Shelter & Structures Forum
Cabins, tiny homes, insulation, and building for the long haul in a place the grid does not reach.
Nothing here yet.
This board is open and waiting for its first question. If you have one about shelter & structures, ask it here and it becomes the start of the thread.
What this board is for
Cabins, tiny homes, kit buildings, yurts, renovations, foundations, insulation, air sealing, roofs, and the sequencing of a build. It is also the board for the questions that decide all of those before a drawing exists: what the county will permit, what you may live in while building, and whether a given structure can be insured or financed at all.
Those legal and financial constraints are not a side issue. They are frequently the thing that decides which of the attractive options is actually available, and they are much cheaper to discover before the materials are ordered.
The questions that come up most
Can I live in a camper while I build? The single most commonly restricted thing in off-grid plans, and entirely local. Some counties permit it with a temporary occupancy permit and a time limit, some prohibit it outright, and enforcement is frequently complaint-driven.
Owner-build, kit, or conventional? Conventional costs most and causes least trouble afterwards with appraisal, insurance, and resale. A kit or shell finished by the owner shortens the exposed build window, which matters where the season is short. Alternative structures work well for the right person and are often excluded from conventional insurance and financing.
What order do I build in? Access, then water and wastewater approval, then the envelope closed against weather, then systems, then finishes. Money spent inside a building that is not yet weather-tight is money at risk.
How much insulation? More than code minimum is nearly always the right answer off grid, because the envelope is a one-time cost that pays back every hour of every winter.
What a useful answer looks like here
Say the county and the climate, the structure type and size, and where you are in the sequence. Building answers are dominated by local code adoption, snow load, frost depth, and what the health department will approve for wastewater, none of which generalize across regions.
Photographs help enormously, particularly for framing, roof, and moisture questions. So does saying what your constraints actually are: budget, season remaining, whether you are doing the work yourself, and whether you need the finished building to be insurable or mortgageable, which narrows the options considerably.
The mistakes that cost the most here
Spending on finishes before the building is weather-tight. Everything inside an open structure is at risk, and a season lost to that is a spring spent repairing rather than progressing.
Closing walls before systems are tested. Wiring, plumbing, and ducting buried behind finished surfaces before anyone verified them is a recurring and expensive regret, and photographs of every wall before it is closed cost nothing.
Building to the minimum insulation the code allows in a place where the code was written for houses that connect to a gas main. Off grid the envelope is the cheapest heating system you will ever buy.
Choosing a structure type without checking whether it can be insured or financed. Alternative and owner-built structures are frequently declined by mainstream carriers, and discovering that after the build narrows your options considerably.
And siting the building for the summer view rather than the winter sun, the drainage, and the driveway grade.
Sequencing a build year
Work backwards from the date your hard season closes the window. Access first, because everything arrives on it. Then water and wastewater approval, because they decide what may be built and occupied. Then the envelope: foundation, frame, roof, windows, insulation, air sealing. Then systems, then finishes for as long as it takes.
Book the slow things early. Drillers, excavators, septic installers, and inspectors are busiest in exactly the months you need them, and a reserved date that slips is easier than a call placed when you are ready.
Leave something for next year deliberately. A finished, modest, working house beats an ambitious one that is ninety percent done when the weather closes in, and the deferred projects are rarely the ones people regret deferring.
Roofs, snow, and fire
In snow country the roof carries a load set by local code, and where a metal roof sheds, the ground below it is not a place for doors, propane tanks, meters, or the path you walk daily. Snow guards or geometry solve that at the design stage for almost nothing.
In fire-prone regions the roof and the first few feet around the building decide whether a structure survives an ember shower. Non-combustible roofing, enclosed eaves, ember-resistant vents, and a maintained clear zone are the measures that consistently matter, and several cost nothing extra if chosen early.
Both are examples of the same principle: a decision made once during design removes an annual risk that would otherwise be managed by hand for as long as you live there.
How much of this is regional
Snow load, frost depth, wind, seismic requirements, and fire risk are all local, and each of them changes the structure rather than merely the detailing. A design that is sensible in a mild coastal climate can be inadequate under four feet of snow or in a wildland fire zone.
The regulatory side is equally local. Whether a building code has been adopted, whether owner-building is permitted, what the minimum dwelling size is, and whether you may occupy a camper during construction all vary by county and sometimes by town.
Post the county and the climate with any building question. Without them the useful answers are limited to generalities, and the generalities are what get people into trouble.
Insurance, financing, and the choices that close doors
Insurers care about construction type, heating method, distance to a responding fire department and a water source, roof material and age, and whether the property is occupied year round. Several of those are decided during the build, which is the argument for asking an agent who writes rural policies what they would need to see before you build rather than after.
Lenders generally want comparable sales, a permanent foundation, a permitted dwelling, and conventional utilities or a documented alternative. That is why unconventional structures are so often cash transactions, and why the choice of structure decides the exit as much as the entry.
None of this argues against building unconventionally. It argues for knowing which doors a given choice closes, so the decision is deliberate. Lesson eleven covers the whole subject.
The lesson that covers this
Lesson 8: The building itself in the free course works through this subject in the order the decisions actually arrive. Choose a foundation, roof, insulation, and entry that fit the climate and the systems, and learn which permits come first.
The whole course is twelve lessons, free, with no account required to read any of it: start at the beginning if you are new to this, or jump straight to the lesson above if you are not.
Tools for this topic
Most questions on this board come down to a number somebody has not worked out yet. These do the arithmetic and show their working, so an answer here can be checked rather than taken on faith.
- Tools/heat loss calculator: see what the envelope is costing you
- Tools/gravel driveway calculator: cost the access that everything arrives on
How this board works
Posting needs an account, which exists so that answers have a name attached and so that the same person can be asked a follow-up six months later. It costs nothing and it is not used for anything else.
The conventions here are the ones that make a small forum useful. Say where you are, at least to the state or region, because almost every answer on this site depends on climate or on local rules. Say what you have already, and what you have already tried. Give numbers where you have them, and say when you are guessing. And when something works or fails, come back and say which, because the thread is read by far more people than post in it.
Answers here should be able to say where they came from. Experience is welcome and so is a rule of thumb, as long as it is labeled as one. Where a claim is about safety, code, or law, it wants a source, because the reader on the other end may be about to spend money or wire something themselves.
Boards next door
Off-grid questions rarely stay inside one department. A water question is often a power question underneath, and a land question is usually several at once. These boards field the neighboring subjects:
- Heating & Cooking: Wood and rocket stoves, propane, and off-grid kitchens: staying warm and fed without shore power.
- Land & Real Estate: Finding, vetting, and buying off-grid land and cabins: access and easements, title, perc tests, water rights, zoning and...
- Money & Finance: The real cost of going off-grid and how to fund it: honest budgets, making a living remotely, insurance, taxes, and hard...
- Solar & Power: Panels, power stations, batteries, inverters, and wiring: how to make and store your own electricity, and what actually ...
Asking a question that gets a good answer
The difference between a thread that gets three useful replies and one that gets none is almost always in the first post. Four things do most of the work: where you are, what you already have, what you have already tried, and what you are actually trying to achieve.
Location matters because nearly every answer on this site depends on climate or on local rules, and the same question has different right answers in Vermont and Arizona. What you have matters because advice that assumes different equipment wastes everyone's time. What you have tried stops people repeating it. And the goal matters because the best answer is frequently that the problem should be solved somewhere else entirely: a load reduced rather than a battery added, a parcel checked rather than a design revised.
Numbers beat adjectives. Give the figure where you have one and say plainly when you are guessing, because a guess labeled as a guess is useful and a guess presented as a measurement sends people down the wrong path.
Answering well, and the standard here
Experience is the most valuable thing on a board like this, and it is most valuable when it comes with its conditions attached: what you have, where, for how long, and what went wrong along the way. A rule of thumb is welcome when it is labeled as one.
Where a claim is about safety, code, or law, it wants a source, because the person reading may be about to wire something themselves or spend a large amount of money. Direct-current faults, combustion appliances, and structural decisions are not places for confident approximations, and saying you are not sure is a genuine contribution rather than a failure.
It is also worth saying when something has changed. Equipment, prices, and regulations all move, and an answer that was right three years ago can be wrong now.
New here, or not sure where this fits? Start here walks through the whole thing in order.