not quite a timber frame

[ljmathias]

although it will have at least one "bent" in it... my daughter's house has finally taken shape in our minds (not an easy task, getting two creative minds to agree on anything, let alone an entire house).  She sifted through plans, daydreamed some and found the perfect compromise- if any compromise is ever anything but less then perfect- hence, it's name.  In any event, we've gotten approvals needed, had the "perc" test done and passed, and put in a red clay driveway with maybe enough gravel on top to keep from making a skating rink for cars when it rains, so now to the plans and building itself.  I'll detail more of the prep work on my own, but my lovely daughter has begun a blog detailing her version of reality, such as it is: http://measureoncecusstwice.blogspot.com/  I was surprised and delighted at her insights and outpourings, so I throw it out to you all for comment.

My plan here is to summarize the process of building a hybrid house, mixed timber framing and stick building, although that really begs the whole thing, in fact.  I'm cheating in lots of ways, using pre-fab trusses (not at all easy for the design she's chosen but we have a very creative truss engineer housed in the local manufacturing facility) and mostly stick built.  Reason for this is simple: I'll be doing most of the work alone, although she wants to help and her son, my oldest grandson, has good intentions but no training and a mind that wanders in such a creative way it's hard to break into submission.  Fact is, she just had shoulder surgery to repair a broken bone and torn rotator cuff so she's not going to be much use for several months... Oh, and the timberframing part?  That will only involve a two story bent that will serve to support a loft we've added to the plans, and the rafter trusses for the cathedral ceiling in half the house- only 16' or so wide at the widest although I may stretch that to 20' to cover the stair landing and add some dimension to the entry upstairs.  Overall a not-so-big house (picture below) with a 938 sq-ft footprint and maybe 1500 sq-ft total usable space; not big but big enough for two people (for now) and hopefully within the budget I have available to build it without a mortgage- not going to be easy and we'll have to do most of the work ourselves; lucky my son is a plumber and good worker, and may have free time I can hire him for over the next few months of the on-going recession that has hit us so hard here.





If there's interest here, I'll give details; if not, maybe just summarize key points.  One thing I've learned is that, no matter how much you think you've learned, you really don't know much (substitute "me" and "I" for you...), so maybe there are other members of the forum who would like a step-by-step description of the process of building a house with a most-of-the-time one-man crew of semi-retired educators who is just knowledgeable enough to get himself into trouble, over and over again...

So anyway, to get started, here are some pictures of the first couple of steps- the first two below are of the knoll and after clearing trees from the knoll where the house will be (trees to be used in building the actual house).







Turns out, driving a 4WD tractor up to the knoll is not the same as getting a dirt truck or cement truck up there; for that, we had to actually build a driveway with a good culvert for the occasional water that flows through the "branch" that is in the way... and the next few pictures show how red the fill clay is we use, the antique John Deere bulldozer belonging to a subcontractor my son has worked with before, and pictures of my daughter Jessie "holding" the dozer in her hand, the grandkids "helping" next to where I drilled my post auger into the ground and couldn't get it back out (no reverse on my PTO) plus the oldest grandson (River Moses, who will one day live in the new house) and third oldest grandson (Judah) walking up to the knoll from our house across the creek- just a stone's throw away assuming you have a really, really good throwing arm.









Ok, enough for now; hope this wasn't too boring but today's a rain day here and I'm stuck inside with too much time on my hands...

Lj

[Raider Bill]

Looking forward to this! Thanks for sharing!

[Brad_bb]

Did you clear all the trees off the knoll?  I like the idea of working WITH what's there.  Besides it takes them so long to grow.  I hate removing them if not necessary.

[ljmathias]

Heavens' no and perish the thought: the trees are part of what makes that place so special for us.  They had been planted by the previous owner and although in need of thinning, offer a beautifully secluded location but one that still has a decent view of the meadow and stream in the valley, so no, we only cleared just enough trees to make a foundation.  Start layout tomorrow if the rain lets up- going to try a new way (for me anyway) of stringing my batter boards.  I'll first drive rebar stakes in exactly where the four corners of the foundation will be, squaring those up and using the old trial and error method plus 3-4-5 and diagonal measuring.  Once I have those set, I'll run strings and square those up using a vertical four foot level and/or plumb bob.  Then I'll check for square on the strings with a tape although this is hard to do- holding one end in one hand while I stretch it to another corner to read the tape (yeah, and I'm Stretch Armstrong, too).  Anyway, doing things by yourself makes for inventiveness- how's the old saying going about necessity and someone's mother?  I thought Mother Nature was the reason we could invent anything at all- brains too large to fit our skulls so stuff has to leak out to make room.   

No pictures today- sporadic rain and other projects kept me off the knoll.  Did start a bedside table for one of the kids and managed to slice up one pine tree just cut from the knoll before the rain kicked in again in earnest... had to get a sawdust fix before the year ended.

Hey everybody: Happy New Years! 8) 8)  Had my 62nd birthday two days ago and made it through another year in more or less good health, with all the kids healthy and well if not rich and famous.

Lj

[AvT]

I didn't read every word of this post or your daughters blog but i skimmed a good portion of it and find it all delightful.  I love the orange clay and your daughters writing is phenominal.  precious the way she describes you.  Great stuff

[Buck]

Keep it coming LJ. Thanks for sharing.

[ljmathias]

Decided to fill in details of the process as we go.  Nothing earth shaking here, just a step-by-step of what it takes to build a house in southern Mississippi.  I would guess most of the steps are pretty similar to what others have found (or will) in building outside the city, but maybe not.  Anyway, my daughter will continue her blog as we go and I'll try to keep this thread up to date.  Turns out that building a house is much more complicated than just putting up a structure: duh!

Details of getting started

Building a house out in the country in Mississippi is not the same as building in the cities here.  In town, we now have good oversight by city government.  This involves getting permits and having inspections at appropriate times.  For example, the last Habitat for Humanity house we worked on required pressure testing of all roughed-in plumbing, including the waste lines.  This involved having 8-10' stacks sticking up from the main waste line that were filled with water and monitored for a few hours for drop in level.  Pressure from this height of water is pretty reasonable, certainly more than the pipes will experience in actual use.  Other components such as electrical have similar inspections.  Are these necessary most of the time?  No, of course not, but unfortunately there are still (and always will be) builders who try to cut corners and who do sub-standard work that doesn't show up for years, not until all of a sudden water spurts from places you didn't even know there were pipes or the sag in the floor turns to major droops and drops and your foundation shifts under you.  Sadly, we need inspections and permits to protect the unwary and uneducated home-buyer from such people, and even more sadly, we always will.

Things have changed, though, even out in the country.  When we built our first carriage house and then our main house, I called the county courthouse to check on what I needed to do for permits and inspections.  "You want our permission to build your house?" came in response to the first request on permits, followed by "You want us to watch you build it?" after I posed the second question on inspections.  No permits 13 years ago and no inspections- great for me but there are lots of houses out here that lots of people are having problems with years after they bought them- problems no one takes responsibility for except the uneducated buyers.  Nowadays, post-Katrina and all the problems with insurance companies covering wind but not flood damage, and even the county we live in requires flood certification before water can be hooked up for construction purposes. 

The sequence of events is listed below- nothing all that difficult or expensive, but tedious and must be done in the right order.  Also, you have to keep your paperwork with you when you go in for some other pre-building task as you never know what this new step will require from previous ones.  In fact, the county has a new planning board with real laws and teeth to enforce them, so things are changing fast: once a government agency figures out that its existence and funding depend on making itself a PITA, it devotes lots of thought and energy to that aspect.  Still and all, things could be worse- still no inspections out here for any home construction other then the septic field.  Guess I have no problem with that as I regularly jog past grandfathered-in trailers and houses near enough to the road that their raw sewage pouring into the drainage ditch creates both a health hazard and some unpleasant atmospheric contamination (if you get my drift or rather, snift...).

So the first thing you have to have here is an address.  You go to the county office for addresses (or whatever it's called this month) and they pull up either a topological map or a satellite view of your building site.  They locate your proposed building as precisely as they can, then guess at how many other buildings might eventually become reality on either side of you and across whatever road you're nearest.  Based on that, they guess as to which number will best describe your location.  Seems like a kinda iffy process but an important one in the long term: sure, your mail will be delivered to the box you put on the road with that address on it, but more important, the location is what shows up on the 911 dispatcher's phone if you call with a real emergency.  They do have to know where to send a volunteer fire truck or ambulance if you need them.  Problem with the volunteer fire department is just that- since they are volunteers (and bless them all, they work hard at doing their best), they have to first get to the closest fire station, get protective gear on, crank up the trucks and water tankers (no hydrants out here), get to the property as fast as they can.... All in all, most houses and barns burn to the ground before then can mount an effective quench-and-contain on the fire.  Definitely not their fault, but just part of why our homeowner's insurance is twice what it is in the city.  Of course, our taxes are (currently) a whole lot less also, but that's changing pretty fast as the county figures out it needs more of our money to pay salaries.  Oh, well, the price of progress....

Now that you have an address, you go to the courthouse where they pull up the same topological map you've already seen once, look at the water flow nearby and relative elevation of the piece of land you plan to build on, and decide whether or not you're in a flood plain.  If you are, give up now and find another place to build: no homeowner's insurance for you or at least, not at a price you can afford.  Now if you're not going to have a mortgage (I don't do those anymore) and you're willing to take your chances and drill your own well for water, you might be able to get by, although it's not clear at this point in time whether you could get electricity piped in or not.

If you're not in a flood zone, you get a piece of paper stating that you're not which you now take to the next office in the sequence you have to visit.  Usually that's the health department which oversees percolation tests for septic fields.  No, there's no public sewer system in the county, unless you count the creeks and streams that outhouses might drain into... which means you will have a septic tank and field.  Now you might live in a county-located subdivision that has a kind-of sewer system that goes into a small treatment or dispersal system that the builder has to install before he can build his first house.  Rules on subdivisions have changed a whole lot lately, mostly for the good: who wants a couple dozen or a couple hundred house's worth of sewage draining into Black Creek or into a drainage ditch along the road?  Probably not a good idea: I was talking to the health department employee who did our perc test and was surprised to find out that, of all the places that mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus like to lay their eggs and grow their larvae, they prefer stagnant water with some raw sewage in it.  So, the lesson is simple: if you don't put in a septic field right, not only will the health department be after you but so will swarms of virus-infected mosquitoes just itching (for real) to infect your family with bad bugs.

Oh, and the perc test is an interesting one.  Used to be, back when I built the first couple of houses out here, that it actually involved testing for water percolation: dig a hole, fill it with water and see how fast it drains away.  This is a good indicator of what will happen to the outflow from your septic tank- all that not-quite-digested gray water that pours out has to have some place to go, and it better not be to the surface for the reasons described involving mosquitoes.  Turns out that there's more involved than just water drainage, as the county health agent pointed out: there's also the presence of ground-dwelling bacteria, or at least the environment that such bugs can grow in, so that they can help with the conversion of your waste water to clean water for those downstream of you.  As the agent told me, there's loam and sandy loam and sandy clay and pure red clay... the list goes on.  It seems that there are places here that just don't have any percolation: he described trying to find some place on a fifty-acre tract of land that the poor landowner wanted to build a house on: took four tries in different plots of the farm before he found a place that just barely paced.  Sometimes, he said, they just don't find a place that will support an in-ground septic field, which leads to high-tech (and you guessed it, expensive) alternatives that have to be used.  Luckily, we passed the test: on to the next office....

Which turned out to be the electric power company.  Since we didn't have any natural gas service to the nearest road, the house we're building will be all electric.  That makes the electric company happy, I guess, although they gave us brochures and folders on how to build more energy efficient homes.  We'd already planned to do that but some of the requirements laid out for their certification levels were pretty expensive: R39 insulation in the roof/ceiling which requires lots of thick batts or thick blown-in fluff or very expensive foam of some kind.  The foam is out of our price range, leaving blown-in or 10" fiberglass.  Decided to talk to the truss guy on this... although I first made my initial deposit on the electrical service to set up a site inspection.  Let's talk about that first, then trusses and framing.

The electric utility people I've dealt with over the years have been extremely helpful and friendly, and why not?  They do run a monopoly so your only alternative to buying from them is putting in solar, which costs more arms and legs than exist among the family members involved in this enterprise.  Accepting the reality of the situation, I met up with the site engineer (I guess you'd call him that) and talked over possibilities: since the house would be all electric, they'd run overhead wires for free up to the last 130' which they'd put underground.  We were about a thousand feet from the road- three poles with wire; ugly and passing through pretty heavy woods where the chance of a falling tree during a storm or one of our beloved hurricanes would mean "lights out" for some undetermined period of time.  Or we could go all-underground at the cost of $4/foot: let's see, for a thousand feet that would be... lots more than we got budgeted.  We choose overhead wires, not liking the choice much at all: 30' clearance on the right-of-way means open space we didn't want and couldn't use for tree-farming plus a fair number of trees coming down before their prime.  Guess I get to turn more of those into lumber and siding then planned.  Oh, well, such are the compromises in building a new house on un-invaded farm land.

Now the interesting part: to have electricity for the actual construction process (helps a lot to run a circ saw or cut-off saw let alone fresh coffee brewing all day...) we have to set up a temporary pole.  This means a pole (which I happened to have- never pass up the chance to acquire some pressure treated poles) plus conduit plus meter base plus cut-off box with fuses plus receptacle plus ground rod and wire.  All told, a hundred bucks or more not counting the pole... and guess what?  We can't use any of it in the actual house when it's ready for trim out.  Oh, bother, as Winnie used to say (I am trying to fix any language problems I've developed over the years since I'll be sharing work time and space with one impressionable pre-teen and lots of younger grandkids).  Ok, bought the components, will put those together today and have the pole ready to go up as soon as the electric company is ready to set poles, which brings us to a major problem: no driveway, no poles.

Seems the power company likes to use trucks to bring in and set their poles- big trucks that take up lots of space and make major impressions on soft ground, such as the "branch" that drains a small part of the farm directly in the path of our future overhead lines.  Solution: put in a culvert ($300), bring in a bulldozer to widen the path and then pack down fill dirt (dozer $450, fill dirt $960) and then the gravel on top to keep the red clay fill from becoming mud that will bog down anything on four or more wheels (two loads, $720).  Oh, and to keep the new dirt from just washing away under the gravel, we had to plant winter rye (hope it catches fast) and overcoat with 12 bales of hay ($150 total).  So now we have a path for the trucks that (hopefully) will not settle too much or slide down the branch with the next heavy rainfall (see pictures above for visuals).

Next up: back to the utility company for a meter base for the pole and to put down deposit for interim electrical service, then to the water company to put down deposit for service so we can lay pipe.  Stay tuned for more details...

[Qweaver]

It always makes me wonder how codes vary so much from place.  I've built both in Texas and West Virginia and it's like night and day.
Here in WV the power company requires that the owner put in the conduit for underground but there is no charge for the wire or hook-up labor. 
The conduit and hardware for my house service cost about $800 and for my shed service about $300.  Pretty reasonable.  Of course I was able to do my own digging or the cost would have been much higher. That's about 40% more than if I had gone above ground.  You still have to buy the service center, pay the inspector, etc., whether you go above or below.  My friend in Ohio was able to do the same thing and he was not even required to put in conduit.  Did you ask the power company if you could do it this way and avoid the $4 a foot?  The conduit costs a lot but no where near $4 a foot.  I sure like not having to deal with overhead wires.

[ljmathias]

Underground is vastly superior to having wires overhead but expensive no matter who does the work.  I've done it both ways- paid them to plant it and done the digging, conduit laying and covering myself.  Unless you own a ditchwitch or don't care about having a foot-wide hole to fill that's 3-4' deep, it's a lot more efficient to just let them do it; besides, they do it all the time and are fast and efficient at it.  When I did the big barn on our place, my son and I took on the task- he happened to have a mini-excavator at the time so we had a 12" wide hole 3 1/2-4' deep sitting open till the electric company people could come verify it was deep enough, THEN we could put in the pipe- 4" diameter and PITA to work with on long runs like this (couple hundred feet). Also, you have to leave the pipe uncovered till they inspect again (sometimes they'll do both inspections at once after the pipe is in but pray for no rain- empty conduit floats real nice).  So, you have pipe in the ground and now you wait again till you come up on their priority list to come run the wire and hook up the service.  All in all, took a couple of weeks.  When we were ready to hook up my son's house- about 130' this time from the junction box sitting next to the driveway), I bit the bullet and paid them to do it- all done and lights were on in 6 hours... sometimes time really is money, especially when a daughter-in-law and three young children are waiting to move in...

Lj

[Qweaver]

It was not nearly that hard for us.  The Elec. Company gave us a list of inspectors. When the boxes were installed and the conduit laid, the inspector came out the day I called him, looked it over,  put a sticker in the box, we back filled.  We had power two days later.  Different companies and states, different rules and results.  It sucks.  Also our conduit had to be 3" not 4".  Big difference in price

[ljmathias]

Update on the driveway: finished the fill dirt, blocked up the side downstream of the usually-dry creek to help hold the bank in place, sprinkled heavily with winter rye seed and covered with straw.  First picture below shows the finished product with a picture after of the sprouting grass- happened perfectly: day after we planted it rained but not hard enough to erode or wash the seeds away so they actually took root very fast, less than a week.





Next comes electricity: setting up a temporary power pole and watching the power line clearance cut...

Lj

[Jim_Rogers]

I'm glad to hear you and your family are moving forward. I was concerned about you when the New Years storms rolled through, but I think most of them were north of you.

I hope you make it through the expected ice storm in your area.

Jim Rogers

[ljmathias]

This thread has been dormant awhile, but not because we were. In fact, just the opposite: too busy to take time to upload pictures and write commentary.  I decided for posterity (my kids and grandkids mainly) that it was time to revitalize and re-post, so here goes....

Update on the utility poles: so we got the driveway built and I put together the utility pole that will provide the temporary service (it comes down when the house is finished and they put in the last couple hundred fit underground).  Pictures below of that useful device: not something I'll use everyday, but given the history of building on the farm (half a dozen structures so far and more to come), I'll keep this one for future use as well.







The main excitement was having the power company crew come through and "make a hole" for the lines.  After Katrina, they are now very, very strict with right of way clearance: 15' on each side of the line: OUCH!  That meant a lot of trees we wanted to keep, lots of SYP's, some nice red and white oaks, hickories which we have too many of, and a few beautiful dogwoods that had been volunteered but provided fantastic spots of white flowered emphasis in the spring.  Two problems with having the power crew cut their clearance: they don't care about stumps or trash- just leave it lay or push it to the side and get 'er done.  URGH!

First picture below is of their lead truck plowing it's way onto the farm: the invasion starts!  Second are the "scouts" who are, you guessed it, "scouting" out the path of least resistance and maximum destruction.  Well, not really: they were actually very nice about it and we negotiated the line paths to actually minimize number and type of trees lost.  Still hurt a lot, though, seeing all those decades of growing hacked down in a few hours- picture three doesn't really do it justice so I'll find some more and upload later.  Picture four is after the cutting is done, the poles set and lines strung: I've reconciled myself to the fact that I now have a whole bunch of bucking, forwarding and sawmilling to do with the downed trees.  Fortunately, it was still cold when all this happened which meant the pine beetles weren't out yet and I could get nice clean, yellow lumber from the SYP's cut.... more in the next post on that.

[ljmathias]

Ok, so the powerline went through the land like a tornado (or more appropriate to our recent history, like a hurricane) and left a lot of downed trees and tree trash.  Here are a few pictures of the right of way now free of dangerous trees that might any minute leap through the air and grab the powerline for a quick surge of electrical energy- trees need their addiction fixes too, you know; that's why so many trees land on powerlines- to feel that sudden surge of energy coursing through their veins...

There's also some more pictures of downed trees and trash laying there- strangely, it doesn't look quite as bad in the pictures as it did when we started clean up work.  Guess you had to have been there... or maybe it just looked worse to us since it was our land and our trees. :'( :'(









Amidst the mess left by the power company were a few really nice logs that had to be trimmed and skidded.  I usually try to keep logs as long as possible for skidding even though I use my medium sized farm tractor with FEL and backhoe bucket on it to do the job- not the best choice, but it's what I have and it does the trick as long as I'm careful.  I have developed a good sense of "oops, that's too heavy or I'm pulling  the wrong way" when skidding now, so I don't have nearly as many of those driving on just the front wheels experiences: I always hook to my FEL bucket and back the logs all the way to the mill- as a teacher (professor, actually) I've grown eyes in the back of my head so I can watch the students while I write on the board- helps with grandkids and skidding also but it does mean you have to keep your hair cut short to not block the view.

First picture is of a log ready for its last ride- and sorry, but no jolt of electricity for this baby to send it on with pure electrical delights.  Second shows a stack of logs ready to buck, third shows them from a different angle and forth is logs ready to become lumber.  I'll show more of the lumber piles that resulted from all the death and destruction caused by the power company (why do I keep blaming them?  I asked for it, didn't I?) but the last picture shows what the lumber coming off the mill looks like: a mix of live-edge siding and dimension lumber for framing.  I normally would NOT have cut dimension lumber- not worth my time as it's cheaper and kiln dried at the big box stores, but in this case, it was either cut into lumber or burn- waste not want not (something a mother must have said sometime in the dim, distant past- probably Mother Nature).













In line with my last comment, I've always struggled with how to salvage and use the smaller trees that get taken down, either on purpose for thinning or like here, to clear land for some purpose.  I don't usually get enough of these at any one time to make it worth while to try and market them so what do I do with these "toothpicks?"  Well, one answer which may or may not be a good one is to just peel them and let them air dry.  I did this after Katrina, for both big and small logs- cut up a lot of these to side my son's house so that worked out good since I had a pole barn for storage and drying.  In this case, what with clearing the house site footprint and having a bunch of smaller trees from the power line installation, I was whelmed: too many to peel efficiently.  I use a Kaiser blade (or swing blade) to peel fresh cut pine trees- works great and is way faster than anything else I've tried.  Only problem is, it's just like real work, and I certainly sweat like a pig (although oddly, pigs don't) and wear myself out pretty fast doing this.  So anyway, I have a pile of small logs just waiting for me to find time to finish peeling them for storage in the barn so they can dry and become something useful.  Here's a picture of a few I did manage to get peeled though- pretty at first, then the sap oozes out and the sticky stuff picks up dirt and shavings and sawdust and some black, nasty looking mold or fungus.... all in all, not to pretty on the outside (just like me, I guess) but still solid and useful on the inside (don't I wish!).





Enough fun for now- got to get to work and get something useful done today... :D

Lj

[ljmathias]

Thought I'd try the automatic uploader to see how that re-sizes pictures.  Haven't been happy with the way my pictures look- too small for my aging eyes.  Anyway, first three are of lumber from a downed white oak- sure hated to see that one go as it was just getting to the size where in a few more decades it would have turned into a really beautiful, straight-trunked tree.  Oh, well, such is progress... :'(   :-\

Last picture is more an illustration of why safety is so important- safety that comes from being aware of what you're doing, paying attention to what the logs are doing, and guarding against malicious intent.  Remember that logs are NOT your friends- they will try to roll the wrong way, twist and turn in unexpected manners and generally do whatever they can to cause you injury.  They do this, of course, to get revenge for being cut down.  You'd feel really, really bad if someone took a chainsaw to parts of your anatomy, especially if such behavior resulted in your untimely demise.  So do trees feel- a fresh cut tree knows it's in its death spiral, sap and life energy seeping from its open wounds, and its last thoughts (from a tree?) are to get back at whoever did this terrible deed. 

Problem with this white oak was, I was not the one that caused its premature termination.  All I was trying to do was salvage body parts, just like we do organ harvesting from the just deceased (ugh!  Not something I care to think about too much- who would want parts from an old, beat up white male anyway?).  So anyway, as I was realigning the white oak log onto my LT40 loader arms, it twists in my hands (yeah, I "forgot" to use a tool) and leaped down onto my foot.  Fortunately for me, nothing was broken, just lots of bruising and soreness that lasted about a week.  Well, lesson learned: think like a log from now on and try to imagine what it would do to cause the most damage to this pesky human that just caused its death, then prevent it from doing that... yeah, right: think like a tree?  My grandson already believes that of me, no reason to reinforce his faulty view of his wise and all-knowing Pop...   :D :D











More later...

Lj

[thecfarm]

Are you some relation to magicman?  :D  Ouch!

[ljmathias]

No, but I do admire him greatly- works smart and hard, communicates effectively and often, and as far as I know, he hasn't lost any limbs yet... unlike the trees he converts.

Lj

[ljmathias]

Footings...

are a PITA, but necessary.  As they say (whoever "they" happens to be), if your foundation is good, the rest is easy... well, may not actually be true, but no question, square, flat and plumb sure helps.  First, though, you have to dig trenches for your footings.  Oh, and just to back up and explain, we're building a raised slab, which is very much like a slab on grade but with a little bit of the "raised" as in "raised foundation with crawlspace."  No crawlspace here.  Instead, we build up a block wall that will be filled with concrete and rebar when the slab is poured, which rests on fill dirt specially brought in and packed down for it.  I like this kind of foundation because, first of all, it's fairly easy (although not as easy as a pier foundation with beams sitting on the piers), it locks all the rough plumbing underground and away from what freezing temps we do have, and most important, pretty well blocks all access for termites, bugs and small rodents, all of which we have aplenty here in the Deep South... especially termites.  Oh, and the most important reason of all: I can pretty much do a foundation like this by myself, although in this case, I didn't.... whatever.     "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy," someone famous once said; same holds true for building a house.  Success depends on adapting and overcoming, just like fighting a war, although with a house, it's Mother Nature to some extent, your own poor planning and irrationality, and in my case, pure stupidity.  We all do stupid things, just some of us do them so much better...












So the pictures above show rough trenches dug carefully with the backhoe on my tractor, "fixed up" trenches that have been cleaned out using the hand tools shown, and below is one the pine stumps that had to be dug out because they were right in the way of my trenches.  I had cleverly aligned the foundation footprint to miss all the stumps left from clearing just the area where (I thought) the house would set... but No!  Daughter has other ideas: she wants the house turned on its axis to face the meadow and stream better.  I had lined it up so the front porch faced almost due south, allowing both early morning and evening sun.  She was right, though, (and I'll not tell her unless she reads this- don't want her getting a big head) as the view is much better now that it's turned about 20 degrees.

Anyway, digging the trenches is careful work with a tractor, or at least as careful as you (I) can be moving a few tons of metal around already dug trenches in pretty soft dirt that wants to cave in with a good breeze.  Following that is backbreaking handwork to square up and clean out before putting in rebar.... oh, and digging out stumps.  Did I say there were stumps involved?  See pictures below for size and shape.  Couldn't pull them out with either the backhoe or FEL on the tractor- God made pine trees to have a deep, tough taproot to keep them from blowing over in a hurricane, which is why they mostly snap off somewhere in the middle of the best log possible so you get shorter lumber than you want.   >:(  Anyway, used the backhoe to dig all around the stump, break what roots I could, then hand shovel out enough to get one of the chainsaws down in the pit so I can run a good chain on each stump.  Finally get enough of a cut to break it off and pull it out, then backfill enough to allow a form to be built to hold the footing soon to be poured.  More on the pour in the next post- got to go to work now.

Lj

[beenthere]

Thanks for doing the extra on the pics. Much better on the eyes.
Enjoying them.

And take care of the foot (both of them... )

[ljmathias]

Thanks, Beenthere- foot's much better now although still hurts if I put weight on it wrong- probably something to live with from now on, along with all the other accumulated aches, pains and mental deficits I've built up over the years.

Picture uploader is fantastic- takes whatever you have (except for one picture I tried that gave the error "File too long for uploader"??) and they come out the right size and much easier to see.  For those of you who haven't yet learned to use it- spend the little bit of time it takes and show us what you've got or done. 8)

Lj

[ljmathias]

Live Edge Siding

I thought it might be useful for those who have thought about making this type of siding to see how one person does it.  What I'll describe today is just the conversion of SYP logs into green siding.  Later on as we continue the house building effort we'll get to applying sealer and finish, cutting and installing, and putting on final protective coat.  Timing for this first step is crucial, and falls into the category of "When's the best time to plant a tree?" question; answer: "40 years ago..."  When's the next best time?  Now, of course, so now it is since I didn't have the foresight to get this done last year for two reasons: didn't know I'd be building a house this year, and certainly didn't know which trees would be prematurely terminated by the power company in their quest to sell us electricity.

First step, of course, is the right logs.  Best for me are those around 10" or more in diameter.  We're going to use minimum of 8" boards with 6" reveal, so even with variations of an inch or so, we get nice coverage and an acceptable "view" of the finished house.  Picture below shows a new batch of bucked logs ready to be sacrificed on the alter of sawmilling.  Notice that some of these are considerably bigger than 10" which is alright.  This just means more careful slabbing to remove bark and a board or two that gets trimmed down to 8" or so later in a separate step.  The goal is to end up with a cant that has three clean cut sides and one with bark still on it (picture below).  There are two competing characteristics which depend on log diameter.  If the log is pretty big, then the cant you get will have nice straight live edges with little curve to them.  This kind of cant is easier to cut and gives more uniform boards but they are much more "boring" to look at when finally put on the house.  Much more visually appealing are cants from smaller diameter logs (more curve in the live edge that results) or better yet, cants from the upper portion of the log where lots of branches have been trimmed.  Leaving a little of the "branch stump" on the rough side of the cant makes for really interesting live edges on the boards- lots of things to attract your attention and break up the symmetry of board after board flat and straight.  If you want that symmetrical look, cut all four sides of your cant square and flat, make all your boards exactly the same width and you have a nice lap siding that is uniform- not for me, however.




Ooops, something wrong with the picture inserter- I'll see what I can figure out or may have to ask Jeff for help.  Got the pictures to my gallery but can't get them in using the two-click method... put them in above using the copy-and-paste method; let's see if that works....

Lj

[ljmathias]

Ok, I'll pick up this topic of making live edge siding again... hope the picture inserter works better but if not, I'll go ahead and use the cut and paste method.

I should back up and give an overview of the process I use:
-First, find "interesting" logs of about 10-12" in diameter; interesting meaning with some branch stubs left on
-Second, buck to length: I vary this to give the siding a more unsymmetrical look, with some logs 8' or so and others up to 20' in length.  Depends in part on how long a piece of siding I'm willing to man-handle and what distances there are between windows, doors or along a wall: if you can stretch a single piece of siding from one corner of the house to the other, this is ideal- no board-to-board edges for thermal expansion and water ingress
-Third, make a three sided cant with one side bark-on, set for even multiples of desired lumber thickness in the flat-to-flat dimension (I use 4/4 scale) and about 8-9" across (this will be the width of your siding)
-Fourth, cut boards to thickness (4/4), scrape off sawdust from both sides, trim off bark so beetles don't infest while it dries
-Stack lumber on FIL, move to drying pile, sticker and cover
-Let air dry for a year or so (won't happen here) or kiln dry; I see no reason to kiln dry lumber for exterior use that is free of bugs (this is all fresh cut, no beetles and kept clean and covered and away from termites)
-Trim each board as you install, seal coat both sides and put up wet
-Finish house, wait a month and apply top-coat to all exposed siding and sealed wood

Ok, now back to steps with pictures.  We've got the cant squared up, and then cut the first board off: it's got sawdust on both sides (bad for fungus growth) plus bark on one edge: picture below shows a typical board slanted off the mill with sawdust being removed by scraping with a piece of busted sawblade (I used to break a lot of blades on my LT30 manual; none so far on my LT40: why?).  Next picture shows bark removal with a kaiser blade: it peels right off, takes about 30 seconds for a board, then load clean board onto FIL (picture in a previous post).








Great!  The double-click inserter is working again...
Shown below are a couple of pictures of stickered and stacked siding getting ready to do nothing while it dries some before we put it up.  Ideally, it should be equilibrated to the humidity of the house location, and here in the Deep South, that's about 100% most of the year, most days.  Major concern is ability for wood surface AND edges to soak up sealer just before install.  As long as it's "some dry" the sealer works fine but drier is better.  You may notice some of the boards have more branch stubs left on which makes the siding much more interesting: this is one application of rough sawn lumber where you (or at least I) don't want all board edges straight, and actually provides a use for the upper part of a SYP that has most of the branches on it.  Our pines tend to grow very straight and tall, with most of the trunk self-pruned and free of branches- boring  but makes for great boards and beams.  The upper third or fourth is where the branches are, and it's easy to just leave that part for the burn pile... except when you want (or can sell) live-edge siding: do I smell money here? Oh, well, man does not live by bread alone... although having money to buy bread is sure nice.







More about siding later when we start sealing and putting it up.  I realized the other day, though, that I don't have nearly enough siding cut.  Did a rough calculation (best kind for rough cut lumber) and came up needing about 1200-1400 sq ft of siding.  For a 6" reveal, a 12' board cut at 8" (roughly) will cover about 6 sq ft.  So... I need about 200 12' boards or the equivalent.  My stack in the picture is about 12' long and 4' wide.  With space between boards, that's about 3' of board surface wide times 12' long or 36 sq ft per layer: that means about 32-40 layers.  Doing it based on number of boards per layer (5) I come up with 40 layers.  My stack of siding only has about 20 layers in it: URGH!  This means over the next week I have to take down a half dozen trees in addition to the ones that the power company "gave" me. :'( :'(  I hate cutting down my own trees in such small lots, but can't justify buying a whole truck load right now (can't find a logger willing to bring me just one anyway so it's a moot point).  So the point of this part: more work to do, which I guess is pretty much a constant state of affairs till the house is done.

Lj

[ljmathias]

footings and foundation walls

Ok, so in between digging trenches and getting weather I could count on to pour footings and get blocks laid, I did the tree-to-lumber conversion.  Now it's back to the trenches and finish the footings.  Most of a day forming up a couple of spots where the ground dipped a little too low and I needed form boards to hold the concrete in plus lay rebar, wire it together and put it on saddles for the pour.  Upstart of all this was a couple of rough nights trying to sleep with a really sore, aching back... and did I say it hurt, too?  I hate drugs (all kinds) but ended up taking aspirin- helped enough to sleep.  Sadly, I lost the pictures of the rebar and the concrete trucks working their way close to the trenches for the pour.  Also had a pain with that- my eldest son was home for a visit from Maryland where he captains our 1939 wooden sail boat for charters of up to 16 people.  Anyway, my other son (the plumber) got tied up and couldn't help till later so it was just the two of us plus a little help from the driver.  Got the first 8 yards in and more or less smooth and at the level of the grade stakes (carefully hammered into the sub-soil to a depth where their tops at right at where the top of the footings should be so that an even number of layers of blocks brings the height up to the right level). I foolishly calculated the amount of concrete I'd need: came up with 14 yards and foolishly told the concrete super that was what I'd need.  Should have said "let us finish the first load and we'll call in amount for the second" which would have given us time to smooth what we'd poured, put in rebar to anchor the block wall and estimate how much more concrete we'd need... so there we were, just finishing up the first pour when in roars the second truck all hot and bothered to dump his load.  Wow, did we scramble then!  Concrete, like time, waits for no man: pour it in your forms or it gets dumped somewhere.  Can't leave it in the truck too long or you have a very expensive specialized piece of equipment that isn't much good for anything anymore.

Well, we did it, although we were a little low in a couple places (only an inch) but NOT high anywhere which block layers absolutely hate- you have to cut every block in the bottom layer when that happens.  Other problem was we had to hurry and shove in our tie bars (rebar spanning from the footing up inside the soon-to-be block wall that when filled with concrete will form a solid structure that will resist motion in any of the three directions that we're normally concerned with).  Since we didn't have time to re-string the batter boards, we missed the inside of the about-to-be-laid block wall in a few sections and made it real difficult in others since the rebar was actually where part of a block should be, meaning more work for the block layer.  Such is life and the joy of being a general contractor doing too much of the grunt work...    :P

Sorry to be so slow with the pictures- I know, "we like pictures..."  but had to get all that off my chest first.   First picture below shows pallets of blocks we had delivered and the second, more stacks plus some of the poured footing.  Not shown is the pallet of cement for the mortor.  All told, about $900 for the blocks, $1300 for the concrete and almost $2000 for the rebar, rebar grade stakes, three rolls of remesh for the slab to be, and wire ties, saddles for the rebar to sit on and thick polyethlene to put down below the slab to keep moisture out.







Not easily seen in the pictures are the step-downs for the footings.  Because of the grade slope from no blocks at the highest point of the porch slab down to six blocks at the edge of the house, there were lots of step-downs.  These are where you put in a wooden "dam" to hold the concrete in the upper level from continuing to pour down hill into a lower level exactly 8" below the upper one.  The idea is, a layer of blocks laid on the bottom level will have a layer on top that lines up perfectly with the upper level footing... obvious once someone explains it to you.  These steps make forming a lot easier, since almost all of your footing concrete is just below grade and no wooden forms or stakes to hold them in place are needed.  These also save a fair amount of concrete since you don't have to form above grade and back fill with concrete.  

So anyway, we did get the footings pretty near to where they needed to be and a couple days later, the block layer and his crew show up at 7 am (first picture below).  Almost had a major delay: he thought I was ordering the sand for morter and I thought he was... luckily I checked in with him day before the job, and the gravel and sand trucker was able to squeeze in a load first thing in the morning.  He got his equipment unloaded and set up (pics below) while I waited for sand back at the other side of the creek.  Dumped the load where we were making a playground for the grandkids, and then I hauled FIL loads over for them to mix with- worked out great: no extra sand laying around at the worksite (not good for future grass and scaffolding support) and the grandkids got a great new place to play.  

The series of pictures that follow show the first blocks laid at the corners of the deepest (tallest) wall- these are used to set strings for rows in between the corners that are built up in rapid succession.  They built the walls at 90 degrees to this first, tallest wall, then connected the ends at the shallowest part, then finished up with the partial walls that will help frame in the back porch slab.

































Six hours after they started, with time in the day still for a late lunch, the foundation walls were up.  Below is one picture showing the finished walls, followed by one of me thinking about the days and days of back-breaking labor I'd missed by having professionals do the job for $840- best money I'd spent yet on the house, though certainly not the last.  Oh, and the last picture shows me and two of my work-horses: my tractor with FEL and backhoe and the old F250 I'm using to haul supplies.  My "good" truck is 4 years newer than this one, a '95 F150 long bed, which my son is driving right now because we can't figure out the problem with getting fuel to his diesel F250 work truck which is also a '95.  One thing about a Ford truck: you have to work hard to kill one, although they can be frustrating and occasionally expensive to keep running... at least ours are paid for.









Well, the foundation walls are up.  Now to brace them and fill the new "hole" we've made with good red southern clay to support the slab.  Then we'll put down the plastic sheeting, rebar and remesh, and bring in concrete and finishers to pour the slab.  The fun never stops! :D :D

Lj

[pineywoods]

DanG, LJ, you building right in the middle of a pine thicket.  I see all them tall skinny pine saplings and thin..ice storm, look out roof  ;D

[ljmathias]

Good eyes, Piney, but the trees aren't as close to the house as they look (mostly) and they're pretty small.  Problem is that trees, like grandkids, grow up and get big.  It's such a beautiful location, with the house nestled into the pine grove that we can't bring ourselves to clear it off for safety in the next hurricane (oh, one will come, it's just a matter of time).  We will be thinning the grove, though, to free up canopy for better growth.  The shade is wonderful, though, especially with summer coming on- I'll be framing and roofing and all the other stuff in the heat of the day- temps are hovering in the 80's right now and our hope is that summer waits just a few more weeks.   :D

Lj