Living in a small house

[dlskidmore]

Great links guys!

[dlskidmore]

Tempting to go for a bigger house. This place is 12 miles from work, along a major road, but is out of my current budget:

http://www.trulia.com/property/3010412550-5610-State-Route-96-Farmington-NY-14425

[Robernson]

I really like that first link. Not to be off topic (I am famous for it huh?)

I just bought this 2 room “tar paper shack” from my neighbor for $200. It has been on his farm since the 1800’s and he was going to tear it down,so now I am moving it. I have it at our place now,but I still need to finish leveling it up.

I don’t know if I would ever live in it full time,but it sure is nice to have….:D

~~R

[dlskidmore]

So much is based on what opportunities are available when we are ready to purchase. Hurry up calendar & savings account! I want to get there already!

[mitchmaine]

i grew up in a ramblin ten room farmhouse. we heated with wood and it was just like trying to heat a lobster trap. it had 200 years of stuff in it. i think its the stuff, not the size of the house that counts. if you can live without too much stuff, i small house would work out just right. cozy always sounded like a good word to me. never got a chance to try it out yet.

[8BitFarm]

I live in just about 1000 sq ft of house(our second floor isn’t habitable, but it would bring the total up to a whopping 13-1400sq ft when we finally get the $$ to fix it up)… and into this little home we squish me, hubby, kid 1, kiddo 2 is on the way, plus 3-4 dogs, 2 cats, the occasional injured fowl, and all the houseguests who can stand the ruckus on a regular basis. The downside is we have no bedroom(we sleep in the living room with kid 1 and the dogs and all) so social time with friends is tricky when we need to put the kid to bed. The upside is it keeps us all very polite, and also with the woodstove cranking in the winter we can heat this place to 85 degrees on the worst and windiest days without burning a whole lot of fuel. The other downside is of course that over the life of the house, many decisions were made regarding additions and renovations that we would have done very differently, and living with someone else’s mistakes is really tough sometimes. I do long to build our own house and make our own mistakes sometimes!
I grew up in a three story victorian house in Philadelphia, and I can say that I never really want a big house like that again. It was never warm/cool, maintenance was never done, and it was never clean, and we all felt like roomates more than family, rattling around in the house like a few peas in a bucket.
We have friends who are finally moving into their yurt that they’ve been building, and truthfully I think if this old farmhouse fell down(some days i wish it would!) i think we’d shack up in the barn for a while and put up a yurt in its place. Think of all the time I’d save on cleaning!

[dlskidmore]

I grew up in a house bigger than what I’m thinking I can afford to build now, but not gigantic. My sister and I each had our own rooms, and the fourth bedroom was the sewing room/office. The living room was not spacious, but it was just big enough to invite folks over for a bible study or a tupperware party. The dining room maybe was a bit extravagant, it was an addition my parents made when I was small, expanding the breezeway to the width of the whole house and making it an insulated heated space, but entertaining was a big priority for us.

[dlskidmore]

The more I look at the price of building a home, the more appealing the idea of commuting to the farm from the city house looks appealing. Could have a basic shade shelter there as the kids’s area…

[dlskidmore]

I also found a minimalist plan at http://sheldondesigns.com/ that has an apartment over a large garage. When we could finally build the big house, we’d have a garage with an attached house, and the studio would become a master suite.

[bdcasto]

I know this is an old thread but thought someone would enjoy my really small house (actually it’s just a home built slide in truck camper). It is made using 16 foot cattle panels bent to make the hoop and covered with alluminized bubble rap insulation and painters canvas tarps. No leaks to speak of despite use in serious rain. Coleman lantern provides more than enough heat for cold camping although we haven’t used it under 20 degrees F. Lots of fun with the kids for out of the way camping.

By the way, I’ve been lurking on the group for a while and finally will introduce myself as a hobby farmer who’s kids sell eggs and meat to help pay for their horse habit. I really enjoy this discussion group and benefit a lot.

BD Casto
New Carlisle, OH

[dlskidmore]

@bdcasto 34583 wrote:

It is made using 16 foot cattle panels bent to make the hoop and covered with alluminized bubble rap insulation and painters canvas tarps.

How did you bend the panels?

[bdcasto]

@dlskidmore 34589 wrote:

How did you bend the panels?

Basically just fence staple one 4 foot end to the frame and then push over and staple opposite 4 foot end to other side of frame. One 16 foot long panel makes a 5 1/2 to 6 foot high arch depending on how wide your frame is. Then for a longer (deeper) hoop, just staple another panel next to the first and wire the long (16 foot sides) together. I found on this camper project that leaving the hoop alone after stapled for a couple weeks resulted in a better/symmetrical shape. On previous chicken/calf houses, I had a hard time getting a symmetrical hoop shape because I was building all in one day. Start with relatively straight panels, staple to frame and then leave alone so the soft steel can take on the shape – much easier than trying to force it all in one day of construction. Hope that’s not confusing.

[sickle hocks]

Looks just like a sheep wagon, nice camper…maybe a horsedrawn version someday?
(i bet the other poster was thinking of steel tube cattle panels, i think of the welded wire ones as hog panels…it would almost be nice to have a thread on this construction method, i’m starting to make sheep and chicken shelters and just making it up as i go along..)

[grey]

bdcasto: What size are the openings in your welded wire panels? Do you have any condensation problems on your bubble foil insulation? We used the same product under the metal roof of our chicken coop and haven’t had any condensation, but the coop is very well-ventilated and we did leave an air gap of 1″ between the roofing tin and the bubble foil, by using purlins between the two. I had been considering using a welded wire panel to make a sheep wagon for camping in but hadn’t seen any examples of one yet. I really appreciate the information you have given from your experience with the project. What you said about letting the panel relax into its shape – rather than try to force it there – makes a lot of sense. As a person with little natural patience, my inclination probably would have been to beat my head against it until one or the other gave in.

[bdcasto]

@grey 34592 wrote:

bdcasto: What size are the openings in your welded wire panels? Do you have any condensation problems on your bubble foil insulation? We used the same product under the metal roof of our chicken coop and haven’t had any condensation, but the coop is very well-ventilated and we did leave an air gap of 1″ between the roofing tin and the bubble foil, by using purlins between the two.

Sickle Hocks and Grey are both correct – this camper is modeled after a sheep wagon design except for the short door (I wanted a window above) and no stove. The cattle panels I mentioned are indeed the welded wire type measuring 52 inches tall and 16 feet long with field fence size openings of about 6-8 inches). As far as condensation, that is the purpose of the alluminized bubble wrap insulation. My first chicken coop was of this design but with sheet metal roofing attached to purlins on the panels. No bubble wrap and a small footprint with 30 hens results in pretty good condensation if not ventilated. The bubble wrap is waterproof and cancels any condensation effect. If using with turkeys, don’t take it all the way down the sides because they will eat the alluminum foil. Robert Plamondon has a good tutorial on this type of building construction on his website http://www.plamondon.com/hoop-coop.html Here’s another version I built for meat birds that has a floor http://www.draftanimalpower.com/showthread.php?3036-Hoop-style-Mulit-purpose-Housing-for-Pigs-etc.&highlight=hoop+house

[Author]

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