Is there any way to add space to a house for $50K-ish or less?

[Anonymous]

Under 50k? Buy a used Sprinter van and park it next to your house. Gut it and put whatever you want inside it, connect to your house's power.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our duplex is tiny and we’re adding about 250 sq ft. It will be a finished room with a full bathroom. I believe it will come to about 70k. We considered a sunroom, but thought that a real room would be more useful for us. We thought about moving, but between transaction fees etc, we figured that building an extension would be cheaper.

Where do you live?

[Anonymous]

Absolutely bone-headed building code changed in MoCo and Arlington are responsible for a big part of the skyrocketing cost of additions. You basically can’t put an addition on top of a crawl space and concrete footers anymore. Everything has to be on foundation. And what’s more, that new foundation can’t just be next to the old one, it has to dig down underneath it to connect or some nonsense. So if you want to change your footprint you have to call in an excavator and a cement truck, engineers, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely bone-headed building code changed in MoCo and Arlington are responsible for a big part of the skyrocketing cost of additions. You basically can’t put an addition on top of a crawl space and concrete footers anymore. Everything has to be on foundation. And what’s more, that new foundation can’t just be next to the old one, it has to dig down underneath it to connect or some nonsense. So if you want to change your footprint you have to call in an excavator and a cement truck, engineers, etc.

When did this change? I put in a very large, permitted screened porch about 12 years ago in MoCo. It basically went over the footprint of the old deck, with no concrete/foundation needed. It was $45k, which seems modest compared to what I'm reading here. Is it going to be an issue when I sell if the building code changed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely bone-headed building code changed in MoCo and Arlington are responsible for a big part of the skyrocketing cost of additions. You basically can’t put an addition on top of a crawl space and concrete footers anymore. Everything has to be on foundation. And what’s more, that new foundation can’t just be next to the old one, it has to dig down underneath it to connect or some nonsense. So if you want to change your footprint you have to call in an excavator and a cement truck, engineers, etc.

When did this change? I put in a very large, permitted screened porch about 12 years ago in MoCo. It basically went over the footprint of the old deck, with no concrete/foundation needed. It was $45k, which seems modest compared to what I'm reading here. Is it going to be an issue when I sell if the building code changed?

I think it’s a last ten years thing, and I don’t know if it treats porches and home additions the same (I sort of expect not). I worked with a builder in Arlington to get a small addition built and he basically said not to do it because of the expense of complying with the new code. He said it was an Slrington and MoCo thing. I suspect you’ll be grandfathered in regardless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely bone-headed building code changed in MoCo and Arlington are responsible for a big part of the skyrocketing cost of additions. You basically can’t put an addition on top of a crawl space and concrete footers anymore. Everything has to be on foundation. And what’s more, that new foundation can’t just be next to the old one, it has to dig down underneath it to connect or some nonsense. So if you want to change your footprint you have to call in an excavator and a cement truck, engineers, etc.

When did this change? I put in a very large, permitted screened porch about 12 years ago in MoCo. It basically went over the footprint of the old deck, with no concrete/foundation needed. It was $45k, which seems modest compared to what I'm reading here. Is it going to be an issue when I sell if the building code changed?

I think it’s a last ten years thing, and I don’t know if it treats porches and home additions the same (I sort of expect not). I worked with a builder in Arlington to get a small addition built and he basically said not to do it because of the expense of complying with the new code. He said it was an Slrington and MoCo thing. I suspect you’ll be grandfathered in regardless.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely bone-headed building code changed in MoCo and Arlington are responsible for a big part of the skyrocketing cost of additions. You basically can’t put an addition on top of a crawl space and concrete footers anymore. Everything has to be on foundation. And what’s more, that new foundation can’t just be next to the old one, it has to dig down underneath it to connect or some nonsense. So if you want to change your footprint you have to call in an excavator and a cement truck, engineers, etc.

This is the International Residential Code. Different jurisdictions are more aggressive about adopting the latest version and enforcing it but it's the national standard.

Making houses have appropriate foundations is not a bad thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely bone-headed building code changed in MoCo and Arlington are responsible for a big part of the skyrocketing cost of additions. You basically can’t put an addition on top of a crawl space and concrete footers anymore. Everything has to be on foundation. And what’s more, that new foundation can’t just be next to the old one, it has to dig down underneath it to connect or some nonsense. So if you want to change your footprint you have to call in an excavator and a cement truck, engineers, etc.

This is the International Residential Code. Different jurisdictions are more aggressive about adopting the latest version and enforcing it but it's the national standard.

Making houses have appropriate foundations is not a bad thing.

Yes, but I’m pretty sure people have been building houses on crawl spaces and footers for a long time and there’s no good reason to make that illegal. Just a dumb regulation adopted without any cost benefit analysis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely bone-headed building code changed in MoCo and Arlington are responsible for a big part of the skyrocketing cost of additions. You basically can’t put an addition on top of a crawl space and concrete footers anymore. Everything has to be on foundation. And what’s more, that new foundation can’t just be next to the old one, it has to dig down underneath it to connect or some nonsense. So if you want to change your footprint you have to call in an excavator and a cement truck, engineers, etc.

This is the International Residential Code. Different jurisdictions are more aggressive about adopting the latest version and enforcing it but it's the national standard.

Making houses have appropriate foundations is not a bad thing.

Yes, but I’m pretty sure people have been building houses on crawl spaces and footers for a long time and there’s no good reason to make that illegal. Just a dumb regulation adopted without any cost benefit analysis.

Nothing in the IRC precludes crawl spaces. From the way you use "footers" I think you mean piers, nothing in the code precludes that either. It's just that when you size them appropriately for soil conditions the cost advantage over a trench foundation disappears.

It's not that there was no cost-benefit analysis, it's that they stopped discounting the future so severely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely bone-headed building code changed in MoCo and Arlington are responsible for a big part of the skyrocketing cost of additions. You basically can’t put an addition on top of a crawl space and concrete footers anymore. Everything has to be on foundation. And what’s more, that new foundation can’t just be next to the old one, it has to dig down underneath it to connect or some nonsense. So if you want to change your footprint you have to call in an excavator and a cement truck, engineers, etc.

This is the International Residential Code. Different jurisdictions are more aggressive about adopting the latest version and enforcing it but it's the national standard.

Making houses have appropriate foundations is not a bad thing.

Yes, but I’m pretty sure people have been building houses on crawl spaces and footers for a long time and there’s no good reason to make that illegal. Just a dumb regulation adopted without any cost benefit analysis.

Nothing in the IRC precludes crawl spaces. From the way you use "footers" I think you mean piers, nothing in the code precludes that either. It's just that when you size them appropriately for soil conditions the cost advantage over a trench foundation disappears.

It's not that there was no cost-benefit analysis, it's that they stopped discounting the future so severely.

What’s funny is that I already had an addition on my house from the 1980s, built on crawl space and footers, and after we had an engineer analyse it we concluded it could support a second story. Seems like whoever built the thing had a pretty good grip on “the future”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our duplex is tiny and we’re adding about 250 sq ft. It will be a finished room with a full bathroom. I believe it will come to about 70k. We considered a sunroom, but thought that a real room would be more useful for us. We thought about moving, but between transaction fees etc, we figured that building an extension would be cheaper.

Where do you live?

OMG, PP can you please share your contractor and the year that was done? That price sounds amazing and we'd sign off on it tomorrow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely bone-headed building code changed in MoCo and Arlington are responsible for a big part of the skyrocketing cost of additions. You basically can’t put an addition on top of a crawl space and concrete footers anymore. Everything has to be on foundation. And what’s more, that new foundation can’t just be next to the old one, it has to dig down underneath it to connect or some nonsense. So if you want to change your footprint you have to call in an excavator and a cement truck, engineers, etc.

This is the International Residential Code. Different jurisdictions are more aggressive about adopting the latest version and enforcing it but it's the national standard.

Making houses have appropriate foundations is not a bad thing.

Yes, but I’m pretty sure people have been building houses on crawl spaces and footers for a long time and there’s no good reason to make that illegal. Just a dumb regulation adopted without any cost benefit analysis.

Nothing in the IRC precludes crawl spaces. From the way you use "footers" I think you mean piers, nothing in the code precludes that either. It's just that when you size them appropriately for soil conditions the cost advantage over a trench foundation disappears.

It's not that there was no cost-benefit analysis, it's that they stopped discounting the future so severely.

What’s funny is that I already had an addition on my house from the 1980s, built on crawl space and footers, and after we had an engineer analyse it we concluded it could support a second story. Seems like whoever built the thing had a pretty good grip on “the future”.

Are you saying the local officials wouldn't allow that? Because as I said, nothing in the new code precludes that style of construction. With an engineer's stamp you should have been fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our duplex is tiny and we’re adding about 250 sq ft. It will be a finished room with a full bathroom. I believe it will come to about 70k. We considered a sunroom, but thought that a real room would be more useful for us. We thought about moving, but between transaction fees etc, we figured that building an extension would be cheaper.

Yeah you should prepare to go way over budget unless you're just finishing a space that already exists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our house is on the smaller side and I've always thought we'd try to add on another room (ideally a four-season sunroom, maybe 10'x15"ish, but can be flexible on the details), but in my head I was thinking about it as costing in the $25K-$50K range. Getting spooked by all these mentions of it costing $100K+. Is there any way to do it cheaper? We are not picky about finishes, can wait and try to time it whenever's best, will probably remodel one or two bathrooms and replace our roof sometime in the next 5ish years so could combine it with one or both of those if it brings cost down, etc. How much would it save to make it a 3 season room or a screened porch? What about if we got one of those pre-fab sunroom things? Is there anything else we can do to bring the price down while still giving us some extra living space?

(Or alternatively, if the answer is that we are definitely going to have to resign ourselves to paying 6 figures, what's the maximum amount of space you can realistically get for under, say, $150K? We're in Montgomery County, if it matters.)

You can get a really nice shed for much less than that. Build to the max size and have electricity run to it and you'll be able to not only store stuff that is current in your house, thus freeing up this valuable space, but w/ a little more work/expense, you have have a decent "man cave" or "she shed" functionality for most of the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely bone-headed building code changed in MoCo and Arlington are responsible for a big part of the skyrocketing cost of additions. You basically can’t put an addition on top of a crawl space and concrete footers anymore. Everything has to be on foundation. And what’s more, that new foundation can’t just be next to the old one, it has to dig down underneath it to connect or some nonsense. So if you want to change your footprint you have to call in an excavator and a cement truck, engineers, etc.

This is the International Residential Code. Different jurisdictions are more aggressive about adopting the latest version and enforcing it but it's the national standard.

Making houses have appropriate foundations is not a bad thing.

Yes, but I’m pretty sure people have been building houses on crawl spaces and footers for a long time and there’s no good reason to make that illegal. Just a dumb regulation adopted without any cost benefit analysis.

Nothing in the IRC precludes crawl spaces. From the way you use "footers" I think you mean piers, nothing in the code precludes that either. It's just that when you size them appropriately for soil conditions the cost advantage over a trench foundation disappears.

It's not that there was no cost-benefit analysis, it's that they stopped discounting the future so severely.

What’s funny is that I already had an addition on my house from the 1980s, built on crawl space and footers, and after we had an engineer analyse it we concluded it could support a second story. Seems like whoever built the thing had a pretty good grip on “the future”.

By "footers" do you mean posts? Because every foundation has a footing.