Owner-Builder Journal Entries
Posted to herbalslim by jack in shenzhen, IN
on 3/11/2010 8:02:48 PM
Imelda Perfect Slim
Herbal Fruits
Zhen De Shou
Weekend Prince
Fast slim
3x slimming power
Shoufsy
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Posted to The-New-Ries-Homestead by Chad in Polk/Richfield/Erin/Hartford, WI
on 3/11/2010 7:53:19 PM
Who thought having warm weather would slow down construction?
I was planning on painting the house this weekend but the crew that was going to put on the knock down texture and spray the base coat of paint was not able to get up the driveway to the house because their truck got stuck. Seems all of the warm weather we've had knocked out the first layer of frost in the driveway (the fill we brought up) but not the lower layer (original ground). This caused the top layer to be very soft and an angry drywall crew. Sounds like we are going to have to wait about a week, everyone who knows says that the rain we are getting lately will speed the defrosting.
We were also planing on having the hardwood flooring delivered and the garage finally poured but that will have to wait until next week for both.
We did manage to get the 100,000 Btu Reznor heater installed in the garage, so that is pumping heat for when the concrete crew shows up. Note: Did you know that thermostats only go down to 50 degrees? Makes sense but I'll need to look for a "garage thermostat" that I can lower to the 40's or I be turning the heater on manually in the winter.
I've attached some photos of the geothermal unit. I'm very excited to have them hook this up. It will supply all of the HVAC needs for the house (no outside AC unit), be hooked up to my in-floor heat and preheat my water for the entire house.
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| Geothermal Unit |
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| Reznor Heater Hung in Garage |
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| Ready for knockdown and base coat of paint |
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| Kitchen & Living Room |
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Posted to DomeSweetDome by Rich in Suffolk, VA
on 3/11/2010 12:35:33 PM
First off, I've realized that I need more minutes on my cell plan. We don't have a landline so my cellphone usually has enough minutes if I only call at night or weekends. Well, that doesn't work when you're making phone calls to building departments and bankers and surveyors so I doubled my cellphone minutes. My carrier also offers 10 friends and family which may also help me if I can predict which numbers I'll be calling the most and keep the list updated.
Second, someone else mentioned doing Internet faxing. The cheapest is by www.fax1.com for small usage. They allow you to pay by the page with no subscription fees. I couldn't get it to work at first until I downloaded their program to my computer which installed a fax machine as a print driver. That has worked well for me.
And now for the depressing portion:
I expected financing problems because I have other mortgages (rentals), because it's a singlewide trailer, and because I'm in another state. The one thing I didn't expect was that banking regulations have changed. To borrow from my forum post:
"My lender once allowed me to offset my rentals' mortgages with their rent income if I had a one-year contract. Now they don't even consider the rent income but yet want 6 months reserves for each mortgage that I have including the one I'm applying for. This is crazy! Fortunately, they do allow me to count IRA's but only at 60% and the current market doesn't really help me there either." Additionally the rental mortgages count against your debt/income ratio. This run-down trailer is really all I can now afford.
Believe it or not, I made it past the new FHA hurdles (barely). My problem is that I couldn't call this my primary residence if I live several states away and won't be moving for a year. End result is the loan was denied. I also called my secondary sources and none of them do mobile home loans. Next, I added my wife to my loan so that she could call the property as a primary residence. That just allowed the first lender to find new faults with my loan package such as "This is a trailer?" after pulling up the listing. End result is that primary lender, the one I've done dozens of loans with over the last 15 years, clearly does not want to lend me money. This ends my hope for a loan as a single family residence which would have given me low interest rates for 30 years. This means my only option is to finance the property as a land loan. The worst part is it took me 15 days to get to this point from the time I submitted my loan application. And I did my homework, too. I called this bank three times before even making an offer to ensure they would give me a loan on this trailer and I even had a pre-approval letter from them. Their original words were "the trailer just has to be habitable with a working kitchen and a permanent foundation". What a joke. I look forward to commenting on their review sheet that I should be receiving soon.
I got some other bad news this week. Turns out the trailer has some issues with flooring and the well breaker wouldn't shut either. This is a minor issue if I'm onsite and can fix them but as it is I would have to pay someone to come out and fix it to get it past the new appraisal requirements (now appraisals have to do indoor inspections of the residence). Even if I do pay someone to correct those issues the appraiser will likely find new problems for me to spend money and fix. The land loan, aside from minimizing many of my other closing costs, doesn't even look at the trailer for the appraisal and won't force me to insure the crappy trailer which was going to cost me $300 a year. So land loan it is!
My first choice for the land loan was a bank that I routinely do business with. However, the interest rate is near double what I was hoping to get and at a shorter time period of 20 years. End result is my construction timeline (cost driven) just got pushed further out. The extra money ($152/month) I had planned on spending on building materials will now have to be spent on mortgage payments. Regardless I later found out that this bank won't lend on agricultural land and won't lend on any vacant land that has taxable improvements on it. Double hit for me on this property.
Thankfully I had identified two more lenders who seemed willing to do the land loan. They have even higher interest rates and even shorter terms which means I will have even less money to spend on construction. After another week working with the two new lenders on land loans, one of those also denied me financing based on the property itself. No real specific details but it wasn't what they were looking to finance, even with 25% down, excellent credit. I didn't even knew banks walked properties themselves...
The last lender, a local bank, however, will extend me credit but it's a 5 year balloon with 20 year amortization at 7% interest and 25% down. Talk about a budget killer... Can I still build? Yeah but the timeline for completion will immediately move right if any of my estimates are incorrect. The wife is already taking my 2 year guestimate and saying that it will take me 3 years.
And we're back to the wetlands issue. Before even looking at this property I researched the Army Corps of Engineer maps available online and didn't see wetlands on this property (in contrast to every other vacant land MLS that was covered in wetlands). However, there is a 2-3' stream on the border that would be considered wetlands. If I begin construction and someone declares that wetlands I would be shutdown. So now I'm back to doing a wetlands delineation. Hopefully the delineation will find no issues that will prevent my construction but it's still more money to be spent. Thanks to the ownerbuilderbook advice I did attempt to obtain quotes from several different soil scientists. Only two responded but that at least gives me a reasonable range for pricing which allowed me to talk down one to a good price. Since I now have a loan commitment letter, I've signed the contract for this portion. If it comes up with major wetlands problems on the land all of this work will have been for nothing.
Once the delineation is approved by the Army Corps of Engineers, I have 5 years before someone can change it which would allow me to get the new house built. There is also a question about buffer zones but I'm still learning about that one. It has to do with whether the stream drains into the Chesapeake or not. If it does, a 100' buffer zone is required around the stream.
One cost savings that I am working on is my survey. I've been advised to get a survey before closing and the building dept requires a site survey before approving the building permit. I called 4 surveyors and am getting quotes from all 4 for the combined work. My plans dept is preparing a foundation plot early to get it on the site survey. However, the surveyor can't do work until the wetlands is flagged onsite.
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Posted to Arnold-CA-Alpine-chalet by Pat in Arnold, CA
on 3/11/2010 12:10:33 AM
We applied for our loan today. We'll see how it goes.
Also, we got an estimate from the county on the fees involved in building.
Water impact fee $11,121 Building permit $5150 Road impact fee $4062 School county fee $6249
There you have it. $26,582 just in county fees. YUP... California tries to keep you from building. HA!
On a good note, we got our Title 24 energy calcs done. We had to exceed the California energy guidelines by 15% to qualify for added rebates in the New Home Solar Partnership program. Our house is expected to exceed the energy guidelines by 38.7%. Woo Hooooo! Thaaaaaaat's energy efficiency!
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Posted to Loris by Loris in Tanunda, SA
on 3/11/2010
Things are finally beginning:
- Rainwater tank ordered 8th March
- Steel frame plans picked up on March 9th and delivered to my engineer, who needs to make slight modifications to the footings before we submit to council for Development approval
- Fence approval verbally given by neighbors 10th March
- Paid deposit on steel framing
- Pre-booked footings for end of March, and Plumber for prelim work, septic tank and rainwater tank in ground installation
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| About to begin building |
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Posted to Mark-and-Lisas-Log-Cabin by mark in altoona, PA
on 3/10/2010 4:15:05 PM
I went to the house after work and dug the last 100' of ditch for the new electric service. It is extremely muddy with all of the melting snow. Hopefully it will be all melted in a few more days. The 50 degree temperatures were welcome!!! I will be reviewing the log list again tonight and tomorrow we release the order for cutting.
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Posted to Seaton-Station by Bryan in Siloam Springs, AR
on 3/10/2010 11:08:22 AM
Stephanie and I are finally in a position where we can consider building a home on a hill in rural Arkansas on some family-owned land. The property is currently covered in trees and on top of an 1100 sq foot hill with views of rolling pastureland for 360 degrees, if the trees were removed. The home is going to be located here. We've gone back and forth on how many of the acres we wish to buy from Stephanie's mom, but are leaning towards 9-12 right now.
Stephanie and I sat down and listed a few of the things we wanted in our new home. We wanted the home to be energy-efficient. Projections of energy costs rising dramatically over the next decade seem both likely and frightening to an accountant such as myself. I believe paying up-front for energy efficiency can help hedge against the financial risk that energy costs are going to rise significantly and increase my monthly variable expenses substantially. We're currently strongly considering using SIPS for the roof, the floor, and the exterior walls, with a crawlspace foundation.
We also wanted a home that more accurately reflected our more modern sensibilities, took advantage of our great views, and had a large enough great room/dining room/kitchen to host a large family gathering or party comfortably. Stephanie is an awesome cook, so we anticipate the kitchen being a focal point for entertaining. Some of our other preferences...I want a kitchen island with bar stools around it, which is just a design and seating preference of mine (that's possibly related to my bad back), we also need a dedicated office space, since Stephanie works from home.
The house is going to be about 1500 feet away from any utilities, so we're going to have to pay for the electrical hookup, but will probably eschew the natural gas hookup (which would likely cost thousands) in favor of propane. Stephanie thinks we can get the propane tank buried, which would be cool. We only really need it for starting our fireplace and grill, since we'll be using electric for our hot water and induction/electric for our cooking.
We finally found a plan that suited our needs (with some adjustments needed) here . We particularly like the upstairs master suite with multiple rooftop decks, including one that just seems made for a hot tub.
Using this we went out to the home site and stepped off and taped to get a general idea of the likely layout of the house. Here's the pictures of the site...
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| The house will sit at the top of this hill. |
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| Here's our best effort at taping off the home site. |
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| This would be the view of the back yard from the courtyard. |
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| Here's the view from the back yard facing South. Again, clearing a lot of the trees out would make it a lot more impressive, but I bet it would look good from the rooftop deck even now. I might have to take a ladder out there and see what it looks like. |
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Posted to OurFarmstead by Mary in Lititz, PA
on 3/10/2010 9:59:54 AM
We spent the better part of an afternoon looking at surplus windows for the shop. Since I had done plans and elevations for the shop, I had a good feel for the windows we wanted. Prior to setting out, I researched our target sizes at a Big Box store so we had that info as a reference to compare against the surplus pricing. The first store appeared to have bulk selections of new white vinyl windows with the surplus store's name stuck on them. Most of the windows were for new construction with plenty of windows in each size. There was also a small section of replacement windows. In comparing their prices with a BigBox store, I didn't think the suspect quality was worth the few dollars in savings. Of course I'm no window expert, so maybe the quality was OK... but to me they looked cheaply made. The second store had a random collection of windows of all sizes, shapes, colors and specs. Ninety percent were replacement windows and a few were new construction. There didn’t appear to be any organization to the way they were stored, and their published inventory list with window locations was useless. But the people in the store were pleasant and helpful and willing helped load our truck, too.
It took a bit of looking, and some flexibility on the design, but we managed to get seven new-construction windows to meet our design requirements for $561. This may not be auction bargain pricing, but I think we had a decent savings. The two large windows are moderate quality, and the five smaller ones are better quality than I would have gotten if we bought new.
And to Michael and Jeff on this forum, thanks again for the input on new vs. replacement windows. We got lucky and found new-construction surplus windows. And aside from the easier installation, we thought the flanges on the windows offer some additional resistance to wind-driven rain.
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| South-East View: Two large windows for passive heat of slab near 12x12 roll-up door. Awning shades them in summer. Four small windows for daylighting in rest of shop, shaded by roof overhang.
Majority of exterior south wall reserved for future solar HW radiant. |
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| North: Lean-to shed shelters north side of shop and adds storage. 3' square is machine vent, not window. |
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Comments (3)
Posted to Mark-and-Lisas-Log-Cabin by mark in altoona, PA
on 3/9/2010 5:42:58 PM
This is a photo taken on our trail cam behind our foundation. We hope they stick around for a long time. What a beautiful sight to see all the wildlife right in your back yard!
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| Some of our friends |
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Posted to Mark-and-Lisas-Log-Cabin by mark in altoona, PA
on 3/9/2010 5:31:56 PM
We now have the foundation completed and are waiting for our logs to come. The east coast had three major snow storms in February which pushed back the delivery of the logs from the beginning of Feb. to the middle of March. In the mean time, we installed our underground piping for our electricity, phone and cable. We are always going up to the land to look around and enjoy the beautiful scenery. We put a trail cam in the back of the house and have gotten some awesome pictures of many deer on our land.
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| Foundation |
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| Nice Veiw |
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| Two Bucks sparring |
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Posted to Mark-and-Lisas-Log-Cabin by mark in altoona, PA
on 3/9/2010 5:17:31 PM
We were driving down a quiet country road in Altoona, PA in the spring of 2006 and noticed a "land for sale" sign posted on a piece of ground. We had been looking for some time for the perfect place to build and this was it. We closed the sale of the land in July 2006.
After battling with the department of transportation for one year about giving us a right of way to our land we were permitted in July 2007. We began the long aginizing process of obtaining a construction loan and were to close in October 2008. A week before we were to close on our loan the economy went in the tank and we backed out. After searching through many books and magazines, we made the decision to build a log home. We have been married for 30 years and have always dreamed of someday owning our own log home. Our families are all tradesmen in different parts of construction. Mark's family has a plumbing and HVAC business, Lisa's father is a plaster, drywall and stoneworker, Our brother-in-law and his son are electricians and our son is also in construction and has a good deal of experience in block work and woodworking. After we backed out of our loan, we began construction on the foundation with our own money. We finally obtained our construction loan in October of 2009.
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Posted to Southport-NC-Home by Adam in Southport, NC
on 3/8/2010 9:30:48 PM
Will the tile ever end? No, I don't think it will. I'm not sure who talked me into the whole hopscotch pattern in the master bath, but I may need to have a heart to heart with them before this is over.
At any rate, here is the guest bath mostly tiled. I forgot to measure and make my cuts early on, so I will have to go back in a day or so to fill them in.
Also, here is the progress on the master after about an hour of layout and 2 hours of laying. Me and Ang are beat, and we have a long way to go. We will tackle it again tomorrow night and try to make a dent in it.
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| Guest |
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| Master |
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| Tired Ang rinsing the perpetually dirty thinset bucket :) |
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Well, we are back from our little trip to the mountains and we have made a few decisions. Think we have found an Architect to work with. He will give us the drawings we need to pass code and permit and at a reasonable cost. We got a few Ideas from the various people we met over the weekend and these are also being incorporated in to the house plan. Well and septic people looks to be all but decided too. The well & septic permit application should be in the mail this week. Again some steady forward progress has been made.
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Posted to TheHoskensProject by Brian in Dome-ville, central, FL
on 3/7/2010
Another day, another 10 sheets of plywood! We're a little more than halfway finished with the second floor plywood. First pic is most of the floor, second is where the water heater will be (up against the sloping part of the dome roof). Next weekend First Choice plumbing will be back again to do the HWH and the gas line we decided to put in. My youngest kept putting bandaids on my knuckles, I guess I forgot how to use a hammer. At least I didn't hit myself with it. We got a lot done and stopped by Daytona BikeWeek area to get some t-shirts.
By the way, we got a 3 foot piece of 3/8" rebar and bent a 2" hook on one end, and bent a handle on the other end so there was about 2.5 feet of rebar in between hook and handle. Holding the handle, you can put the hook under the edge of the plywood and pull up and drag the plywood anywhere you need it without bending over. It worked GREAT!
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| Most of the flooring we put down |
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| Where I wore out...and just far enough to put in the water heater. |
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Comments (2)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 3/5/2010
....the truss company is NOT going to be paying for it.
Kinda figured.
Sigh.
Steven in Colorado Springs
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Posted to OurFarmstead by Mary in Lititz, PA
on 3/4/2010 9:07:59 PM
It seems like the planning has been taking a long time, with a lot of looping back over the same issues, tweaking things, changing things up to see if it works out better. When I first started serious planning in Jan. 2009 I thought this would all be settled by March 2009 and we would break ground that summer. No way! We got far enough along in the planning to put in the first part of the driveway in the fall of 2009. And here it is, March 2010 and we’ve finally seem to have got it settled.
We have site plan, house plan and farm shop plan. All of these were done by yours truly in Chief Architect. We started the process of getting construction drawings from a professional, using our plans and elevations as a fairly detailed starting point. Overall, I feel really good about the house plan. Its been a long time coming, but I think it will suit our needs well. At 2,300 sq ft it’s bigger than I had originally wanted. But when I added in space for accessible, aging-in-place features and room for out of town family it just kept coming up to the 2,300 mark.
We’ve been planning a farm shop and we’ve decided to build this building first rather than start with the house. It will give us (me) construction site experience and then serve as a storage and launching pad to do the house. Of course Hubby is thrilled that the shop is going up first. In his mind, the shop with a bed in the corner is all that the property requires. But I’m pretty sure we’ll still need to build a house. ;-) We’ve finished the plans for the shop and just need to get construction drawings, which should be a quick thing to do as it is a pretty simple building.
And after several more attempts at computer designing and then actually laying it out on the site, I believe we have the site planning settled too. It took a lot longer than I thought it would but in the end I’m actually glad we were forced to spend the extra time on site. For each iteration we would layout the buildings and connecting driveway and then actually drive it, and walk it and stand there and think how the wind was going to come through and would it be comfortable, and how would the daily chores work out and where were the views and on and on. The weather conditions were very different each time we happened to be there, and it was good to get a feel for the layout on a nice sunny day last Fall versus a brutally windy day in January. Over the several iterations we were able to make tweaks to the plan that I think will really improve the daily living on site.
Our goal is to break ground this spring… or summer...
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Posted to Cheriki-Organic-Farm by Cheryl in Ft. Collins, CO
on 3/4/2010 4:59:59 PM
Floor layout is pretty much complete, I may replace the shower with a bath tub shower though. I thought about how convenient it would be to have a bathroom in the garage workshop area. There was already a plan to put the laundry facility in the garage area along with a deep sink so putting in a toilet under the stairs next to the deep sink would not cost much more. The framing plan is also complete and I will be shopping it around for quotes on a timber or timber hybrid roof truss package next.
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| Carriage Apartment floor layout |
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| Garage workshop floor layout |
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Posted to Backwoods-Project by Keith in Jeffersonville, GA
on 3/4/2010 4:40:53 PM
I spent the winter in another cabin, which I did NOT build, merely remodeled... added window, installed insulation, drywall, installed entirely new stovepipe, grounded said pipe, built shelving, a bed, planted daffodils- no, I didn't build it! I was VERY fortunate to have this opportunity arise when a neighbor told me he had a unfinished cabin on his nearby large property I could live in, if I'd fix it up. And luckily, he won't be moving back from Missouri any time soon, so I'm doing quite well in it so far. I am so thankful to have a warm place to stay, nice and insulated, with woodstove heating! Included are a few pics of the tiny (12'x12' with a 4'x8' L-shaped screened porch) cabin.
There's a funny, but cool, story attached (quite literally) to this cabin. It was originally designed and built SOLELY as a heated foyer for a massive RV (Wonderlodge size). The RV pulled in close and "space-docked" with the doorway in the cabin (now replaced by a window). The owners did this only so their menagerie of exotic parrots would have a warm place to live during the winter!! The "screen porch" was built narrow and small, because it was designed as a outdoor birdcage!! I live in the Birdhouse Cabin! LOL!
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| The east-facing entrance to the Birdhouse Cabin. The screen door is open, and the main door beyond is closed. |
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| View of the side yard and the north side of the Birdhouse Cabin. |
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| A hand-assembled panarama of the Birdhouse Cabin's east side (entrance). |
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| During construction... the window is now installed, but insulation needs installing, and the drywall is nowhere to be seen yet. (Don't worry, it's all up now!) |
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| The Birdhouse Cabin during Georgia's two-day snow during winter 2010. |
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| A close-up of the new window from the outside of the Birdhouse Cabin during the snow. Note my little friend inside (wishing she could go out and hunt the birds!). |
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Posted to Backwoods-Project by Keith in Jeffersonville, GA
on 3/4/2010 4:19:28 PM
Hello, friends!
I apologize for leaving this journal without an update for so long! I forgot I was even registered here until I got an email.
Anyway,
the cabin project has been through the wringer (financially,
physically, every way you can think of) until it finally stabilized as
a single-story cabin of 420 sq feet, with a log beam shed-type roof. I
am still in the process of getting the roof completed. The last entry
was posted when I was only planning the home. Now it is 80% complete...
all of it constructed by yours truly, working almost entirely alone. I
intend the finish look to resemble what Julian May fondly refers to as
"munchkin Tudor." I'll post some pics up here soon!
Peace,
Keith
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| How this pic got uploaded into this quirky web-journal, I cannot explain!! I did not select it! It shows my buddy posing as a fantasy warrior for some artwork I did. |
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| The finished subfloor. This is a crudely-stitched photo-collage, but it gives you the best look at the cabin's footprint. I am far more along than this pic would lead you to believe. It was current in Summer 2009. |
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| This is almost what we look like right now. The walls of the front part are not raised yet in this pic. I have yet to build the roof over that section, and yes, my floor is suffering without a roof! However, lack of money, a broken finger at the first of the year, snow and lots of rain have kept me away from building! This reminds of a sign I saw long ago on the old man's bicycle- it said: "Don't Throw Rocks- Throw MONEY, and I'll buy a car!" |
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Posted to Southport-NC-Home by Adam in Southport, NC
on 3/3/2010 4:45:16 PM
Me and Ang worked late this weekend and got the tile down in the utility room. It still needs grout, and tile experts will catch one obvious mistake if they look, but we are pretty happy with it for our first-ever tile project.
Robert and Mom worked tirelessly on cabinets, and now we have pretty much all of the boxes complete. They started on drawers yesterday, so the end should be quickly approaching regarding cabinets. There is a massive amount of cabinetry in this house. I don't know how we talked Mom and Robert into this one :D
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| Ang presenting her work |
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| Looking into master closet. Drawer and cubby bank |
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| Further into closet. Shoe racks |
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| From back of closet to master |
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Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 3/3/2010
Today was one of those "good news, bad news" kind of days.
Of course the good news is the "pat on the back" kind of good news, whereas the bad news is more of the "this is probably gonna cost you money" bad news.
Sigh. Never seems to work out the other way, does it?
First the good news. After the aborted run a couple of days ago (things were just too slick and messy) the bank inspector went up today with Builder Dale and Colleen to do his more-or-less monthly inspection. It's been great working with both my bank and this inspector, in no small part because he seems genuinely excited by the Tanglewood project. It's a good sized house and we're located in a truly spectacular area, and he enjoys coming up to see our progress from time to time. This visit went well--the snow has been melting steadily since Monday and while the roads and work area are muddy you can start to see a bit better now how things are going together. He was excited by the progress that's been made so far with the trusses and was of course glad to see that Colleen and I hadn't skipped off to Aruba with the bank's construction money. That all went very well.
Now for the not so good news. While looking at the crew's progress from yesterday Colleen and Builder Dale realized something at nearly the same time--the trusses in the living room are wrong. Just plain wrong. They are supposed to be scissor-trusses since we have an open ceiling towering up in the living room, but instead (as you can see in the snapshots attached below) they are the standard "triangle" shaped trusses.
General chaos ensued once Builder Dale and Colleen noticed this, and there was much consulting of plans. The crew had generically wondered why the trusses were this way but they work on a lot of different houses so they didn't know what the plan was, and the blueprints are definitely mixed in terms of what they say. While they appear to say "open to above" fairly clearly, what they allegedly don't explicitly call out is something like "Here Be Scissor Trusses!". Whether or not that should have been caught by one the half dozen folks who have been looking at the plans, or whether the blueprint should have been more explicit, is apparently a subject of some debate.
There's a meeting tomorrow with the truss crew to figure out what to do--or more precisely where the fault lies. The trusses have to come out and new scissor trusses will have to be built. There's apparently also some confusion over the roofline adjacent to the computer room tower that nobody seems to have noticed in the 142 other reviews of the plans, so that's got to all be worked out too.
I quite honestly am not a happy camper and I'm sorry for my bad mood showing. Experience has shown me that this kind of thing nearly always somehow gets dumped back on the hapless owner, whether or not he had anything to do with it or would have even recognized it if he'd seen it. Taking responsibility for goof-ups like this is not something I've seen much of out of most subcontractors and apparently nobody thought to ask about these trusses at any point in the last couple of months. (Lest one think that every subcontractor is to be mistrusted that's not the case--there have been a couple that stepped up on somewhat lesser mistakes and they're very much on my To Be Admired List). Now I'm afraid I'm going to have to look over every single thing that's done from here on out before somebody runs out and builds a frame that's 2" short or a countertop that's 1' wide just because of a typo on the plans....and that's just going to slow everything down as I become a one-man bottleneck.
Not fun. Not something I want to do. Probably going to be a nasty hit to the discretionary budget.
Don't see a way around it.
Sucky day.
Steven in Colorado Springs
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| The trusses looking down from the library through the media room and beyond. This is all goodly. Nice work too; those trusses look very fine. |
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| The bad trusses over the living room are in the background. These are supposed to be scissor trusses, but obviously they're not. Nice construction though, gotta give them that. |
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| Another shot of the bad trusses. I'd bang my head against the wall if I thought it would help.... :( |
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Comments (2)
Posted to TheHoskensProject by Brian in Dome-ville, central, FL
on 3/1/2010
It's interesting how you see things. We have been working for months on the second floor joists and support structure. This weekend we got the joists finished and started putting down plywood. Although there's only a few sheets put down, I suddenly realized there was a second floor now when there was NOT a second floor earlier that day. We got 4 sheets of 3/4" plywood put down, and both of us pulled muscles in our backs...there's got to be an easier way to move plywood other than bending over and tugging at it.
Photos
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| Joists finished, tossing some plywood up |
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| The last few joists we finished |
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| Nailing the subfloor down |
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| Some finished subfloor. Everything from under the blue air line and farther away is finished, glued and nailed down. |
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Comments (0)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/27/2010
Colleen and I ran up today to check out the site, download weather data (I have an 8-day logging capacity at the rate I'm collecting info, which is once every 5 minutes at present), and meet with some folks interested in doing the solar power. The roofing guys were also coming up to do some work since they'd only been able to work in small fits and starts over the last couple of days due to the snow.
Sadly the most important stuff, the roofing, didn't get very far. The road was still extremely slick from the (thankfully) melting snow and they didn't really bring enough people, so all they managed to do was move some of the trusses out of the road (good, but "some" isn't "all"--gotta talk to Builder Dale about that) and then nearly fall off the trusses in the snow (bad). They decided that things were still just too messy/wet/slick for them to realistically work safely, so we met them coming down as we were going in. to their credit at least they had gotten an early start!
After Colleen and I got up there she set to work clearing some snow while I downloaded weather data, walked around, took some snapshots and asked some questions. Right about the time I was done with that the prospective solar installers showed up.
It was an interesting meeting. When I'd worked with a solar group a couple of months ago they mostly just wanted to see my estimated loading and then they kicked me a price estimate a week or so later. These guys were a bit different--we walked around as I described the layout of the house, and then hiked up to where I believe the panels should be ground-mounted. We talked a lot about deploying the panels in this area and then measured the distance back down to Tanglewood (~400 feet) so we could figure in the costs of trenching and running line to the house from the panels and such. Of particularly note was the talk about whether it made sense to bring DC down to the house and inverter it to AC there, or to convert to AC at the panels and bring that down the road instead (we decided on AC for line loss reasons). We then discussed our existing well pump (a Teal 11-stage 120 volt job), which as 120V pumps go is a fairly efficient model (240V pumps are somewhat better overall) and whether or not it should be replaced, ultimately deciding not since it's working fine as is.
Of note was the fact that the company's rep proactively brought an electrician to listen to the whole thing and gather data to put in a bid for doing the electrical work within the house as well. Now, long time readers will know that I've spent a lot of time thinking about the electrical and have always planned on doing it myself, but it never hurts to verbally go over your ideas anyway and who knows? I might get a bid that makes handing it all off worth considering. Either way I was glad he was there, and it'll be interesting to see what he comes up with.
I took a couple of pics of the area I plan to place the ground mounts. I have in mind something along the lines of what was featured in Issue #134 of Home Power Magazine, a large system the writer built for his 28-panel at a significant cost savings as compared to having it done "professionally". Of course I've no idea what the company that was looking at the job today will come up with; I'll report here as information flows in.
And that was about it. We left as soon as they did, noting the significant snow melt that had happened during the day and taking hope that this would mean the roofers could get a good week of it on Monday! We'll see.....
Steven in Colorado Springs
Photos
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| The left hand side of the solar panel area. I plan to clear out this scrub oak and some of the trees to widen the view to the south, but this hill is already pretty well situated. |
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| The right hand side of the area in question. Some more pine trees here have to be cleared, but other than stuff sticking above the ridgeline to the south we should be in pretty good shape. |
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Comments (0)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/27/2010
I continue to be amazed at how rapidly things progress from week to week as I go up to gather weather data!
Last week the concrete crew were wrapping up and packing up while the roofing crew was trying to get some work done in nasty, cold weather that basically shut things down completely. This week though the weather was much nicer (high 30s and mid 40s), with the result being that there are now trusses on the house!
There's still quite a bit of snow up there but the crew made good progress regardless. They've gotten perhaps 1/4 of the house done, though it's towards the "easy" end of the second floor where there's a bend in the roofline but nothing too complicated. The apartment is probably the only other "easy" bit to be done, and then they move into the more complicated "three rooflines come together while working around the computer room tower" bit on the south end--which doesn't promise to be easy at all. (Heck, it wasn't even easy for Colleen to draw so it's got to be harder for these guys to manhandle trusses around to match--I don't even them one bit!) While there are still some trusses lying in the road (bad!) most of them are either on the second floor or staged along what will be the driveway. They've got a strong incentive to get the trusses out of the driveway area since eventually all of that area will be mud as spring moves in and we get warmer days, and working with muddy heavy awkward trusses is harder than working with simply heavy awkward trusses.
The forecast promises nicer weather (even 50s!) and sunny skies so my guess is that they'll make good progress and maybe even start nailing on some of the OSB that's lying around. Yay!
Dang this is exciting!
Steven in Colorado Springs
Photos
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| Long shot of Tanglewood with Colleen standing dramatically in one of the hallway windows. Note the trusses on the northern end--yay! |
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| She thought I was done with shots from down below--heheheheheh! |
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| Closeup of the trusses over the guest bedrooms. |
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| Looking down the road. You can see where the snow's been plowed off to the side, and the melt is responsible for those patches of ground you can see. |
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| Trusses in the middle of the road--bad! Builder Dale will be having a word with the crew. In the background you can see the trailer that the concrete crew guys have been filling with their tools and such. |
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| Another shot of the badly stashed trusses..... |
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| Looking at Tanglewood from the rampart side. No trusses here yet. |
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| Closeup of the front door area. You can see the library at the top there; this has been VERY helpful in lifting trusses to the second floor. |
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| Colleen mans the ramparts! |
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| At least these trusses are out of the road....they plan to move them up on Monday. |
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| Looking at the guest bedroom over the apartment garage. |
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| The crew wisely is using the interior to store some of their materials. Int he distance you can see some of the Buildblock that will (eventually) seal up that big hole into the apartment area. |
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| Great shot of the trusses looking towards the guest bedrooms from the library area. |
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| Closeup of the trusses. The close spacing is both for snow-load and hurricane-roof reasons. Nice workmanship on the trusses too. |
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| Closeup of one of the trusses taken from below. |
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| Looking off into the living room area. Trusses will be going in here next. |
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| Another shot of the trusses from the library area. That black trash bag is covering one of my radiant heat manifolds. |
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| "Don't take a picture of me...."
Trusses stacked up on the second floor awaiting deployment. |
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Comments (3)
Posted to Beaver-Creek-Ranch by Terry in Santa Rosa, CA
on 2/26/2010
Things have slowed down quite a bit, but there's always little projects that keep things interesting. Our little computer/phone center needed a little attention to dress it up so we had an idea to use a bunch of the corks that we've saved over the years as a backdrop. Now, considering that the wine that these corks came from ranged in price from $8 to $80, and there are over 400 corks on the back wall alone, this little section of wall is the most expensive in the whole house! Haaaaaa
Our laundry/mud room was in need of a counter to fold clothes on and also a place to set things when we arrive. I used two layers of 5/8" plywood, with the top layer 3/8" shorter in front. This created a little bumpout for the trim piece to be nailed to. The nosing-trim piece gets a dado cut that fits over the lower 5/8" ply which helps stiffen the front of the counter. I used the same tile for the countertop as I did on the floor and added a nosing of poplar that was stained to match the maple cabinets. No need for a backsplash - I don't like those anyway - this is much cleaner.
Now back to the cork wall... this had to be revised later when I installed my security system and had to move the top shelf down to make enough room for the security monitor. More pictures will follow...
Photos
Comments (1)
Posted to Southport-NC-Home by Adam in Southport, NC
on 2/26/2010
Mom and Robert have been working really hard on cabinets for the past couple of weeks. The kitchen is pretty much done as far as building the boxes. Today, Mom, Ang and Robert were on their own, as I was (and still am) sick as a dog. I have been on the couch all day trying to recover.
Anyhow, we also got the HardieBacker down in the utility room, and I hope to be feeling well enough to tile within the next few days.
Photos
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| Island nearing completion, and uppers finished and mounted. |
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| Hey, somebody left pizza in the oven :D |
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| Back (kitchen side) of island |
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| Ang mixing thinset |
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| Sanding down minor ridges where subfloor panels meet. |
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| Getting the thinset down |
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| Viola! Instant HardieBacker :) |
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Comments (0)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/26/2010
Well, the "little bit of snow" that we got here in town (maybe an inch) meant a good 6" to 8" of snow at Tanglewood, depending on where you measured it and where the drifts were. All fluffy and white and fairly dry, but a lot more than we got anywhere east.
Wow.
The roofing crew tried to go up but quickly turned around and went back to town. They weren't really chained up for this kind of snow, and of course the house would have been a mess anyway. Colleen went on up to do a quick job of pushing snow off of the second floor, but tomorrow is supposed to actually be a pretty good day temperature wise so we're hoping that the sun and wind will make quick work of the fluffy white mess.
Crew is supposed to come up tomorrow (Saturday), but there's another front moving in tonight so that's problematic. We'll see.
Look at the bright side though--springtime is one day closer! Yay!
Steven in Colorado Springs
Comments (0)
Posted to The-New-Ries-Homestead by Chad in Polk/Richfield/Erin/Hartford, WI
on 2/25/2010 9:19:56 PM
They installed the drywall in two days. The insulators are scheduled to finish the R-50 in the ceiling tomorrow and the drywall crew will be back on Monday to mud and tape. One thing I did not know is the drywallers do not pick up after themselves but there is a service they use called "pickers" that come in after they have installed the drywall and pick up the scrap and recycle it. The HVAC crew has been working diligently on running the vents and should be done tomorrow. This will run heat throughout the house so the mud and taping will dry properly. We have the flooring and tile lined up so it looks like we will be painting all of the walls and ceiling next weekend. Then it is on to floor and cabinets.
Photos
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| Stairs Drywalled |
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| View from hallway towards garage door, notice open stairwell to downstairs. |
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| View of living room and breakfast nook |
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| View of master bedroom with tray ceiling |
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| View from master bedroom to walk-in closet and master bathroom (notice window in closet for natural light) |
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| View from master bathroom towards master bedroom. To the left is a walk-in shower with two shower heads. The tub is a bubble tub. Large windows look out over land. |
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| View from back door towards bedrooms. To the right is a half bath, utility room and office. To the left is the master bedroom, kitchen and living room. |
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| Kitchen and breakfast nook. The half wall will have a counter top. |
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| Another view of the kitchen includes walk in pantry closet. |
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Comments (0)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/25/2010
Today started okay but quickly turned nasty. The crew had planned on coming up later in the day, but by the time they got going things were starting to turn nasty and so after some consultation with Colleen and Builder Dale they canceled.
The danger of building in winter.
Did I mention you should never ever ever build in the winter?
Never. Ever. You get nothing but heartache and unplanned snowplow expenses, punctuated with a couple of days of amazing progress.
But hey...that's life "in the view", I reckon.
We'll see how tomorrow works. Snow has a 50% chance of clearing out of the way.
Sure will be fun to live up here though!
Steven in Colorado Springs
Comments (0)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/24/2010
With yesterday's relatively good weather and Colleen's excellent job of clearing the snow off the second floor the roofing crew were finally able to get back to work today. The weather was overall very nice (sunny, low 40's) and lent itself well to the otherwise relatively heavy work of moving trusses around.
Tanglewood's trusses were somewhat problematic for a long time during the planning and initial bidding phase. We had gradually evolved them over time as the roofline solidified, with the last major change coming from Colleen when she applied an artist's eye (rather than an engineer's eye) to the problem and greatly simplified the layout. We then got various bids, but when we decided a while back to go with Builder Dale he had his own preferred suppliers and so they did the bidding as well, ultimately getting the task. They've been working on the trusses since around October to get them ready for when we were finally done with the second floor pour, and so began hauling trusses up to the site a week or so ago.
Of course so far the trusses have all been unloaded and left down on the ground--they either didn't have enough manpower to work on lifting them up to the second floor, or ran out of daylight, or weather was moving in, or there was a combination of all three. That meant today was the first real day for the roofing guys to get the trusses stacked near where they could actually use them.
This was all a lot easier said than done, as you might expect. They've decided not to bring up a crane, in part for cost reasons and in part because it would be problematic getting it to the site in the first place. They opted instead to haul each truss up over the dropoff from the second floor library to the living room, the same place Colleen and I have been shoveling snow off the second floor for the last couple of weeks to create the Living Room Iceberg. Colleen even spread a bit of gravel around the library area to help them avoid any slippery bits of ice she might have missed, and that appears to have helped quite a bit. The Iceberg even gave them a natural slope that helped them push/pull/lever each truss onto the second floor; Colleen got some excellent movies of this whole process and from the looks of things they did a pretty dang good job. (As useful as it was of course I fully expect the Living Room Iceberg to be in somebody's way sooner rather than later, but until then I'm going to ignore it and hope that Spring comes early this year!) I believe the longest truss is 32 feet long, and the heaviest ones
(which basically go where the roof changes pitch or slope) consist of 3
sets of 2x4s rather than just one. They all look very heavily constructed, which makes sense as they're required (county code and my personal preference anyway) to handle very heavy snow loads and 100mph wind gusts. I was a bit surprised that they built and brought them up in one piece though, rather than building sections and then assembling them on site--I'd just assumed that they would be too long and heavy to work with this way, but apparently they're used to this kind of thing. Very nice.
Late in the day another (final, I think) load of trusses was arriving as Colleen was headed out. This was the same driver as the guy who took the wrong turn a few days ago, and while he wasn't lost this time they were definitely behind schedule--I believe the crew had been expecting him around noon. After a bit of chat about the status of things he headed on up while she headed on down; the remaining roofing crew should help him get the rest of the trusses unloaded.
So that was the bulk of the day, more or less. Colleen continued to clean up and put things away (the remaining Buildblock all has to be moved either downstairs or out onto the deck where it will be out of the way) while the crew dragged trusses onto the second floor and stacked them at one end of the building or the other depending on their coding. There's a bit of sill work yet to be done but they'll probably do that tomorrow ahead of the next bout of weather (never build in winter!) due on Thursday. Pics and movies of the whole thing can be found below.
Dang this is exciting!
Steven in Colorado Springs
Photos
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| An Abert's squirrel was checking out the commotion in "his" woods. |
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| The sill work here isn't done yet, but it won't take them long. |
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| Levering up one of the trusses. This is one of the heavier ones that spans a roofline transition. |
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| Getting ready to push it down to the other end of the building. |
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| That same truss a few seconds later as they slide it to a temporary storage location. |
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| Working it into position. They'll end up leaning it on the far wall until they're ready to put it up. |
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| Trying to find a safe way to let go..... |
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| Snow stacked on the ramparts. |
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| Good shot looking along the outside of the ramparts....you can see a couple of the drains pretty well here. Colleen had to lean out a bit to get this one. |
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| An unusual "reverse" look along the outside towards the living room in the distance. |
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| The crew working another truss through the front door to eventually be levered up to the library. |
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| One pile of trusses safe and sound at the south end of the house. |
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| Another pile of trusses at the north end. Notice the flamethrower/propane bottle in the foreground; Colleen got that to help with some of the stubborn ice patches. |
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Videos
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| Hauling a truss onto the second floor. Fortunately this was the heaviest one. |
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| Colleen meets the truss truck as she heads back into town. This is (of course!) one of the nastiest turns on the road. |
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| He has to work it a bit but he gets around the turn without any real problem. Turns like this were why I was afraid the trusses might have to be brought up in sections! |
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Comments (0)
We are up at the plot this weekend making contacts. Looking at well and septic siting plus interviews with some Architects. Hard to believe it's nearly March already. We have been on this project since about last June, when we first started looking at land. I have been reading all I can and drawing since about September. The 1000 hour guideline isn't so far out here, I probably average about 20 hrs a week so far with that figure steadily increasing as we finalize ideas and plans.
Comments (0)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/23/2010
Wow.
After the past few days of snow...and more snow on top of that... we knew that there wasn't going to be any construction work at Tanglewood until we had a couple of days of shoveling and melting past us. Today Colleen and some hired help (thanks Dan!) ran up to assess the snowfall and shovel off the second floor again (something we've become all too familiar with since the LiteDeck was poured a few weeks back).
What she found was a winter wonderland.
The sunlight was brilliant and the air temps were pleasant enough if you were moving around. Getting an early start since she didn't quite know what to expect, as soon as Colleen started up the canyon (Blackie had been thoughtfully chained up a couple of days ago) she was presented with fantastical sights. The snow drenched everything in white icing, and the canyon was so bright that she had to put on her sunglasses whenever she emerged from under the trees into sunlight.
Picking her way up the canyon--there had been traffic from a couple of the folks who live up there but about half of the road was unmarked and very slick--she was particularly delighted with how Tanglewood looked in the snow. She said later that it looked like the "Fairy Queen's Palace" (though personally I prefer "Winter King") and judging from the pics she's not far wrong. It was amazing how the stark, bright white of the ICFs blended in with the thick white snow, and the alternating shadows and sunlight leant an almost camouflage look to Tanglewood's ramparts (we have crenelations now so I can call them ramparts right?). You can see for yourself in the pictures below; I think these are some of the prettiest pictures of the canyon either of us has ever been able to capture.
She estimates that we got about 6" of snow down below in the lower part of the canyon, perhaps 8" up above. She and Dan spent about 4 hours shoveling and sweeping the snow off of the second floor in anticipation of the roofing crew being able to get down to business later this week (good weather is predicted for the next couple of days).
Amazing canyon....it will be an honor and a privilege to live there!
Steven in Colorado Springs
Photos
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| This tree (which we've show before with some wild turkeys under it) is at the mouth of the canyon. It looks magnificent, don't you think? |
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| A shot of the road and canyon wall about a half mile in. Wow. |
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| Neat shot of sunlight topping the snowy trees along the road. |
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| Magnificent shot looking from the road towards the southern rim about halfway up to Tanglewood. |
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| Notice the leaning tree towards the middle bottom right. We've been watching this one closely all winter; it's probably going to fall over one of these days and block the road. |
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| Closer view of the tree in question. I think the only thing holding it up right now are its branches intertwined with the tree just to the right. |
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| The Winter King's Palace! |
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| Trusses piled up in the driveway don't detract from how pretty this all is, does it? Look at the way those trees glow! |
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| Closeup of the patio door/living room area from the road. |
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| The Ramparts of Tanglewood. |
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| Good shot of the mountain to the north through one of the living room window holes. |
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| Dan hiking back and forth on the second floor, sweeping snow. |
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| Closeup of Dan apparently doing all the work. Note the pile of "leftover" Buildblock in the background; most of that will go to finish up the openings on either end of the garage downstairs. |
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| Simply magnificent. |
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| They did a pretty good job, I'd say. Note there's some more Buildblock down at that end of the house too. |
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Comments (0)
Posted to TheHoskensProject by Brian in Dome-ville, central, FL
on 2/22/2010 12:55:53 PM
Not mine...but there's a 34' A.I. dome kit and 3 lots for sale in Deltona, FL. Package deal for $25K. Look under craigslist in orlando, FL. I don't know anything about it, but it sounds like a great deal for an owner builder who wants a dome!
Comments (0)
Posted to DomeSweetDome by Rich in Suffolk, VA
on 2/21/2010 6:42:13 PM
After the previous search for land fell through I began a new search for a piece of property. The one I've found is a 4.4 acre mini-farm property with a single-wide trailer already on it. This will allow me to obtain financing as a single family residence unlike vacant land. It also already has septic, water, power, and a driveway!
It's relatively flat and I've already verified the following before going under contract:
Not in a Chesapeake Bay Protected Area
Not in a flood zone
Not impacted by wetlands where I hope to put the new house
Per the Health Dept a repair was made to the septic some years ago but never re-inspected so I will need to get it finished. Should be relatively minor and at that time they can tell me whether the tank is big enough for a 3 or 2 bedroom home. My house plans are for a 3 bedroom home but initially only 1 bedroom will be finished according to the plans. I was told that the leach field will support a 3 bedroom so even if the tank is too small I can fix it by adding a larger, 1000 gallon tank in series with the smaller tank. That's something I can do myself if I can get access to a backhoe I think.
The building dept will require an engineer's seal of my dome.
The soil will support a normal foundation. It's not the special soil that requires structural engineering analysis.
I've also changed the design of the house. Before I wanted a little vacation cabin. Now I need a primary residence for the next 10 years. So I'm going with a 45' diameter dome which is one of the largest. I'll only finish the downstairs at first to get the Certificate of Occupancy. For financing I'm hoping to only need the original 30 year loan on the property and trailer, use a HELOC I already have available, and then pay for the rest as we go. Currently we hope to do the majority of the work. Attached is the new design. I'll also be adding one more additional bedroom upstairs. I can get something from the health dept that limits me to 6 people for a 4 bedroom house since I'll only have the leach field/septic tank to allow a 3 bedroom (times two is the occupancy allowed).
It will likely be a slab foundation as that is easier and cheaper. A lot of people dislike them but I've lived several years on a crawlspace and they leave a lot to be desired. In a crawlspace the floor often squeaks and acts springy. Mold grows on the joists requiring moisture abatement (yeah, I've installed 6 mil poly to fix it which helped some). Plus, it's a lot harder to do your own foundation if it's a crawlspace vs slab. A slab offers radiant heat.
Now that I'm under contract I'm still a little worried about financing. I've never bought a mobile home, particularly one where the mobile home is worth less than 5% of the value of the land. I'll feel better once I hear those magic words from the lender even though I've already called them 3 times to verify they will do it.
For cost estimation at this point I've only used this website, RSMeans book, and www.building-cost.net. Where that left holes I've called contractors and made trips to Lowe's and Home Depot to get basic quotes.
For a timeline I'm planning on taking the next year to finish my building plans, get the engineer seal, permits, and finish all the planning. Then I'll do the slab in the spring followed soon by the shell when we'll also be moving into the trailer. Then I think it will take me a year to get the certificate of occupancy upon which we'll move into the dome and scrap the trailer. As funds allow we'll finish the downstairs and then start work on finishing the upstairs. Living in the trailer will be a big money-savings that will help me (hopefully) rapidly devote a large portion of my income to building supplies. Since I'm now 1.5 years away from moving I felt like this month was the last month I could look for land. Good thing I found this property!
Files45SIGMA.pdf
Comments (0)
Posted to Southport-NC-Home by Adam in Southport, NC
on 2/21/2010
A lot has been happening over the past couple weeks. Ma and Ang got quite a bit of painting done on the exterior, and even some inside. Also, we started the kitchen cabinets. We also picked the tile for the baths and utility, so only the kitchen tile remains to be picked.
We figured out that something got cross-threaded during framing and the refrigerator niche ended up two inches too small. The sheetrockers tore out the rock, and I modified the framing to accommodate the fridge. Now we have to wait for that to be patched back up before setting cabinets. Hopefully, that happens in the next day or two.
We have five weeks to get a CO if we are to maintain our time line. It is going to be very tough, but we are giving it our best shot! Robert and Mom stayed until 10:30 PM on Saturday building cabinets and painting. We really could not do this without the help we are getting from family and friends.
Thanks again to all involved!
And now the pics...
Photos
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| Getting some paint on the walls |
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| The scary high work... |
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| First coat is on... Oh, I forgot to mention it snowed :D Cool, huh? |
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| Ang really got in the spirit and made a snowman... |
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| First coat in the utility room. It's not quite as neon in person... |
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| First coat in master bath. I couldn't get a good angle with this camera. |
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| Kitchen cabinets started |
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| More cabinets. |
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| Lowers are pretty much roughed in. Ang is presenting them for the studio audience :) |
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| Group photo after a long day :) |
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Comments (0)
Posted to The-New-Ries-Homestead by Chad in Polk/Richfield/Erin/Hartford, WI
on 2/20/2010 1:07:45 PM
They finished the stairs to the basement today. I had the rough carpenters do the stairs and it saved us some money. They turned out great so starting this coming Monday the HVAV/Plumbers will be back, the drywallers will be hanging the drywall, the electrician will work in the basement and the insulators will come back to finish the attic and sills in the basement. Should see a lot of progress over the next week and we are very excited.
Photos
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| Stairs installed/Geothermal Pipes and In Floor Heat Panel |
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| Brianna inspecting the stairs to make sure they are correct |
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| Brianna making sure the door is big enough (it is a 3/0 door) |
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| Enjoying the size of the basement, running from one side to the other |
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Comments (0)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/20/2010
Ick. What a miserable batch of weather we've gotten today!
We knew that there was a bit of a front moving in overnight, but everybody still thought that we'd be able to get some more roofing work done and the crew had agreed to come up today to make up for the lack of progress yesterday. What we didn't count on was the "nastiness" factor of what did move in.
Normally we get some snow, or maybe some cold, or maybe cold and snow combined. You can usually work around those if the sun is out, so long as the wind stays low or non-existent. Today however we didn't have that--we had icy cold rain/snow that drizzled steadily throughout the lower part of the canyon, sticking to your windshield and glasses and making navigation of the road an exercise in slippery driving.
Colleen and I got to the canyon mid-morning, mostly to follow up the crew and because I needed to download weather data anyway. We knew that the crew had gone up because the truck from yesterday was gone, but the weather had us questioning the wisdom (and ability) to get any real work done. As it was we had to put snowchains back on Blackie again; he'd been running without chains since the second pour was completed since we were taking loads of recyclables into town as part of the site cleanup but today the road was just too slick to continue that particular practice.
About halfway up the canyon the drizzle/rain/snow stopped (which was nice) but the temperature dropped about 5 degrees, the fog got thicker and lower, and the humidity went up a bunch--it was amazing how you could feel the difference over just a few yards of road. We got to the site with no real problem, only to find two truckloads of the roofing guys getting ready to head out. They'd taken the flatbed of trusses up and unloaded them, and they promptly fell over on the icy surface. The whole area was just too slick and messy to realistically get any work done, and the cold (made worse by the humidity) was just penetratingly nasty--I was getting cold toes and fingers just during the introductions!
We talked a bit about where we were and what the plan was for next week. This site is a bit unusual in that it's difficult to get to the back side of the house, and so the roofing crew has a problem in figuring out how to get the trusses onto the roof. The general thought is to either walk the trusses through the front door opening and pull them up over the libary/great room drop (where we'd been dumping all the snow, of course) or to bring up a crane t lift them up over the garage area. They'll make a decision once they try the manual method a couple of times and see if that's going to work or not.
Of course it was decided to call things off for today. As we were talking the fog dropped lower and I'm pretty sure it got colder too....it was just an icky, nasty, cold day.
I am very much looking forward to (once Tanglewood is all built-oh that happy, happy day!) sitting inside by a roaring fire, drinking hot chocolate and watching squirrels shiver on the branches outside the library. It will be goodly.
So after I got my weather data downloaded we packed it in, took a few pictures, I and headed back down to town. I couldn't climb up onto the second floor as the concrete folks took their ladder and the roofing guys haven't deployed theirs yet due to the aborted day. Nothing much really got done today other than another load of trusses getting up to the site (I think this was the las set, but I'm not sure). That's the way it works when you build in winter (I think I've mentioned that you should never ever ever ever ever ever ever do that, right?), I reckon.
Fun in a frozen kind of way.....
Steven in Colorado Springs
Photos
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| My anemometer is somewhere over there on the other side of that fog, not that you can tell from this pic. Gorgeous view though, isn't it? |
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| Long shot of Tanglewood in the foggy snow. |
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| Another shot showing the driveway, the front door and the pile o' trusses. |
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| Another shot taken after I'd downloaded weather data. Note that the fog is both lower and thicker now.... |
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| ...and there's a lot less visibility looking over at my anemometer than there was before. |
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Posted to Cheriki-Organic-Farm by Cheryl in Ft. Collins, CO
on 2/19/2010 2:48:22 PM
I've been in Guantanamo Bay (GTMO), Cuba with my Mobile Communications Platoon for the last month in support of Operation Unified Response. For a while there was a lot of relief goods and other "assistance" being flown into GTMO, trucked to the ferry, floated across to the sea ports then loaded onto barges to go to Haiti. Who designed this base anyway? Not a very efficient way to go, but it worked in a pinch. I hope the Haitian people actually get a new school or hospital or sanitation system out of all the money being poured in from donations. So political, it's a shame. Haitians are a happy people though and are bouncing back fine. In a few ways I think they are better off than many Americans as most grow their own food, raise livestock and are in debt to no one which has enabled them to bounce back so quickly. But without clean drinking water, health care, and very little education they die from completely preventable diseases and work hard just for the basic necessities of life. So God Bless America, I want to go home!
All the barges and planes are able to go straight into Haiti now so getting ready to re-deploy back home in the next week and realizing how impossible it was to do any planning on my Colorado property after working long hours 7 days a week. Just goes to show how important it is to start planing at least a year in advance as you never know when something in your life will cause you to completely loose a month or more.
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Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/19/2010
Today wasn't a very long or productive one at the site, unfortunately. The roofing guys didn't make it up at all, instead parking a truck with some more trusses on it down below late in the afternoon. Not sure what the cause of all this was, but because it wasn't planned this way Builder Dale had a bit of chat with them and they agreed to come up tomorrow (Saturday) to get some stuff done, weather permitting (there's another front moving in--oh boy!).
So beyond getting a couple of the house and of the weather moving in, Colleen didn't spend much time up there either. The concrete crew is nearly done gathering up their tools and supplies, and have stacked most of them on or under the big trailer they brought up there back at the beginning of their work in December. My guess is that they'll get things tied down as best they can, and then wait for a semi-decent weather day to take the trailer back out. There's a bit more concrete and stacking work to be done later in the schedule, but for the most part their part of this mess is done. :)
Enjoy the pics.
Steven in Colorado Springs
Photos
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| My anemometer way up high on its frosty, frozen ridge. The clouds were low but there wasn't really any fog. |
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| The stack of trusses dropped off by that wayward truck yesterday. |
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| The load of trusses parked down below awaiting delivery on Saturday. I probably would have put it in a less visible spot myself. |
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Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/18/2010
With the relatively good weather from yesterday continuing the roofing guys were able to get some good work done, though a couple of "oops"marred the overall success.
First the good stuff. The bulk of the crew went up bright and early this morning. A couple of them continued unstacking their tools and materials while the others worked around the tops of the walls to attach insulation and sill plates for the roof. Some of the trusses that were taken up yesterday had to be moved since another truck of supplies was expected in mid-afternoon, and of course there were still a couple of guys up from the concrete/stacking crew as well who were continuing to pack up their stuff from the last couple of months. The guys working on the roof were able to complete nearly all of the sill work (apparently they love working with ICFs since the tops are flat and the walls are straight) and then they helped the other group unpack and stack and such while waiting for the new truck of supplies to come up. So things were going well with the completion of a major milestone, and things were under control.
After checking in with the crew Colleen came back down and ran into one of the other canyon residents doing some work to plow out a particularly nasty stream crossing. The ice had built up into some fairly wicked shelves along each side of the creek, and so you bounced a lot when going through it (one of the roofing crew folks had their battery knocked loose by this jolt, though I suspect there was some inappropriate speed involved in the crossing as well). She and our neighbor worked on chopping up and moving out the ice (he has a small work tractor) and they did such a good job that she even snapped a picture of it.
After that interlude is kinda where things went wrong. Colleen spotted the truck carrying some more trusses on its way up the canyon and snapped a shot of it as she was leaving to do some coordination work with Builder Dale, and you can see it below. This was around noon or so, but by mid-afternoon the concrete guys had come down and given her a call that no truck had shown up yet. THAT was unexpected--even if he'd been creeping up the road paralyzed by fear of ice and snow (and neither were that bad after they'd cleared out that one stream crossing) he'd have gotten there by around 2:00. Colleen had seen him heading up the canyon...so where the heck was he?
At Builder Dale's request she went in search of the missing truck and quickly realized from the tracks in the snow what had happened--he'd taken the wrong turn going up the canyon and headed a branch of the road that parallels the northern canyon rim. (This despite multiple signs pointing the way to Tanglewood, plus a plethora of tire tracks in the snow.) By the time Colleen got to him he was slowly backing his rig down the road, having found no place to turn around along the road at all. (I can believe this; I've been up there a couple of times and everyplace there's any wide spot at all there's a big piece of construction equipment or something similar parked there.) He didn't know that he could probably have driven about another mile and found a turnaround spot at the house back there (he was driving through BLM land when he gave up and started backing down the road; the private chunk of land is kinda an inclusion back at the end). I gotta say I'm stunned that he would miss the turn given all the signage, but I'm very impressed that he was able to back a truck of that size down the road--I had to back my Tercel down it a few years back and that wasn't easy! I can't imagine the nerves he must have to back a big flatbed truck like that down the road!
So, by the time Colleen got him onto the right road and he got up to Tanglewood, the day was mostly shot. The crews got the lumber unloaded as dark was falling but didn't try to cut it apart or anything; they're going to give that a shot tomorrow.
Various pics and a movie of the truck successfully backing down to the main road are below. Enjoy!
Steven in Colorado Springs
Photos
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| Behold the stream crossing after it's been worked over a bit. Much nice, FAR smoother. |
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| Later in the day after Colleen found the wayward truck. He's backing down the last stretch of road here; almost at the turnoff! |
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| Almost there...... |
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| In the middle of all of the truck fun a big hawk flew past Colleen and perched in this tree. He's nearly dead center on a branch of the pine. |
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| The truck is down, the driver is happy, and I'm just plain thankful. Note that he was wise and chained up his dually tires on the back--very good idea. |
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Videos
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Posted to The-New-Ries-Homestead by Chad in Polk/Richfield/Erin/Hartford, WI
on 2/17/2010
Wow a month has passed since I last posted and it feels like last week. So much has happened that I don’t know where to start.
We had a little over of a week delay due to thawing out the basement frost (it was hard as a rock). Needless to say I was spending about $100/day for that week on heating the basement to make sure we were frost free for the basement pour. I had both a 100,000 BTU torpedo heater and an 80,000 BTU LP furnace running full blast during that time.
I took advantage of the fact that the electric company was going to be on site burying the electric up to the house and had the well installed the same week. Both of them had to bang through the frozen ground. Good news with the well – they only had to drill 87 feet!
I figured while the walls were open I would add insulation to a number of the common walls for sound proofing, didn’t cost me more that $150 and a couple of days to install myself. Menard's was running such a good deal on their insulation I ending up insulating the garage as well with R-13.
Once the exterior walls were insulated the fireplace company came and installed the fireplace. The inspector caught the fact that they did not install the insulation barrier in the attic they were supposed to, so we may have dodged a future fire.
I had them sheetrock the garage and install the garage doors. I thought I was going to heat the garage and pour but with what I spent on fuel for the basement I might wait a little bit until it gets over 32 degrees to run the heaters there.
We had 2 inches of rigid foam laid in the basement and the radiant tubes installed before they poured the basement floor. Now that the basement is poured next week they will sheetrock the rest of the house and the HVAC/Plumbers will come back to finish the rest of the rough. I hope to have the drywall installed on the ceiling first, that way I can have the insulation company come back to blow the attic and finish their part.
Photos
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| Well Installed |
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| Garage Door Installed |
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| Tubing Down |
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| More Tubes! |
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| Fireplace Installed |
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| Sound Insulation |
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| More Sound Insulation |
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| Basement being poured (cover up the tubes) |
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| Basement poured |
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Posted to YaNYca by Jeff in Boston, MA
on 2/17/2010
Spent a little time sending out feelers for an architect in the area we wish to build. We simply posted an ad on Craigslist, and within two days got a half-dozen responses from home designers and architects. Quite a surprise; I never figured professionals would be cruising CL for work, but I guess in this economy the fishing net gets thrown pretty wide. A few of the folks who responded seemed like good candidates, so when it looks closer to building time, we'll be sitting down with them to choose an architect or designer.
That said, some folks are of the opinion that an architect is a waste of money when you are an owner-builder. In our case, I think a good set of detailed plans will allow us to do more of the work, better, by ourselves without a costly mistake.
One of the respondents did say that the house would cost in the vicinity of $500,000 and upwards to build.
Ouch.
I guess that assumes full contract labor, ashlar stone facade, nice materials throughout and who-knows-what else was thrown in to the cost. I hope that once we've sat down with one of these folks, we can find out the best way to do this to get the project within a realistic price range for us, otherwise it's a couple years of designing and reaming on our part down the tubes.
Comments (2)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/17/2010
With yesterday's pour of the second floor having gone so smoothly we saw no reason to delay getting started on the roof, and so today we decided to get started on the roof.
So this morning the roofing folks began to bring up some of their pieces parts. They brought up a single flatbed for this, bringing up a load of OSB and sill plates for the roof attachment so it's going to take a couple of days to run everything up to the site. Some of the original concrete crew were also up to begin taking down the ICF and V-Buck bracing since these are no longer needed, and they'll shortly be moving on to other jobs--that's the nature of builds like this, the only constants should be myself, Colleen, and Builder Dale.
Things went mostly smoothly though there were a couple of rough spots. The concrete guys had had months to get used to the road and conditions up there, but it was all new to the roofing guys and so their first "working" trip up the road (their boss had been up there a couple of times during earlier phases of construction to check on progress and ask various questions of Builder dale) was fairly slow. Once there they had to unload a bunch of their equipment and supplies, while working around the concrete guys who were basically taking down their stuff and stacking it for eventual haul-out. I suggested that the roofing guys might want to stack up the lumber and such inside the garage area, since that would be out of the snow and relatively dry, and it seems from the pictures that they at least started doing that. The acid test will be when they deliver the trusses I suppose--to me it just doesn't make any sense to leave them outside when you can have them covered up and dry, but we'll see.
Colleen divided her day between taking pictures, answering questions of the new crew, and running a couple of loads of recycles (styrofoam and cardboard this time) into town. She very wisely left several of the larger bits of cardboard from the ICF palettes up there to be spread out for the trusses and roofing lumber, since we don't want them to get into the mud at all--I will be very unreasonable about this should it happen!
And that was basically how today went. A bit colder weather than yesterday and a new crew getting used to the site while an older crew was packing up, but smooth enough.
Enjoy the pics!
Steven in Colorado Springs
Photos
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| The first load of roofing supplies arrives. The ground was still fairly frozen at this point so they didn't really have too much trouble parking here. |
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| Unloaded and ready for use. |
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| A closeup of the area between the garages. You can see some of the sill plates already laid into place. |
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| There used to be a huge pile of 2x4s, ICF parts, and rebar here. |
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| Inside the garage. They've stored many of the parts here; that green roll in the foreground is (I think) the insulation that goes under the sill plates. It kinda looks like sheets of packing foam. |
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| Looking down the master bedroom wing. |
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| The living room and door, with the bracing all removed. They haven't gotten to these ICF bits yet; some of them will probably get used on other jobs. |
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| One person works on laying in the roof sill plates which another works on taking out the V-Buck from the windows. I didn't quite realize I had positioned the window that high, come to think of it.... |
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| The windows over the stairwell. I was scared to death of the library being this "dark hole" so I put in a lot of windows...now I'm mostly wondering how the heck I'll close the curtain on that one on the left.... |
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Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/16/2010
It seems like just yesterday that we achieved our first floor milestone, and now here we are with the second floor successfully poured! Amazing.
The second floor has been mostly stacked for the last couple of days, but we kept having to move the pour due to weather and finalization of some of the bracing. We were worried about the weather for today--we've gotten a fair amount of snowfall in the last couple of days and I was frankly skeptical that we'd had enough sunlight and warmer (mid-40s) weather to melt off enough of it, but as it worked out today was practically perfect pouring weather.
Colleen and Builder Dale got to Tanglewood bright and early to do a final inspection, and some of the crew came up shortly thereafter to double check their bracing and such. This pour was a bit different from the previous ones as to date we've always done "partial" pours--the foundation, and then a couple of feet up the first wall, and then the rest of the first floor wall, etc. This time rather than do 2 or 3 feet at a shot, though, the plan was to pour the entire second floor wall plus the deck crenelations--8 feet of ICF stacked up to about 20' above ground level. Everybody was worried that trying to pour this much in one swell foop might be too much if there were any weak spots or places that needed bracing, so the crew had braced the heck out of everything. It turned out to be a good idea, as there were literally no problems whatsoever with any part of the pou--no leaks, no bulges, no funky settling.
A total of 8 trucks came up today for a grand total of some 64 cubic feet, more or less. We did not have the bit on the second floor LiteDeck that had been missed a couple of weeks back done since that would need to be finished and it didn't make sense to have a finishing crew up just for that. We'll have that part finished (it will probably about a half of a cubic yard) when we have the first floor poured a couple of months from now (that's a guess). The pour went extremely smoothly, starting at about 0900 and finishing just after noon. As the mud was setting up the crew inserted anchor bolts for later attaching of the sill plates for the roof transition, thumped the walls to make sure there were no voids in the concrete, and checked all of the various patches for any leaks. All went well.
Since things went so well and there were no problems to speak of, the plan now is to have the roofing company begin bringing up trusses and whatnot tomorrow--the ICFs will cure quite nicely overnight and while they won't be at full strength for another week or so they'll be more than solid enough to begin tying sill plates and whatnot to. There's another bout of weather predicted to be coming in later this week so we hope to have most if not all of the roofing parts on site before things get messy again.
Fewer pictures this time since (honestly) it went so smoothly. Colleen was able to get a couple of movies of the fun but mostly she was busy helping guide the concrete trucks in and out, since things were moving relatively quickly.
I haven't been up to the site since a couple of days ago and won't be up until this weekend, but it's amazing to think it's come so far so fast. I mean, our first pour was only back in December!!!!
This must be what all house-building is like, when it's going well--and boy is it fun!
Steven in Colorado Springs
Photos
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| The pump (yellow) arrived just ahead of the first truck. Note the snow covering everything; by the end of the day much of this had melted away. In the distance you can see our work trailer, a couple of sheds, and the picnic/fire ring area. |
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| The crew snaked the concrete hose through the (eventual) front door of the living room. |
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| The deck crenelations await the pour. These are on the uphill side of the deck. Note how they've stubbed out the gaps with pretty much whatever they had handy, mostly wood but sometimes leftover bits of V-buck. |
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| The other half of the deck and crenelations...this is the side most visible from the road to passersby. The pile of ICFs is there mostly to get them out of the way. |
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| Pouring around the north end where the guest bedrooms will be. You can see my main radiant heat manifold carefully protected and covered with a trash bag in the middle there. I was scared to death that they'd hit it. |
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| Working along the area over the garage. Note how much snow has melted off of the concrete since they were back in the far north corner. |
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| A bit later in the morning. Here they're pouring in the crossover area and the wall between the house and the deck. |
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| Long shot of the house with the trucks and concrete pump in the foreground. Note that there's less snow around now. |
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| Finishing up the crenelations along the front. You can see the drains very nicely in this shot; later we'll be dressing them up with dragons or gargoyles or something like that to look appropriately "castle-ish". |
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| A closeup of this work along the front. We went with narrower slits so the crenelations would work better with the spacing of the drains and windows. |
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Videos
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| The crew begin the pour. Notice how that hose is jumping around, and it's all pretty noisy--apparently concrete pumping is very loud! |
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| Short clip of the pour along the front of the house. Note how some of them are thumping the walls to help ensure the mud settles properly. |
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| Pouring along the south walls, together with a very nice 360 degree pan-around of the entire upstairs. Good job Colleen! |
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Comments (0)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/15/2010 8:28:35 PM
Or at least that's what we hope will happen.
Turns out the designated pumper truck is slated to be up in Aspen on Wednesday, so they're going to try to do the pour tomorrow. We have some doubts about this plan--it won't give us two days of snowmelt to help clear the roads--but we've done some sanding (mostly this has been Colleen's work--she's awesome) and maybe the roads will be good enough.
We'll see. If not we'll ahve to fall back, either by getting a different pumper truck or by moving the pour date until after the next storm (Thursday/Friday).
We'll see.......
Steven in Colorado Springs
Comments (0)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/14/2010 8:59:55 PM
Sigh.
Well, the hoped-for "dusting of snow" completely skipped us here in town--in favor, apparently, of settling right smack dab over Tanglewood.
I was hopeful this morning when I got up and saw sunshine, thinking that maybe we'd dodged a bullet and would be able to proceed with the pour of the second floor ICF tomorrow (Monday). Things rapidly went downhill though when I drove to the site--about halfway there I found myself entering foggy conditions, and then the snow started. And kept coming. All the way up the canyon.
I'd guess we got between 3 and 4 inches of snow last night, and it continued to fall the whole time I was up there. My original intent had been to load up Blackie with recycles (cardboard mostly) and stack the bits of ICF over to one side for another trip, but I ended up spending the entire afternoon shoveling snow off top floor again (just like yesterday, but this time it was just me!). The snow continued though at slightly lesser rates the entire time I worked, so while I didn't realistically get it all I at least cut down what has to be shoveled/melt off tomorrow a bit.
Sigh. All that work yesterday seems wasted. I know it's not really--the snow today would have just been that much deeper--but good grief!
I was finally able to get some recycles loaded up shortly before nightfall and ran them down to the recycling center. It was the only snow-covered cardboard in the bins! ;)
No pics as I didn't think I'd need to take any since yesterday. That'll learn me!
We also get to spend money (again) to have the road plowed (again) so that the concrete company can (again) try to come up (again) on the new pour day (Wednesday this time). I've lost more money to this unexpected ongoing expense than any other single item so far.
Don't. Ever. Build. In. The. Winter.
Or in Latin: Winterus buildus mistakus dontus.
Bring me some of that global warming!!!!
Steven in Colorado Springs
Comments (0)
Posted to tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO
on 2/13/2010 9:47:29 PM
Well, after some minor soul-searching we realized that we hadn't really made enough progress during yesterday's round of shoveling snow, so Colleen and I decided to head up again today to focus on trying to finish clearing off the second floor rather than sanding the roads. As it happened we were able to get a lot of both done.
We got a bit of a late start and didn't really hit the house until noon, but we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of work that the crew finished up yesterday afternoon combined with the melting that had happened overnight. I'm not sure we actually got below freezing last night, or if we did it wasn't by very much (I didn't even think to check the weather station), so the heat the concrete had soaked up during the day kept working its magic on the snow and ice nearly all night long. There was a lot less snow and ice than there had been yesterday, and we set about to work over the more stubborn knots of ice that had (mostly) been protected from direct sunlight by water-laden cardboard (leftovers from the ICF palettes). In place of the ice and snow was a bunch of water, which pooled wherever there were any variances in the level of the concrete (though I was pleased to note that there was nothing obvious--good job concrete guys!).
It took us nearly all afternoon but with a bunch of chipping, sweeping of water (we have a nylon pushbroom up there that's just for things like this) and shoveling we got the second floor pretty much cleared off. By the end of the day there were still some snowy spots (mostly where sunlight wasn't hitting the floor at all) and some ice near where the bracing was glued to the floor (we didn't want to chip it away in case we were to accidentally knock loose a brace), but most of the floor was merely damp-to-wet and there were several dry spots. I figure one more good day of sunlight and warmer temps and nearly all of the snow up there will be gone....
Unfortunately we might not get that. The weather reports for tonight aren't as bad as they were yesterday, but they're still calling for "snow showers and colder temps". We'll run up tomorrow to pull together some recyclables and see if we got anything serious, though if it truly is just "snow showers" we should be okay. if not, the Monday concrete pour will probably have to be delayed until Tuesday or Wednesday. We have our fingers crossed though, and appropriate pleas have been made to various guardians of the forest. I guess we'll see!
On the way out we had a bit of a bonus moment, in that we were mildly amazed at the amount of melting that had occurred since we drove in just a few hours before. We decided to take advantage of this by throwing down some gravel and sand on most of the stream crossings (where ice was thickest) and on a couple of the more shaded parts of the road that often keep their snow and ice longer than most. Our thinking was that if the snow misses us, then the dark gravel will help to melt the snow and ice that much more quickly, while if we do get some "snow showers" and they aren't too thick then at least there will be some "grit" under the powder.
Not much chance to do any research or plans today regarding various features. Still need to pick out a circular stair and finish designing the radiant tubing layout for the first floor. We're probably getting close to the point where I can start thinking about some of the inside DIY stuff too, like putting in the central vac tubing and starting to plan out the electrical (which is going to be a real bear!). And of course there's the whole solar energy-and-hot-water thing to work through.....
Now I'm tired again! But hey it's all fun anyway......
Steven in Colorado Springs
Photos
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| A shot of the living room. The smaller windows underneath have already been installed, but we won't be putting in the big ones until the roof is nearly done (they are going to be VERY heavy). |
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| Behold the (mostly) cleared second floor, looking towards the guest bedrooms. A good breeze for a couple of hours should dry this right out. |
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| The deck. You can see parts of the crenelations where the protective tarps have blown up. We didn't do a whole lot of snow clearing here since there are already drains to handle the water. |
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| Standing on the walkways looking over the library towards the living room. |
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| Standing in the same spot looking towards the guest bedrooms. Some dry spots here. |
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| Longer view of the upstairs from the walkway above one of the guest bathrooms. You can see Colleen way off in the distance looking at the tarps. |
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| As I walked around the scaffolding I realized I'd never taken a shot from this angle before--so I did. |
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| On the way back down we stopped to chop some ice and sand the road, and I spotted this little pool of greenery in the creek. What an amazing canyon this is! |
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| Another pool along the creek filled with plants and (most likely) hibernating fishies. |
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Comments (0)
Posted to DomeSweetDome by Rich in Suffolk, VA
on 2/13/2010 9:33:05 AM
Two years later...
The building site in Vermont didn't work out. I had plans, contractor appointments, and financing but the building site didn't work out. Lots of time spent planning but not too much money. I did compromise by building the nicest treehouse you'll ever see. It is 8' x 8' and the bottom joist is maybe 12' off the ground. I'm 6' and can stand up inside. It has plywood walls, rolled metal roofing on top, a trapdoor, and 4 windows. Two windows on opposing walls open out and 2 are fixed plexiglass windows that I created. The flooring is treated wood decking. My children love it and we camped in it this last October. Build time was about 10 days. The whole thing is treated lumber and screws and timberlocks so the cost was around $1000. Hopefully it will last forever. I picked the nicest tree on about 10 acres that is a 30something year old evergreen. Great building experience but I did need help hauling the 3/4" treated plywood up for the roof. It also gave me a great opportunity to buy a few more nice DeWalt cordless tools.
I'm now a year and a half from moving again so I restarted the land search to build my dome. I found the nicest property about 10 minutes from my next job. It had just over 5 acres and was very secluded. I spent many, many hours calling contractors and getting quotes. The property was set back about 700' requiring an easement through 3 other properties for the driveway. Here are my concluding remarks:
The driveway would have been a minimum of $12,800 if no fill had been required. That’s for a 12’ wide driveway which met the Fire Dept requirements but not necessarily their checklist. Their checklist specified a 20’ driveway for greater than 100’ long. This price is for the absolute minimum amount of work that would stand up to code.
Electric was free up to 200’ from Dominion. Past that you had to pay extra. If I had dug the trenches myself to put in underground cable it would have cost me $8,000 to run electric the 800’ to the closest housing site. Plus, we would have had to get that additional easement (currently only an ingress/egress easement). One neighbor saying no to the easement would have shut the entire building project down from an on-grid-electric aspect. I was also planning on running the electric under the driveway which would have probably raised my driveway costs. Most municipalities require electric to be run 4’ down or so. I think trenchers exist that can do this but if the soil had been rocky then costs would have escalated quickly.
Septic fields need dry soil that will take moisture. This property didn't have that so previous attempts looked at Engineering Drainage Management. This creates ditches around the septic field that then drain to deeper ditches offsite that then take that water to even deeper, public ditches offsite. This property could never reach public ditching (without being deeper than the public ditching by the time it got there) hence the inability to use a standard septic system. At present the only engineered septic system passing the health dept without problems was a mound system that I was quoted $50,000 to engineer and install. This system is also higher maintenance and has a higher risk of failure as compared to conventional septic systems that often last 30 years with only routine pumpings every 3 years or so. I did find a second system called the Clearstream drip irrigation that was costing $18,000 but it was currently in appeals with the health dept.
Lot clearing for this lot also proved to be more difficult. I wasn't sure the fire dept would approve burning of debris (like stumps and limbs) so all of the debris generated would have to be hauled away in dump trucks. That placed the cost of clearing only 2 acres around $9,500. If I had gotten that permission to burn that cost would have been reduced.
The driveway would have started in a Chesapeake Bay Conservation Area 50’ buffer zone. I was confident that I could get my variance approved to put in a driveway but the engineering analysis alone was expected to cost $1,500 which could also reveal higher costs for the actual driveway itself.
I had an idea that wetlands existed but I thought that they would be limited to the borders. During my snow-covered walk on the parcel I didn’t see any of the aquatic plants that I expect to see on wetlands. On recommendation from one of my many phone calls, I called the Army Corps of Engineer hoping for a quick answer of 'no wetland problems'. Instead he told me that the property has massive wetlands. Having a lot of wetlands either rules out construction completely or requires massive amounts of money for individual permits and/or wetland credits. Either way the initial engineering estimate was another $1,500 or so just to determine where the wetlands started.
This ended my planning for this property. I did make a 24 hr drive (roundtrip) to see it and I learned quite a bit. Now I'm working on a second property but I'm not sure what landmines it will contain.
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Posted to NorthPoleHome by Tim in Anchorage, AK
on 2/12/2010
Well, I'm still chomping at the bit to get building but we're still in scrimp and save mode since we'll be building this with cash only. Since we're 350 miles away and I have another two years until I can retire from the military, there isn't much I can do right now but study construction methods, surf forums like this, refine the budget, hammer out exactly which materials we plan on using, and seek out deals on tools/supplies. I may try to volunteer as an apprentice to an electrician or plumber this summer just to pick up some practice on two trades I'm only a little experienced in so I can do my own later. The summer of next year I'll have enough cash to put up the shell. The plan is to put the shell up summer/fall 2011 and retire spring 2012 with all summer to finish it.
By my budget/savings forecast we'll have enough cash to build a weathertight shell with water, septic, power, insulation, siding, and masonry heater. This summer we are going to install our own septic tank/field and have the well drilled. As much as I'd love to put in the crawlspace foundation, I'm leery of doing anything this year that can be damaged by time or weather. Frost-jacking is a problem up here.
Our engineer is finished with the final plans, but is having trouble printing them out so I don't have them in hand yet. I'll be using advanced framing techniques as much as possible to not only save on lumber but to maximize the thermal efficiency of the exterior wall. I'm also putting 2" of EPS foam on the outside with 1x3 strapping to attach the fiber cement siding to. I snagged a deal on the EPS, 106 4x8 sheets at only $12 each! In order to eliminate almost all penetrations in the vapor barrier, we're strapping the exterior walls inside horizontally with 2x2s every 2' O.C. to run/mount all the electrical and fill the 2' gaps with 1 1/2" EPS (I got 50 4x8 sheets of these for $10 each). This should get me about an R-35 wall with the R-21 batts in the stud bays. I figure the added cost of the extra insulation/strapping is about two to three years' worth of heating oil, which ironically is more expensive in Alaska than the lower 48. Anyhow, just giving an update so my journal doesn't go stagnant and get deleted.
Tim
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We are now back on track. Our architect created new plans in a record 2 weeks and they are going to the structural engineer next week. We now call it our Alpine house.
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FilesLOWER LEVEL 021010.pdfUPPER LEVEL 021010.pdfLOFT LEVEL 021010.pdf
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