Steel homes
July 22, 2012 1:33 PM Subscribe
What is the best company to contract for building a steel home?
My wife and I are interested in building a steel home for ourselves. Has anyone done this? We understand that steel is a good building material with a strong strength to weight ratio.
Ideally, the home would be around 1500 square feet. We would prefer a home that would require minimal assembly.
My wife and I are interested in building a steel home for ourselves. Has anyone done this? We understand that steel is a good building material with a strong strength to weight ratio.
Ideally, the home would be around 1500 square feet. We would prefer a home that would require minimal assembly.
Steel is very expensive, and pretty much only gets used when nothing else will do. For a private home it's massive overkill.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:25 PM on July 22, 2012
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:25 PM on July 22, 2012
I personally would use shipping containers. They're affordable, modular structural building blocks that can be stacked, sistered, or used to frame an open space between them.
Make sure you remove the floors in them & replace them with new ones: the existing ones are impregnated with toxins to thwart pest importation/exportation to non-native habitats.
Don't let the raw industrial look put you off - they can be skinned & insulated to the point you wouldn't know they were there unless you saw it under construction.
Containerist is an excellent place to start.
posted by yoga at 4:50 PM on July 22, 2012
Make sure you remove the floors in them & replace them with new ones: the existing ones are impregnated with toxins to thwart pest importation/exportation to non-native habitats.
Don't let the raw industrial look put you off - they can be skinned & insulated to the point you wouldn't know they were there unless you saw it under construction.
Containerist is an excellent place to start.
posted by yoga at 4:50 PM on July 22, 2012
See also, the Container Bay section of FabPrefab for much more info.
posted by yoga at 5:01 PM on July 22, 2012
posted by yoga at 5:01 PM on July 22, 2012
Steel is very expensive, and pretty much only gets used when nothing else will do. For a private home it's massive overkill.
We build all our new buildings with steel as it is a brilliant building material. There are many reasons to build a private home with a steel frame. One in particular is the fire-protection steel provides compared to timber framing in fire-prone areas. Another is the protection against rot and termites. Another is protection during earthquakes and high winds.
Due to its span capacities, you need less steel to frame a house than timber. And unlike timber, you can weld one piece of steel to another to create the length you want.
Steel kit homes are popular in our neck of the woods (which isn't yours, I guess). If I was going to look into steel homes in your area, I would google 'steel kit homes' (because the nature of steel allows the kit form) and then ask the builders for references.
posted by Kerasia at 5:12 PM on July 22, 2012
We build all our new buildings with steel as it is a brilliant building material. There are many reasons to build a private home with a steel frame. One in particular is the fire-protection steel provides compared to timber framing in fire-prone areas. Another is the protection against rot and termites. Another is protection during earthquakes and high winds.
Due to its span capacities, you need less steel to frame a house than timber. And unlike timber, you can weld one piece of steel to another to create the length you want.
Steel kit homes are popular in our neck of the woods (which isn't yours, I guess). If I was going to look into steel homes in your area, I would google 'steel kit homes' (because the nature of steel allows the kit form) and then ask the builders for references.
posted by Kerasia at 5:12 PM on July 22, 2012
Best answer: You'll have to define "steel home". A house made using light gauge metal framing instead of dimensional lumber? A building somehow made completely of steel? A steel frame structure with infill of something else, like an office building type of thing? Sure steel works great, but is no better or worse than any other building material in most respects, aside from rot/pest problems with wood. It just depends on how the steel is made and put together.
Steel kit homes are available, you'll just have to look through what they have to see if anything works for you. This most likely isn't going to be something you do yourself.
We build all our new buildings with steel as it is a brilliant building material. There are many reasons to build a private home with a steel frame. One in particular is the fire-protection steel provides compared to timber framing in fire-prone areas. Another is the protection against rot and termites. Another is protection during earthquakes and high winds.
Due to its span capacities, you need less steel to frame a house than timber. And unlike timber, you can weld one piece of steel to another to create the length you want.
This is kind of a lot of hooey. You build everything out of steel in Australia because 1) labor is expensive (thus no masonry or concrete) and 2) eucalyptus trees aren't suitable for harvesting lumber from. The way steel-framed houses are generally built, there are just as many members in the structure as with a wooden one unless you spend a lot of money on heavy steel framing. Code requirements are such that a steel-framed building isn't necessarily going to be any stronger than a wood building unless it's specifically designed to be that way, and steel will completely fail in a fire, just from the heat (remember 9/11?) Sure you can weld one piece of steel to another, but that generally doesn't happen with light-gauge framing, and just about never happens with larger steel members - if a steel column is cut too short for some reason, it's a MAJOR fuckup and not easily solved by welding a little piece of column on top of the short one.
posted by LionIndex at 8:35 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]
Steel kit homes are available, you'll just have to look through what they have to see if anything works for you. This most likely isn't going to be something you do yourself.
We build all our new buildings with steel as it is a brilliant building material. There are many reasons to build a private home with a steel frame. One in particular is the fire-protection steel provides compared to timber framing in fire-prone areas. Another is the protection against rot and termites. Another is protection during earthquakes and high winds.
Due to its span capacities, you need less steel to frame a house than timber. And unlike timber, you can weld one piece of steel to another to create the length you want.
This is kind of a lot of hooey. You build everything out of steel in Australia because 1) labor is expensive (thus no masonry or concrete) and 2) eucalyptus trees aren't suitable for harvesting lumber from. The way steel-framed houses are generally built, there are just as many members in the structure as with a wooden one unless you spend a lot of money on heavy steel framing. Code requirements are such that a steel-framed building isn't necessarily going to be any stronger than a wood building unless it's specifically designed to be that way, and steel will completely fail in a fire, just from the heat (remember 9/11?) Sure you can weld one piece of steel to another, but that generally doesn't happen with light-gauge framing, and just about never happens with larger steel members - if a steel column is cut too short for some reason, it's a MAJOR fuckup and not easily solved by welding a little piece of column on top of the short one.
posted by LionIndex at 8:35 PM on July 22, 2012 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Light frame steel (basically building using stick(dimensional lumber) framing techniques but with light gauge sheet metal two by fours and such)is ok but does have some drawbacks for a home. It is harder to insulate well since steel transfers heat pretty good and you get thermal bridging. You have to be very careful with your wiring because you can get it wrong and 'energize' your whole house. This can be bad. It tends to be noisy because steel transfers noise better than wood and the steel framing members are hollow and can 'echo' if not insulate right and sometimes even if they are.
The house you build will be more resistant to rot/insects but more subject to rust. For an alternative building material from wood framing I think (as a civil engineer) the two best technologies for residential housing are either Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) or Structural Insulated Panels (SIPS) and i think the single best way is build with ICF foundation/walls and use Sips for the Roof with Rafter framing, not trusses.
With either system you get a home that comes insulated and airtight from the beginning, it will be more rot and insect proof than wood or steel and is very, very quiet. The big challenge with this type of structure is running the wiring and plumbing but you can use techniques from masonry construction to solve this-mostly running all the plumbing/wiring on interior partition walls and using the basement to get stuff were you want and using chases for running stuff to the second story and/or attic.
Both of these technologies have good reputable companies all over the nation that can assist you and provide engineering. You can do a lot of the labor yourself for building the ICF as it is essentially giant hollow legos that you stack then fill with concrete to get a solid home. Really solid. Like bulletproof/bombproof and more fire resistant than wood (the forms can melt if they get hot enough).
If you are going to build a structural steel home out of w beams or some such, well I hope you are either an ironworker or wielder and congratulate you on your ambition.
posted by bartonlong at 8:55 PM on July 22, 2012
The house you build will be more resistant to rot/insects but more subject to rust. For an alternative building material from wood framing I think (as a civil engineer) the two best technologies for residential housing are either Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) or Structural Insulated Panels (SIPS) and i think the single best way is build with ICF foundation/walls and use Sips for the Roof with Rafter framing, not trusses.
With either system you get a home that comes insulated and airtight from the beginning, it will be more rot and insect proof than wood or steel and is very, very quiet. The big challenge with this type of structure is running the wiring and plumbing but you can use techniques from masonry construction to solve this-mostly running all the plumbing/wiring on interior partition walls and using the basement to get stuff were you want and using chases for running stuff to the second story and/or attic.
Both of these technologies have good reputable companies all over the nation that can assist you and provide engineering. You can do a lot of the labor yourself for building the ICF as it is essentially giant hollow legos that you stack then fill with concrete to get a solid home. Really solid. Like bulletproof/bombproof and more fire resistant than wood (the forms can melt if they get hot enough).
If you are going to build a structural steel home out of w beams or some such, well I hope you are either an ironworker or wielder and congratulate you on your ambition.
posted by bartonlong at 8:55 PM on July 22, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by rtha at 1:47 PM on July 22, 2012