us3andthedog

Mrs us3 is set on buying land in the water valley, cremona, cochrane area of AB around 3-8 acres nothing to big and having a machine log house built, not completely made from solid wood (eg moose mountain) as way to expensive but something that wont cost the earth.
Looking around the £200,00.00 mark, is this enough $$$ for a build

As we have no experience in this type of build I wanted to get info and advice from anyone who has done the same thing, who they used etc etc.
Want 3 beds up and a basement so can have 2 more bedrooms and a boys (games) room and standard kitchen, dining room and lounge on main floor

dbd33

We live in a three bedroomed machine made house with a finished basement. It's not made from logs but planks and so is a much more economical alternative. The manufacturer, Viceroy, is well known for making "wood and windows" type buildings, they're more commonly used as cottages than year round homes but our experience has been that they're perfectly viable homes so long as you don't value formality. Pictures way back at the start of the blog.

iaink

http://www.viceroy.com/


Lots going up around here. Like anything else, viability for 4 seasons is going to depend how much money you throw at insulation, window specs etc.

A lot of viceroys seem to be cathederal roof / open plan...not great for heating as all the heat ends up waaay above your head.

dbd33

That's certainly an issue, ours seems cheap to heat but then the house we lived in before had actual gaps between window frames and walls, it wasn't ideally economical.

Inse

As part of my training for energy auditing we studied a number of real log homes. These type of homes can sometimes be some of the least energy efficient. Make sure the insulation levels are good and that the walls are all well sealed and as airtight as possible.
We used a thermal imaging camera on one place and it was amazing just how quickly the heat was getting out.
I'd suggest a Viceroy type of house may be a better investment and cheaper to run.

AlexInBC

You can say that again... Ours is a 1980's hand crafted log home and the amount of drafts we had to seal up around the place was ridiculous. I can't believe that 2 consecutive families had lived with it for 25yrs, but I guess that when you're heating for free (wood stoves) there's less incentive to draft-proof. Even now it's far from air-tight, but at least we shouldn't have the bats flying around indoors that we had twice during our first year

By the way - thanks for the potential solar installation grants info. I'd seen the federal stuff on the ecoaction.gc.ca site, but I'll also keep an eye out for any BC initiatives.

R I C H

So you're looking at roughly a 3000 sq ft home (or larger)?

Reckon on $200 per sq/ft for building costs for a nicely specified home, and be aware that log homes are definitely not the cheapest way to build.

Having recently finished building, I can't imagine how your budget's going to get close to building what you propose.

dbd33

Something else in the original post, 3-8 acres, how come such a size? Are you hoping to keep animals of some sort?

AlexInBC

Yikes - is it really that much?? So, basically, if you live in a cheapish area like ours, it's far more expensive to build than it is to buy an existing property?

We were/are toying with the idea of selling up this place and building a new house on an adjoining bit of land. We don't need anything bigger than we already have (which is about 1800sq ft), but we wanted to built an eco-friendly "green" home (which we've heard as a ball-park figure would cost 20-25% more than a standard build), so we could be looking at $450k ???

That's more for the new building alone than we paid for this place and 8 acres of land, guest cabin, various outbuildings/animal stalls, established B&B Business, etc...

R I C H

Yep - you might find a builder willing to start discussions around the $175 sq/ft mark, but the build quality will be at the low end. My 2050 sq ft house (plus 500 sq/ft garage) has cost knocking on $600k to build (not including land), though I've gone high end on appliances/fixtures etc. I chose radiant heat with polished concrete floors, rather than hardwood, and saved a small fortune, so could have spent a great deal more. These sort of build costs are one of the drivers behind the spiraling cost of homes going on the market.

AlexInBC

That is madness! Back to the drawing board... The only reason we were considering that plan was because we thought it would make more financial sense to build eco-friendly from scratch than to try to retro-fit this place, but I don't think we'd even get enough from the sale of this place to replace it to the same standard...never mind "upgrading" in any form...

Good job we love this house anyway!

Thanks for the figures - and btw - Congrats on the job offer!!!

garvard

What company is the best to build a home?

R I C H

The one that's best equipped to meet your needs/price/expectations.

No idea how many building contractors Canada has, but you'll need to narrow down and define the who/what/where aspects of your question somewhat more.

iaink

On the other hand I read this on the beeb, so it very much depends what you have in mind and how you want to approach it...



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/s...nd/7275312.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7279502.stm

Building code might be a challenge for alternate technologies?

R I C H

The price of hay is spiraling upwards right now, add in inflationary rises since that article was published, and Alex may still be struggling