/diy/ - Do It Yourself

this interests me greatly but I know nothing about it

>>324655
im interested too

come one people provide some info

In b4 shipping containers.

>>324684
Well, I already said CEB walls, so maybe that will prevent that suggestion.

Depends on the structure, really. I'd go with rammed earth for best compromise of cost and longevity.

>>324655
>what are the best materials to use?

Stone, cob, earthen plaster, and wood.

>>324689
>rammed earth

Fuck rammed earth. Mixed soils are much much easier to work with and last centuries when properly built and maintained.

>>324690
What about for roofing? I'd like a metal roof, or some sort of cool roof?

Also, is there any way to reduce the labor component of cob?

>>324692
I listed "stone". Slate is stone. You also use non-slate stone for roofing too.

>Also, is there any way to reduce the labor component of cob?

Machinery, children, friends, etc.

>>324692

>>324697
wtf? why did it upload a tiny version?

>>324698
Woah, ok, I want that now. Looks heavy though. But it looks cool as shit. But heavy.

Little to no windows. Windows allow huge fluctuations in temperature that must be made up by your air-conditioner/heater. It's seriously more cost effective to light your house with those wind up bulbs than windows.

Seriously, shipping containers are so cheap for what they give you it's not funny. For aesthetics I wouldn't do it though.

Hey, I'm the same fag who posted in moot's thread, I built (and now live in thanks to an unexpected job opportunity) a 8x16 cabin with a loft and while I'm still working on it and learning I can give you some tips.

First off, fuck cob. I know a guy who built a cob house nearby and it took him ten years to finish it. It is incredibly labor intensive for large applications.

You want cheap walls? Find someone selling old pallets and built your house out of them; there's plenty of resources for this. Search for construction runoff too. My cabin is all wood, and all the interior and exterior siding I got for a song compared to what one would expect to spend. Make friends with a local sawmill, most of them are dying for business and can sell you wood really cheap.

Metal roofing is boss. It's cheap, it lasts forever, and you can roof your house in a day with 2 or 3 sets of hands.

More incoming.

>>324708
Don't way to pay the high coast for wood treatment? Make your own by heating up 4 parts olive oil to one part beeswax. Totally non-toxic, a little labor intensive to apply/scrape off/polish but the end result looks great, feels great, keeps your wood in great shape and it costs very little compared to traditional wood sealants.

In terms of things you should pay someone to do/make sure you have someone knowledgeable to help with here's a few things I recommend:
Get help with any plumbing you plan to do. PEX pipe is cheap and easy but you'll still need a PEX tool and someone to show you the ropes at a minimum.

Electrical is a bitch (I know, I'm still struggling with mine), get some help with this.

Have someone hang your doors if they aren't pre-hung. This sounds silly, but hanging a door is a delicate art, and unless you want a door that never opens or closes right, get someone to do this for you. A good carpenter will do this in half a day for under a hundred dollars generally, assuming you provide all the materials (including the door).

I'll be watching this thread (while I'm not sorting out my electricity) so feel free to ask questions and I'll try to answer them.

>>324714
>Have someone hang your doors if they aren't pre-hung. This sounds silly, but hanging a door is a delicate art, and unless you want a door that never opens or closes right, get someone to do this for you. A good carpenter will do this in half a day for under a hundred dollars generally, assuming you provide all the materials (including the door).

Shit, I never even thought of that.

>>324703
Learn how to design your building so that it heats and cools itself. Windows in houses are a very important part of human health. In fact in some places, like where I live, there are building codes that state you must have x amount of square area of window space or it can be condemned as unhealthy.

>>324715
Jesus, it takes me about an hour to hang a door. It isn't rocket science.

>>324719
You sure you're not talking about a prehung door? (pic related)

If you've had luck hanging a door from scratch, putting all the trim and stuff in yourself, and can do it in an hour, then more power to you. For everyone else though, I recommend you get someone to do this for you; it's one of the ONLY things I sprung for in this regard.

>>324730
I'm talking a door without the frame. All you need is a table saw. I switched out all the doors at my mother's place with antique solid wood doors. Those just needed swapped for the most part, but a few needed to have the door frame removed and a new one made to fit the door since the sizes didn't match.

The prehung doors are terrible these days. I've had a couple that the holes in the frame for the latch did not line up and was off half an inch. I had to epoxy the entire hole and drill a new one in the correct spot.

The only part that might take you a while to do is the removal of the wood where the hinges go, but that depends on how you design the frame really.

>>324837
Agree with this guy.

So long as you go about it in the right way its pretty simple.
I can imagine that its easy to make it considerably more difficult than it needs to be if you don’t think about it properly.

>>324655

depends totally on location, climate, materials available, and building codes, and what your usage will be. oh, and money (lol). where are you?

I disagree about skipping windows. Windows are a great source of passive solar heat. Just make sure your making them multi-layered if your making them yourself, obviously you can't fill the dead space with inert gas... and if all you want is light, you can fill it with aerogel or something similar. Look up trombe walls if you want the solar gain without much heat loss.

>>324655
Cob house technique. It's somewhat similar to adobe or rammed earth, but easier, cheaper, and lends itself to unique sculptural enclosures. Look it up. Most cob structures go for a hobbit hole sort of aesthetic, but normal 90 degree corners are just as easy and structurally sound.

>>324719
if a prehung door takes you an hour, you're just not considering the right considerations. Either that or your rough openings don't allow for enough play.

Things to consider with a pre-hung:
1. it fits in the opening, and then some
2. lift the hinge side with a wonder-bar about a 1/4 inch with your foot, slap a level on the actual hinges. Tack pairs of nails at the hinges when level.
3. check the reveal (or the space between the door and the jamb that the door is enclosed in.) Keep it similar across the top and tack the top in with finish nails.
4. Keep that same reveal all the way down the knob side.

tada. open the door, shim the back side (making sure your shims dont prohibit you from replacing the back jamb back in.) Re-put the back side into the jamb. Finish nail all the way around.

>>324690
earthbag.
Steel roof
insulate walls heavily
walls to the south for winter
solar water heater with in floor pipes to heat your house with solar hot water
/thread
http://www.dreamgreenhomes.com/function/residential.htm

>>324966
I think you misread that. I'm hanging the door that was not prehung in about an hour. Meaning I have to make the frame from scratch. Prehung doors already have their frame made and take about 15 minutes to install and shim into place unless the doorway is borked.

>>324698
Is that a stone roof?? How would something like that be done? Leak proof? SO MANY QUESTIONS!

>>324994
I think its called a corbelled roof. there are stone age tombs with this type of roof that are still mostly leak-proof after thousands of years.

>>325000
Nice!

So, I googled "Earthbag homes" because I've never heard of them before, and I really liked the look and idea of such a cheap stable home.

I live in minnesota, where snow can pile up like nobody's business and it can get to -20 degrees in the middle of a really hard winter.

Would an earthbag home be ok in such an environment? One would think that the ground would keep the inside warm like a little insulated oven, but would it really? Would the ground shift and move the house around, do you think? Would it move and shift the dirt in the bags too?

I've got so many questions, but I love the idea of building my own house and this looks do-able.

>>325069
I sent you a link to a bunch of the plans...
>>324976

http://www.earthbagbuilding.com/articles/insulated.htm
Earthbag isn't an insulation, it is a way of holding mass.
Like, it can heat/cool by holding mass and being dense, but you should insulate one side of it with other stuff like perlite or rice hulls on one side of it.
http://www.earthbagbuilding.com/articles/insulated.htm
Some people have very insulated homes, which use solar gain to get most/all of their heat.
You can use solar hot water heaters to heat the home, and skip a heater altogether. The water flows through the floor, heating the house. Hot water is stored over night.
Or you could just use a wood stove.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/solar-hot-water-zm0z11zphe.aspx
http://www.wittus.com/

>>325082
Thank you

>>324994
Yes, it is a stone roof. You overlap the stones to make it leak proof. The pitch of the roof needs to be steep too. Look up slate roofs.

>>324994
>corbelled roof

No, that is different, but it is very close and many people mistake one for another. Corbelled roofs will be self-supporting and arched, but not a true arch.

Pour 6 concrete supports and build a log cabin on it. Use a wood heater for cooking/heating/hot water. Dig a water well.

Grow your own bamboo on site, use that to build.
Bamboo walls, insulation, plumbing, furniture, floors, roof, etc.
For the cost of a saw and some bamboo from a nursery you can build as many houses as you want.

For passive heating/cooling you could consider rammed earth. You can DIY your own block making rig and do it on site if you have decent soil.

I don't think you can get more cost effective than bamboo and earth.

>>325231
Doesn't it take a factory to make it flat planks?

>>325551
>flat planks

What are you talking about?

>>325558
Sorry, I'm really high. Like bamboo flooring, they make it flat I saw it on TV somewhere. It looked like it would take too long to do it by hand.

>>325582
I think that guy means more something like in this pic. Bamboo is used for framing up the house, instead of timber. In this pic I believe they've used thatched bamboo husks for the panelling too. For the floor, I'm not sure how you'd go about making flat bamboo planks, but you could cut stalks of bamboo in half, then use them as flooring with the round side down, then use the same thatched husks to lay over the top of it, maybe even in layers.

>>325231
But Bamboo takes like five years to grow a mature culm (section), does it not?

That's much quicker than regular trees, but still.

>>325582
Oh, that's easy,

http://www.guaduabamboo.com/crushed-bamboo.html

Bamboo is really easy to make stuff with, using minimal tools. The only thing is that it takes a while to dry.

>>325586
Yes.

Depending on available materials and their cost I would make a wood cabin or a limestone brick cabin. Its not called limestone but I do not know the right word for it in english (pick related its one of those bricks). If the ground is strong enough to handle a slab concrete foundation I'd go for those limestone bricks. Build the walls out of that, glue EPS plates to the outside then plaster on top of that with a weather/waterproof mortar. I tried this on a house extension after seeing it being built somewhere else. Works fine, will last a long time and isolation is pretty good depending on the thickness of the bricks and EPS plates.

If the ground cant support a thick concrete slab I'd go for wood. Wood can last a 100 years but only if you built it right. There are many do's and dont's when building a house out of wood, way too many to explain here. Simply get a book about building houses out of wood, learn a bit then apply them to your own project. Wont have to be complicated or a lot of work or anything, but some details are pretty important.
I would make some nice double walls with isolation and finish the outside with a nice wood stain. Dont just use a wood stain you bought in a random shop. They know about good wood stain in Norway and other northern countries, I cant remember what brand and type anymore unfortunately, but those woodstains can last 15 years easily. You can also enhance a random wood stain by adding some extra things like boiled linseed oil and such.

I like OP's pic, I'll build something like that some day for my kids if I ever have them.

>>325617
look into how the Amish people build houses iv seen 150 year old houses still standing in places like Tennessee and Kentucky thay built thease houses right very beautiful and hand tooled if thay did it by hands you can do it with power tools

>>324703
Do you even understand the concept of "passive solar"? Or, for that matter, how a greenhouse works? Fun fact, they use WINDOWS. (But not Windows 2000. Fuck that shit.)

>>325586
Yes, 3 to 6 years to mature, then a year to season the bamboo once harvested.
At best it would take 5 years before your house was completed.

Earth bags are pretty much the fastest way, just dig up bags and make a hut, it would take around a day to make something liveable.

hempcrete maaaaan... its cheaper than concrete if you can get a source close to your building site. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOZzXYgl7-s

>>325906

I've lived near some Amish. Firstly, most of them do use some power tools now days. A lot of them use air tools, and have full modern workshops, just everything run off of compressed air instead of electric. They also have some modern appliances like blenders and stuff that run off of air. Depends on the group, some have adopted more modern stuff than others.

Secondly, the Amish are expensive as fuck to hire. Sure, they do good work, but you're going to pay out the ass for it.

Much cheaper to build a house or barn yourself with modern materials than to hire the Amish.

This seems pretty handy for you OP http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SolarHomes/plansps.htm

Would a little abode like the one in OP's photo be realistically inhabitable in a state like Florida? If so, does anyone know of a site that has plans for something similar? Not to be all mushy or whatever, but that little thing is fucking awesome. I want one.

>>329480
You could make it the same footprint, but you wouldn't probably want to sleep in a loft in the Florida summer. And the windows and doors would be best re-arranged for more cross ventilation.

>>325000
we have buildings made from stone for over thousand years that still work. Pic related

>>331753
Imagine those in an earthquake.

>>331753
>muthafuckin skellig
I was thinking of Newgrange, but yeah.

>>331787
>living in an Earthquake zone

>>331787
not much of a problem here
>>331789
Newgrange much much older - 5000 years ago more or less.

Another example of stone dwellings from around 800 or so in PIC

>>332250
fuuuck. forgot pic

look up the videos by Nader Khalili (torrent it)

>>332252
I want that level of patience. I have the skill, but damn, I'm so fucking lazy. I even have a massive pile of stone already.

>>333048

Just do it a little bit at a time. Rome wasn't built in a day ya know.

>>333064

I'm pretty sure it was. Trust me, i'm a welder.

>>333079
hehe

This is a great thread, you guys on /diy/ are one of the best-kept secrets on 4chan.

One of the most important issues you'll face with your new home isn't even the initial cost, but rather the property tax you'll be forced to pay. Generally, the bigger and nicer a place looks=more money to the bigwigs; Since this is something we'd all like to avoid like a child with their fist firmly entrenched in the cookie jar of their mortgage, take precautions in what materials you use when decorating the interior, and downplay it's size as much as you possibly can.

Don't stray into illegal tax evasion stuff, or rather, don't get CAUGHT.

Wow, really cool thread. I've been toying with the idea of building a cabin like this for some time now but I might actually be in a spot to start saving up for this and get it built in about 2-4 years time.

I'm toying around with various ideas now. The house built by that brit out of cob for the lower parts and wood packed with something for the higher parts and then topped off with some dirt. Looks a bit like a hobbit house and I'd be pretty darn happy with it.

I was thinking of getting a fireplace that could heat the inside as well as water for bathing and cooking and recently I came upon thermoelectric generators. If a fireplace was able to give me about 10kW of energy, I reckon that could make enough power (4V/~10Q per plate) to get about 110V and about 200W of power for charing cell phones/laptops. Also been thinking about wind/solar/water, but I dunno which location to put my cabin yet. And I dunno how to handle shitting, I'd like to avoid having a privy in the yard, I've had that and while it's ok in the summer, it must suck fucking bad in the winter.

/ideas

Also just in case someone from this thread doesn't have the link : freecabinporn.com . While it doesn't provide any technical food for the brain, some of the images are fucking astounding.

>>333461
I want to build my house as a series of small buildings, less than the minimum for taxes(usually 100-200 sq feet) so one building for the kitchen one for the bedroom etc

>>333515
Just so you know what to expect, 200W of peltier/seebeck junctionswill be expensive (could cost several hundred $, but will probably be under 1000$) Add hundreds more for all the heatsinks/cooling blocks and converters (DC-DC or inverter)

What you could do is use water cooling blocks to keep the "cold side" of the junctions at a relatively low temperature compared to the hot side.

Or big heat sinks, or heat sink and fan.

You need to budget power for running a pump or fan if you're going that route of course.


For the shitter you could build a heavily insulated shed outside and put in a composting toilet. I have friends who do that, but they live on the ocean (on an island in a bay) and it doesn't freeze much in their area.

>>333552
Thanks anon, I'll copy your post somewhere for the future. Not really worried about the cost as it would still be cheaper than solar (I think).
I would also have to think of some way of dumping heat out during the summer.
>summer
>wants to charge phone/get hot water
>heat up whole house
THinkin of making a inner air duct for warm air, then if it's summer, I could change the path so that most of the heat goes straight outside.

Lots to think about, gonna look around for some books on this topic as well as a bit about masonry, plumbing, carpenty...

>>333549
I guess it all depends on your local legislation, but some places have 'total dwelling area' regulations to close that kind of loop-hole.

>>324692

If you aren't into aesthetics and don't live in a tropical environment I don't know if I have ever seen any roof that could compete against hot rolled tar.

Once its on there its on there. Water rolls off like a ducks back.

>>324983

Where I live the doorways are always fucked. I don't even mess with doors anymore honestly.

If you live in an area where ghetto rigs are the norm and everyone is broke I would say don't even mess with those sorts of jobs. DIY sure. Eventually you can figure it out without too much problems and filler.

>>325000

I don't know about leak proof but it is definitely one of the greatest achievements in architecture in human history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbel_arch

>>326156

Air but not electric? Could you please elaborate?

I have heard though that Amish for whatever their particulars are the gold standard in construction principles.

>>333461

This! Depending upon where you live. I have seen homes over the years that were pruposely designed to look like ugly shacks.

Once you go inside they are insane hobo mansions!

It keeps the thieves and the real criminals away...the tax assesors.

i fucking love tiny homes. tumbleweed makes the best and the look cozy as shit on the inside i plan on living in one. they are about 15,000 to build your house and less if your smart about it. you can use recycled materials. they are extremely cheap to live in and have very low utilities. like maybe $5 a month for heating during the winter

>>333861

15.000 sounds kinda steep for a project like that. I was thining more like a grand or two.

>>333867

I've seen quite alot of people do it for way less if they find used or recycled things. i don't know if you can do it for a grand, but its definetly something u should look into. i feel like if your wise you could pull this one off for two thousand. http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/products/xs-house/#ad-image-0

>>333867
>>333867

I've seen quite alot of people do it for way less if they find used or recycled things. i don't know if you can do it for a grand, but its definetly something u should look into. i feel like if your wise you could pull this one off for two thousand. http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/products/xs-house/#ad-image-0

sorry about that double posting shit i dont know what just happened

i like sheds, i will live within one

minimal housing woo

>>333910

i see nothing but empty wasted space in every example for small houses.. it aggrevates me

i am ocd about efficient utilization of space

>>333861
$15k? Where's the money going? It just looks like a kids play house on a trailer. Granted, the interior would have a better finish. But what pushes the cost up so much?

>>333916
from what little I've looked into tumbleweed homes, a good chunk of money is in the goddamn trailer itself...and funny enough, the priceline breakdown they list for the size of the trailers is nowhere near what I've seen when hunting in GA. It could be a regional thing, but fuck if I can find 'em cheap. Another big price adjustment is in the roofing and structural reinforcement...they're built to take hurricane like winds due to the portability of em. Every beam in one of those homes has hurricane brackets, and beams. The siding isn't really skimped on either. They're a fantastic design to mimic, but yer, expensive for that kinda footage...Id say if you have a sedentary lifestyle and know where you're putting down roots, you'd be much better off using either one of their permanent floor plans, or using them as a guideline, and tailoring the materials to your budget/climate.

>>333914
I'm right there with you. The area is horribly misused in that pic, and I don't see anything that's a necessity such as a kitchen...it gets pretty testy making every meal over a campfire, even if it is from a dutch oven. I think everything in a small home needs to have a dual purpose. your shelving must be deep enough to double as a desk/table. A pullout side table with a leg build into the shelving is great too. chairs must be able to be folded and stored between the gaps between shelves...most everything else is completely dependent on your lifestyle/family size/availability of technology and society. Got a couple of things I'll upload here pertaining to small homes once my phone bandwidth finally gets them up.

>>334036
goddammit, "The insulation* isn't really skimped on either".

I have no idea where my mind is at right now.

I'm just going to leave this here for everyone interested in the tiny/efficient living movement:

https://www.youtube.com/user/kirstendirksen?feature=results_main

>>334048
also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDbrUk2xYBo&list=UUDsElQQt_gCZ9LgnW-7v-cQ&index=57&featu
re=plcp

If you want to be SUPER minimalist.

>>334066
that lady was scary and her house and fireplace was way too clean

>>334097
and did you see her writing? way too neat.

>>334036
Alone in the Wilderness....great short film about an older gent building his own cabin and living in alaska. Minimalistic, but a great reference to what goes into building a house, not to mention it's great inspiration.

part 1
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2fjavhmm2vp6lw1
part 2
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?1wg1i8e77zh2jh3
part 3
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?y89yndnd3fuchh4
part 4
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?hqnp16lo47d7b9x
I got a book to upload here as well, but I've been fighting mediafire all damn day just to get this up...tomorrow most likely.

>>335371
samefaggin' it up. Came back to post a brief video link of the cabin construction...it goes into better details in the full video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYJKd0rkKss

also, a book about building a small home, the basic tenants of what goes into designing a home, and the advantages/contrasts to small homes vs. home construction today. Some of it feels like reaching for excuses, but a lot of it is kinda interesting to think about.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?blhdc21upowhd68

Oh if we're wildernessing it up... google Nordfor Sola. Two norwegian dudes build a cabin in the middle of nowhere and live there for like 9 months surfing etc.

All the information and films are in norwegian, plus they had to have took a load of stuff with them, their cabin looks cozy as hell.

>>335551
2nd pic of the cabin.

>>335552
3rd

>>335553
4th and final.

Nordfor Sola (North of the sun)

You couldn't live there for ever, but it'd be pretty peaceful.

>>335371

It's not so much about building, but there was a follow up movie done called Alaska, Silence and Solitude. It was done in 2004, so you get to see how his cabin held together and it's pretty neat. This guy is awesome.

>>335551
>two dudes
>9 months

Were they alone up there....

>>334048
I would like to both thank, and curse for your this post....great info, but I've most of my day off
just watching the videos here and envisioning what I'd do with a small home.

freecabinporn add the .com at the end, enjoy 52 pages of different house ideas.

Thank me later.

hay covered with lime and (free)barked wooden struts as scafolding.

>>335750

Yeah I think so.

Supposed to be quite remote.

>>335803

I <3 freecabinporn. Sometimes when I'm just feeling a bit meloncholy I just go through all the pages. It's where I found the nordfor sola dudes.

bumping because interested, and, I mean c'mon idk about you guys but building my own home is the ultimate diy project

Though the Cabin idea is cool. I myself in the end use a shipping container. Only reason why is cause I can get some for free (Dad owns trucking business, they replace them over the smallest of damage) So I would get one or two, either stack them or set side by side. Go about cutting holes for windows, doors etc. Then after words I'd find recycled material, build the outside and inside walls, lay down floor, find windows etc. My father did this for his Cabin during the summer. It costed him about 2 grand, really nice inside. I will try to get some pics of it in the morning.