Building our Dream Home a.k.a. Delusions of Retirement

[EOTE]

I finally started the site prep today... got the stakes in for the corners of the house, made an elevation map, and basically dragged a blade across the site to highlight where I am going to start excavating.  I moved my sawmill from where I have sawn logs for the last 2 years.

I estimate that I have to move approximately 200 cubic yards to level the home site and another 200 to contour the surrounding area.  12 Mexicans with a 1/4 yard bucket.  Yee haw!

Here is a view before and after from the same location.



 





Next steps are to move the pile of scrap metal, cedar tree (unfortunately it is right at the corner of the home site), dog house, dog, and cable run.  Then I plan to excavate around the home site to level grade for reference.  The East side is close to grade with a slight hump in between.  The Northwest corner will require the most excavation to grade (about 45").  

Here in East Texas, everyone tells me to excavate, not fill for foundations and slabs as the soil is most stable that way.  I followed that advice when I excavated for the barn and have no cracks in the concrete after 3 years.  I also did the same on the sawmill house and drying house.

That will put the house on a grade about 8" above the grade of the barn.

[Old Greenhorn]

Up here we get a lot of frost heave and cutting into ground to build on undisturbed soil is preferred. However, I am thinking frost heave is not a real big issue for y'all. I think if you fill and grade and PACK properly, you should be fine. I assume you will have some time between site grading and pouring, right? Have you looked into the historical flood zones? In TX I know that big storm runoff can be a real issue.
Nice patch of ground you have there.

[EOTE]

Up here we get a lot of frost heave and cutting into ground to build on undisturbed soil is preferred. However, I am thinking frost heave is not a real big issue for y'all. I think if you fill and grade and PACK properly, you should be fine. I assume you will have some time between site grading and pouring, right? Have you looked into the historical flood zones? In TX I know that big storm runoff can be a real issue.
Nice patch of ground you have there.

Fortunately where I am at I would have to thumb a ride with Noah if we ever got flooded.   We are well above any flood plains. I've checked all the soil maps as well and the home site is actually the most stable soil on our land.  
Our neighbor to the West is about 200 feet above us and I think we have inherited most of his prime top soil from run off over the years. :D  That's probably what we're building our home on.  ;D

[Old Greenhorn]

Our neighbor to the West is about 200 feet above us and I think we have inherited most of his prime top soil from run off over the years. :D 

Geez, your neighbor must live on one of the tallest mountains in Texas!

[Darrel]

Our neighbor to the West is about 200 feet above us and I think we have inherited most of his prime top soil from run off over the years. :D

Geez, your neighbor must live on one of the tallest mountains in Texas!

:D

[EOTE]

Got to actually cutting grade around the construction site today.  I welded a bracket to the barn awning post so I can mount my laser level on it.  After calibration and testing, I can take it off and put it back on the bracket and it points to the same spot every time.  I have a white reference strip on a tree about 100 yards away and it matches every time!



 

Anyway, I cut the East and south sides of the site today.  I still have to cut a little to make it exactly to grade but it was a good start.  I am running into some roots and stumps from clearing the land a couple of years ago but the 12 Mexicans seem to be handling it pretty well.  If I run into something it can't cut (like the remains of this cedar stump), I have a stump grinder which will allow me to grind it down as much as 10" below grade.



 



 

[EOTE]

Over the weekend I was able to level the perimeter on three sides.  However, with all the rain this week, I had to postpone site excavation and move to an indoor project.  





I have to process about 6,000 bd. ft. of 1" x 6" and 1" x 8" into shiplap.  The first step is moving the pallets of wood to the barn and sizing each board to 12' length.  This is about 20% of the total I have to process.  The next step is to plane to thickness, and then cut the rabbet on both sides of the board.  I get to handle each board enough times to be on a first name basis with them  :D.



 

[1938farmall]

the guys on here with moulders must be going nuts knowing they could make your finished product in 1 pass at about 50 lf per minute

[EOTE]

the guys on here with moulders must be going nuts knowing they could make your finished product in 1 pass at about 50 lf per minute

A lot of our decisions are based on what we want to do but then we have to deal with the reality of what can we afford.  I can afford spending a lot of my time and labor but not so much of my money.  When it comes to equipment, the immediate need has to be balanced with what the long term need will be.

Processing 6000 bf by hand on a planer and table saw will take several days but in the end, I'm more physically fit, and that planer/moulder I could have had for $xxx would be sitting there where as the planer and table saw will always have a use.  I also have the satisfaction that I did it and did a great job.

[thecfarm]

We all work with what we have.  ;)
I have a manual mill. I have no use for a full hyd mill unless someone else wants to buy it and maintain it. Not much can go bad on a manual mill. I only saw when I need an out building. Seems to be once every 2 years, I am sawing and building.

[millwright]

When I built my place in the woods(15yrs ago) I used shop lap too. Every piece done on my old table saw. It took a little time and work, but the end results were great 

[WDH]

I have done the hard labor route too, but the end result has been by my own hand and very satisfying. 

[EOTE]

After 3 1/2" of rain we finally started drying out to where I could get back to site excavation.  My plan is to cut the home site perimeter to grade and then excavate the home site proper to grade.  To accomplish this I had to remove a Cedar tree on the northwest corner and move the dog house and cable run.
Got that all done on Sunday and went to grind down the cedar stump and blew a hydraulic line.  Nobody open on Sunday who can make the hose so I had to wait until Monday.

Got the new hose on Monday and installed it, hooked up the stump grinder and the end of the new hose blew off.  Now the back of the tractor and the stump grinder are completely oiled and I have to remove and reinstall the hose in the field.  I finally got the hose replaced and ground down the stump.

So now I have 3 sides of the perimeter excavated and the rain started back up.  I will spend the next couple of days inside on the shiplap manufacturing process.

Here is what the home site looks like.



 

Here is my excavation partner...I call her my Red Dirt Girl.



 

[EOTE]

This week started out with more rain (for 3 days).  The rain finally let up after 4 inches so the last couple of days the soil has been drying and firming up.  I am hoping to continue the excavation tomorrow. My hope is to try and make a big dent in it this week.  I would probably be fooling myself to say that I could complete it this week but it looks like 7 days with no rain in the forecast so we will see how far I can get.

I spent the week turning 1" x 6"s and 1" x 8"s into shiplap.  I ended with a bit over 2,000 board feet.

Here is the stack of boards after sizing.  



 


I had to take about a half a day and tune the planer.  It was always hard to feed boards through but it just got worse over time.  It turns out the in-feed roller was out of spec and probably came from the factory that way.  Once I corrected that, cleaned the rollers, and did some experimenting with the tension adjustments on the in-feed and out-feed rollers, I got it to work flawlessly.  Oh, I tried a different wax which had a tremendous positive effect on the feed.  I was able to feed the boards at the fastest feed rate and do 2 and 3 at a time.  In testing a sample throughout the thickness planing process, the boards all came within .005 of my set thickness.

This is the wax that works wonders on the planer bed!


 

My pallet size is based on how much the 12 Mexicans can lift so each pallet is betwen 1600 and 1800 lbs.
The partial pallet will wait until I have to do more indoor work and take on another 2,000 board feet.

The finished shiplap heading to storage.



 

[tule peak timber]

What type of planer ?

[EOTE]

What type of planer ?

It's a Jet 20" helical head planer. 5 hp single phase 240 volt that I bought new last year.

[tule peak timber]

That should see you through....Are you planing after drying ?

[EOTE]

That should see you through....Are you planing after drying ?

Yes, what I planed this week was sawn a year ago and moisture content was about 8%.  All my lumber is air dried.

[EOTE]

Here is what 2,000 board feet of shiplap generate in wood chips, shavings, and sawdust.  (9 cubic yard trailer full to the top).

I run my 2 hp. vacuum with 5" flexible ducts outside to the 14' dump trailer.



 

[WDH]

If you do much planing at all, that is why you might not want to use a dust collector that depends on bags   .  

[EOTE]

Well, I was able to get back to excavating this last several days and finished the excavation and rough grade.  Instead of excavating 200 + yards of soil, I ended up excavating ~ 550 cubic yards.  Rough grade is within +/- 2 inches.

Here is where things stood last Tuesday.



 


This is what it looked like end of day Wednesday.


 

This was end of day Sunday.



 

Here is end of day Tuesday.  Finally got the site excavated and rough graded.



 



 

Most of the dirt went to the south end of the clearing where it was low so I was able to build it up a bit closer to grade.



 

Here is today after 1-1/2" of rain...






So when it dries down (hopefully this weekend), I will start finish grading.  After that, the west side of the building site has a 4 foot high wall which I need to contour back to the trees so I will have to move another 300 to 400 cubic yards of soil.  This will be stockpiled on the south end of the clearing for backfill around the foundation when it has been put in.

After that I can hopefully start laying out the foundation and utilities.

[Crusarius]

you did all that with the box blade and bucket on the Kubota? 

What I wouldn't give for soil like that. I have rocks tree roots and black clay. When it finally drys out enough to get on it with the tractor it is like concrete and unworkable.

[thecfarm]

A good job making it level. I have to agree on the rock part. Good soil you have there for rocks. I leveled out one part on my land, probably a quarter size of what you did. Yes, there was rocks, but I was able to get most of them out and smooth it out. It was a very rough part that we wanted to mow. I am claiming back an old pasture and some places I can't even drive my tractor between the rocks.

[EOTE]

you did all that with the box blade and bucket on the Kubota?

What I wouldn't give for soil like that. I have rocks tree roots and black clay. When it finally drys out enough to get on it with the tractor it is like concrete and unworkable.

I am definitely blessed with good soil here.  There are no rocks to speak of.  The only thing I ran into is old tree stumps from when we cleared the land 2 years ago.  Most of them the bucket cut right through but there were about 15 of them that I had to put the stump grinder on and cut down below the surface.  The area I cleared is a little over 100' x 100' feet.  The area where the water pooled was very soft because of the moisture content.  I found while digging that I would sink 6" to a foot so I would have to constantly backfill my tire tracks.  Fortunately, the soil is very stable and does not erode quickly.

[EOTE]

I used some of the excavated soil to expand my parking area in front of the barn last week so I went to pick up gravel (200 miles one way) on Friday to cover the area.  My 16K trailer does a good job of hauling road mix as I can get between 5 and 6 tons at a time.  Unfortunately, my trailer blew two tires on the way from the gravel pit.  Now this is the second set of tires provided by the manufacturer under warranty and I have only 13,000 miles on the trailer since I bought it.  So now I am faced with the dilemma of replacing the tires with the same size (they were out of warranty by a few months) or upgrade the trailer so I don't have this recurring problem.

Fortunately the tires gave out while entering a small town along the way so I was able to leave the trailer in a parking lot and come back to EOTE for tools.  Unfortunately, my 3 ton jack couldn't lift a single wheel with the load of gravel so I had to give up until the next day.  After contemplating the different options at my disposal, I decided to get rid of the stock tires (load range G with a rating of 4005 pounds per tire max) and upgrade to tires with a load range H (4900 pounds per tire max).  So Saturday morning I loaded extra tools including the 20 ton jack out of my hydraulic press and I drove a hundred miles out of my way to pick up a new set of tires and wheels for the trailer.  After picking them up, I had to drive back to where the trailer was parked (80 miles from EOTE) and put the new tires on.  So by 3 in the afternoon, I finally got the trailer tires swapped, and back on the road with the gravel.  We got in around 6 pm but essentially the whole weekend was spent as well as $1,500 trying to haul $40 worth of gravel for my parking area.

Sometimes we have learning experiences that challenge us.  So I am back tonight at my home in central Texas and will pick up a second load of gravel to finish out the parking area.  Hopefully after that, the building site will be dried out enough for me to do the finish leveling to grade this week.