Sheds For Living: Small Practical Prefab Living Space | Hacker News Reader

Sheds For Living: Small Practical Prefab Living Space

inhabitat.com

62 pointspeter12347 comments

Is it me or are these things insanely expensive. Maybe if you live in the bay area this is cheap, but I live in Indiana and in some places you could by a house way bigger than one of these for the same price. And that includes the price of a 1/8 to 1/4 acre lot.

The other problem is where do you put it? I am not going to live in my parents back yard.

Yeah, from the post title here and the opening of the article, I thought this going to be alternative housing on a budget, but instead it was more vanity guest house for the stuffwhitepeoplelike.com set.

While I mostly agree, in their defense, the material/feature quality is significantly higher than your average home. LED lighting, high efficiency appliances, radiant heat, and solar aren't cheap features... nor are they easy to find in houses of comparable price.

Also it's hard to compare the price of something made for the British housing market to prices here in America. It could be the case that housing in general is just much more expensive there.

That said, it does seem way too expensive for the average case, although it might be worth it to me if I could stick it on a green roof somewhere.

Actually these are astonishingly cheap compared to a poor quality house in the UK. My parents bought an ex-rental unit to renovate at ~£100,000; it was single story (in the UK basements are virtually non-existent outside of cities) semi-detached and probably hung around 1,000 square feet of floor space. It was quite literally the cheapest house on the market in the area and it had nicotine stained walls, ceilings that seeped tar, had plumbing, gas and electrical problems. Not to mention one of the clauses for sale was that my parents dispose of all the junk in the house, which not only included bedrooms crammed full, but also a garage and a shed.

If you can get property in the UK and get the rights to put one of these sheds on, you'll probably save yourself anywhere between £25,000 and £100,000 on your lower end priced home.

The large versions of these homes are a quarter of the size of that apartment. It is only like 258 square feet.

Not only did we build a whole 1600 f^2 house for only $168k here in DC, there were severe limitations to how big, or how small you could make your house just about everywhere we looked. There were no lots available where local government would allow less than 1000 f^2.

Yeah, I thought the same thing. If you're living in a car, you probably can't afford to drop the British equivalent of $50k on a house - especially one that doesn't come with land.

I'm sure there could be al sorts of interesting applications for this if it was cheap or if it was relatively easy to transport . Teenagers, parents, renters, students, vacation homes, tourist flats.

But I don't see why this is better/different from having a unit or cabin built by a builder. You can do this even in the bay area. The only difference is they call it a shed.

Yes. I've seen duplexes in my town selling for only a bit more than this, which is a really good deal considering that you could offset your mortgage by renting out the other half. At least in my area the housing markets are down but the rental market is going strong so if you exploit this gap you can end up offsetting your housing costs.

The median home price in Detroit was only $7500 a couple of months ago:

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/jan/29/nation/chi-de...

I looked at these houses, many of them were not livable. You had places that the insides were gutted.

They're from the UK, so I should think that you Indianans could make similar blueprints, and produce these for under half the retail price.

Exactly my problem with this. I would be find buying one of these, but the price needs to be cheaper.

Yeah, I thought the same thing. If you're living in a car, you probably can't afford to drop the British equivalent of $50k on a house - especially one that doesn't come with land.

This shed is significantly nicer than any studio apartment I've ever lived in. So the answer for many people would be, "yes".

I found this site devoted to buildings made from containers. http://www.isbu-info.org/

Are you kidding me? I live in Manhattan. The shed's bigger than what I live in now.

And in grad school, I lived for a while in a bedroom that measured 81 sq ft.

Bachelors (especially) need almost zero space to actually operate. Hacker-bachelors (hackelors?) just need power, network, and a project (+ atop the standard amenities) to keep themselves pretty satisfied.

That's generalizing a bit. As a "hackelor" myself, I can tell you I don't function well at all in small spaces and can't productively live anywhere that lacks copious empty space. I live in a three-bedroom apartment with one other person, expressly because we couldn't find a two-bedroom place with enough open space.

Yes, empty space is important. One personal trick I've found for doing with less actual space is to sit next to a window so that almost half my peripheral vision is into a much larger area. This is especially helpful if that window also has long lines of sight available.

There's a difference between the bare necessities we need and space we need to be happy and satisfied.

Sure, I could live in a closet, but I'd be pretty damn miserable most of the time.

(This is, of course, considering bachelor hackers. If you're living in a car, your priorities have to be rearranged and your happiness might have to be deferred for awhile.)

Same here; now just to find the right building to put the prefab thingy on. Probably shouldn't be too tall or the winds will get ya.

I would not live in a nearly $60,000 shed. That doesn't even include the land you need to put it on. Say in many places you can find a cheap apartment for $500-$800/month and just do the math. The shed makes absolutely no sense. You'd honestly be better off with a trailer since there's a bigger existing market for them including used & rental options.

I lived in a shed on my parents farm for more than a year. it definitely wasn't anything like the ones they are selling here: It was incredibly hot in summer and the pipes froze once in winter, I did what I could to insulate it and enjoyed it very much. (After I air-conditioned it).

The total cost of construction for my shed was R50,000 (~$6 145.35) complete with bathroom and kitchen. I now live in a 140 square meter (2x bed, 2x bath, loft) apartment which almost costs as much as these sheds.

I've always been very interested in this kind of housing. To be honest, I have the feeling I will build myself a house like this one day. I can probably find a small patch of land at a reasonable price about an hour driving and take a small loan to build it. I lived in a 12 square meter studio for 3 years, this seems heaven in contrast to that. Mix it with solar panels and you have a very nice place to call home...

I think it would be even more fun to get a big farm/orchard/ranch with an old farmhouse, sheds, etc., and then bring in high speed fiber, cheap/sustainable utilities, and then put a bunch of 200-1200 square foot cabins in the less-productive, more-scenic parts of the property. Walkable community, private housing, cheap, and then big common areas for workspaces.

$30-50k is a rip. If you are going to live in a shed to save money, you can get a perfectly fine shed for much less. ~$10k

http://www.panelconcepts.com/priceitOR.htm

If you like small homes, check out:

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/houses/

I knew an entrepreneur during the nineties who started his company with an office in a 10 by 20 foot rental storage unit. He went onto raise millions in venture capital, turned down a big time exit and then lost it all after the crash. Last time I talked with him he was living in the storage unit. I lost track of him after that but have no doubt he eventually succeeded. He was smart, fearless and had amazing drive.

This is not sustainable at all - they require lots of space, materials, they are expensive... Dense cities and tall buildings are, surprisingly, much more material and energy efficient than this.

Your correct. The Urban density of London for example is so low compared to New York. Because of shoddy building in the sixties and poor maintenance from the 60's on the British are not fans of high rise.

A lot of Brits are obsessed with owning a small house with two gardens and a drive only to leave the gardens to go over grown!

Many people already live in sheds to save money. They are called "trailers."

+1 to ellyagg for the "stuffwhitepeoplelike.com" call

There was an entertaining exhibit of fabricated housing at MOMA last year, including some "working prototypes." The "micro compact home" was incredibly cool. The attention to detail and slick, functional design was really inspiring. I left with an "I want one of those" feeling, a little like you'd experience after seeing an exciting new gadget.

If the prices come down, I would love to have one of these. But only if they can get some economy of scale and mass produce parts for them cheaply.

On a similar note a very nice Yurt can be built for under $10K, as always the real trick is finding a place to put it that has services.

Check out http://www.yurts.com/ (if you want to see what they are like several Oregon state parks have them for rent)

somewhat cheaper ($110/ft^2) [http://www.cusatocottages.com/buildingyourcottage.php] and more beautiful: http://www.katrinacottagehousing.org/original.html, http://www.cusatocottages.com/photogallery.php

I haven't seen one of these Dwell-Magazine-Modern-Prefab inspired cottages, but an old girlfriend of mine lived in a studio cottage in the Bay Area. I also checked a couple of them out when I was looking for an apartment a few years back. So I guess the answer is "yes."

That's cool and is about the perfect (if not more) amount of space I need. However that is ridiculously expensive for just that alone. You could build one of those for next to nothing compared to their prices fairly easily.

A mite pricier than the original: http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html

This is all highly Hiro Protagonist, don'tcha think?

Who needs a bookshelf when you've got the Street?

umm.. it's a fancy looking Granny flat? Perhaps with some more eco-friendlyness thrown in. What's the big deal?

Do they not exist or something over there?

// currently living in a converted garage/shed.

May be they can have these floating around like in Up movie.

FYI, multiply by 10 to roughly convert sq.m to sq.f

Yes. I would definitely live there.

Curious what they do with sewer/water/electricity... must be an easy hookup I assume?

They explain it here:

http://www.shedsforliving.co.uk/

Choose options => FAQs => 05 How do we connect to the services

Basically they say it's easy + for a cost you can make it independent of any services.

I have an idea: let's build solid houses out of classical materials like stone and brick that will last over 100 years. Let's also build them with time tested architectural aesthetics and in traditional neighborhood designs that have been proven over the decades. Slightly higher upfront cost, dramatically lower cost long term.

The last thing we need is more ticky-tacky garbage that will look like shit and be worthless in 10 years.

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