House building ideas

[Crocuta]

Those yurts look like tents. I remember yurts with walls kind of like barrel staves wider at the top, all connected by cable.  The cone shaped roof pushed out on the top of the wall stressing and stiffening the whole thing.

Yeah, they have compression rings with steel aircraft tension cables.  I do like the idea that the 12' models start at four grand and the 30' model with all the options can be had for under $20K.

I've been curious about these since our local building codes would seem to not require a permit for a non-permanent structure.  It might make for a fun battle with the building department, especially considering the top of the line models look nicer than my stick built home. 

[Pat McCotter]

How 'bout this?


Built like this:


And the roof tensioned like this:

[Russell Kanning]

pretty cool

[Crocuta]

My personal favorite is still cordwood construction.  There are stories of 80 year old grandmothers building a cordwood home mostly by themselves as one never lifts more than a few pounds at a time.  Plus, I think they are pretty attractive.  If things shake out that we have to stay here for a while, I'm thinking about building a small cordwood building as a testbed for later constuction.  Maybe something similar to the last picture.  I'd really like a sauna.

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

[Lloyd Danforth]

A frame is pretty cheap to build. 

But......................................................................................Then you have to sheathe it

:rimshot1:

[Russell Kanning]

I like the way this one looks too:

http://www.midcoast.com/~adolphsn/alan's/

[KBCraig]

How 'bout this?

Sadly, that ended up like this:


But she persevered, and rebuilt. Quite a woman.

Kevin

[Pat McCotter]

The burned house was her larger home. The small hexagonal is a studio.

[Pat McCotter]

And then there is her friend who can carry 500 lb logs.

[Lloyd Danforth]

There is an older cordwood house up in VT where I have to go in the next month or so.  I will get a picture of it.  You have to debark the wood.  I'm not sure how long it has to dry.

[Russell Kanning]

some of the guys said 2 or 3 years .... some poor guys in the depression did it all in one year

[Tom Sawyer]

I have a book I loaned to Jim called Alternative Houses (I think) that is pretty good. It has a chapter on cord wood construction. The one negative appears to be that some cracks can develop around the wood when it expands and contracts. The solution is to chalk any of the cracks that develop.

[Russell Kanning]

they also recommend using softer woods for less expanding/contracting

[Lloyd Danforth]

I have a book I loaned to Jim called Alternative Houses (I think) that is pretty good. It has a chapter on cord wood construction. The one negative appears to be that some cracks can develop around the wood when it expands and contracts. The solution is to chalk any of the cracks that develop.

Or...........you could caulk them

[Tom Sawyer]

There Lloyd goes showing of his wisdom... got to be right all the time.