steel building homes

We’ve built a couple homes with radiant heat on the subfloor.
The subfloor is 1 1/4” thick. It has a groove ringing through it and a thin aluminum sheet covering the entire sheet and pressed down in the grooves. You send the company your building plan and they make the subfloor to fit your plan. Each piece has to go in the correct spot.
As the water warms the aluminum sheet it transfers the heat between the water lines.
Last one we did was about 2010 or so. $225.00 per sheet for that subfloor.

Speaking of steel buildings, does anyone remember Lustron that made enameled steel panels after WWII? They were, as I remember, based in Columbus, Ohio on 5th Avenue in part of the old Curtiss - Wright aircraft factory and supplied material for White Castle Hamburger buildings, some gas stations and houses. There are still  a  few of the homes around here. Steel houses are not a new invention.

The shop I work at has heated floors. Make your feet sweat at 10 degrees.

For any new construction I would absolutely go with water heat in the floor. I first saw it done back in the early 60s (it was the new firehouse being built) no matter what the weather was as soon as the bay doors came down it was warm inside again. 

Not sure where Tom ended up with his steel building/ home? I am very happy with my wooden shop building that I think could pretty easily be a home also. I like steel too. But in my case I have other buildings close by and wanted a different look. So mine is a blend of post and beam construction, OSB and house wrap, vinyl and hemlock exterior and shingle roof. All the things Tom is not looking for. But sometimes a different perspective can help us to make decisions about our own projects. I am actyally doing a lot of steel on the inside of the shop. And as I do that I am becoming more comfortable with working with that material too.

there is a neighbor that just put up his pole barn house, from Google Earth it appears just a regular rectangler building...prolly 50x80 in size. they took out a permit for it for $246,000. it's a Cleary building, i see lots of concrete around it. dunno if the house part is 2 story or not. it better be awful danged fancy for that amount of money! whew!

there are companies that are building steel framed homes that look like any other house around. some include steel studs, some don't . we are looking at a "T" style, living T'd off a machinery type shed that is taller than the house part. with the steel wall inside the divided buildings, it creates a fire wall. aside from the heated floor, sewer pipes, other plumbing, and electrical, the old lady....oooops....i mean the loving wife and myself plan on finishing the interior ourselves. we have built our own bath and kitchen cabinets ourselves in the house we currantly live in. we also want knotty pine for walls, and unsure what the ceiling will be yet. there is a reason for the larger machine/garage area that i won't address at this time. having never had a garage before, it'll be a welcome site to be able to walk from the vehicle to the house in a dry non windy area.   

  A steel building seem like that would be less likely to happen if you used steel studs than with a wooden pole building.

this is alot closer to what i want!

no stairs; something like a 3 bedroom 2 bath with oversized 3 car garage.   front to the east so an overhang on that side.

i have a single story house with attached garage for most work.. Figured that out 40 years ago... Dont want a 2 story, but if i had one, i would make sure main bedroom  / kitchen / living room / laundry were all on the first floor... Upstairs could be long term storage, 2-3 bedrooms for kids when the visit , extra TV room, etc..

  Building a building like that when your young is great but as you get older the stairs can become a problem. Where and attached home and garage-shop is more convenient 

steve; not a design i would want but this is a picture of the kind of building that i wanted to know about!

Since alot of people just had a little taste of cold weather, one thing I will say is on a friends office area they built connected to the shop so they didn't use up shop space. Someone wasn't thinking and they put some water pipes in the north wall anyway a few winters back one cold spell they had frozen pipes. I don't know if it was pex just guessing because nothing broke. Part of the problem also is the wainscoting on the outside looks nice but it is another seam for cold air to blow in. When you look at what some of those guys have done with shop offices/lunch rooms it is easy to say I could live in that.