The numbers nobody publishes
Materials, cut lists, and costing
Where to find plans that come with materials lists, and why honest cost sheets are the thing this library most needs.
Plans that come with a materials list
A drawing without a materials list leaves the hardest part undone. These sources include one.
| Source | What it gives you | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Shedplans.org | 107 free shed plans with materials lists: storage, garden, garage, barn styles | reachable |
| Construct101 | Free shed plans with drawings and materials-list PDFs | reachable |
| Midwest Plan Service (Iowa State) | Free building plans and materials: framing, utility, hay and grain storage, trusses, livestock housingThe host in most circulated link lists (www-mwps.sws.iastate.edu) no longer resolves. This is the working address. | reachable |
| Canada Plan Service | Livestock, dairy, horse barns, greenhouses, poultry, storage, post-frame. Government, free. | reachable |
| 116 free farm and ranch barn plans | Aggregator of US and Canadian government plans | reachable |
| BarnToolbox | Free and paid CAD barn plans: pole, post and beam, gable, gambrel | reachable |
| WikiHouse | Open source CNC-cut plywood housing system. Open CAD, ordinary tools, no specialist trade skill. | reachable |
| Open Source Ecology | Seed Eco-Home and straw bale house in full FreeCAD models; also the compressed earth block press | reachable |
Sizing timber
Before you price a cut list, the members have to be right. The Wood Handbook is the free reference for allowable stresses by species, how moisture content changes them, fastener capacities, and joint behaviour. Chapters 5 and 7 are the ones you will keep returning to.
The honest note on cost
There are no cost estimates on this page, and that is deliberate.
Almost every natural-building and homestead site quotes a figure, “a cob house for $5,000”, with nothing behind it. Those numbers usually exclude land, site work, the foundation, the roof, glazing, the well, the septic system, permits, tools, and every hour of labour. Repeating them would make this library part of the problem.
What would be genuinely useful, and what nothing online currently offers, is a small number of real cost sheets from real builds: receipts, hours, what was scavenged, what was bought twice, and the final total. One of those is worth more than every estimate on the internet.
That is the ask on the members’ builds page.