How much does a house weigh?
 

Seriously!

20' x 36', wood frame pier & beam w/metal hip roof. Any ideas?

My house weighs about 35 tons, but it's a little bigger than that... :D

200 lbs per square foot and 275 for two stories.

i would estimate about 25 to 35#/sf for a one story with drywall on walls and ceiling and metal roof. with carpet and or vinyl on the floors.

so it is about 720 sf x 30 that would be 21,600# not counting anything below the wood floor system.

these are round numbers, why do you want to know?

oh yeah that is empty, with no furniture or appliances or people.

tom w

One question.

Why?

Do you plan on Fed-Ex'ing your house cross country?

It is 200 lbs a square foot that is a fact, google it.

just cause google says it doesnt make it so.

there is just no way that a frame ranch with metal roof weighs any where near 300# per square foot.

now if it were concrete and masonry then that is a different story. and of course the foundation weighs a good deal too.

as you will note in my estimate i excluded the foundation, since i have no idea what that is. that will vary all over that map depending on where you are and how deep it freezes there.

i do weight calculations on every building i design the structure for, adn that is every one i design, and occasionally i will design a structure for one i dont design. i have a book with all the materials listed with weights per sf and cubic foot.

now if you were to give me specific specifications i could do a complete weight analysis. then if you want to know for sure you could weigh it. but most of the time we just estimate the weight, size the stucture and build it.

i have been doing it for about 30 years. between 3 and 400 built structures. none have fallen down yet.

tom w

My numbers came from a house mover and google and do include the foundation and floor which in Michigan can be up to half of the weight.

It can't weight that much. I see trailers pulling 700 sqft. houses down the highway all the time. :D At 200lbs a square foot that would be 140,000 lbs!

I tried . . .
 

I just couldn't get mine on the bathroom scale to save my life. I guess I can't argue with 200lbs a square foot.

A true 1300 sq ft modular weighs 40-60 ton per half.

What does a house weigh? Some mental heavy lifting

Ask the Expert / Darrell Hay


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Q: How much does the average house weigh?

A: First, we need to define "average," then we need to define "house." But, in general, the average house today is about twice as big as the average house 50 years or more ago. But an older house (depending on exact age) will have solid lumber wall sheathing and floorboards instead of plywood, will have heavy lath and plaster walls instead of drywall and likely will have more masonry work.

So when we say "house," does that include the extremely heavy concrete foundation, concrete garage or basement floor? With all those variables, how could we possibly figure out how much a house weighs? There are three methods:

• Totaling the weight of the individual components.

• Pulling out a scale and actually weighing the finished product. (That would be one awfully big scale, but house movers tell me that most houses weigh in at between 80,000 and 160,000 pounds. Of course, this is sans foundation and concrete floor slabs, and house movers typically are dealing with older, smaller structures that have been stripped of many components (but not always).

• Rules of thumb around the construction industry are 200 pounds per square foot for a single-level home, 275 for two levels and 350 for three levels. This figure is predicated on no heavy features such as tile roofing or extensive masonry work, but includes foundation.

To check it out, I built a hypothetical 1,600-foot, single-level home in my head and on paper, based on known delivered weights of given materials. It totaled 345,000 pounds (including 160,000 for the foundation and 30,000 in the garage floor), compared to the rule-of-thumb house weighing in at 320,000. Pretty close! Of course, what good is a house without a deck? In my hypothetical house, I added a deck, a gazebo and a hot tub, which pretty much explains the difference. Adding in the weight of a foundation, slabs, appliances and fixtures to the house-mover's figures, we cross-check pretty well.

Refiguring for the "average" 2,200-square-foot, two-level newer home, rule of thumb comes it at 605,000, which I suspect is on the high side. Why do I think that's high? Because the foundation hasn't increased dramatically in size over my hypothetical single-level house. But then again, I don't have a scale that big, so what do I know?

that guy just doesnt know what he is talking about.

sorry.

unless he is building the walls fo 12" thick concrete.

lets see, a 24 x 24 foot garage slab 4" thick is about 30k #, so he got that right. his other figures are way too high unless he is talking about a brick adobe with 2' thick walls.

now lets see a 1300 sf modular weighs 40 to 60 ton, that is 80 to 120,000 pounds or about twice the legal limit for a semi, am i right? i dont think so.

i have a 35' travel trailer, it weighs about 8,000 pounds and has three axles. so lets see it is 8.8 x 35 or about 300 sf. so by that calc a 1300 sf modular would weigh about 35000 pounds.

tom w

Hmmm. @ 200lbs ft2, that makes me heavier than a house per ft2........:eek:

Mine currently weighs about $170,000. :)