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Comment by stefek99 | Hacker News Reader

> For the structure and insulation of a PopUp-House building (floor, walls and ceiling) it costs about 200 €/m² including labour. To this cost must be added all the finishes: waterproofing, exterior finishes, interior finishes, electricity, plumbing, heating, etc.

What would be the total total cost then?

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According to Google...

200€ = 278.08 US Dollars

1 meter = 3.28084 feet

So.. 278.08 dollars gets you 3.28084 sq ft, or about $84.76 per single square foot (278.08/3.28084)...

If I did my math right. ;-)

200€/m² = $25.85/ft² http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=200+%E2%82%AC%2Fm%C2%B2...

Plus all the finishes. What do those cost in a standard house?

According to the NAHB [1], construction is about 60% of a house's cost (the rest eaten by land, financing, etc.). Of construction cost about 20% is foundation, framing + insulation (what we have in this design). For this particular design it's not just all the finishes though, since you still need plumbing, electrical, etc.

[1] http://www.nahb.org/assets/images/Table1_201035133529.jpg

Pet peeve: "about 200 €/m² including labour" is not supposed to be accurate to 4 significant figures - and even if it was, the EUR/USD exchange rate varies by more than that from day to day. "$25 / square foot" is much better if you treat it as a translation rather than mindlessly plugging numbers into a calculator.

(Maybe I'm just being a grumpy old man, but I deal with this sort of thing all the time in my day job and it winds me up something rotten).

1 meter = 3.28084 feet

1 square meter = 10.7639 square ft

As a rule of thumb, the typical stick-framed Midwestern home (so, 3-4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, vinyl siding, asphalt shingled roof, drywall interior, mid-range cabinets/flooring/trim) will typically cost around $100 per finished square foot.

Of that number, roughly 1/3 of it is for framing the shell. The rest is all plumbing/HVAC/electrical/trim.

There's a lot of easily-invalidated assumptions built into that number, so take it with a grain of salt.

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