in your spare time with supplies as cheap as you willing to get, find suitable cheap/odd land, and haul it there when ready. Upshot is you pay high prices because the alternative is doing serious labor yourself.
hussong 15y ago
German version: File your application for a construction permit for less than €5000 (SCNR).
- drats 15y ago
  I've been around the Internet for a long long time and that's the first time I've seen "SCNR". As I had to search to see what it was I'd suggest you expand it in future usage. You are right in the point you make though, continental Europe is awash with ridiculous red tape and pompous bureaucrats. Although I have to say I am surprised that the he "got away with it" in the UK as it's not much better there.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Of course, your comment wasn't any help, either. It seems to stand for "Sorry, Could Not Resist".
alan_cx 15y ago
Here in the UK we have a show called Grand Designs on Channel 4. Its a show about self builders. One of the episodes featured a guy called Ben Law(S09E13). He is a woodsman who worked woodland in a strict conservation area. He wanted a home in his woods, and did a similar thing but on a bigger scale. For electricity, he had solar and wind power, feeding submarine batteries. He collected and purified water. Waste waster was, IIRC, fed in to a reed bed. He also had internet sorted out, cant remember how. I cant find a decent site that shows the build, but for any one interested, it worth a google. Ben has a website, but there is not much detail there. There are also various vids on youtube. For any one vaguely interested, this project is well worth look up.
- lifeisstillgood 15y ago
  Ben-law.co.uk this was such a wildly popular (for channel 4) programme that they did a follow up. He had built an extension for his new family (single originally, and let's face it the project was a form of therapy) and was / is now making a small income teaching others how to do it. My concern, and only real defence of the construction industry, is there probably are not enough hillsides and trees to go round. But as one living opposite a building site, yes, the construction industry can stand to learn one or two sustainability lessons
- ctdonath 15y ago
  "Survivorman" Les Stroud did the same, recounted in his documentary Off the Grid http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001WAMB9U/ref=carldonath http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001WAMB9U/ref=carldonath
nkh 15y ago
If your interested in cheap housing. Yurts are worth a look. They are used by half the population of Mongolia, and can be very warm. They make a great cabin retreat, but they are not quite as nice a normal american home without the added expense and convenience of plumbing, electrical, etc... However, in there base form, they cost around $5000. See the link below for pricing: http://www.yurts.com/products/default.aspx http://www.yurts.com/products/default.aspx (I am not affiliated with anyone selling any yurts, I just happen to like them).
- davidw 15y ago
  That's pretty cool, and, naturally, it looks like it was founded by some hippyish individuals not far from my home town of Eugene. Where else but Oregon or Northern California would people do something like that? :-) They do look like a pretty good option for a cabin for some land in the mountains. I wonder how well they do being left alone for most of the year.
  - chadzawistowski 15y ago
    A ski area near a family home in Maine has just recently put up some yurts. They appear to be year-round structures, and I assume they rent them out. I couldn't tell you how well they age, though, as they're new this year.
  - cullenking 15y ago
    My girlfriend's sister lived in one for almost 2 years in Southern Oregon. Held up just fine, no leaks, and it was around ten years old when she moved into it. She mud plastered the walls and painted using some natural pigmented paint she made, kinda cool. Compost toilet was a little walk down a trail. Southern Oregon doesn't get a ton of rain, so it's not that bad having one outside the house.
- hammock 15y ago
  Yurts are cool structures and relatively heat-efficient. You can find them everywhere now. In the western world at least, they are built with modern engineered materials most of the time. What is cool about the OP is that it's totally built in the rustic style - sticks, logs, etc. This is a bit distinct from deciding to build a "yurt." For more examples, google it, or check out something like Dry Kye (http://drykyerustic.com/ http://drykyerustic.com/). Disclaimer: this is my cousin in Maine. He harvests his own materials and is especially fond of salvaging patina-ed, old-growth wood from very old abandoned barns in the Maine countryside.
grk 15y ago
There's no bathroom/toilet.
- deleted 15y ago
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- deleted 15y ago
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Cherian 15y ago
Reminds me of Super Adobe by architect Nader Khalili. http://calearth.org/building-designs/what-is-superadobe.html http://calearth.org/building-designs/what-is-superadobe.html
gutini 15y ago
Has anyone read anything on Zach Klein's cabin in NY? Very curious how he went about designing and building it. http://beaverbrook.com/ http://beaverbrook.com/
myspy 15y ago
In Germany: After digging out the first stone, the neighbors called the building authority and declares a full stop to your efforts until you hand in hundreds of papers and plans done by an architect and approved by a constructional engineer -.-
sharpn 15y ago
Reminds me of a Tony & Faith Wrench, who have done similar things a few times in West Wales: http://thatroundhouse.info/ http://thatroundhouse.info/ Interesting couple.
vishaldpatel 15y ago
Did the house need to pass inspections / safety?
sidman 15y ago
Legendary ! that is pretty awesome. I guess there are conditions on where you can do that and thinking about it now i cant think of anywhere near me where i could do that if i wanted/could do it. Though if i went back to where my parents came from in south east asia i could think of alot of places where that would work.
giardini 15y ago
Sure hope he used galvanized nails on that or he's in for some surprises in a few years. And how would you get something like this past a city inspector?
retrogradeorbit 15y ago
And then the council comes and knocks it down because the plans were not approved by the central bureaucracy!

280 points by mambodog 15y ago

+1,000- 1500 man hours @ say 15$ / hour = a total of around 20,000 - 27,500$ + land costs. Which, is still great for such a cool house IMO.

roel_v 15y ago

What bugs me about projects like this, is that they're being presented as 'sustainable' while they're the antithesis of that. If everybody would want to live like that, there wouldn't be enough room, let alone large, undisturbed areas for forests or agriculture; plus this house may have cost the builder only 5000 pounds (if you don't count the land), but that's only possible when it's a one-of-a-kind project. If you'd have to take into account the supply network needed to build a house like this, and live in it, to a reasonably comfortable standard (meaning, at the very least: warm, dry, no vermin inside, access to sewer and running water), it would become a lot more expensive, if not downright impossible.

anthonyb 15y ago
I get the room part, but it cost him 5000 pounds because he built it out of logs and straw bales. There's not really a massive supply network needed for that sort of thing. Also, your idea of a decent house is (obviously) not necessarily his idea of a decent house (eg. he has a composting toilet), but it looks pretty warm and dry and vermin free to me.
- shortlived 15y ago
  roel_v is saying that a house like this does not scale in terms of production, materials and land required when everyone would be building one.
  - dodedo 15y ago
    anthonyb is saying that logs and stray bales are available in large quantities. And he's right, there's no issue of scale here, other than labor. I have family who have built straw houses and they're cheap, straw is very plentiful, and you really can't tell the difference from a traditional drywall/fiberglass insulation home (it wasn't stylized like this one). The only thing I see being an issue with the house from the article is the composting toilet. However, running a sewer to this style of house is no different than running a sewer to a traditional house.
    - latch 15y ago
      It's more than just the building material. I live in a 65 story building..8 units per floor (I'm sure it thins out near the top though). How many people per sqft of land do you think we take? How much would be taken by free-standing (single) homes? How much do you think we save in heating and cooling given that only 2 out of 4 walls are exposed (and in some apartments, it might be 1/4)? If I wasn't tired, I'd look it up, but I have to imagine that apartment-style "dense" living, is way more sustainable than almost any type of house.
      - onemoreact 15y ago
        I have seen a few studies that suggest New York City is the most environmentally friendly place to live in the US. But, mostly it comes down to transportation costs. And being that close to a harbor is actually a huge net gain.
      - dodedo 15y ago
        It seems your issue is with the concept of single family homes and urban sprawl, not this particular method of building. That's a bit of a different issue -- many people don't want to live in the middle of a city (such as myself: I'm on a rather large lot in a 4 bedroom home) It's true that high density housing is efficient, but if you are going to build a single family home, strawbale is a great way to do it.
        latch 15y ago
mseebach 15y ago
Don't forget that 1000-1500 hours of work isn't free worth £0.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

upthedale 15y ago

I remember reading about this a long time ago. The builder's own website on the subject is a much better link, which presents the hows and whys: http://www.simondale.net/house/ http://www.simondale.net/house/ The OP is nothing more than a copy-paste job, though given how old it is, there might be some interesting discussion in the comments. I believe from what I've read in the past that this was more of an exhibition piece than a long term place to live.

smallegan 15y ago

Should be titled, live like a hobbit for $5000.

csomar 15y ago

http://www.ciracar.com/img/weird/build_a_house_for_less_than_$5000/build_a_house_for_less_than_$50004.jpg http://www.ciracar.com/img/weird/build_a_house_for_less_than... If it rains enough, I expect that the house will collapse. Also what about Electricity, Water and Internet (ok there is wifi) but electricity and water needs their proper setup. Gas is important too, if it gets too cold, and I expect they want to cook something.

anthonyb 15y ago
Strawbale walls + wood heater. Did you read the article at all?

elmarschraml 15y ago

I love the look of that house, seems extremely cosy and well-designed. But it's pretty hypocritical to present it as cheap and frugal. The cost of a house is land + labor + material. Land costs depend on where you want to live, but can be the biggest factor. He mentions 1500 hours of labor, which, if you were paying somebody to do it, would be somewhere around 100000 USD (full cost of a skilled craftsman is around $60/hour). And even the 5000 dollars for materials is a fool's calculation, since he mentions using scrap materials, i.e. stuff that somebody else had to pay to produce. If you want something truly sustainable, i.e. not something pseudo-green and feelgood-ecologigal, but something that anybody can afford, you'd unfortunately would have to go with a mass-produced high-rise block of flats. Not a fan of the do-gooder hypocrisy here, but as an example of an architectural style that blends into nature it's adorable and looks fantastic.

Vivtek 15y ago
Yeah, I'll bet a mass-produced high-rise in China costs way less than $5000 per one-room unit, and at practically zero land cost, too, given its vastly smaller footprint. That's a damn good point.
anthonyb 15y ago
Not hypocritical at all, if you read the background story here: http://www.simondale.net/house/family.htm http://www.simondale.net/house/family.htm Initially we had no capital and we had decided resolutely to be full time parents whilst our children were young. As you’ll appreciate to be a full time mum and part time dad our income is low, about £5,000 p.a, so a mortgage was not an option and the prospects for renting seemed grim. Providence came our way and a landowner offered us the chance to move to his woodland in west Wales to build an eco-house. There would be no formal security or long term ownership, but £2000 was available for materials, so we jumped at the idea without a backward glance. Sounds like just the sort of risk-taking, scrappy bootstrapping story that'd do well on HN, but everyone seems to be bagging it. ps. Scrap = things that other people are chucking away, or will have to pay to take away. Making use of it is a good thing.
- dkhenry 15y ago

Vivtek 15y ago

You can get similar bang for your buck by firing your own bricks for a masonry house. Nice project!

tocomment 15y ago

I feel like you'd need to know a lot of engineering to be able to design the thing, and still be able to sleep at night knowing it won't collapse on you. Also how does something like this work with county inspectors?

brudgers 15y ago
Based on the photographs, it does not appear to be engineered - roof supports do not appear to be of adequate depth to support live, dead, and snow loads. People can dance on that roof and under most building standards deflection is the controlling factor for structures this size. IMO, it is highly improbably that adequate structural analysis was done on all those small twisted members because branches and stunted trunks contain so many knots and so much sapwood. On the positive side, the approach is straight out of Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, and any victims of the inadequate structural design will be due to Darwinian forces. http://www.patternlanguage.com/leveltwo/ca.htm http://www.patternlanguage.com/leveltwo/ca.htm
drostie 15y ago
Well, you might be impressed. Think about these massive Middle-Ages cathedrals done before we had Newton's Laws and modern notions of engineering. How did the architects do it? Well, they were hackers with a large budget. The architect usually had never built anything on this scale before and had no idea how their much-smaller-scale building experience would scale up. In particular, the fact that arches create sideways stresses which tend to bulge a large, open building outwards wasn't necessarily well-known by many of these architects. So what did they do? They just tried it and saw what worked. They hacked it together. If it doesn't start buckling and collapsing in the first month, it could probably last for a couple hundred years, maybe more if the ground doesn't shift in unexpected ways. The walls started bowing out? Then we'll build structures to buttress them back in. There's a dangerous sagging happening between these two columns? Well, place a third column in there! Of course, wood offers a lot of questions as a building material, since it's got a lot of energy in a bioactive form which lots of critters and cellular lifeforms might enjoy eating, and therefore needs to be treated in ways that might tend to prevent these critters from using it as a food source. Keeping it not-wet is an important first step which isn't discussed very well in the article. But for what it's worth, this was the way you built houses before we had engineering. You just went for it and spent a bunch of the year working on it, and it better be successful because you've got to have a place to sleep this winter.

brador 15y ago

How long is this house expected to last? did they remember to coat the wood? termites and woodlouse are going to be a pain in the ass in that location...and then there's the rain... and cold... There's a reason we use modern materials, like bricks, modern insulation and tiles, to build modern homes. They work and have proven robust (although mass production has also lowered price on some less desirable materials). Nice little project though.

gazrogers 15y ago
Woodlice may be a problem, but we don't have much in the way of termite infestations here in the UK.
cullenking 15y ago
I can assure you, straw bales are better insulation than modern fiberglass. A family member lived on a sustainable farm where they had a 40 foot diameter roundhouse with 25 foot ceilings and an upper loft. Basically, a big volume. It was easily heated, and kept incredibly cozy, by a single woodburning stove. Additionally, it was fully plumbed with water (though used composting toilets outside), as well as electricity.

roqetman 15y ago

The original link (has more detail): http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm

sodiumphosphate 15y ago

Such things are built in the woods of Southern Oregon, and in my hipper days I had the pleasure of living in some of them, and helped to build or refit a few others. It's all good until the roof fails catastrophically.

ctdonath 15y ago

While the house cute and quaint, cozy and cheap, methinks most of us are more fond of modern straight-line homes than "hobbit" habitats. For some time now I've been digging for info on building ultra-cheap housing, starting with an interest in log homes and branching into "tiny houses". Goal is to get my kids to earn and move into paid-off real estate by graduation. To keep it short, here's some interesting links: Tumbleweed Houses - http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/ http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/ (plans starting at $20; in one notable case, house built for $10K) MIT $1K house project - http://web.mit.edu/1khouse/ http://web.mit.edu/1khouse/ (seems defunct, but a noble start) Tiny House Blog - http://tinyhouseblog.com/ http://tinyhouseblog.com/ (ongoing reviews of small and/or inexpensive options) Cheap houses - https://www.google.com/search?q=cheap+houses https://www.google.com/search?q=cheap+houses (there is a lot of dirt-cheap real estate out there if you're flexible) Free land - https://www.google.com/search?q=free+land https://www.google.com/search?q=free+land (some jurisdictions will, in fact, give you land free if you'll build a house & live there a while)

bdg 15y ago
I couldn't find anything regarding the free land you've mentioned. Do you have any more leads?
- ctdonath 15y ago
  Maybe Google gives us different results. One relevant link is http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/7-towns-where-land-is-free.html http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/7-towns-where-land-is-free... ...BTW, I understand sections of Detroit are super cheap, and a motivated developer might be able to leverage that.
  - freehunter 15y ago
    As a Michigan resident who has tried buying property in Detroit... many of the cheap plots of land come with huge fines and back taxes attached. The owner stopped paying taxes, and when the fines added up they skipped town. If you buy that land, it's now your responsibility. Not saying not to buy land in Detroit, there are lots of businesses making good money on cheap land (and there are quite a few startups, especially around Woodward Ave, see: Dan Gilbert). Just make sure to do your research to keep away from any nasty surprises. That $25 half-acre with a plant already built might actually cost $100,000 up front.

bdg 15y ago

I like what he's done and I'd love to do it if I could somehow work around a few issues such as: I have a job, I can't build a house 8 hours a day for 30 weeks (1500 hours) and I can't get the land deal he did. I'd be really interested in seeing an easily repeatable solution that doesn't come down to living in squalor.

ryandvm 15y ago
No problem. For labor, land cost, and materials just add about $100K or so. Oh wait...
dagw 15y ago
I like what he's done and I'd love to do it if I could somehow work around a few issues such as: I have a job: Go down to 50-60%, adjust living expenses accordingly I can't build a house 8 hours a day for 30 weeks (1500 hours) So go a bit more than 30 Weeks. Let's assume you work 3 days a week (60%). If you average 4 hours a day on the days you work and 8 hours on the days you don't, you'll be done in 60 weeks. Also there is nothing that says you have to work on the project alone. If you have just one person helping you 50% of the time, then you're down to 45 weeks. I can't get the land deal he did Have you tried? Sure you probably won't get land next door to where you're living right now, but if you're willing to relocate finding cheap or even free land is far from impossible. No one said that it was easy, and I'll be first to admit that it's not for me and I'm not even going to try. But I'm also sure that for someone who really wanted to do it and was willing to make the necessary sacrifices it's certainly an option.
ctdonath 15y ago
The whole point of having that job is you can generate more value doing that than, say, spending the better part of a year building a house full-time. By spending 8 hours a day for 30 weeks writing software (or whatever you do besides HN), you can support yourself, dependents, and laborers who in turn will build you a house - that's a pretty darned good deal on your part. Good job on adding so much wealth to society! Sure his solution isn't "easily repeatable" and involves living in squalor. He's not giving up productivity to build the house, but you would be. As such, it's a step up for him, and a step down for you. If it was "easily repeatable" it wouldn't entail 1500 hours of labor, or ~$100K to buy it. What does resemble an "easily repeatable" solution is http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/plans http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/plans where you can start with the plans for a really minimal home for $17, little box bungalows for $99, or more normal looking houses (albeit tiny) for a few hundred. Most are designed for small trailer frames, so you can build one in your spare time with supplies as cheap as you willing to get, find suitable cheap/odd land, and haul it there when ready. Upshot is you pay high prices because the alternative is doing serious labor yourself.

hussong 15y ago

German version: File your application for a construction permit for less than €5000 (SCNR).

drats 15y ago
I've been around the Internet for a long long time and that's the first time I've seen "SCNR". As I had to search to see what it was I'd suggest you expand it in future usage. You are right in the point you make though, continental Europe is awash with ridiculous red tape and pompous bureaucrats. Although I have to say I am surprised that the he "got away with it" in the UK as it's not much better there.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Of course, your comment wasn't any help, either. It seems to stand for "Sorry, Could Not Resist".

alan_cx 15y ago

Here in the UK we have a show called Grand Designs on Channel 4. Its a show about self builders. One of the episodes featured a guy called Ben Law(S09E13). He is a woodsman who worked woodland in a strict conservation area. He wanted a home in his woods, and did a similar thing but on a bigger scale. For electricity, he had solar and wind power, feeding submarine batteries. He collected and purified water. Waste waster was, IIRC, fed in to a reed bed. He also had internet sorted out, cant remember how. I cant find a decent site that shows the build, but for any one interested, it worth a google. Ben has a website, but there is not much detail there. There are also various vids on youtube. For any one vaguely interested, this project is well worth look up.

lifeisstillgood 15y ago
Ben-law.co.uk this was such a wildly popular (for channel 4) programme that they did a follow up. He had built an extension for his new family (single originally, and let's face it the project was a form of therapy) and was / is now making a small income teaching others how to do it. My concern, and only real defence of the construction industry, is there probably are not enough hillsides and trees to go round. But as one living opposite a building site, yes, the construction industry can stand to learn one or two sustainability lessons
ctdonath 15y ago
"Survivorman" Les Stroud did the same, recounted in his documentary Off the Grid http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001WAMB9U/ref=carldonath http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001WAMB9U/ref=carldonath

nkh 15y ago

If your interested in cheap housing. Yurts are worth a look. They are used by half the population of Mongolia, and can be very warm. They make a great cabin retreat, but they are not quite as nice a normal american home without the added expense and convenience of plumbing, electrical, etc... However, in there base form, they cost around $5000. See the link below for pricing: http://www.yurts.com/products/default.aspx http://www.yurts.com/products/default.aspx (I am not affiliated with anyone selling any yurts, I just happen to like them).

davidw 15y ago
That's pretty cool, and, naturally, it looks like it was founded by some hippyish individuals not far from my home town of Eugene. Where else but Oregon or Northern California would people do something like that? :-) They do look like a pretty good option for a cabin for some land in the mountains. I wonder how well they do being left alone for most of the year.
- chadzawistowski 15y ago
  A ski area near a family home in Maine has just recently put up some yurts. They appear to be year-round structures, and I assume they rent them out. I couldn't tell you how well they age, though, as they're new this year.
- cullenking 15y ago
  My girlfriend's sister lived in one for almost 2 years in Southern Oregon. Held up just fine, no leaks, and it was around ten years old when she moved into it. She mud plastered the walls and painted using some natural pigmented paint she made, kinda cool. Compost toilet was a little walk down a trail. Southern Oregon doesn't get a ton of rain, so it's not that bad having one outside the house.
hammock 15y ago
Yurts are cool structures and relatively heat-efficient. You can find them everywhere now. In the western world at least, they are built with modern engineered materials most of the time. What is cool about the OP is that it's totally built in the rustic style - sticks, logs, etc. This is a bit distinct from deciding to build a "yurt." For more examples, google it, or check out something like Dry Kye (http://drykyerustic.com/ http://drykyerustic.com/). Disclaimer: this is my cousin in Maine. He harvests his own materials and is especially fond of salvaging patina-ed, old-growth wood from very old abandoned barns in the Maine countryside.

grk 15y ago

There's no bathroom/toilet.

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Cherian 15y ago

Reminds me of Super Adobe by architect Nader Khalili. http://calearth.org/building-designs/what-is-superadobe.html http://calearth.org/building-designs/what-is-superadobe.html

gutini 15y ago

Has anyone read anything on Zach Klein's cabin in NY? Very curious how he went about designing and building it. http://beaverbrook.com/ http://beaverbrook.com/

myspy 15y ago

In Germany: After digging out the first stone, the neighbors called the building authority and declares a full stop to your efforts until you hand in hundreds of papers and plans done by an architect and approved by a constructional engineer -.-

sharpn 15y ago

Reminds me of a Tony & Faith Wrench, who have done similar things a few times in West Wales: http://thatroundhouse.info/ http://thatroundhouse.info/ Interesting couple.

vishaldpatel 15y ago

Did the house need to pass inspections / safety?

sidman 15y ago

Legendary ! that is pretty awesome. I guess there are conditions on where you can do that and thinking about it now i cant think of anywhere near me where i could do that if i wanted/could do it. Though if i went back to where my parents came from in south east asia i could think of alot of places where that would work.

giardini 15y ago

Sure hope he used galvanized nails on that or he's in for some surprises in a few years. And how would you get something like this past a city inspector?

retrogradeorbit 15y ago

And then the council comes and knocks it down because the plans were not approved by the central bureaucracy!