Design of cabin with intent to move later ??

[pharmvet]

Ok, here is the scenario. My wife and I have plans ultimately to build a new house. However, we are not quite ready (on several levels). We have the land purchased, the power line in place, the road and house pad constructed. We need to sell the house we are currently living in, but we obviously will need a place to live while our house is being built. Financially, we are unable to begin construction on a new house until we sell our existing house. I know several folks who build a shop at the location of the future home and live in it while their house is being built but I would prefer not to do that (I have my reasons). Therefore, we are considering building a super simple, super efficient "cabin" on the same property we plan to build. Goal would be to live there a while (2-3 years) and then move it once the new house is constructed. I would either sell it to be moved, or move it to a location where we hunt and use it as a really nice deer camp. Which brings us to my question.

How would you construct a cabin if you knew from the very beginning that it would be moved some day?

- What dimensions - Maximum width for reasonable move
- What material - Im thinking steel frame and R panel walls and roof
- What foundation (Im thinking I-beam) (possibly on concrete beams)
- Even thought about pre-placement of moving beams

Any other recommendations would be extremely helpful. What Im looking for is information from those of you who have moved a cabin or had one moved that I can use from the beginning (design plans into construction) to make this as easy as it can be. thanks

 

[keegs]

Why remove the cabin? Why not just expand on it to arrive at your final configuration? Call the cabin phase one and the expansion phase two.

keegs place phase 1

http://i829.photobucket.com/albums/zz215/keegsbucket/mainehouse1.jpg

 

[Mace Canute]

How would you construct a cabin if you knew from the very beginning that it would be moved some day?

- What dimensions - Maximum width for reasonable move
- What material - Im thinking steel frame and R panel walls and roof
- What foundation (Im thinking I-beam) (possibly on concrete beams)
- Even thought about pre-placement of moving beams

keegs suggestion makes the most sense to me but if you don't want to go that way, I'm thinking an outfit that builds RTM (Ready To Move) homes would be a good place to start asking questions, maybe consider even having one built on site. (If you go that way, you might want to keep an eye on them to make sure they do build it to RTM home specs, I know this from experience a friend had years ago.) I know that at one time here where I live, there was a significant savings to be had sales tax-wise building an RTM on site rather than having it moved in. I'm sure the RTM builders have experienced all the requirements for and obstacles to moving that you could imagine. I don't think width is as much a factor as height although they do go hand in hand. Getting under overhead lines can be expensive depending on the policies of the affected utilities.

 

[pharmvet]

Definately want to have cabin built on site, the moving part will come when we build our house.

 

[mikim]

what about going simple with a 1/1 mobile home? It was a thought we had before we built out the "barnaminium". We were looking at them about 5 years ago and the price was about $10k. We decided against because we decided we would keep whatever we did and re purpose, redo, or whatever. We've been in the house 2 months now and I haven't done anything with the barn apt yet. I believe it will end up being a paint and stain room for projects. Of course at the time we hadn't planned on having a guest cabin....that just sorta happened....

 

[CurlyDave]

Think hard about a trailer.

You can buy it ready-made, meeting all of your criteria, and it can switch to the hunting cabin role easily. It is already engineered for what you want.

There is a lack of storage space, but that is easily fixed with a shed.

 

[Putter]

We just kept our eyes open for a mobile that was cheap enough that we will be able to sell for what we paid. My thought is you would spend a lot of energy building something that you will not recover your investment or you will fall in love with it and not want o part with it. I would save your money and creative juices for your permanent place. The idea of building your place in stages makes sense too if you can find a plan that makes that work. Good Luck.

 

[TnWV]

I would have to agree that a small single wide mobile home would be ideal. Quick, easy, and won't be hard to resell or move to your camp. Most likely for anything you build to be movable, it wouldnt be any larger anyhow. I had the same plan and am living in the mobile now. Only I went with a fairly large double wide because I knew up front I might be in it 10 yrs or so and wanted plenty of room for a kid or two in the mean time. Going on year 6 now, but the wife will graduate college in December so hopefully once that expense is gone we can start looking at house plans.

 

[Mousefield]

We bought and moved a 14 X 70 mobile home onto our 14 acres 13 years ago. After a couple of years we had a house built for us on the property and now rent out the mobile.
As others have suggested perhaps a mobile is the way to go. You can either rent it, re-sell it or move it to your other acreage.

 

[EddieWalker]

Are you going to build the cabin yourself? if so, then building it on a wooden foundation would be the most cost effective and allow you to move it at a later date. If you are going to hire it done, you would be better off looking at RV trailers and single wides.

For a floor plan, go to any moble home site and look at their single wide floor plans. You wont find a better source with every option already figured out.

Eddie