20x30 Single Story cottage

Cody · February 01, 2007, 03:32:39 PM

Hello, Im sorry it has taken so long to respond. As you can see we added a little awning and not really anything else. We have been waiting for money to do some catch up things like a road. We cant evan get back to the house from the highway. Also the land needs to slope away from the house more, water is quickly bringing in the soil and the slab is getting covered on the one side. I think the 6" slab is know only out of the ground about 3-4 inches. The inside hasn't been touched at all. These panels can sit on any seal or bottom plate rather over a crawl space, basement or slab. If you have 2x6 walls than its a 6" bottom plate and 6" top plate that holds them togather. I will surely post pics as soon as we get going again. Thank You for all your posts.
-Cody

tj4orange · February 03, 2007, 12:57:47 PM

Any idea on the total cost so far Cody. Also did you run plubing or heating in your slab and why or why not? Thanks! I am asking becasue this looks as though something very feasable for me to do if the price is right. The land around here is what is killing me! Also would love some opinions on expanding this. I thought the plans/preview said it could be extended due to no interior walls being supporting walls. So is 20 x 60 realistic with basically what ever floor plan i want? (ex: 3 or 4 bedrooms w/ 2 baths) Also would this work on a basement. Any ideas of what basements run these days?

February 03, 2007, 01:16:15 PM

I think there are some basic basement calculators out there. As far as extending the length, John might be better to ask.

A 20x60 basement foundation could be pricey. One member here is actually building is his own perimeter foundation with concrete blocks. I will post back when I can remember/find who that is - someone in "WOOO PIG SOOIE!" country - I believe.

youngins · February 03, 2007, 01:21:18 PM

Oh yes,

N74TG -

http://n74tg.blogspot.com/

glenn kangiser · February 03, 2007, 01:47:48 PM

Extending length is not usually a problem, engineering loads are the same. Footing spacings continue along the length. Width changes loadings.

February 04, 2007, 08:21:14 PM

One of the problems of slab foundations is that they can have problems if they are not built on high ground and the backfill doesn't slope away from the house on all four sides.

You might want to trench and put in a drain to daylight or a sump if that was not done at the footing level. This could be done away from the house now that things are already in place.

Jared Drake · November 16, 2014, 10:32:56 AM

Quote from: youngins on January 11, 2007, 09:52:14 PM
I emailed Cody directly and she replied the following to me:

The panels are designed to sit on a sill plate and also have a top plate to connect them to each other. The sill and top plate take up the last 1.5 inches of the plywood. So now you have your basic panel - you can either put a stud in at 24"oc or you can build in a window or door. The corners where a little more tricky bacuase you need plywod to cover the end of the other panel. So, in my case, I used 2x6 plus 5/8 plywood, which is 5.5 inches thick for the stud plus .5 inches thick for the plywood - so my plywood over hang 6 inches.

I'm raising this from the dead for a reason: Everything I need to know is covered in this post, so there's no point in making another post. The part above, in red, though, doesn't make sense to me. Can someone please explain it better, maybe draw a picture? We've got our land, all utilities and even have put a travel trailer out there and had a metal carport built over it, so we've got everything we need to work on a place. However, I spend more time at home and our rented storage unit is about two minutes from our house, so I'm thinking of doing this with the 1.5 story plans we bought. I'll build in the garage and haul to storage. Then, when all panels are complete, I'll borrow dad's 16' trailer and haul all panels to the building site. Some of us are better at spending a little money at a time rather than saving it up and spending a large amount all at once. Anyway, can someone please help with the above question?
Jared

John Raabe · November 16, 2014, 06:43:44 PM

When you use prefabricated panels you want to make sure the sheathing covers the corners and the sill plate as would normally be done in a site built structure.

Building a layout shop and getting all the panels to fit right at the site calls for careful layout work. You are setting up a small fabrication plant and kit builders can work for years to get this right. Cody did careful work on a very simple house.

You might more easily prefab the stud panels (with a temp diagonal brace) and then skin the panels at the site.

UK4X4 · November 17, 2014, 05:50:34 AM

imagine a 4 ft wide panel, the sheathing is offset by 6" so that when its joined to the corner, it covers the edge of the 6" wide stud.

Basicly in a prefab you dont want the stud joins and the sheathing joins to be in the same place, you want the sheathing overlapping any panel joint, whether it be corners or along a wall.

This is for a chicken coop , but you can see the overlap for the base plate and the overlap to the next stud along from the panel join

make the panels as large as possible to minimise the joints in a long wall, the top and bottom plates would be as long as possible any joins being positioned so that they are not at a panel join.