Building your own evacuee shed/house/home

I posted several images of the recent work in HI where locals stepped up and built some shelters for the evacuees.
While these seem small, stripped of most of your possessions, how much space do you need?

As a historical note, the first major 'planned community' postWWII was Levittown in NY state. .
Home were 800 sq ft and considered roomy for the day. So a 120 sq ft temp housing may not be all that bad for a month or three. The one thing I though the folks in HI missed was butting a flat roof on the place.

How about this instead -


(found a better image)
10 wide by 12 deep with a loft of about 100 sq ft and standing headroom top and bottom. The loft nearly doubles the inside space with the same footprint (and property tax free status). Sleeping on top, living space below.

A smaller version w/o loft will use less material -
These have over 6 feet of standing headroom @120 sq ft. 4 foot side walls and gambled roof.

Lets begin

The platform is 10 x 12 made of 2x6 pressure treated lumber. The floor is 3/4 plywood over a layer of...3/4 plywood deck. It hits -20F quite often, so a thick floor can keep things warmer. Walls are straight 2x4, with top plate, skinned with cedar siding.

from the photo - observe:
The roof seems to the hard part for a lot of folks. You will need a chalk string, tape measure, a chop saw (best) or a Carpenter's triangle. Use string to mark center of deck; place a base 2x4 even with the 'front (right side in image) .
Decide how 'tall you want the roof.
Take one 2x4 stud and cut the bottom at 23 degrees.
Cut other end at 23 degrees at the length you picked for hieght. Make a matching piece for the opposite side..
Place first pieces on deck., second on 'top' of first. This will cross the line you marked with chalk line.
Measure from top of first piece to chalk line.
Now you have your measurements.
With your first set of pieces cut, lay out out the rafter on the desk. Once it fits from outside edge to outside edge, use some scrap to build a template as shown.

Here's the math - 2 x 23Degres = 45 degrees. And so 2 x 45 = 90. The pieces meet at the top @ 90 degrees. This takes a bit of a fiddle, but we hit the sweet spot 1st time around.


On top of the now skinned walls, add your top plate to tie walls together
Toe nail (or use screws like we did) put up the first rafter. We also added so-called hurricane ties.

We put up a plywood sheet - the first part of the roof, and as we added more rafters, tied them into the ply.

We added Masonite over R-19 fiberglass insulation, then tied the two long walls back together which makes the floor of the loft. Because we had the wood, each crosspiece was a pair of 2x4s. This allowed me to not have a lot of cross-ties on the rafters (1 x-tie at each end and one in the middle) so open, standing headroom in the loft.

After this we put tar-paper (30 lb) and shingles.

Loft deck is 2/4 in plywood again.
Door was a commercial steel door, the door frames are doubled up 2x4s. Hinges are held by 3 in deck screws. No windows right now, what with long, cold nights, not much use.

The main floor deck has a square of ceramic tiles to hold a kero heater should we have to move in.
Hopefully this will give you some ideas - if you go to build a dual use shed (storage for now, shelter in case of need)

Or you could buy a Costco 'garage' and set it up in case of need.

enjoy

 

Fine post.

 

In 2017 , I finished building a girl a tiny home on a trailer. It was almost 8 ft wide and 20 ft long. Complete with a kitchen sink, hot plate and microwave and small fridge for a kitchen. Bathroom vanity with a sink and full sized tub.And a composting toilet. One of those small washing machines that washes and dries , all in one combo. A loft for the bedroom on one end and a small loft on the other for storage. On the front tongue end of the trailer I mounted a small propane fueled instant hot water heater.
That's a lot of stuff packed into a small area , but it was what the girl wanted , and was mostly built from her design. I wouldn't want to be dragging it around to much , but she's living in it now. It provides the basic necessities, which is all we really need.

 

When I was 16 I had already been working on a ranch everyday (after school plus weekends) a couple of years. I was physically mature and had paid my way, fought men, and known a couple of women.

I came home drunk as hell one Tuesday night and my truck ended up high center in the middle of a gravel pile we kept for the driveway. I got the "if you're gonna live in my house your gonna follow my rules speech". I was at least smart enough to be humble and quiet.

A couple of other ranch hands and I disassembled a couple of old fallen down barns and built an 8' x 16' cabin way in the back of our place. I salvaged some windows from an RV and a woodstove was gifted by an old rancher who was amused by our antics. I even had dome lights and a radio (power antenna!) from a couple of junk cars that was powered by my truck battery (I parked on a hill).

Bunk beds and a big porch finished it out. Life was grand. I lived there for about 5 months before the family and I negotiated my return to fancy living at my grandma's at Christmas.

Those were good times. I learned you don't need much. I also learned that you got to find the good in what you got. I also learned to respect family as a unit.

 

I had a friend who turned a tuff shed into a retreat. I remember walking and and thinking, "I could live in here". If one is organized in the designing, a person could easily live in a small shed. I look at my home and most of it is wasted space. I find if you have space one tends to fill it up with stuff.

 

Agree, but I prefer the fireproof nature of sheet rock over masionite. Military with tents convinced me that if you have a day room, mess hall, etc, several people can live quite well in a small place. A church with cooking facilities and the normal Sunday school area, with the addition of a shower and toilet area like a camp ground, could with small individual shelters like the ones you built, serve a couple hundred people in relative comfort for a few weeks, and at a survival level much longer. With the younger generation, you might not even need the day room as long as their smart phones worked. Thank you for sharing.

 

My Mom and oldest brother once lived in a converted chicken house. During WWll in Cali if a wife wanted to be close to her spouse she could not be too picky in what she rented. From there she followed him to Fort Benning Georgia. No idea where she lived there, but another brother was born on that Post.
Life is simple, if you let it.

 

Tool list for shed building.

Fairly basic --
Tape measure
Square
carpenter's triangle
chalk line
chop saw (OMG, does this ever save time)
Skill saw
staple hammer (for tar-paper)
Nail gun!!!!

The shed posted here was screwed together. I built the the platform solo in one weekend - in between BBQ. Next weekend had all the boys (2 sons & a SIL) over and we had the shed framed (with loft floor) and skinned with the rafters up in one day. Finished the roofing (plywood, tar paper and shingles the next.

The inside - insulation and Masonite the next Saturday.

Helped my SIL put up his shed - 10 x 12, but we put up the chip plywood for walls, covered with tar paper then added lapstrake siding made from salvaged cedar fencing.

The cost of a nail gun is repaid with the massive amount of time saved.

We looked at forming a 'business' where we would help a homeowner / DIY type to plan and build a shed for themselves. After talking with a lawyer and insurance agent, we dropped those plans.

 

As a kid in the early 1940's the Lakota would come to Gramps farm and camp in the pasture by the river to "help with the farming" They made small leanto's out of canvas and cooked over an open fire and did very well. Left in the fall and would go to house or barn if weather was really bad, thunderstorms, while they were there. Old houses on islands off Cape Cod had very low ceilings, very small rooms, and in a few hundred sq ft, raised large families and often had more than one generation living in the house. Our custom of 2,000 sq ft for 2 people is very recent. As a kid, mom, dad and 5 children lived in about 1100 sq ft and thought we were middle class as it was a well built new house.

 

Collecting stuff for my shipping container I am still looking for an old ships head had a sink that folded up over the commode as it folded it had a drain in back like the overflow you see in the front of sinks today. Prison toilets require you stand to the side that saves zero space as you cannot build up to the or close to the unit.

 

Pullman Sink

 

or

this one would be a little easier on the back while brushing your teeth....

 

there are several version of an all-in-one compact kitchen, some have a washer/driyer combo at the cost of a very small fridge.

 

a bit more old school compact kitchen

Reminds me of something...

like my compact portable kitchen.

 

just no.

 

hangs from wall. Oven (on right) height adjustable.

Wow - you think this is some kind of IKEA kitchen?

Nope, this is a Electrochef all-in-one kitchen from 1920. It featured an adjustable height oven, four-burner stove.

 

You see a lot of compact kitchens in so-called Mother-in-law cabins or Granny cabins, typically a separate garage turned into "low-income" housing.

The Muni recently changed the code to allow these (hooked up to full utilities) for folks.

Lots of older people live in the small unit and rent their house for additional income
or
Use this as housing for a live-in assistant for home health care. America is getting very gray

 

LMAO HK User is the winner that's what i am looking for

Pullman I don't know why but that name didn't register I had been on trains that had them in Europe long time back but pullman car pullman sink the name just didn't light the boiler .