[XJCountry]

Hello all, I recently purchased ~15 acres and am in the process of designing a house for a family of 5+ to live in. We don't want to spend a lot of money to build a mcmansion, but want it to be comfortable. I have attached a simplified floor plan that was made in excel to show the general layout.
Base is a 30x70 metal building. I figure that there wont be 30x70 of actual floor space inside, but for simplicity sake I assumed full dimension interior.
each square in the image is 1 sq ft. I made all the rooms slightly larger to account for walls in between (and exterior).

My Notes -
Large garage - I want this to double as a shop, but I may build another structure for this...
No dining room - Wife and I feel that a large bar between the kitchen and living room will suffice.
Large bedrooms - too large?
Pantry - this may end up combined with the laundry room to take advantage of additional space, but humidity stays fairly high around a washing machine...
Upstairs - we currently live in a 2 story house and have grown very fond of the additional space. Layout of the upstairs will be an open rectangle.
Orientation - North is toward the top of the image so 3 of the bedrooms will be on the South side of the house. Plan to have overhang for a covered porch on the South side.
Building dimensions - Went with 30x70 because it provided the space needed in a relatively small footprint.

Please comment and let me know if you have any suggestions. I have bid out metal buildings with several local companies (Central Oklahoma), but if you know of someone please let me know. Best price I have for a 40x60 is ~$33k (Material, dirtwork, slab, construction, insulation, 2 walk doors, 1 overhead door, and gutters).

Thank you all for your help.

 

[xstuntman]

My plans are for something smaller but I'd suggest you ditch as much of the hallway as possible and juggling the layout might help. Hallways are space wasters that you have to heat and cool with zero living area. Great rooms/open floors sell better too.

 

[DWwolf]

Our resident NE farmer would be the one to ask.
His main residence is a metal home.

 

[RockDoc]

I have a buddy who built a barn-dominium west of houston on ~15 acres.

I drew this up from memory, so it is just the idea. Hopefully it helps.

it is essentially a home inside a metal building.

The part that faces the interior of the barn is even sided.
Poured concrete slab (Texas...)
Not sure on the actual dimensions, but you could prob guess based on kitchen, foyer, stairs, plus drive-thru width. maybe aroud 40ft wide?

a few windows here on the living quarters side. I'm not sure what hieght you were thinking. This one accomodates well over 2 stories inside.

Two OHD are nice to drive through and no backing up.

For a family of five.... that would take some adjustments.

I've always been envious. He likes it quite a bit.

 

[XJCountry]

Bumping this to try and get more feedback.

Thanks for everything so far.

 

[nitehawg]

My wife and I have lived in a metal building for the last 7 years. Not sure if you're talking about a wood frame building with metal siding or a "red iron" structure. Ours is red iron which has the metal supports towards the "living area." Those supports are more intrusive on the top than on the foundation and placement of walls dividing the rooms is somewhat dictated by the supports. We love the building and low maintenance. Cell phone reception inside can be spotty. Any further help just ask.

 

[scatter cat]

A family down the road has a barn style metal building that is about the same size as you want. Its 2 story. They have been in this house since the late 80's I was talking to him about it a few months ago they are still very happy with it.Low maintance not much for termites to eat. :thumb: its built with the red iron framing.

 

[Red Dirt Walker]

Unless you think you will be spending much time in the bedrooms you could reallocate the space to living or storage. Most of my family use the bedrooms for sleeping and that's about it. I would gladly shrink my bedroom space if I could get walk in closets.

Just my 2 cents.

If you don't mind.....how much are you look at it costing. I've been looking into building also and was thinking metal.

 

[XJCountry]

If you don't mind.....how much are you look at it costing. I've been looking into building also and was thinking metal.

I dont have a final number, but just the structure will probably be around $30k. I am hoping that we can keep the interior portion under $50k, but this may not be feasible. We are pretty good at bidding work and craigslisting, oh and we aren't strangers to power tools.
These projects tend to go upward from estimates rather than down, though.

 

[country_boy]

Couple of thoughts- cheap metal build depreciate and insulation usually sucks.

You need windows, by code in the bedrooms, but for livability as well. All bedrooms need 2 forms of egress,

The stairs look to be an issue- DO you have enough room for a landing by the front door?

Assuming you want sheetrock walls, you essentially have to frame a house inside the metal building to get 16 or 24" stud. having said that, you could blow insulation in from the attic into the cavity (Im guessing 10" or so) and have great insulation.

See if you can have a truss roof- it gives you something to attach you ceiling to- OR you have to frame a ceiling, but get an attic out of the deal.

 

[no guns here]

Don't forget your plumbing BEFORE the slab...

 

[Dragonid]

Don't forget your plumbing BEFORE the slab...

I was thinking that too. It seems like a low estimate for a slab that large with a bunch of plumbing etc in/under it.

 

[MattB4]

Your layout will complicate the plumbing. My neighbor built a metal house and he used spray foam insulation. In terms of money the cost of any home is the interior work much more than the shell. Metal shells though can help a DIY person to have a in the dry structure to work away at finishing. He did almost all the inside framing, plumbing, electrical himself after work and on the weekends, got his father in law to do stone work around the outside half up the walls and a stone hearth for a stove area. It took him about a year and a half before it was move in ready.

However in this area no permits for building are required which greatly facilitates that kind of thing.

 

[cheepsk8]

I think skimping on the dining area is a mistake. With a family that big, you'll want a big dining area. What if you have friends over? What if the kiddos have friends over? What about when they start dating? Get married? Have kids of their own? Dining room space would be nice.

 

[XJCountry]

Don't forget your plumbing BEFORE the slab...

Good Point. The quoted price I gave does not include plumbing. I tried to keep all of the bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry in one area, but my wife wanted 3 bathrooms and 4 bedrooms so I tacked an extra bathroom on the east side. The plus side is that when I shifted everything east it gave me room for stairs with storage underneath.

 

[XJCountry]

I think skimping on the dining area is a mistake. With a family that big, you'll want a big dining area. What if you have friends over? What if the kiddos have friends over? What about when they start dating? Get married? Have kids of their own? Dining room space would be nice.

I think you bring an excellent point to light. I will have to think on this some more. One of the main reasons to do this is to reduce our debt load significantly and have the associated peace of mind. If we have to give up a few conveniences in the long run is it worth it?

We enjoy having family/company over so this may be something that gets put back into the design.

 

[XJCountry]

My plans are for something smaller but I'd suggest you ditch as much of the hallway as possible and juggling the layout might help. Hallways are space wasters that you have to heat and cool with zero living area. Great rooms/open floors sell better too.

Hallways are good to use for concealment of bedroom doors as well. I could connect all of the bedrooms to the living room, but to me that would be an eyesore. The living room is pretty large as is, though (280 sq ft). I grew up in a house built in the late 70s early 80s so hallways may just be stuck in my subconscious. :

 

[Florida Jean]

Access to garage? Outside only, or through the laundry room?

Laundry should be on an outside wall [better to vent]. Better yet it should be in the garage. And best yet separate from the house [laundry's are a major fire source in houses]. Pantry with inside walls only. [i.e. swap them at min.]

Hallway OK, but make sure they stay 3 feet wide [wheel chair usable]. You can fit a door right after the half bath to provide further privacy for the two main bedrooms and if there is no thermostat there, you can close off that section when it is not in use and not have to worry about heat and AC as much. [empty nest syndrome]. Contemplate zonal heating. What are you heating with?

Also, have you fiddled with a plan with the Master bedroom/bath at the end of the house where the two bedrooms are? At a later date you can turn one of the other three bedrooms into a dining room, office, etc. and it would be better located.

Stairs? Hmmm, I agree, it looks like you need more space. If you think the bedrooms are too large, just slap closets along the hallway space either opening into the hallway or into the bedrooms.

Open upstairs? Put a bathroom over each bathroom down stairs [well, not the half bath, though frankly you could put a wet bar there. This means if you do some walls in there later, then you have the plumbing already in place. You can't have too many bathrooms. And put the hot water heaters upstairs in each of those bathrooms. One to take care of the master bath/kitchen a bit larger, and the other to take care of the full downstairs bath. No waiting five hours for hot water, or someone else using it all up.

How close are any of the kids to teenage hood? Would they prefer an upstairs bedroom?

Windows upstairs? Where? A deck? Upper porch.

Is that foray going to be open to the second floor? Will your heat go up there? Might you want enclosed stairs with a door to prevent that [and no open foray].

If for any reason you might get a senior moving in, the larger bedrooms are better.

 

[unno2002]

We do too much hot / steamy / smelly food prep / storage processing. We need our kitchen capable of being isolated from the rest of the house and independently well ventilated to the outside.

I would “fear” a metal shell getting too hot / cold without a ventilation capable space between the shell and a more massive and insulated inside wall/roof.

 

[foley96]

I am a foam insulation contractor, so I deal a fair amount with "barndominiums" as they're commonly called, so I'll give you my few pennies worth of thoughts.

Whoever made the comment about poor insulation, you're way off base. I would say that is the BEST feature of an otherwise relatively poor design option. You commonly wind up with wall cavities that are 10" thick or thicker with standard steel frame construction and walls. This is a lot of volume to allow of lots of R value if you're using fiberglass insulation. If you're using foam then you're wide open on how thick you spray and how much R value you get.

Overall however, the way this is commonly done by professional contractors is a very inefficient method of building and often produces unsatisfactory results. The basic problem is that steel erectors don't typically work much with wood, and wood framers don't work with steel. The way these buildings usually go together is one of two options:

Option A, a residential builder is contracted to build the home. He does not work with metal so he subs out the shell of the building to a steel erector. That guy builds the shell of the building, and leaves. Then the framing crew comes in and builds stud walls and gets the house ready for the MEP trades to come in and do their thing, then sheetrock and finish work.

Option B, a steel erector is contracted to build the home. He builds the shell, and then subs out the interior framing work, with the same basic results.

This is where your 10" thick walls come in, you typically have a 6" C purling spanning the structural steel that the wall sheets are screwed to. Then you have a 2x4 stud wall that is built EXACTLY like it would be for a standard brick or hardieplank sided home, except no OSB sheeting on the outside. These walls are generally constructed such that they could be load bearing, but are not. Basically what this boils down to is that you make the following trade on building materials compared to a standard stick frame house:

Stick Frame house would have:
OSB sheeting
Weather Resistive Barrier
Brick or siding
Wooden trusses or stick framed rafters
Roof Sheeting
Roof Underlayment
Shingles.

Instead you have:
Free standing steel structure that is completely independent of the wood framing that would support the house.
Purlins and Girts to support the wall sheets and roof sheets
Wall sheets
Roof sheets.

Based on all this, you wind up most of the way to the cost of building a house AND a barn, but all you get is the house.

Now of course all of this is if you hire traditional contractors to do the job. If you're doing a bunch of work yourself, you can change this up, build non load bearing walls for the interior out of 2x3's on 24" centers that are literally just enough structure to hold sheetrock, and then inset them in the purlins of the walls to make your 10" thick wall into a 6" thick wall. Most traditional contractors can't or won't do this because it is too hard to train someone to do it. It sounds crazy to a self reliant individual, but when you're dependent on hourly labor to do the work, you can't make money having them do things any way other that "the way we always do it" because it'll get screwed up. So the steel guy does his work just like any other steel building, and the framer does the same thing.

Now there are exceptions to this. I helped with one that was the personal home of a friend who is a steel erector. He used a J&I manufacturing building kit with 3" square columns and standard trusses. He carefully located his windows and doors so they wouldn't be impacted by the posts that were frenched into the walls. He basically built a giant carport, 3x3 steel posts with trusses sitting on them, and a steel roof. Then he had the framer come in and build his 2x4 walls just like he would on any normal wood frame house, except the exterior walls were broken up every 10' by the posts for the trusses. Once the wood walls were built, they got OSB sheeting, tyvek type WRB, and then the standard metal building wall sheets. This was a much more space and material efficient method, but it took a LOT of management on the part of my buddy to get it done the way he wanted it because noone was doing things their "normal" way.

Some other aspects to consider:

Most metal building "kit" windows suck. If you want an efficient home, they're not what you want. Buy good quality new construction windows from a window manufacturer and have them installed in your building shell.

Same goes for doors, although steel framed commercial style doors work best in these buildings.

In many cases metal buildings leak at window, door, utility, and other penetrations. Consider doing a wrap around style porch on the house to help keep the penetrations in the wall sheets out of the elements.

I hope this helps, I didn't mean it to be quite so long.