Its a great idea, a steel frame/exterior house...  but if you want it to increase three-fold in value after you build it the house must have curb appeal...  If you want to re-sale, you must build for the masses, as stupid as they are...  Its easy to sell a trendy house.

haha

The building for that plan would cost about $40,000 including all the
plumbing and wiring.

$1100 to sheetrock cieling
$3200 to sheetrock walls
$175 to panel all closets (not sheetrocking closets)
$6000 (roughly) to build all the interior walls

Comes out around $50,475

This does not include fixtures.  We could furnish and fixture the rest
of the house for less than $10,000

Roughly 3000sq ft.

(ignore the pidly garage...just there for location)

Oh and the biggest part of the interior estimate is planning $20 per foot of interior wall with 18" studs at 10ft height...which I think is a bit over estimated and not all the rooms will be 10ft high.

I'll try to find info. the guy is a friend of a friend so it may take a few days. but i'll try

Mak - need info. Who is the supplier of the steel stuff. I am serious. And who is framing it. This is a custom plan that the company will build right.
Wifey drew a plan that almost will lay over yours ... it was a 2800 sqft though, on a 42X72 foot print I believe.
Anyway, I would put all bathrooms against outside walls and some small stuff like that. Yours is like a 45 X 75 or somehting right. Looks cool.
Anyway Garage is addable. You can build it any time. I would do it as a stand alone with a breezeway of sorts.
I also would like one with an attic space with dormers so its a nice open play area.
Cool.
Srinath.

The plan is based on a 48X72 steel building...not something they'll come out and put up.  I have experience erecting steel shops and buildings and I've three other handy men who can help as well.  Putting it up ourselves is a good cut in cost and it's really not difficult work if you've got a good tractor with a bucket.  We're probably going to be scaling it down, though, because won't be able to do much with 3000sq/ft except fill it with crap.

The building I'm looking at is supplied by Mueller fabrication.  I ran with 48X72 because that's as big as they can really make the building without needing a high roof.  As is, the peak of the building is around 16ft and the exterior walls are the only load bearing structures.  This way we could have 10ft cielings in some rooms, even higher in others, a decent size attic, and lofts.  I've always wanted a loft.  The floorplan is just something the fiance drew up.  I did my estimates by calculating cost of quality 1/2" sheetrock at $.31 per sq/ft (from Home Depot) and then calculating the entire wall and cieling area.  I then calculated the cost of walls (interior walls only as the exterior walls are supplied with the building) at $20 per linear foot.  The only things not calculated are insulation and fixtures.

When it actually comes to buying material and what not we're likely going to go with something like 45X65.  A 45X65 building with a 16ft peaked roof is a bit cheaper and it'll hold up to 150mph wind...a tremendous bonus as we live in Tornado Alley.

You should really consider garages and porch areas when laying the foundation.  Having all the foundations laid at once makes things much simpler.

Aaaaah ... building to house conversion.
I am also looking at these since you put that idea in my head, but I want standing seam steel roof, steel siding that looks like vinyl, a loft and stuff yea but that 16 foot sounds good though. I'd so 8ft and do knee walls upstairs. Anyway, let me see what mine works to. I got someone chewing on it. I cant prolly do it though.
Cool.
Srinath.

Yeah we're looking at several siding options to make it look more like it a home and less like a "building".  One idea is to rock the lower half all the way around, and then do the top with steel siding.  Between that, all the windows, and some shubbery it should look decent.

Rock or brick or whatever has this one huge disadvantage IMHO. You need to put OSB underneath it. You can do wrap and steel siding without if you dont have brick. I hate introducing a decay prone, moisture weak termite food material in an otherwise solid sturcture. You can actually do that same trailer roof material instead of siding too. I just like steel siding a bit more for the stealth nature of it. Looks like siding, is steel type deal.
Anyway I am still working on the finding a guy to build part. lets see how much luck I have. but yea I wish I could have some friends who can build it, and I get in there and build the freaking thing. That'd be so cool.
Cool.
Srinath.

I have a hypothetical question.
Say I have a 40X60 foot print house. I want a 8ft front and rear porch for the full width. I also want the whole upstairs area hidden in the roof AKA loft/attic/bonus room.

Now I can get that with a 56 foot steel frames with say a 6/12 roof pitch, Like this one ...
http://www.heritagebuildings.com/steel_homes/hillcrest/index.asp

Or get that with a 40 foot steel truss with a 9/12 roof pitch and a set of shed roof extension from the main roof extending out that 8ft front and rear at a 3/12 or something. Like this one.
http://www.heritagebuildings.com/steel_homes/crestwood/index.asp

I cannot directly compare these 2 they are very different.

Which will be cheaper and will it be significant enough to count in my descision.
Cool.
Srinath.

hmmm...srinath with the hillcrest plan there you already get the material for the porch front and back if I'm not mistaken...crestwood just has the front.  If I understand Heritage's descriptions, they include all but finnishing materials but I won't say fr certain.  We really haven't been looking much to buying a pre-planned kit.

We do, however, want a covered porch along the front of our house as well.  We're redoing our floorplan again, but the last draft we did used a 42X65 building with the peak in the middle.  The outside walls were 10ft, and I just carried the roof out over the porch.  No change in angle, that way we could just order longer roofing sheets.



That's the basic look from the side.  This carried 6' over our porch usin the same sheets as on the room.  Height at the outside edge of the porch is 8' and it's supported using 8" pillars.  We're going to wrap it all up with a nice little railing.

This is our latest floorplan which is roughly 2485 sq/ft and will cost roughly $52,000 to build (not including fixtures and counters.

OK Your pics didn't upload.
Anyway I think I'd have to get the stuff from the same place you get.
The shed vs whole bigger truss thing, I am sorta partial to the shed type different roof line deal. I dont want the rectangular box look. I am anyway slapping dormers on it and will have complicated roof line a little bit. I also want a standing seam metal roof and of course steel siding. Lets see, I might price it out with them and see. Building to house conversion is cool, cos there are a million building suppliers. I ahve one that this contractor builds a lot of from a company called mesco. I think a building is the best way to go, and turn it into a house. But lets see how it pans out in this area ... heck I need to find the right land to build on. My hill that I found was great for basement, but slab ... not at all.
Cool.
Srinath.

I'm not too sure what you're meaning about your roof...draw me a picture, mate.  We've got at least a dozen different floorplans laid out...maybe one of them will be more your style.

That crestwood proch was what I was talking about. The roof pitch will be different for the house (much steeper like 9/12) and porch will be like 3/12 or less.
I have pics but this is prolly something I will have to check with the manufacturer.
Cool.
Srinath.

Well really that's not a difficult thing to do.  They just put a piece of flashing to seal the gap between the porch and the roof.  In that case, though, the porch and house would be completely seperated and independant...like something you add on.  I'm trying to keep my roofs all on the same planes so that I can keep the building completely contained.

Its sorta like that, but since its a slab it will be on 1 floor. The cost was what I was talking about, will it cost more or will I be better off going with a larger truss. Like I said, I would prefer to have the 2 different roof lines just to keep it from looking boxy.
Cool.
Srinath.

To go with two seperate roof angles, yeah, it'll probably cost more but it wouldn't be tremendous enough to really deter the idea.

We don't particularly want the "box" look but there's other ways to hide it than just altering the roof angles.  Several of our floorplans have the porches set into the house, making a squarish dogbone shape from above.  Other plans are designed around piecing together two or three buildings and just merging the roofs.  You can always contact Mueller Steel.  They'll put together a kit for you using any dimensions you want...I'll probably buy my material through them.

My idea is to have a steel building garage that connects to the house via a breezeway. Only problem is, that whole thing will more than likely be behind the house so from the street It will look like a box. The development I am going to has several modular houses that are very very box like ... so if I am not building a modular, I am getting as far away from it as I can.
Lets try it and see what they say for $$$ ...
I just cracked Kodiak's formula ...
Adding 12 feet on a 48 deep base, with 8 foot porch and 2 rooms on first floor and 1 roon on second floor with one 12 foot dormer = 10K.
Cool.
Srinath.

Ok they say no mold, termites, dry rot, fire and high wind resistance.
Here is the important question in that case ... like what about rust ... gaaaaa ...
Cool.
Srinath.

Ah the dreaded rust! A mate of mine has a steel-hull narrowboat that he and his Mrs use as a holiday home / houseboat in a freshwater canal system.

He has to get it lifted out of the water once a year and check the hull and paint it, other than that nothing.  Modern marine paints are often good for a year in salt water conditions so unless you can afford to build in stainless steel (Bullion might be cheaper) the trick would be to ensure that once built all the steel is accesible for periodic inspection and maintenance.

My experience with steel hulls is that condensation is an ever present problem but I imagine you would allow for this insulation and ventilation wise but make sure that if condensation does form on the inside of the shell that it can run somewhere it will do no harm, you dont want pockets of water forming at the base.

It sounds a very interesting and worthwhile project, good luck with it and keep us posted with progress and developements.