Minus the outside ivy and the movable walls, it sounds like you’re re-inventing a Lustron house. Trust me, you don’t want to do this.
I knew someone who lived in a Lustron, and they hated it. It is entirely like living inside of a fridge in more ways than one. The concrete slab is cold (radiant slab heat would have been a huge help here) and the walls are all enameled steel. Completing the fridge motif is how they could use magnets to hold things to the walls - posters and notes could be placed anywhere with a few fridge magnets. Heavier things like framed artwork was brutally difficult - a carbide-tipped drill bit was needed to penetrate the enamel. And yes, it’s fairly noisy. Even the roof was enameled steel, so rain was just deafening.
Yes, they and Tucker shared the Dodge plant for a while before Tucker got forced out (then let back in) before the Feds finally shut Tucker down for good.
What would hold your inside walls in place? Tracks in the floor and ceiling (limiting where you could move things)? Pegs into the floors and ceilings (would still limit locations)? Free standing (now you are rather unstable). Something else?
Would you be better off building your house frame, with no interior walls, and then building free standing rooms inside it? It might well be cheaper to build a couple of new walls every 5-10 years, then to create all those rolling metal walls, that may very well not get moved very often any way.
Hmmm. First of all, I would ditch the whole “ivy as exterior wall” idea. That needs to be worked on some more. I do like the idea of reconfigurable interior space, but I think you have too much flexibility at a cost of too much work and a generally unpleasant place to live. How often do you feel the need to repaint your walls?
If you like concrete floors, more power to you. I think they’re pretty, too. But modern laminate floors look much warmer and are just about as wear-resistant. As for the interior partitions, instead of steel I would go with panels framed with wood, filled with insulating foam, and faced with sheetrock or something similar. Each panel would be, say, three feet across, and the panels would hang from a track built on a three-foot grid on the ceiling. The hangers would be on wheels that ride on the track, so the panels can be moved easily, and they would pivot to form different angles. I envision each panel having a set of tabs and latches on the edges so they can be hooked together for rigidity. Each panel would hang to a fraction of an inch off the floor, and have an interior rubber bumper, top and bottom. A mechanical arm, perhaps simply actuated with a removable crank, could press the bumpers firmly into the floor and ceiling, stiffening the structure and providing sound isolation.
Most of the panels would be walls, but some panels could have doors built into them. If you want to be slick, the track could carry 110 volt power internally, and some of the panels could have pickups and floor-height outlets. A simpler solution would just be to mount a boat-load of outlets on the ceiling. Some of the wall panels have outlets, and a shorty cord that plugs into the ceiling receptacle and routes power to wall receptacles.
Plumbing would have to be stationary, and likely placed against the exterior walls of the structure, plus there would be storage cubbies that the panels stack in when not in use. You wouldn’t have closets in any of your rooms, and you’d want most of your furniture to be on wheels. I don’t think you’d want to rearrange twice a day, but doing so every now and then wouldn’t be too onerous.
newcrasher, I thought you might like to look over a couple of alternative housing style websites. Dwell magazine is my favorite source for modern/green housing ideas.
Rocio Romero is an innovative designer of pre-fab steel frame homes, and her designs are very similar to what you are describing.
There are lots of great ideas on these pages for architecture and interior design. I have been working on converting a modular home to a modern, industrial style for the past year, starting from the inside out. If you are interested in pics or details, message or e-mail me. I will be happy to share some building ideas with you, including cost and such.
In general I think you’re sacrificing a tremendous amount to gain flexibility that you won’t end up utilizing enough to make it worthwhile. And at great expense, I would imagine.
If the outside walls were poured concrete, or even tilt-up concrete panels, this could be abated. I think the OP has an interesting idea if he could work aroud a few issues:
Comfort in the living spaces inside
Ease/aggravation of moving the walls
Utilities: water/sewer/electric
Resale of the home
Here in Mississippi, concrete floors are not cold. I reckon it depends on your weather region. I love my concrete floors. Actually, I tink the OP said they would be heated. I like the overarching idea of this home.
I’m less concerned about the internal aspects of this house - they don’t really appeal to me, but they aren’t a huge barrier, either.
However the ivy-anchored-in-chickenwire concept has me cringing. First off, I don’t believe chickenwire has an outdoor all-weather lifespan of more than a few years, it corrodes too easily. Especially if it’s in contact with another metal, like your steel external walls. Second problem associated with the ivy, for most normal ivy-covered buildings the ivy actually roots into the building, either the mortar, wood, brick or stone that the exterior of the building is constructed with - with your all-steel construction, I don’t believe that there’s anything for the ivy to root into. When that’s combined with the corrosion of the chickenwire, it’s going to mean that the ivy covering is going to be falling off in job lots as the chickenwire fails.
Personally I prefer the floors of a hose to have the “give” of a wood frame. Same goes for the walls to some extent. I think it’s also safeer with some give.
I’m not sure why you specified metal walls instead of, say, some lightweight polymer material, or something else - surely a there’s going to be a bit of a problem moving big sheets of metal about, even if they’re paper-thin.
If I was going for movable walls, I’d personally be looking at making them modular out of fairly narrow strips - dispense with the wheels and build them so that they slot into one another and have a lever device in the side (obscured by the next section you add) that locks them tight against floor and ceiling. If you make them out of narrow sections like this, walls can be laid out in straight lines or curves (well, polygons approximating curves).
But having said all that, I’m not all that convinced movable walls would work at all for most people - at least not in the context of “shall we put the walls away for the party tonight?” Look around almost any modern home and see how much stuff is attached to, leaned against, piled up alongside and just placed in front of walls - sure, you could change your whole way of living to adapt to having movable walls, but would you? And would you want to? - if the building dictates a significant change of lifestyle, doesn’t that run somewhat contrary to the idea of designing a home to fit your life?
It’s like those ‘minimalist’ apartments and houses you see on the telly - they look great, but nobody can really live like that really.
I think metal and concrete are an awesome look. Your decor choices (tables, cabinets and fabrics, etc.) are what warm up a room. You could even hang removable panels on those sliding doors to add warmth and interest.
I think the idea, on the whole, is a good one. Most plans require investigation of the finer details to make it work, but so what? I would probably double my budget to accommodate the unforeseen setbacks, but that seems to be the rule of thumb for most major undertakings. Have fun and good luck!
This is a concern. I was watching one of those shows on making changes in order to sell your home. This couple had a very expensive custom home that turned out to be too expensive for them to continue with. One interesting point was that the bedrooms were much too small. Their thinking was that they wanted the bedrooms to be for sleeping. Period. They said they didn’t like the idea of their kids being tucked away in their rooms doing TV or computer activities, so they created what amounted to “sleeping pods” so they would interact with their kids more. They ended up having to knock out walls, etc. But the OP’s plan would make that a non-issue for the most part.
IIRC steel is reeeeaaaally expensive right now, too. But I do like the big, open, configurable space idea. I just couldn’t live that way, considering how attached I am to stuff.
I’d like to recommend Your Engineered House by Rex Roberts, published in 1964. Many of his basic ideas parallel yours; post-and-beam structure, non- load-bearing walls that can be moved when your needs change (though not on wheels,) for example. A noisy home is one with walls at 90 and 180 degree angles. If you build interior walls several degrees off square, the echos go away.
He says basements and attics are expensive to build, so he doesn’t build them. He heats and ventilates with the help of the sun and gravity.
Some of his methods are outdated after these 43 years, but a lot of it still makes sense.
I seem to recall in the last week or two seeing something on The New Inventors that would suit you. It’s building bricks that work more or less like lego. You can leave them stacked up for moveable internal walls, or if you want to fix them in place, they have channels you can run concrete down so that they self-lock in place.
Can’t find that one there, but I bet there’s a heap of other things from this show that would be interesting or idea-inspiring for you: The New Inventors
What is it that you REALLY want from this house? You seem to want to sell it as a flexible space, but I am reading you as more enamored with the metal than with the flexibility. Which is just fine, btw. If your dream is to have a house of metal (that sounds like the name for a biker’s bar), go for it, but I think you really need to sit with yourself and find out what is it that you really want.
A metal house, without the moving partitions, could be a killer project. Ditto for a rearrangeable house of any other material (they call them cubicle farms in some places). Maybe you can have one without the other.
