20x32 A frame cabin Central KY

Started by EaglesSJ, July 23, 2010, 10:39:15 PM

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Don_P

I'll be a wet blanket... Get something up to triangularize the piers before winter. We have mud, wind, frost, snow load... this is the trying time on the piers. I had been watching a barn for the past 15 years and commented on it here this past winter. It fell the day the frost went out.  Do anything to cross brace it and then do what you gotta do, just don't leave the bugs under there for warm weather, rake all the bark and junk out. A day of yard birds in the spring would about sterilize it under there.

poppy

I'll also be a wet blanket.

First, the firewood is not going to help or hinder the piers.  I agree with others; don't stack it under the cabin.  Use a tarp.

Second, even with bracing, that cabin wants to go downhill.  It will eventially settle and/or slip or creep down.  The combination of gravity and water plus add some breeze from mother nature and something is going to move.  Take a close look at your trees in the area; they want to grow vertically, but soil creep will tilt them and they will straighten themselves by bending vertical again.

Whatever you do, divert surface water as far away from the foot print as possible.  That requires an uphill swale or french drain or something.  A shallow ditch won't do the job with heavy rain.  Even if you don't see surface water actually flowing under the cabin, it will weep in from pretty deep.

There are plenty of stable cabins/houses sitting on stilts, but their piers are well anchored with pilings or continous concrete footers and would be deeper than 3' expecially for those downhill piers that are 7' out of the ground.

I'm not trying to alarm you; just trying to look into the future at what water can do.



EaglesSJ

#127
Here are a couple threads I came across while searching for others who built on tall piers.

http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=8555.0

http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=1312.0

The cabin does not want to go down hill. It wants to push straight down in the ground because that is how gravity works. Also these piers are in basically pure sand so drainage has not been a problem. Even in the heaviest of rains. I plan on adding 3 6x6 post sunk 4 ft in the ground to the rear of the house this week and triangulate them in both directions.

EaglesSJ

Killed my first chicken and had Lindsay cook him up. We had 5 roosters to 7 hens and so the hens were getting mauled so Im gonna kill one a week until we get em thinned out a bit. Also built a storage shelf/closet area in the bathroom so she could hang up clothes this winter to let them dry since it will be too cold outside for the clothes line. Headed out tomorrow to buy the supplies for pier bracing and a front porch. Will update when complete.





IronPatriotTN

She can cook, handle a saw, and is pretty to boot.  :)

You are a lucky man. She's a keeper. lol.  ;)

Hope y'all had a nice Thanksgiving.
~Ron


Don_P

Looks like you had a fine Thanksgiving. We made the mistake of keeping the toughest rooster in the hopes that he would best defend the ladies. He considered us something to defend the flock from. After flogging both of us I was more than happy to throw him in the stew pot  d*.

I hadn't kept up with the thread for a little while. Piers resist two loads. The first concern is gravity, vertical, loads. The second is lateral, horizontal, loads. These come from wind or seismic. When I get back engineering these have been analyzed, then they go on to check various combinations of those loads. Poppy's concern of slope movement is something that can be seen as you drive around and something I look at when we get to a new site. If you see trees with "pistol butts" the slope is moving and trees are straightening up as the slope moves.

EaglesSJ

Woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow. I was more than happy to sit by this cozy little fire with the stove door open and watch the wood pop and crackle while I ate my breakfast and looked out to the white woods. Why anyone would want to live in the city is beyond me.


Redoverfarm

Quote from: EaglesSJ on November 26, 2010, 11:43:31 AM
Woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow. I was more than happy to sit by this cozy little fire with the stove door open and watch the wood pop and crackle while I ate my breakfast and looked out to the white woods. Why anyone would want to live in the city is beyond me.

I haven't figured that one out either.

phalynx



OlJarhead

Love it :)

Nice thing about chickens, they taste good, lay good tasting eggs and make great fertilizer :D

EaglesSJ

Finished my front deck and the rear support post and bracing. In the upper 20's here so it made for some cold working days.

I used 6x6 post sunk 3.5 feet in the ground and 4x4s for bracing with the exception of the middle post where I added  a couple of 2x6s to brace against the center beam. I bolted all of this together with 1/2" bolts 2 per joint.








astidham

"Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice"
— Henry Ford

ben2go

Awsome!We barely left KY before it started snowing.

EaglesSJ

went building the whole house with no troubles and was nailing in the gutter board today and it shot through my finger. went in bout where my fingernail started and went back about 3/4 of an inch. split my nail and blood sprayed all over the under side of the house like spray paint. Lindsay was scared to death cause when it happened it bled so bad it looked like i shot my finger off. i took this picture about 7 hrs after it happened and it was still bleeding through the gauze. nasty stuff. lesson learned, slow down and watch what your doing.



bayview


   Sorry to hear about the finger injury . . .    Seems that many of us on this forum have had similar experiences . . .   I think we could almost start a whole new topic with our construction injuries.

/.
    . . . said the focus was safety, not filling town coffers with permit money . . .

IronPatriotTN

Looks like that needs a couple of stitches bro.  :o

EaglesSJ

Ok so even after putting foam insulation on the pipes and then wrapping them with regular pipe insulation and sealing off under the house my pipes are still freezing daily. Any idea what I can do to prevent this from happening without using heat tape as we dont have the extra electric to pull it. thanks in advance.

Solar Burrito

Can you tuck them under the house more, then put fiberglass insulation on the outside side of them to trap a little house heat around the pipes? Not sure where your pipes are now...

So I guess it does get cold in Kentucky... ???
Small Shelters, Off Grid Living, and Other Neat Stuff http://solarburrito.com

rdzone

Where are they freezing in the house or outside?  If they are freezing outside you can always build an insulated box around them.  Is there a way you can get some of the inside heat to them just enough to keep them from freezing?  A little 12volt fan to circulate warm air around them? 
Chuck

EaglesSJ

Its supposed to be 2 degrees here sunday so yeah it gets cold. The pipes are outside under the house. about an inch below the floor joist. I think Im gonna try putting insulation in the floor and then some on the outside of them and covering it all with black plastic and seeing if it will trap a bit of heat from the house around them. I really dont know what else to do. It has been a miserable winter so far.


dug

That's a tough problem, I've been battling it for years in the two trailers on my property. I skirted and insulated them and now they only rarely freeze, if it gets below 5 degrees. I hope your idea works, but if not I was wondering if heat tape could be coupled to a thermostat so it only kicks in when the temps get critical? Might not consume too much juice that way and sure beats fixing busted pipes.


AdironDoc

Was following this thread and couldn't help noticing you two are fellow Jeep Forum members. I'm a lifetime supporter there as well and can't tell you how much time, money, and aggravation I've saved from the collective wisdom there. Seems many of us travel is similar circles.

Cheers!
DocJake (JF)


Quote from: OlJarhead on September 07, 2010, 02:56:33 PM
Quote from: havoc on September 07, 2010, 01:50:07 PM
Hey there Jeep buddy,

I followed your thread from the link off your Jeep Forum Profile.  Just wanted to say that you have done a great job on the house, and you have a very nice looking family..and how come you haven't posted your gal on the Hottest Wife/Girlfriend thread on jeep Forum??? She's a keeper.  [cool]

AS for the house, I have an idea for your water.  I was stationed in Okinawa and when we lived off base, we had water rationing.  It was during the summer and our house could only have the water on odd numbered days.  What the land lord did was put a water tank on the roof of the house. The tank had a float valve that would stop the water from being pumped in when the tank was full. It was like a toilet tank valve. When we were on the odd numbered days our tank would fill up so that on the even numbered days we would have water.

Now where I am going with this is water pressure..with the tank higher than the rest of the house we always had good water pressure for doing dishes, showering and whatnot.  Since your already pumping water up hill from your spring, why not put your water tank up on some stilts next to the house out back. As long as it's higher than your shower head and faucets you'd have good water pressure and wouldn't have to worry about an additional pump in the house tank. You could rig the level switch to kick the pump on or off for the pump at the bottom of the hill down at the spring.  If you know anything about plumbing, I do not, or you know a plumber get with him/her about pipe reduction. I believe that you could have like a 2 inch pipe coming out of the elevated tank and then reduce it down to 1 inch at each faucet to get you even more pressure.

Good Luck and keep us posted!

Your keep buddy,
Mike
havoc64

Wait, what?  I'm a JeepForum member too....I'll have to pop over there and see which thread you're chatting about :)

COOL

Also MountainDon is a Jeep nut too

MountainDon

With having off grid electric and no excess for heat tape what I believe you need is an extremely well insulated box/sleeve from cabin floor down to the ground level' possibly into the ground if the frost penetrates any distance. R-30 ???  And then you would need to be able to circulate warmth from the cabin above down into this insulated space, so you would not want that part of the floor insulated at all. A grate or a little door in the floor, that could be opened when it's very cold. Maybe a small DC fan to circulate warm air down.

Just because something has been done and has not failed, doesn't mean it is good design.

MountainDon

Maybe a hatch in the floor and room to place some heated bricks down by the pipes(heated on the wood stove). Sort of a PITA to have to change them all the time but it would help.
Just because something has been done and has not failed, doesn't mean it is good design.

EaglesSJ

Ok so I tackled a few things today. one was to wrap the pipes in ANOTHER layer of insulation and then wrap every single one from tip to tip with duct tape to make them air tight. Then after this was accomplished I insulated the floor with R19 and shoved extra pieces all around the pipes. Im hoping that this will possibly trap some heat from the house down near the pipes as they are all right below the floor joist. Then i made my heat shield for the wood stove. It is made of 2 pieces of thin aluminum sheeting and has a 1/4" spacer between the wall and the second piece of plate so I have 2 air pockets now. What are everyones thoughts on this? Anyway to get rid of even more heat from that pipe before it reaches the ceiling? I have been burning some cool fires as I noticed the wood starting to get very dry and darker in color prior to shield install. Scary stuff. I think that the cooler fires are contributing to my pipes freezing though because we woke up yesterday morning to a shivering 45 degree home. It is a comfortable 65 in here now but the shield is getting pretty hot. I can no longer keep my hand on it near the center. As always thanks for the help!