Here's an idea for building a cheap house: Use what others are throwing away. This woman is using closed cell foam. It has to be disposed of, because of an envirmonmental law passed in the Ozarks. She is using them as load bearing supports. It looks good, but one doesn't ususally think of foam as being that strong.
Carrying this idea along, what they mostly try to give away on Craigslist is concrete chunks, mattresses and old appliances. I could see using concrete chunks like rocks in a slipform concrete wall. Maybe you could build a post and beam house filling in the sides with mattresses. Appliances, well maybe you could have a wall of microwaves. A refrigerator, washer/dryer/dishwasher wall would be quite wide, but at least they would all be more or less the same thickness. You could even have the doors open to the inside and have built in storage. It goes without saying that you would have to build this somewhere where there are no inspectors. I hear rural Vermont is like that.
Wonderful post! That is a brilliant idea. It sounds like a new way of recycling things to make them still useful. Thank you for posting.
ReplyDeletein this day and age we need to be doing everything we can to save money when building a new home. Thanks for the post. Some very creative ideas :)
ReplyDeleteIt is not as hard as it seems, once you do some reading on the topic. There are some excellent books out there for building houses. One is how Habitat for Humanity typically builds a house. There are a few others I bought as well. Until I began building my solar house, I had not built any either. Now that it is almost done, it is kind of amazing to see. There are things I would do a bit different next time, but it has been a great learning experience.
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing post, I really appreciate your sharings.
ReplyDelete