Hi Tia,

If you haven't already taken a glance at the Big Enchilada Plans Kit, that's basically the problem it was designed to solve (although it's not a pre-fab kit, just the plans). You'd probably start with the Little House or Builder's Cottage (all included in the kit) and then grow from there, with the Sunroom, Greenhouse & Skylight Plans (also included). You can get as creative as you want as your space/design needs evolve and since all those options come with it, you can do some mental modeling and pre-plan a bit more than you otherwise might be able to.

Here's a link: https://countryplans.com/big-enchilada.html
And here's a link to a few examples of what other folks have done with the plans: https://countryplans.com/gallery.html
(just search the text of the page for "Enchilada", "Builder's Cottage", or "Little House" to find the other links)

Best to ya!
Adam

I'm interested in the cheapest way to build a small, livable cabin/house on new land. Nothing too elaborate, but something that might start out as seasonal and that I could add on to for extra space or to make it livable year round. But I'd be happy to start off basic as long as it's cheap but has room to work with.

Unfortunately, everything I can find online seems to be either "Here's a 120 square foot box we're calling a cabin" or "Here's your prefab cabin with floor to ceiling windows, loft, cupola, and elevator, your price is $283,000" with almost nothing in between. I can't believe that there isn't some kind of simple, pre-fab home kits out there for people who just want a decent building without breaking the bank.

I've looked at Arched Cabins, which comes closest to what I'm interested in in terms of price for value, but I was hoping there were options that were a little more conventional looking and/or easier to expand once built.

I have a Clerestory Shed Roof in my house with a full row of vertical windows.  It is my favorite feature of my home.  It provides great sunlight through my living room and most of the first floor.  But it also "lights" the rooms at night, most nights.  

Mine are fixed windows, I've wondered if windows that open would be better and let hot air rise and leave the house.

The shed roof exterior looks a little dated architectually, but the benefits are worth it.

I still have completely finished the PDF reports since I've had my head so buried in the Timoshenko stuff for a couple of weeks (probably not a good use of my time but I couldn't resist).  Here is some output for a couple of cases (two span and three span beam, equal spans with a UDL).  What is interesting is the shape of the deflection graphs for the Timoshenko analysis.  I think the numbers are correct but to be honest I really don't have another 3rd party program I can fully test against.


I'm using a kappa of 5/6 and a G of 1/16 the E value, so in this case G = 106,250



Also I am just using the listed value of E for my Timoshenko calculations even though it already includes a 3% bump for shear built in.


EB = Euler Bernoulli, TIMO = Timoshenko


http://medeek.com/resources/engplugin/TEST8/EB_TEST8_2SPAN_UDL.pdf


http://medeek.com/resources/engplugin/TEST8/EB_TEST8_3SPAN_UDL.pdf


http://medeek.com/resources/engplugin/TEST8/TIMO_TEST8_2SPAN_UDL.pdf


http://medeek.com/resources/engplugin/TEST8/TIMO_TEST8_3SPAN_UDL.pdf


As a sanity check I multiplied my calculated value of G above by 10,000 in the code and then ran the TIMO analysis, the results are almost identical to the EB analysis as expected, so that tells me that with an extreme stiffness the TIMO degrades to an EB analysis as it should in theory.  Here are the links to the TIMO analsys with a 10,000X inflated G:


http://medeek.com/resources/engplugin/TEST8/TIMO_TEST8_2SPAN_UDL_GMAX.pdf


http://medeek.com/resources/engplugin/TEST8/TIMO_TEST8_3SPAN_UDL_GMAX.pdf

In order to keep the clutter to a minimum I will put these two options at the very bottom of the HTML menu under "Advanced Options". I will also add them into the global settings so they will default to the preferred choice of the user everytime the tool is run:



The simple report style will be one page report only showing the loading the diagram and the design results, supports and loads tables. The detailed report will probably be about seven pages showing all the calcs and additional graphs.

The deflection section is fairly basic but it does specify the span used to calculate the L/d as well as the x location and load combination:

I'm planning to move out next week and really don't want to handle everything by myself this time. It's a short-distance move, but I've got a few bulky items that need extra hands. I found a company called ThreeMovers while searching online, has anyone tried them before? Open to any other moving company recommendations too.

Here is the L/d given for both the LL and TL diagrams:



However, in this case I have an overhanging beam (right side only) and I recalled that with overhangs the L/d was usually calculated differently (from previous engineering projects working with decks). Sure enough when I ran a quick test in Forte I noticed the 2L/d overhang criteria being used, see sample below:



Where in the code (ie. IBC, ASCE etc...) is this actually codified, to use twice the actual span for overhangs? I can't seem to find it but it does appear to be common practice.

I would look at how RVs and travel trailers are laid out, they ar optimized for storage and utility space.