Builders, what do you think?

I am interested in fringe house building. This make Hubby weep. He is very inside the box thinking, I am very outside the box. So far, we live in a box.

I am thinking round. I could live in a round house,I think. Round walls have WAY more structural support that square. It is the most efficient shape. All nest/dens in nature are round. It is easier to heat with no cold corners.

There are a few companies who serve the round home market. Some are framed in wood. But I am thinking about ICFs (insulated concrete forms) which apparently are available in a curved shape (I have not seen this with my own eyes). This means a house built of rebar and concrete. I do like concrete as a building material. I find its beefy mass and honest texture and look very appealing. Unlike plastic products that try to look like something else, concrete just looks like concrete and I am drawn to materials that look like what they are and don't try to be posers.

Auntie Evil made a post about air tight homes and air recirculating systems and while I cannot deny what Aunty says, I also think when you buld a house that is so prone to rot if you don't treat it with kid gloves, WE ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG! I also object to relying on any electrically operated system that brings air into the house after going to great lengths to keep in air in and out air out. It may make good scientific sense, but somewhere I can't help but thinking our whole way of doing things is profoundly stupid. Can't say why, just a gut feeling.

So let the conventional builders choke on their coffee and tell me why this is a ghastly idea, and let the free thinkers tell me how to make a sod roof. (not going to do it) I have not told Hubby that now I want a round house. As long as I don't suggest a round cordwood (stackwall) he'll be marginally relieved. I still like stackwall design and cob and rammed earth and dirt bag and.......

how bout a straw house?
AS long as theres no wolves around....I remember a lady from Athabaska built a straw coop and covered it in stucco, looking pretty well insulated and cool but seemed a little dark I was thinking...

I like the idea of having a brick wall inside across the room from a floor to ceiling window and then you capture heat during the day and then shutter up the window and the brick gives off heat all night.

Love those Finnish stoves made of soapstone Tulikivi or something, I think theres a dealer for them in your neck of the woods Uno.
They hold heat all the time....and you can cook on them...
I like the way you think Uno!

Something like this, Uno?

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Round and straw!

About straw. I like the idea. However a conversation with a local fellow who has built straw and would not do it again sort of took the wind out of my sails. THe point of straw is its superior insulative quality. HOwever this is only acheived if you have superior building skill and can recognize and deal with the areas where your high insulation will be lost through poor building. Straw bale is NOT idiot proof (not that any building method is).

Also, here you have the building inspector all over you more than the RCMP get on the local dope growers. It is almost impossible to get a load bearing straw bale wall past inspection, so everyone goes for post and beam with straw bale infill. You still use a whole lot of dimension lumber and framing and maybe timber joinery and the cost of putting up your roof bearing walls is the same as if you are building a traditional home. So if you can't get away from the cost, work and 2x6 material of framing, it sort of defeats the purpose of straw bale. Other than the look, which is extremely unique.

This fellow had built one small straw bale building that they lived in for a few years while they saved money to build their house. He had the foundation in place and the deck on, ready for straw bales and in the end, after several years in his straw building, he scratched the whole plan and went back to conventional with SUPER insulated walls.

Auntie E brought up an interesting point that wind, usually 20 below, blasting against your house pushes cold air into cracks and crevices and makes your interior uncomfortable, or to use common language, drafty and nasty! A ROUND house does not present those blank, flat surface for wind to pummel. A round house is more aerodynamic (I a making this up) and blowing wind should not have the same effect on interior air since wind does not have the same impact on the outside surface. So..round is better? Yes?

Just think how much we all love the shape, feel and heft of a beautifully crafted hen's egg in our hand. An egg, to me, is so magical and beautiful! While an egg is not round, it is rounded, and seems more soft and inviting in my hand than say a Rubik's cube. I am convincing myself that I want round.

Have you considered an umbrella house. It brings on a whole whack of structural and preventing dampness issues, but they can be heated with the earth and your animals can eat the grass you'll grow on your roof.
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Or there is slip form construction:
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Or you could use Ben Law's round wood designs.
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As you say though, it is the bureaucratic BS that causes all the problems with unusual house design.
If we didn't have a fine little house, we'd definitely love to build an umbrella type. Unfortunately we don't have the cash or energy to do it -lol
If you do, please let me live vicariously through you!

Hey, what about a Yurt? There are some here for the Fibre Arts Group. I kind of like them. When we were thinking of building, I mentioned it to my husband...he was not so keen.

You can get into trouble with the building inspectors even with wood framing. Someone here used a log many times larger than the typical 4x4. The log like many logs had a crack from drying visable. The inspector wanted it changed for conventional lumber (cracks are not as noticeable).

I hope you said no.

Yurts...I looked into those, but essentially they are canvas. After watching bears tear their way into my plywood sided chicken house, destryoing it in the process, to get at some scratch I had in there, I decided in this neck of the woods I want something more between the smell of my morning bacon and the local bears than a sheet of canvas. Another reason tenting is not high on my list of things to do. I have bear phobias.

Slip form...rock...mmmm...chunky..heavy...massive. Very sexy building method. I have read some on this, not much and the one thing we have in vast abundance is ROCK! Any property that gets developed up here has to blast the stuff out of the way.

You know...I am too old for this. Sometimes getting the dishes washed and a load of laundry folded before bed seems to take all the energy I have. I'm not the young 40 year old I used to be! I can see myself half way into some bizarre project when it suddenly occurs to me, what the heck was I thinking, I don't to do this, I want to have a nap.

We have the property, it's that darn, lurking building inspector waiting to pounce. Do you suppose I can skirt permits and such by making a sculpture? Since when do you need a permit to create art? Did Michelangelo stop in at city hall before he began chipping away at his marble? I think not! SO when building inspector drives in and asks if I have a permit for the building I'm erecting, I'll just say this is not a building...this is ART! (I might be old but I'm still a super genious!)

Wouldn't a round house just roll down the hill?

If you have a lot of stones then use them in a concrete and stone house with a double wall ,dead air space in between ,and you can make it in any shape that you want ?? It would take time ,mixing your own concrete...stacking the stones ( or green wood ,which when incased in a concrete wall will only crack as much as the wall will allow ,which is NADA ) .I have a book somewhere I think that discribes this method ( actully thought of making a Cabin in this way ).There are a lot of alterantive methods out there ........but building inspectors seem to be bent on what is ""IN "" as the only way to build .

Lots of roundhouse and yurt ideas out there.

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There's an octagonal House not to far a way! I envy it.

Fowler, had come across that site while poking around Google for round houses. That is quite the undertaking! I'm sort of hoping there is an easier way than hiring a bunch of Chilean brick layers. BUt it is pretty awesome, wish there had been a few more finished pics. Who knew lightning was such a concern in Chile?

Talk to Helmut and Rick at the end of my street - they build dome/roundhouses and they are GORGEOUS.

Uno there's just what you are looking for up here
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My hubby rolls his eyes and says no frickin way hahaha

What about cord wood house.
They are rather interesting looking.
I have always wanted a cabin done
in that style.

I feel very lucky to have been inside three different cordwood homes. Bought the book by Rob Roy years ago and read it many times. They are very unique and have a feeling of solid mass that the average stick frame home just doesn't have. But talking with the builders comes to one conclusion, this is something that a young person takes on once because none of them said they would do it again. It is a MASSIVE undertaking and it's not like you can hire the job out to trades people since this is pretty much a do-it-yourself building method. Locally there is one round structure that someone began over 20 years ago and to this day it sits, unfinished, roofless, like a crumbling Stonehenge.

Again, there are variable at play that can lead to leaky walls and settling insulation and COLD. One house locally had vermiculite insulation that over the years had settled and the top 3 feet of wall no longer had any insualtion at all. The new buyers removed the roof, refilled the settled out voids in the walls (no small task!) and replaced the roof.

I still am drawn to stackwall (hubby runs for the Tums when I bring this up) but would do it for a small cabin, NOT a full size house. I think it would make a funky chicken coop. (right until mites inhabited those walls!) The one not far from here is almsot 3000 sq ft on one floor. YOu need a golf cart to drive from the kitchen to the laundry room! No kidding that guy wouldn't do it again, what a massive job that first house was! But even Rob Roy has made some changes to his method and ideas since his first book was published. I think it would be fun, but worry how to make it warm, although thermal mass comes heavily into play in a stackwall home. Even with wind whistling through, which it usually does not.

Isn't this fun? If you could build any house in the world...

Lived in a yurt for the first two years I lived on the ranch. The most fantastic place to live in spring and summer. Chilly in winter but then I didn't do much customizing. I was having an existential crisis and thought creature comforts were a distraction.

The Chilcotin I am told is the last place in Canada without a building code or building inspectors. Just TRY to limit what we do. This is why my house still doesn't have a balcony railing...

Go Uno GO!

Heda! I AM having an existential crisis and I DO think that creature comforts are bringing me down. I have been fighting the urge to throw away all of Hubbies stuff. WHy don'y you start a new thread...What is the MEaning of life and Should Uno really build a Round House or is this just Hormones?

You can come up and live in the yurt for a while. It will get you through the existential crisis and not alienate your husband. Too much. I have chickens, turkeys and a grumpy husband. You will be right at home.

I will contemplate a new thread but am rather lazy about complete thoughts and find it easier to tag along on your sweeping statements.

I have studied several construction methods discussed here. I'm attracted to timber framing and SIP (foam sandwiches) walls and roof with ICF for the basement. In some ways construction standards have declined in my opinion. Shiplap has been replaced with plywood which in turn has been replaced with a lot of chips glued and compressed together. Houses are now built on 24 inch centres while in days gone by they were built on 16 inch centres. Siding is often plastic which burns far easier than the cedar produced at the local mills.

farmchiq wrote:Talk to Helmut and Rick at the end of my street - they build dome/roundhouses and they are GORGEOUS.

They are usually gorgeous now but a white elephant when it comes time to sell and it will be much more costly to build than conventional styles such as a box. All kinds of added problems such as bathrooms and kitchens. Most bath tubs are not designed to fit against a curved wall and the same for kitchen and laundry room cabinets. I built my first house about 40 years ago and I built the one that I live in now and I built it relatively square like a box. What I discovered was that one of the expensive parts of a building was the exterior walls so you want the fewest lineal feet without losing square footage. In other words a box. Also if you have a box and place a furnace in the middle of it the heat will not have as far to travel as in a rectangle or L shaped floor plan.

Dan, your point is valid, some of these crazy design ideas (and I have LOTS of them) are hard to unload when it's time to sell. Local realtor says even log homes are harder to sell just because they appeal to a smaller market than a regular stick built home. I can imagine that a round, mud walled house might be a little harder to move even than a log home!

Your other point is also correct, that the closer to a square your house is, the more efficient use of exterior wall to enclose interior space. The more rectangular, the more costly to build(per foot of exterior wall) and you get less square feet for you dollar.

Still....I do like htese crazy, alternative ideas. Who the heck needs to sell it anyway, pass it down to the kids in the will, as a form of revenge. Ha ha, you get the round house and all my fine china.

Rosewood, it isn't ALL bad, this house was only built 20 years ago and there isn't a sheet of OSB anywhere in it! And we are 16" on centre, sided with cedar and OVERbuilt in anyway Hubby could double up on dimension size. Hallways are 4' wide, all doorways 3' wide, if either of us ended up in a wheelchair, we could live in this house. HUbby griped over my plan to put 3' doors in every room but blessed me when it was time to lug furniture around.

Now I feel the urge to dig out all my Fine HOme Building Magazines and study up on the 5 ways to frame a corner. I bet there's an article or two on round homes... And you know Dan, tubs and cabinets do not need to go against an outside wall. The possibilities are staggering.

rosewood wrote:I have studied several construction methods discussed here. I'm attracted to timber framing and SIP (foam sandwiches) walls and roof with ICF for the basement. In some ways construction standards have declined in my opinion. Shiplap has been replaced with plywood which in turn has been replaced with a lot of chips glued and compressed together. Houses are now built on 24 inch centres while in days gone by they were built on 16 inch centres. Siding is often plastic which burns far easier than the cedar produced at the local mills.

................24 inch ? since when ? It's still every 16 inchs around here !