I’m thinking of adding on a room to the back of my house. The natural progression would be something like a typical DIY homeowner with help from professionals at critical places.
By the way, this room will be used for a game room for the kids (and a hot tub for mom & dad!)
1) Build a free-standing covered patio about 10 fee from the back of the house. (Roof pitch to match the exitsing house.)
2) As time and $$$ allows, add windows, sliding glass doors, etc. to “close it in” on the three sides away from the house. Then attach it to the house by a walkway/transition room. It would be designed with lots of windows, skylights, etc. and a concrete floor so it would be a “three season room” at this point but completely closed off to the weather.
3) Finally, add heat & air unit. (Yes, the duct work will be already there.)
BUT HERE’S MY REAL QUESTION:
I grew up on a farm where we would put up “pole barns.” For you city-slickers, that’s where you sink poles down far enough to get past the frost line. (Use old telephone poles if you weren’t too concerned about looks, or use 6X6 or larger treated posts if you were.) Then you attach your framing to the poles and when you are finished framing you pour your concrete pad around the poles. Add any kind of siding, door, windows you want. BUT the point is: the strength comes from the poles, not a trational foundation.
What’s the difference in building like this? Many farm buildings have lasted years & years with no signs of problems. Why don’t we build houses like this? Seems like it would be stronger against wind than the way we attach our stick houses to the foundation now.
What pro’s and con’s do you see ahead if I build my addition like this? One “pro” is it avoids much of the digging & mess associated with a traditional stemwall and pad pour. We dig ’em about 3 feet deep around here. Another is a huge price difference.
I’ve talked with a salesman from Morton Buildings (just one name, there are many others) and he claims some commercial building is done this way and they have no problems meeting building codes.
So, what do you guys think???
Replies
I think what is best is not always what is.
Depends on your area. Codes and building inspectors have vanquished many a dream to the realms of the lost. Inside city limits around here and you are in hell unless you're super sly. A short jaunt 3 miles down the state route outside city limits and you're a freebird to pursue your DIY building desires. The city building inspector is a big PITA by ALL builders and folk in the area. Known as little Hitler and god-player. City council not much better. Now you cannot build your polebarn unless your house is up first. No variance here. House first. So people have to leave everything open and cover it up with tarps. A lot of senseless crap in my book. Small community of 12 to 13 thousand fairly rural type atmosphere community acting like a metropolis wannabe. Pole building can be done successfully for sure, especially if it's your place and you aren't planning on resale value down the road a while.
Sorry. Guess I got off on a bit of a rant. I don't know how you California builders can do what you do and keep your sanity unless the money is so good you can jump thru the hoops with a smile on your face.
Half of good living is staying out of bad situations.
Howdy,
You have thought this ought fairly well and have a decent conceptual plan. One thing you don't mention is the soils and seismic conditions. You hint at a cold climate since you speak of three feet down to get below frost.
The reason this is critical is in matching fouyndation movement or lack thereof to the existing house foundation. The strength and beauty of a pole structure is in it's simplicity. A straight, plain rectangle on certain soils can bind itself together and never move.
But what you describe is an addition to an existing. As a genmeral rule, you are safest in making the foundation for the addition to be the same type as the house. Additionally, you are really talking about two foundations for your game room. One is the poles to support the roof structure. The other is the slab containing a hot tub(Unless the tub is raised above) I forsee the possibility of the slab moving separately from the poles, forcing stresses into the windows and doors unless extreme care is given to drainage planes and insulation. Long story short, it is probably easier to dig a foundation in.
As to the generic question, pole barns are fine and last long but when you have a place to store hay or equiptment, you are less concerned with whether it moves around a little than if you have nice tight fitting window casing that opens up and sheetrock that cracks.
Sorry for my useless rant. Think I need to shutup and take a vacation.
Half of good living is staying out of bad situations.
Not useless, we all hate inspectors or any other govt official who abuses authority or lets the letter of the law supercede the spiritExcellence is its own reward!
As useless as your rant maybe, its to the point. We want to inspect your project so we can get a piece of the "action" but if we miss something you can't touch us!
Well, I don't want to be one accused of teaching children: 'remember, the building inspector is not your friend'.
I've met some reasonable, nice guys really, type of building inspectors who just do their job without personal ambition or desires entering in. One inspector dropped in and let me slide on r-13 instead of required r-19 in a wall of a cottage retro in new england. Pleasant comments and not aggressive. Wouldn't mind him around more often. Another job one leaves positive comments about the work and goes on. But the one I mentioned in the previous post, well, ok:'sometimes the building inspector is not your friend'.Half of good living is staying out of bad situations.
Get an engineers and/or a architects stamp on the plans you come up with and you can pretty much do what you want. I've never had any problems with inspectors. For the most part if you learn and follow the rules, most of them are there for a good reason, you should have few problems. If you treat the inspector as as enemy, they catch on fast, they will respond in kind. Not to say they will let you avoid the rules even when your friendly. It just makes things more pleasant.
Trust is another point. If you lie to them and get caught the inspector has to wonder about every little detail. While a good inspector can check literally hundreds of points by just walking a site a detailed check of everything could take hours. This slows them down and makes them fall behind and grumpy.
Some work 12 and 16 hr days and get lied to for most of those hours. I like most inspectors. If they feel you are trying to do it right, as defined in the codes, they realize that they are just double checking your own vigilance. A quick check of the major points and a statistical check of a few minor things, along with a feel for the site (clean/dirty, organized or not) and they make the call and move on.
They have caught things I missed and saved me time and money. Knowing quite a few contractors. Some I would have rather not known. I'm glad they are there to keep things as right as they do. For the most part I regret that they don't have more power and support.
In most places you can build like that. As pointed out previously it's called post and beam construction.
I can think of a couple of reasons not to do this -
First would be bracing. You need knee bracing from the posts up to the trusses to give a post frame some rigidity.
Also - Insulation can be a problem. How do you insulate those 6X6 posts? How about between posts? If you build a wall between each post so you can drywall and insulate, have you really gained anything?
I'm going to start a museum where all the work has been done by children.
I'll put all the paintings up on refrigerators.
Boss, a three season game room with wall to wall windows doesn't need much for insulation, does it?Excellence is its own reward!
I know of a guy in Pennsylvania who built his whole house on posts. It seems he bought some land to build on, after purchase but before building, they classified his land as "wetlands". They still allowed him to build, but the cost went up astronomically as they charged him a wetlands tax for square foot of foundation. So he suspended his whole house on posts. Hah!
BTW, timberframed houses are basically the same thing as pole barns. The posts or timbers bear the weight of the roof. The walls are just there to keep the rain out. Bearing that in mind, you could use the same methods timberframers use to wrap your house...mainly SIPs (stuctural insulated panels). More expensive than a regular pole barn, but a lot more r-value.
If you were to build this way, as another poster alluded to, you would have to be concerned about bracing. The steel provides alot of that in Morton buildings. If you didn't use steel, you would need braces.
Why not pole construction for homes? I have built five ple buildings on my farm beginning over 40 years ago. First problem is that the old creasote poles available then are not available now (enviornmently concerns of course). The replacements are not as good. Some now use treated 2 by 6 and 2 by 8 nailed together for poles. Some of the more modern solutions do not resist various forms of rot. The worst example are the treated 2 x 6 centermatch used at ground level. This winter we changed those on a 29 year old building. They were treated with penta and were shot by 20 years. I will not build any more pole buildings. A better and economical approach is to dig a trench with a ditcher, use a concrete form to keep the top straight and pour a foundation below frost. The old pole construction had its merits but I feel the current materials are suspect.