I will be following this forum closely and hope to learn a lot from everyone's experiences! Jim in Northern California

Bill's Forum Posts: 0
Journal Entries: 21
Interview Answers: 58




Bill's Selected Image

Subscribe to this journal...

The finished footers

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 4/30/2010

Today the gravel was placed in the trenches. I was not there when it was done, so Diane and I stopped back later to capture a few pictures. This is the last part necessary before the Superior Walls will be delivered next month.

Photos

The completed footer trenches

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 4/29/2010

The trenches are ready, but before we begin filling them with gravel, we had to have the first termite-protection application. After Terminix was done, we placed 4" slotted drain pipe all around the outside bottom of the footers. In two places, we will also have drainpipes to daylight. While no photos were taken, we also placed two 8" sleeves in the trenches to allow the septic sewer lines to pass under the basement walls.

We also called for and received our county inspection: passed!

Photos

Terminix treatment #1 of 3	Trenches and septic tanks with risers.	Foundation-drainage pipe.
	At the back, you can see the pipe that will exit the foundation and be connected to solid pipe to daylight.	The other drainpipe to go to daylight.
We started to put a little gravel around the pipe to hold it in place.

INCA ruins?

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 4/28/2010

Digging the footer trenches was an all-day affair. Just moving the trackhoe around without destroying what was just dug was a feat all by itself.

We are using Superior Walls: a factory-built engineered-wall system. These walls do not require a concrete footer. Rather, we are using a modern version of a rubble foundation. Rubble foundations have been around all over the world for centuries. Frank Lloyd Wright has been credited with extensively using this foundation type in many of his now-famous homes. Essentially, the trenches are filled with clean 1/2" gravel compacted in 8" lifts. The house will essentially sit on top of a giant French drain. Now that will keep water away from the house!

Specs call for no trenches on the earth side and 18" on the daylight side (frost line here) with 8" above virgin soil. I wanted a measure of security, so as you can see, we dug a 12" trench even on the earth side. Some of the daylight side was fill, so you can see in the pictures that one part of the garage foundation is about 4' deep.

Photos

Deepest footer trench down to virgin soil.
One friend saw this photo and wanted to know if we found INCA ruins.
The trees I had saved for firewood are getting in the way since spreading so much more dirt.		We had to find a new location for my firewood.
That's it for today!

I have more dirt than I ever expected!

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 4/27/2010

With the additional site prep, we have a lot more dirt available. As a result, we have a nice, level, small backyard with a terrific view. I never expected to actually have a backyard, since we are building on a mountainside. We have so much dirt that we had to add two 18" septic risers to accommodate the new yard level.

Dirt-moving continued all day. After the grader was done, we laid out the footers with spray paint. First thing in the morning, the footer trenches will be dug.

Photos

Adding two 18" septic risers each to two tanks.

We spray-painted the footer locations to make it easy for our grader. You can start to see that we have a complicated house footprint.

Site prep: the second time around!

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 4/26/2010

Five months after we got our permit, we are finally moving forward. As I mentioned previously, we had a lot of wet weather in Waynesville, making the gravel road and our property quite soggy. So, today we begin the final site preparation to accommodate the house footer trenches.

The previous site preparation was before I had "real" blueprints. Now that we know the exact house/garage dimensions and having set the house location in February, for the next couple of days additional earth will be moved and the footers will be dug.

Photos

Transit Lessons

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 2/22/2010

Here it is February 2010: the first day since we got our permit and after the grading equipment was moved up to our property. My friend, Bill and I used this break in the weather (note the snow in the pictures) to get the footers laid out and marked so Franklin Grading could dig accurately. Bill had experience with using a transit level, so I bought one and became his student. Being an O-B sure justifies buying neat toys!

Like many parts of the country: Waynesville had a lot of weather! Snow, rain and sleet left the gravel road up the mountain in terrible shape. We were quite worried that running heavy trucks under such wet conditions would destroy our road. My neighbors wouldn't be happy if we tore up the road, so we decided to wait for better weather and dryer conditions.

Photos

Until my wife, Diane can come over, I have to be taking the pictures. Besides, Bill has more experience reading blueprints, so I don't mind.	As you will recall, our house has a lot of angles. Fortunately for me, Bill knew what to do to pin the foundation.	Note the snow that still lingers. This day was quite comfortable, but the ground is really wet.
The orange paint shows where the stair tower will be placed. Now that we have final blueprints, we need to remove additional dirt from the bank to set the foundation.

Ready, Set, Go!

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 11/17/2009

As the saying goes... "damn the torpedoes: full speed ahead!" I really want to get this house building under way. While the economy is still soft, it has been improving. So, we are going to go for it. Today, I went to the permit office to review my plans, and it went very well. The County office had no problems with my application. The only concern was the fact that I was using a floor-system technology that they were not familiar. As long as I had an engineering stamp on my floor-system blueprint, then it would be fine. After paying the $1,224 building permit, I walked out with our approval to begin building our future home.

Photos

Info box with our permits and inspection records

First official inspection: "temp toilet"!

Files

• Haywood+County+Record+of+Inspections.pdf

While We Wait...

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 7/4/2009

With home prices dropping and the school system where my wife is a Teacher Assistant laying people off, we figured we should wait on any further decisions to build. In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy some "non-construction" pictures of our property.

Photos

Final Blueprints

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 5/2/2009

Can you believe this? No, you can't know the extreme frustration I have had with my designer. Honestly, at one point, I expected to go to Texas and file a suit against him in small claims court. Whatever you do, don't hire this designer. Contact me if you want his name to avoid.

Like I said before, what work he does is excellent, but he has terrible customer service manners. I still don't have my SIP drawings and I don't have any expectation he will ever finish them. In the end, he produced quite adequate blueprints, so I've included photos of the elevation renderings and the first and second floor plans. As far as the SIP's, the chosen manufacturer will be quite involved anyway. As you can imagine, this set back our building plans, but it was when the economy was not as good, so maybe he did me a favor...

While I was steaming over NOT getting my blueprints, I found Metwood, a company in Roanoke, VA that makes cold-formed steel beams and manufactures a concrete pour-over floor system. This is just right for me as we will be using a radiant heating system. Their engineer stamps the blueprint and the county will accept that, since they are not so familiar with this type of construction in residential construction.

Photos

Blueprint Changes

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 9/28/2008

After studying the plans, we decide we need to make some changes and some things the designer didn't follow in our earlier requests and discussions. Since we are working long distance with the designer, I was very detailed in my email correspondence regarding our expectations and what we wanted. For the most part, Don complied but in several critical areas, he just went on his merry way with what he wanted and NOT what I requested.

As I mentioned previously, he had 6 posts in the basement and this was unacceptable. In both email and phone conversations, he has stubbornly refused. When I brought this to his attention, he was very defensive. He said it must be so. I have a retired architect friend (commercial work) and a niece who is a structural engineer. Both of them told me it can be done with fewer posts if he sizes the floor beams properly. Don became belligerent, so I hired a structural engineer to "redline" my blueprints. We designed the beams around a couple of wide-flange I-beams with TGIs resting on them. This eliminated all but three posts. Don the designer was really upset with me: telling me that I-beams cannot support anymore than laminated wood beams. Don is not an engineer: can you imagine his arrogance to think he knows more than a licensed engineer who can stamp my plans?

Fortunately, this so far is the only frustration I have encountered since buying our property. Reluctantly he is redoing my plans with the changes I requested including the structural beams. It sure seems to me when I am the customer paying the bill, my contractors should be doing what I want, regardless if they disagree.

Photos

With two friends, we discuss changes to the plan that will improve the design. Bill and Steav suggested changes to the front elevation that I really like. It will now have a wraparound porch with another door into the master bedroom.	This is the engineers changes to the first-floor beam support, eliminating three posts.	Just some of the changes we requested the designer redo.

Finally I get my blueprints!

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 9/1/2008

My blueprints are overdue. I was promised them months earlier, but Don finally sent me just the elevation drawings on February 7, 2008: not the floor plans. I guess he was getting tired of me asking about them, so I received only an installment.

I finally got the rest of the plans on September 1, 2008 so I could start reviewing them in earnest. Despite the frustration of taking longer than he promised, he has done good work. Overall, I am pleased with his initial set of drawings, except he has placed posts in the basement nearly every 8 feet. I guess this is what he is used to with timberframing, but I can't have it that way.

Photos

		Note that the plan has 8 posts in the basement. The right side of the basement is supposed to be a single-car garage, but not with the posts in the way.

Digging Our Well

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 6/10/2008

When you dig a well on a mountain, it is really just a guess how deep you will have to go to get water. I say "how" deep, as opposed to "if", because everyone else on this mountain has hit water so naturally, I was confident I would also. Now the depth does not correlate to how high up on the mountain one is. Some wells below me are deeper than some above me. So after learning how deep everyone else dug a well, I guessed I might have to go as deep as 750 feet: so that is what I budgeted.

The day has arrived for the well to be dug, and I am excited and full of anticipation. I stayed all day and watched as they past 600 feet with no sign of water. I went home (2 1/5 hours away) dreading how much deeper we may need to go.

The next day they called and said they were at 750 feet and still no water: should they go deeper? I sucked in air and said go another 100 feet if needed and call again. The call came and they were hitting just a trickle of water: not enough to be adequate. What do I want to do? Go another 100 feet and call again. Again the call, still not enough water. Go another 50 feet and call me. I got the call yet again: still not enough. At this point, I had just been talking with my neighbor below me on the mountain. I was teasing him that I would have to go deep enough to tap into his water reservoir: he didn't laugh too hard. I agreed to another 50 feet.

I got another call. We are now at 950 feet. What should I do? I had three choices: 1) Go deeper, 2) Pull up and try somewhere else on the property, or 3) Fracture the well. Going deeper would be the least expensive option, but what if we don't hit water...? Okay, I was really struggling what to do now. Then it dawned on me, my daughter's birth father is a hydro-geologist in Colorado. Paul knows all about underground water. We have never spoken, so this would surely be a strange first conversation between us. As it turned out, Paul is easy to talk with. After discussing my options, his advice was to go deeper: maybe another 150 feet. So another 100 feet we went and we started to hit adequate water: not high pressure but solid volume. With a sore throat, I said go another 50 feet. The water supply improved, and we finished off with another 25 feet and stopped at 1,125. After two days of testing (pumping the well dry and seeing how much is there in 24 hours) showed that I would have over 900 gallons per day in a 600 foot column.

You may know this but the drilling price past 1,000 feet goes up by a 1/3: I went way over budget. And I know this is not done. The well completion doubles to drilling price! Deep wells, like mine, require heavy duty everything, and the costs are much higher. So much for my budget. I like the view, but not without water.

After it was all over, it dawned on me I was drilling in the middle of a four-year drought. I hope the well will improve when we get back to normal precipitation...

Photos

Phase-one grading is complete.

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 12/21/2007

We started this building project knowing we would be grading the property three times.

Phase one: general grading to shape the lot for the expected house layout. Keep in mind that we don't yet have our final designer plans, just what I drew with Punch Pro. This first phase would also let the grading settle for a good period of time. With so much earth moved, I expect the lower driveway will settle some and need to be reshaped again.

Phase two: When we get our final house blueprints and seek a building permit, we will need to do additional grading to accommodate the exact placement of the footers.

Phase three: After the walkout basement is built (including the basement and first floors), then we can get the final grading on the property.

All this is expensive, but it allows us to have a very usable mountain property with a yard - no small feat.

Photos

First part of the driveway coming off the road above.	Where my car is parked is the turn onto the upper pad.	A view over the upper pad. It was a cold rainy day so the view is limited. You can always count on the view changing.
The upper pad was extended and seeded as a side yard.	The end of the upper pad.	This is the first time our daughters see the property. It is cold and rainy; they are not impressed... yet!
I stitched together several pictures to show the panoramic view of the upper and lower pad.	Here you can see the expected layout of the house against the upper pad. Even the garage will have a basement.

And now for the Septic System

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 12/1/2007

This is the day we get our septic system. We had requested and were approved for a five-bedroom system. We really needed four, but since we are building an apartment over the garage, it is considered a "separate" dwelling and the minimum system is for two bedrooms. Adding the main-house three bedrooms is how we end up with two 1,200 gallon septic tanks and an Infiltrator Systems' gravelless drainfield chamber system. Most of the time, it will only be the two of us, so this should last forever.

I wanted a driveway to the lower level where the house would be built over a daylight basement. Dennis had to move many tons of soil to build up the lower driveway. He did a wonderful job of packing the soil in 8" lifts.

We were so lucky to have a lot that was right on a ridge line. This gave us a lot of soil that we used to level off two pads. I never expected we would end up with a flat yard on the side of the mountain; this is a really nice bonus.

Photos

		Infiltrator Systems' gravelless chambers
Two of the three chamber runs.	Two 1,200-gallon septic tanks	We had a lot of soil moved.
Dennis and I discussing the width of the driveway coming down from the road.	Diane and Mocha are standing on another area Dennis built up with the excess soil.

Digging continues.

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 11/26/2007

I drove over to Waynesville to discuss the progress with Dennis. I am very pleased.

Photos

We break ground.

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 11/14/2007

With Dennis Franklin Grading's big machinery, they make fast work of clearing the debris from the construction site. Many truckloads were hauled away; no buried stumps on my property, please!

Photos

Time to get professional help.

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 8/12/2007

After many consultations with friends, and Diane, my wife, we settled on this house design. With this in hand, I hired a designer. I interviewed many designers and a few architects. Architects generally have greater skills and offer more services. But I didn't need many of their services and their fees are very much higher than designers. I settled on Don Whippie, because he has experience with timeberframing and SIPs; both of which I plan to use, and he was fairly priced.

Photos

3D Punch Pro rendering of the north (front) of the house.	3D rendering of the south side. This is where the view is!	Diane, my wife, is a great photographer. This is her photo of the early morning mist over Mt. Pisgah and Cold Mountain. Didn't we get a great view with our property?

So, what do we want to build?

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 7/18/2007

Like all good folks who want to build their own home, we had been collecting and discussing ideas that we would like to consider for our retirement home:

• low-maintenance: probably Hardie Plank
• energy-efficient: probably SIPs (structural insulated panels)
• comfortable heating: probably radiant floors, hopefully solar-heat supply
• use technology wisely and cost-effectively: Superior Walls for the basement.
• Easy access as we get older: main floor with all the conveniences we need/want: master down, wider doorways, minimal obstructions
• Arts & Crafts, farmhouse and mountain style influences
  

Photos

This was my first successful floor-plan drawing using Punch Pro.

Files

• Punch+Design.pdf
• Punch+Design2.pdf
• Punch+Design3.pdf
• Punch+Design4.pdf

Unwelcome parties!

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 6/5/2007

Since we cleared all the briars, we started having locals enjoying our property. It wouldn't have bothered me, except they were trashing it and even built fires. So...it was time to put up a gate and padlock it. Too bad.

Photos

Now that we cleared the briars from the driveway, we started getting some unwelcome partying on our property.

Files

• This+is+why+we+bought+the+property.pdf

Briars, Briars, everywhere!

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 12/8/2006

While the property had been roughly graded some 15 years earlier, it had become overgrown with lots of briars, etc. We had to clear many 10-12 ft. high blackberry briars just to drive down on it. We spent many weekends on the property just cutting down trees that were previously cut down but now were suckering. It was hard work, but we enjoyed it.

Photos

In the Beginning!

Posted to Collins-on-Cobblestone by Bill in Waynesville, NC on 12/6/2006

After nearly two years of searching, we finally settled on finding our property near Waynesville, NC. We started looking near Black Mountain, but it had become too expensive for mountain-view property, so we headed west. Our objective was to stay within 30 minutes of Asheville. We found our property the first day of a four-day weekend searching Haywood County. Every morning and evening we would start and end our day at this property and each time it reconfirmed this was the one we wanted. On Monday morning, December 5, 2006 we walked into Southern Exposure Realty and asked them to represent us in making an offer. Jackie did a great job and soon we were the proud owners of the property for our future retirement home!

Photos

On 12/5/2006 with signed an offer to buy our property.