Apply the "Swing" function in your digital audio workstation or drum machine to the hi-hats in the house drum pattern. Swing moves the drum sounds slightly off the beat, creating a funky house rhythm. Set the swing to "16"; this setting affects the 16th-note hi-hats that characterize a house beat, leaving the kick and snare unaffected.
Drag the snare drums in the drum pattern slightly off the beat to create more funk. Turn off the grid in your digital audio workstation's drum-pattern editor, then zoom in on a snare drum. Click and drag the snare so that it begins slightly before or after the beat.
Add offbeat percussion samples to your house drum pattern. Placing a tom-tom or conga, for example, just before the end of the first kick drum in a bar can help create a funky rhythm. Experiment with varying the position of the percussion sample in different bars: place it after the first kick drum in the first bar of the pattern, then move after the third kick drum in the second bar, for example.
Incorporate recordings of live drummers into your house music drums. Nothing's funkier than a live drummer, and adding a live drum loop can greatly increase the funk level of your house music beats. If the drum recording has a different tempo than the track you're producing, use your workstation's warping or timestretch function to match it to your chosen tempo.