Small House Building Blog » free house plans http://blog.small-house-building.com Information on building your own small house. Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:01:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Free Plans from U of Tennesee http://blog.small-house-building.com/free-plans-from-u-of-tennesee http://blog.small-house-building.com/free-plans-from-u-of-tennesee#comments Sun, 02 Aug 2009 02:08:28 +0000 Anne http://blog.small-house-building.com/?p=120

Another reader passed along this link to a great website by the University of Tennessee Extension. There’s a wealth of information there! Most of the plans are for agricultural related buildings like barns and sheds, but there are a few for simple cabins.

The plans come in pdf format that are printable on [...]]]> Dormitory Loft Cabin

Another reader passed along this link to a great website by the University of Tennessee Extension. There’s a wealth of information there! Most of the plans are for agricultural related buildings like barns and sheds, but there are a few for simple cabins.

The plans come in pdf format that are printable on regular 8.5″ x 11″ paper. That makes the final printing rather small and difficult to read. But, for someone with some background experience in building and construction these plans will be easy enough to follow… and modify. I would venture to guess that you could even take any of these print outs to your building department for permit approval.

Even if you significantly modify any of their plans they’re a great starting place for thinking about building a small house. I printed out several of the small cabin plans and immediately started visualizing how to modify floor plans. The plans for the cabin shown here are under the Dormitory Loft Cabin heading.


]]> http://blog.small-house-building.com/free-plans-from-u-of-tennesee/feed 0 Tiny Free House Plans http://blog.small-house-building.com/tiny-free-house-plans http://blog.small-house-building.com/tiny-free-house-plans#comments Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:01:00 +0000 Anne http://blog.small-house-building.com/?p=113 Michael Janzen has been putting in a lot of time working on his tiny free house plans. His design is intended to be put on a trailer, much like a Tumbleweed home, but you could build it on a permanent or semi-permanent foundation. The roof lines are very innovative with a standard gable [...]]]> Michael Janzen has been putting in a lot of time working on his tiny free house plans. His design is intended to be put on a trailer, much like a Tumbleweed home, but you could build it on a permanent or semi-permanent foundation. The roof lines are very innovative with a standard gable design on the ends and a shed style roof in the middle. This allows for some great window space for some nice solar gain, although with the amount of windows in the plan as it is would probably lead to too much heating for the smallness of space inside. I’d probably go with half that window area for the south side and add a generous overhang to shade the windows in the middle of the day.

Michael Janzen's tiny free solar house plans.

Michael Janzen's tiny free solar house plans.

And he did it all with the free version of Google Sketchup! There is a paid professional version, but Mike says the free version is just fine for the purposes of rendering drawings for a simple house like this.


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