How much does a house weigh?

[JackRit]

Anybody have a rule of thumb or two for calculating the weight of a house (exclusive of foundation)? Most of the houses I deal with are wood frame with either wood siding or stucco and composition or tile roofs. Thanks.

[KEVINB]

Do you need the weight per foot on a foundation? or are you trying to figure out the typical weight of a x by y sized house with one or two or more stories? Just wondering, what would you use this information to do?

[Thor Matteson, SE]

I remember an article in JLC a year or more ago where a house-mover gave a figure of 50 pounds per square foot. I assume that would be per square foot of floor area.

Thor

www.shearwalls.com

[Hausdok]

Hi,

If you go here, you can put the figures together to figure it out:

http://www.foretruss.com/WTMAT.pdf

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[James Eggert]

Hey, Mike!

Nice to see you back!!

[Hausdok]

Thanks Jim,

I've always been around. I would mostly look in evenings and see if the place had exploded and then sign off again.

Just didn't had a lot of time through the summer and fall to hang out. TIJ and the business pretty much occupied most of my time, and then I got roped into teaching a class on home inspections at a local community college. Just turned in those grades and now I can work on other stuff.

Things in my profession always slow a little bit after holloween until about the middle to end of January, so now I have more time to chime in.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[JackRit]

Thor, Thanks for your reply. But is that 50 psf per floor? ---Jack

[Ode...]

Since we have actually scaled a home quite a few years ago, my figures average to be 124.5 psf for a raised ranch/split foyer 864SF home w/bath and a half, 3 BR home. It was 36T for one piece and 36k for the rest of it.

[Matt Clark]

House mover for our last one estimated it at 62 tons. 32 feet square, 2 stories. He added on a bit for the car port and the small slab floor under a laundry floor.

Works out to roughly 121 pounds per square foot of footprint, or 60 pounds per square foot total living space. Not too far off of some of the other estimates.

[Brad S]

That 60 psf of floor area checks out with the tonnage I just hauled off of a 3000 sf demolition. That's actually great information for the next demo estimate since much of the cost is the tonnage hauled off.

[Matt Clark]

You know, I never thought about it that way. That's pretty good info. even for partial demo's. At least I'd have a rough idea of the amount of waste that would have to be landfilled. Had the info at my fingertips, and never really used.....hmmm.

[Barkri12]

Depends on the house size, hight, weight, contents, and the matereal used in the construction of the house.

I heartily agree with the above answer, but a better and more to the point answer would be: Depends on how heavy it is, and that depends on what the definition of is, is.

On the other hand, my experience tells me that single story wood-frame houses range from 25 to 60 lbs/sq ft. (depending, of course, on how heavily they're built). I know, coz I always ways my houses. I caint get em up onto my scale so I has to pick em up and then stand up on the scale myself. That requires some arithmetic to make up for how much I ways, but we ain't gettin into that.

Now before some smartelec sez they heared different, I'm talking about a bare-bones house sittin' on a foundation, but not includin' the foundation and all the stuff that gets stuffed into houses. Most people ask about house weight when they want to jack a house up off its foundation for repair. If they're a gonna do that, they better empty out the house for a lot of reasons; and we ain't gonna get into that neither.