OT:thinking of building again: OT

What is you climate like? Coastal or high wind threat? I took a six hour seminar on ICFs a few years back. My sister built her pre school building using steel insulated panels recently. Her heating and cooling costs are very low and the wind load rating is very high. I might be leery about doing that close to salt water due to corrosion.

Okay either would work for you. The SIPs that my sister used were corrugated metal with a thick slab of styrofoam in between, more for a commercial building in appearance. Let me get back to the house and I’ll try to pull up a link to something else that will give a more residential appearance.

Jeremiah said:

What is ICF and SIP?

Individual Cardboard Frame and Sawdust Infused Plastic.

Lol I believed @DMW, damn cheap wine.

In all seriousness, our goal once our daughter is off to college is to get rid of this big (for us) house and do either a driving class A RV or an Airstream along with a metal building house. (As a homebase). (Something like in this pic). As for now, we want her to have the suburban-home childhood. 

Here is the product that I was most familiar with. http://www.nudura.com/divisions/nudura-products
Down here we mostly build on concrete slate foundations. As the slab in poured, you stub up reinforcing steel where the walls are going to go. When it is hard, you tie on about a 4 to 6 foot reinforcing bar, overlapping 18 inches, you lay horizontal rods at certain height intervals. When the block wall is 4 feet high, you fill it with a somewhat wet pea gravel concrete. Let that set up for a few hours then continue to place the insulated blocks. I saw two people form a section of wall 6 feet high for pouring in  about 15 minutes including framing in for a window. 

For exterior finish you could have stucco, cement board, or brick with cement board probably being the cheapest. On the inside of the wall you cut trenches to carry conduits for electrical and water and place your electrical outlets. After the building inspector approves the water and electric you spray foam over the conduits and scrape it level. Then you screw dry wall to the wall where plastic tabs are located and paint or do any typical drywall finish. 

When using this make sure to use a furnace of HVAC system about 30% smaller than typical for the square footage and climate. This is so that it turns on often enough to control interior humidity. The interior walls could be standard framed walls or ICP but standard walls are less likely to interfere with your wifi.

You will pay a small percentage over a standard house, but no termites, lower utility bills, lower insurance bills, less maintenance. The key is finding an experienced contractor.

@blasting google “metal building home” there’s many to choose from. I’m more inclined to be more basic (read cheaper) ones, then build-in a “living quarters” saving the rest for storage/ rv space. The most important aspect of this is I have the wife’s approval 

We just finished building our home about 2.5 years ago.  We went traditional stick for frame, but went ICF for our first floor floor.  We wanted to have polished concrete floors and a basement.  ICF and a couple steel beams allowed us to accomplish this.  Gulfcoastguy gave you some great info.