Alaska Cabin Progress

[fishpharmer]

Its coming along nicely, all downhill from here (the build ;)).

[PlicketyCat]

Now if this melt will just drain!!  Lake Wardle and the Slushy Quagmire have returned around the tent; and there are 4 reasonably substantial areas of the drive to the cabin that are deep enough that you're pretty much fording a creek if you're on foot (one is so deep I flooded my boots -- brrrrrrr!) and you spray everywhere going through on the ATV. But, for the most part, right around the cabin is draining a whole lot better than around the tent, so it looks like we did succeed in finding the "high ground" on our mostly flat acreage. Or maybe it was just colder this spring allowing the subsoil to warm up a little more before the surface snow all melted. In any case, it will be extremely nice to do some interior finish work for a change because that's where I do my best work... forget all that heavy lifting stuff, I'm the detail person  

Once the drywall is hung, I'm kicking hubby and puppy out of the cabin, cranking the radio and getting into the zone... on a good day without interruptions I should be able to get both stories taped and floated, and come back with a scratch coat as long as it's warm enough inside for the mud to dry. Heck, I'm not above cranking up the woodstove to surface-of-the-sun temps and mudding in my scivvies if that's what it takes to "git'er dun" faster.   Skim & prime is normally one day, and I can usually get at least 2 coats of paint done in day as well... the tough bit is going to be sanding the exposed loft floor joists to get them cleaned up enough to poly or paint out (still haven't decided which, depends on how they look). I'm not as fast when working overhead with power tools, but the painting should go fast once the sanding is done.

The hubby gets to come back into the cabin to help lay the floor, but puppy and her big muddy paws will banished from inside the cabin until that third coat of poly is down and fully cured!

[Raider Bill]

Great looking cabin!

What about electrical outlets? I don't see any in the walls.
Wouldn't you do them before drywall?

[PlicketyCat]

We didn't want any electrical in the walls to minimize thermal bridging and air/vapor infiltration. We'll have one through-wall infiltration for generator/solar power inlet point (no grid out here) and the exterior circuit with the porch lights and GFCI outlets. All the interior electrics will be "surface" runs behind the baseboards and trim mold (outlets and switches, too). We're using hand-profiled 2x6 for the moldings with a channel routed out of the back for wiring and cut outs for outlets and switches on the exposed walls, and our loft joists are open so running the wire for overhead lights in the pantry and living room is simple and easy to hide.

We've got a lot of floor to ceiling built-ins to maximize our vertical storage space without eating into our floor space, so it's easy to run wiring behind those and wire outlets directly into them or hide a vertical run from a switch up to the overhead lights.

If we need to add to the system later or reconfigure the outlets, we don't have to open the walls at all. If at some point we want to raise the height of the outlets above floor (or cabinet) level or move a switch away from a door/window frame, we can easily add in some surface chases and boxes for those extensions.

The only somewhat tricky part is going to be hiding the wiring for the 3-way light hanging over the stairwell... but that's only one wire at the end of the lighting run, so we might be able to hide most of it with cove molding in the corner of the wall/roof in the loft and behind a bullnose extension around the floor opening. Then we'll put the switches into the door casing (downstairs) and the window casing (upstairs).

We're off-grid and don't use much electricity anymore, so it's not like we'll have a ton of outlets ... we've been living with 3 lights and 4 outlets (with two power strips as needed) here in the wall tent for 2 years and the cabin isn't much bigger

[Raider Bill]

Yep I think you've got this well thought out!! 8) 8)

I hope to be up your way next summer 2012 or 13. Fixing the get my motorcycles picture taken at the Arctic Circle sign.

[PlicketyCat]

- figuring things out is what I do all winter when it's too cold & dark to do anything and all summer when it's too bright to sleep at night ;D  Wait until I start on the built-ins and pantry shelving... yeah, I'm obsessive!

Now, if only my trade production skills could match my planning and design skills  : :'(

The Arctic Circle sign on the Dalton Hwy is just up the road a piece from our turn-off  (Elliott takes a left toward our place and Dalton begins/continues straight at Livengood). It's a fun drive in the summer, but expect some lovely bruises from flying gravel if you're on a bike since it's unpaved after Livengood in both directions! Actually, the entire AlCan to Cold Foot tour would be awesome on a bike in the summer if you can stand being pelted with gravel and have a high clearance cycle... but your kidneys probably won't recover for a while

[Raider Bill]

Well Sarah Palin says the whole road is paved....... :D

[PlicketyCat]

Yeah, and she would know because she can see Russia from her outhouse!  :D  (too bad she can't see Korea -- DOH!   )

Trust me... the Dalton is not fully paved. There are paved portions (like around Cold Foot), but the majority is still gravel haul road just like the Elliott west of Livengood. It's one of those roads that's actually smoother in the winter after you get a good 6-12" hard pack of snow on it  ;)

[Raider Bill]

Your description better fits what many others have told me than hers.  ;)

[jim king]

Plickitey:

That was a very good response to the people who have views about your life.  Just keep going.  You have proven in the last couple of years that you are of an elite group as those who came to America and had no idea where the they were going and generated the until now the greatest country in the history of the world.  Very few exist in the world today.
Do you think that Palin could do what you have done ???????????????????????  NO

Keep going girl and live your dream.  The world needs more like you.

I hope Raider Bill gets to meet you.  It will change his life.   Give him a good roasted porkypine when he gets there, he will never forget the experience.

[D Hagens]

The only somewhat tricky part is going to be hiding the wiring for the 3-way light hanging over the stairwell... but that's only one wire at the end of the lighting run, so we might be able to hide most of it with cove molding in the corner of the wall/roof in the loft and behind a bullnose extension around the floor opening. Then we'll put the switches into the door casing (downstairs) and the window casing (upstairs).

We're off-grid and don't use much electricity anymore, so it's not like we'll have a ton of outlets ... we've been living with 3 lights and 4 outlets (with two power strips as needed) here in the wall tent for 2 years and the cabin isn't much bigger

I've run across this problem before on cabins I've built up country where they've wanted the wireing done the same as the two of you.
What I did when I needed to run wires up a wall was to take some square stock, router the inside to allow the wire and just for looks I would round off the two outside edges then pin or glue it to the wall.
BTW I've been impressed with your progress and you guys should be verry proud

[PlicketyCat]

I've gotten to the point where I let people rant on about how I'm doing things wrong if they aren't going to listen to why I opted to do them that way in the first place. Notice that a lot of folks don't understand the why behind a lot of the building codes and methods, so any deviation makes them poop their pants  :  The way I figure it, we rarely have guests so the only folks to get hurt if something doesn't really work is us anyway, so no point getting any knickers in a knot!

After fighting with the drywall on the gambrel ceiling, I think I'm going to end up putting some sort of coped/beveled 1x4 (or 1x6 to better match the base & casings) trim at the pitch break and ridge to hide where our site-built (in sub-zero temps) rafter trusses aren't exactly the same size and spacing or even remotely plumb in some cases  :-[ 

If we do that, we'll have plenty of space to hide any ceiling light fixtures upstairs. I can run the end of the 3-way behind the bull nose at the stairwell and up to the window casing behind the fake newel, and then up to the peak and over and just darn well cheat and hang it from a pretty swag chain across over the stair case. Then I only have to put a bit of matching fake trim on the south wall so that it all looks intentional. It's perfectly acceptable to fudge it as long as it's symmetrical and looks like you meant it to be that way all along ROFL 

I actually prefer square trim, with the corners eased over a bit, so much better than ornate profiles. But I figure I would leave the option for something more decorative in case hubby finds out that he absolutely loves playing with the router (or I need more alone time inside to complete the finishing and need to find something else to occupy him - hehehe). So much of the cabin is straight, square and utilitarian that it might be nice to have just a little bit of ornamentation somewhere to spruce it up... especially since hubby won't let me paint with bold, saturated colors this time (I miss my lime and magenta bedroom :'( )  But I may just save the purdy stuff for the cabinet hardware and window treatments where a little goes a long way.

And my "crown mold" in the living room with all those exposed floor joists on the ceiling?!?  Dyed 1" hemp rope attached with hot glue... you didn't actually think I was going to mess with all those miters did you  ;D

[Kansas]

We fought trying to hide wires in my log home. Eventually got it done but can't say I have as good of light some places as I would like. Then we had a customer build a home using a lot of hackberry beams, exposed upstair floors. He didn't try to hide the wiring. It actually turned out looking nice. He used conduit. He even has his heating/cooling pipes exposed. I think I would have done things differently if I had seen his before I built my house. Would have been way easier.

[Raider Bill]

I really like how you are thinking things out! Your surface mounting of the elec. makes sense for the thermal bridging affect. Never thought of it that way.

When I built my Tenn house it was on cocktail napkins without a whole lot of thought really I guess. I'd do a bunch of things different.

My friend who built his log cabin on my property did surface mount elec. using small branches routered out to cover the wires and wood block for the boxes. Looks very nice.

Note to self, Add kidney belt to trip gear. ;D

[PlicketyCat]

Lighting was a big consideration in our cabin plans since we've been living with a single CFL overhead centered in the tent for 2 years and knew we needed a light directly over the stove, and directly above the pantry shelves, and directly above the counter... so tired of trying to do stuff in a shadow cast by the central light!

We're going to install a large track bar in the joist bay above the wood stove... it has 4 CFL pendants on it that we can angle around to get the stove and the LR built-ins lit. There will be 2 CFL overheads in the pantry (one for each aisle), and we got 6 halogen under-cabinet pucks for the kitchen counter. All the overheads are centered between the joists, so it won't be difficult to tuck the wire against the joist and then paint it out or use a chase/conduit to hide it. Our current CFL pendant will become the stairwell light and we'll reuse one of our current porch pendants for the overhead upstairs and that wiring can be hidden with molding. We also have a vanity light in the bath, but don't have to hide anything on that one since it's on an interior wall. 

You can't have too much lighting when you only have 2-4 hours of daylight in the winter

I also found some nifty wireless LED medallions that are on battery and remote control, and have been thinking about mounting those on the staircase like running lights at the movie theater. Since they're LED and not on our main power, we can leave those on continuously for several months if we want to so my spasticness doesn't make me take a header down the steps since the stair case is a teeny bit steep.

Lots of stuff will eventually get tucked up in those joist bays... retractable clothesline for winter laundry, fold-down drying racks for towels and wet gloves; fold-down shelves/bins/hammocks for baking pans and basically anything that I don't use all the time that is fairly light and will fit in the 14" width and 11" depth. Can't afford to waste any storage space in a tiny cabin, and it's best to save your cabinets and shelves for heavy stuff and stuff you use frequently... and definitely definitely keep as much as possible off the floor and out of sight

Our cabin design started out on a take out napkin, moved to notebook paper, then graph paper, then Visio (plan view), then SketchUp for the 3D model with copious calculations and materials lists in Excel spreadsheets. Both of us used to design software for a living so detailed specs and iterative plan reviews are second nature ;)  And, I'll admit, I'm way OCD about it, too... whenever I get frustrated and stressed, I Internet window shop for building materials, organizational products, and woodworking plans and it makes me happy and calm again. I get a lot of good ideas that way, so only hubby is complaining .

[Thehardway]

Plick,

Noticed from the initial pictures on your blog that you originally planned for a round house.  I started out at the same point.  I wanted a octagon shaped house.  I ended up ruling it out because of all the inefficiencies in material and cutting.  Unfortunately plywood doesn't come in triangles.  I still want to do a octagon or round addition to the house later on.

I am on my bazillionth set of plans.

I have a couple questions. If I was building a small cabin on a solar and battery based system off grid electrical system I would wire for DC power and use strictly LED for lighting. What is your logic for inverting and use CFL's? What is your backup plan for power if your inverter fails?

Did you ever have a well drilled?  I saw that as a to do item on your wish lists but don't remember you saying anything about it. 


I get my first glimpse of Alaska in July but not going near as far north as you are.  We are staying in Kenai.

[Raider Bill]

I wondered about the halogen lights myself don't they draw a lot of juice?

[Thehardway]

Bill,

Halgen lights are 10-20% more efficient than standard incandescents, primarily because you get more light per watt so you can use a lower wattage bulb to get same lumens.  CFL's can be up to 75% more efficient.  CFL's do have some drawbacks although they have improved in recent years.  They usually take a few minutes to reach full lumen output so they are not efficient for short term lighting application.  There color rendering is not typically as good as incandescent or halogen especially in the economy models.  They don't last as long as they are supposed to if switched on and off frequently.

LED lighting is certainly the most efficient and uses 50% less than even CFL's.  Efficiency is even greater if operated on DC power as nothing is lost to heat (AC powered LED bulbs typically have a heat sink to dissipate conversion loss heat.

LED's have some limitations in color rendering and in light distribution but they are very efficient and can last a very long time.  They will operate on low voltage cabling straight from batteries or solar panels and need no inverter.  I am putting some in my house for emergency use as task lighting.  I'm thinking specifically about the stair's, toilet, and rooms without windows.

Both CFL's and Halogen light's put off UV light.  I was wondering if this was good in Alaska for minimizing  effects of Seasonal Depression.

 

[Gary_C]

That's very good information and there is one thing I would add. Halogens get very hot in operation so there is increased risk from fires. So halogen fixtures need to be well insulated and kept away from flammable materials.

And that brings up another thought. PlicketyCat I hope you have put your OCD skills to good use for fire protection. Do you have some sort of water tank for emergencies or do you just rely on dry powder? And remember that dry powder extinguishers have to be serviced regularly or they can become useless when the powder settles in the bottom and gets hard. You need to set up a regular schedule to upend those dry powder extinguishers and shake the dickens out of them to keep the powder loose and ready for use.

[Raider Bill]

I guess I always equated the heat of halogens with high amp draw.

And thanks Gary I just went out to the shop and tipped all my fire Ext's upside down and tapped them with a rubber mallet a bit.

[jim king]

I don´t know the answer to this question and that is why I am asking.  When you have a wood burning stove inside a well built building such as this how do you assure that the fire does not consume all the oxygen in the building.  Do you need an outside air intake of some kind to the stove ?  It seems to me as you could wake up dead with no fresh air source.

[Raider Bill]

Jim, I think most new stoves have a outside air intake provision. What you ask is very true with today's air tight dwellings. My Tenn house is close and you can actually see the draft difference  when opening a house door in the morning after having everything shut down for the night. Although I'm not in any danger of suffocating with 2000 sq ft to draw from and some leaks to address it is a concern .

[PlicketyCat]

Trying to answer in order

We still want the round house, when it rains money we'll build it as "The Big House". Biggest issue for us was sourcing the straw bales since AK isn't exactly the grain growing capital of the world. To get the amount we needed, in the condition we needed, we would have had to ship them in from Canada or Idaho/Washington... $$$. Plus, as mentioned, complicated cuts and wasted materials... the roof and support structure would have taken forever with a circular saw in the bush! There's so many out buildings we need, I'm sure one of them will end up octagonal... probably the one we build with cordwood masonry or vertical log.

Halogens do use more power than CFL and LED, but less than incandescent. All the overheads that get used most & longest are CFL; but CFL put off ugly light that's bad for color rendering and detail work, so we have halogen for ultra-bright true-color task lighting under the cabinets for the counter just when we're using it.

CFL and LED are both a little hard to read by and do detail work, they make everything a tiny bit fuzzy (at least for us) and you end up with eye strain and a headache after awhile. DC LED are the most efficient lighting, but running a bunch of DC wiring through the house is $$$. We will have battery operated LED emergency lights (like those amber medallions on the staircase) and the light in the power shed once we get our panels and turbine set up.

LED is also unidirectional light, which makes it good for spot lights, but even the new multi-diode imitation "bulb" LED units don't throw true omni-directional light (except Quantum Dot -- and they're $100 a bulb!)... so they're out for overheads. You can achieve almost true color rendering with LED, but you have to combine the right numbers of red, green & blue diodes to get the right white light (there are no real white LED diodes)... most manufacturers of the bulb kind haven't quite gotten it right IMO, and the light is always vaguely purple/blue which is OK as long as you aren't doing something where color render is important.

Our porch lights are going to either be incandescent or halogen... CFL doesn't work in the cold, LED doesn't throw the light wide or far enough to be effective for a porch light (security light, maybe). But, again, these aren't going to be on all the time so we can deal with the big draw. Heat build up is so not an issue for the porch lights since we only need them in the fall-spring when it's below freezing outside at night. We don't really light in the summer when it's above freezing since the days are so long.

Lighting with UV is important for Seasonal Affective Disorder, Vitamin D production, and planting seedlings indoors in the winter CFL and tube fluorescent is good for that. Bright & natural spectrum lamps, at least a couple, are also good because they help simulate daylight hours and keep our eyes and brains happy... CFL & LED aren't as good for that, since their light is "dingy".

We haven't gotten our well dug yet, but may this summer if plans work out. For now, we're still hauling water from the public well in Manley. But we will have a 200 gallon tank in the loft where it will stay unfrozen and won't require a pump to use (just a little transfer pump once to get it up there from the truck tank).

We're relying on extinguishers at the moment, and we do get them serviced regularly. We have one by the wood stove, one in the kitchen, one in the pantry (in case the generator goes up in flames on the back porch), one by the electrical cabinet in the loft, and one by the bed since it's handy for the chimney. And then we have a few for outdoors in the garage and equipment/fuel shed.

We are planning to dig a pond and let that fill up naturally with melt water. That will give us at least 30k gallons for firefighting and we'll get the huge GPM pump with it's own engine for the fire hose. We might luck out and get a big/fast enough well to supply a fire hose in an emergency, but I'm not counting on it.  Once the well is dug, we'll be burying 1000 gallon drinking water tank to save on the pump cycling and power draw, but that won't be near enough volume or pressure for any serious firefighting.

We're more concerned about forest fire than house fire, but are taking precautions for both. Clearing the trees from around the house and proper fuel storage is the priority. The house is pretty darn fire retardant with the heavy posts & beams and the blown cellulose insulation and we won't have any carpeting and limited upholstered items and drapery. We kept the clearance around the wood stove about a foot wider than necessary, and it's freestanding in the middle of the room not up against any walls or fixtures. We also sweep the chimney regularly and several times during the heating season. We also have the emergency roll-out window ladders for upstairs just in case.

We did purchase the outdoor air intake kit for our stove, but are waiting to see if the cabin is really airtight enough to need it since our outdoor air is actually cold enough to put a fire out in the winter and could lead to substantial heat loss in the firebox and cabin. But we are concerned about waking up dead so we have combo smoke/CO/O2 sensor alarms on both floors. We also have a temperature alarm that goes off if it's less the 50F in the house... hypothermia is another way to wake up dead.

Pant Pant Pant -- did I answer everything?  ;D

[jim king]

Can´t see that you have missed a thing yet.  You are certainly well organized and in order.  I ask the question about the stove  as I remember as a kid the ice fishing house needed to have the door opened up every so often.  The house I grew up in had no problem with air infiltration. 8)

[PlicketyCat]

Now I'm just trying to figure out the porches. We eventually want a wraparound on all 4 sides, but we must have the E & W porches on to finish the cabin roof.

So, the question is, do we bite the bullet and at least set the posts and build the roof for the N & S porches at the same time, or can I figure out a way to add them later without a lot of extra work and messing up the roof line?! If we build them now, we'll have to take cash from something else, but there's no sense in saving today only to have it cost a whole lot more to do it tomorrow.

Also beginning to throw around ideas for the driveway. There's a few low places that become bogs or creeks during break up. They aren't exceptionally wide or deep, but I've got to figure out whether to fill them and trench the water to a drywell (or our eventual pond), put in culverts, or bridge over them... ack!  They all have their problems in our climate and conditions. But we have to do something or else we're going to end up sunk to the running boards in mud every spring. The cheapest solution requires the most work, and the easiest solution requires the most money  :(