Considerations Before Building a Metal Home

Additional Reasons for a Metal Built House:

• Growth: This goes back to the flexibility and versatility of the structure. Building your pre-engineered metal home today through a custom design still allows for growth in the future. Residential steel structures can be more easily modified and expanded than traditional housing construction and it’s typically much faster!
• Insurance: Due to materials, metal homes typically cost less to insure (they’re fire-resistant). They’re also more capable of handling extreme weather. This is great news for you if you live in an area that is prone to experiencing tornadoes, hurricanes and/or flooding.
• Durability: The strength and durability of steel makes it more reliable than wood by providing consistent strength per weight ratios. Simply put, steel is strong but doesn’t weigh as much as wood would with similar strength. Not to mention maintaining a pre-engineered metal home is minimal – especially when it comes to pest damage.
• Unique Architectural Expression: Building with metal provides the opportunity to achieve both a conventional aesthetic as well as a unique, never-been-seen-before design. For example, Art Hance, Owner & President of Hance Construction, collaborated and coordinated the pre-engineered portion of the unique design by Adam Kalkin, called Bunny Lane. SteelHouse, by Hance Construction, is another example of the flexibility and design capabilities of a home built with steel.
  
  
  

There are Some Disadvantages – Let’s Review:

• Cha-Ching! Steel is expensive. Steel to lumber, in today’s market, the costs are relatively similar but the labor to install steel is much more expensive as it requires precision that lumber does not. Lumber requires hammer and nails whereas steel requires screwing, welding, and bolting. Those techniques making it more costly.
• Additional Cost in Insulation: Condensation and eventual mold can be an issue if the structure is not properly insulated from the beginning. In addition to condensation, extreme weather or temperature fluctuations could be costly when it comes to heating and cooling – again, be sure to include top-notch insulation in the scope of your build.
• Lending/Financing: Some lenders refrain from offering traditional mortgages for non-traditional homes and if they do, they have much higher requirements (think, no less than 30% down – often more than this). 
• Resell: Metal homes are considered difficult to sell. Which are typically why lending requirements are so high during financing. 
• Growth: Steel residential structures can be easily expanded (in footprint) but multi-level expansions are an entirely different story.

Your home is a safe haven, a place to provide protection from the outside world. Making a decision about where, how and who will build your home as well as what materials they use, is highly personal and should be well thought out. Hance Construction is here to serve you.

When working with Hance Construction, you will meet with the full team that is involved during the build – from designers to project managers and engineers to subtrades – the team ensures that they each understand the plan and their role in creating your dream space.

Embracing challenges and collaborating to find affordable, effective and attractive solutions for clients is the Hance way. If you need help navigating your residential construction project, reach out to Hance today!