Monday - March 21st, 2016

I've started a new thread because this is my 2nd CountryPlan build. My first build is located over at my other thread here: http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=10641.0

I am basically copying my previous 20x30 with loft but going with the smaller size of 14x24 which I guess would be considered CountryPlans 'Enchilada' plans (which I do plan to purchase in the future). I'll try to document the money and time I spend on everything and I hope I'll keep up with that. I tried to do that with my last build and just gave up and stopped keeping track of what I spent and how long it took me. It's hard to do that with a whole house because your buying something every day two or three times a day and it's easy to loose track, at least for me.

If you look back at my last build you'll notice that I never really 'totally' finished it on the outside or the inside before I ended up selling it. I think a number of people here on CountryPlans end up selling their place after they build it (and maybe even before they finish it like me), at least I've come across a few threads where I noticed that happening.

A major difference from my last build to this one is that I'm not using steel and angle iron for my piers and beams, I'm using 4x4's and also 2x4 walls. Another difference is that there is a lot of rock on my land and it's also on a slope where as my last build was much more level and not a single pebble got in my way when I dug all 15 pier holes with a shovel. (I'm digging these pier holes by hand also) The biggest difference for us with this build is that we are off grid totally and we love it! We have solar panels, a wind turbine, we setup a rain catchment system with pressurized and reverse osmosis water, and a composite toilet.

After we sold our first CountryPlan house we ended up buying 5 acres with little to no restrictions, unlike the first build where there was a home owners group in place with a lot of rules, it was also just a 74x130 lot and not 5 acres. We are in a much better secluded area and close to our church, the hardest part of this move is that my work is a whopping 85 miles away...one way! I'll be retiring in a few years so I won't have to tackle that long drive for too much longer.

Ok, that's enough about the past, now on to the present.

Monday - March 21st, 2016

In the first part of October 2015 our Derksen building was put on our land. Shortly after that we decided to go off grid with everything. We've lived in other places and hauled water for years so we are basically used to the off grid life style. The one thing we didn't do in the past is to go off grid with electricity. We ended up buying a bunch of batteries, charge controllers, wind turbine, and many other do dads that have to do with electricity and I will explain all of that in near future posts.

When we first had the building put on the property we had decided to be content with just living in this 16x40 building and making that our home. But then in the beginning of March 2016 I guess I got some strength and desire to build my 2nd CountryPlan place and now here I go!!!

Here is Pier #1 completed on March 20th, 2016

Here's the youtube video of Pier #1: https://www.youtube.com/embed/BwK7qp99NR8

Monday - March 21st, 2016

Ok, pier hole number 2 has a big rock/boulder alongside it. I tried to dig around it and used a real huge pipe to pry it but it's not budging. Would it still be ok to just pour the concrete around the post and leave the boulder there? End result would be that one side of the pier hole would have this boulder next to it. The boulder would be about 6 to 8 inches away from the post and angle upward and outward. You can almost see where the post is going to be, the lower left part of the hole has a slight radius to it and you can tell 'about' where the post will be and how close it'll be to the rock.

AL I was going to tell you something but it may be too late.  I would locate all the pier locations first and explore them for similar problems before pouring any of them.  If it occurs again and again at other pier locations you may want to shift your build one direction or another to miss it or even others.  But if you decided to move on to another and pour them then you will just have to live with it or others as they occur. 

I can break the rock with a couple of small tools. Here's an awesome video showing how to break/crack a boulder:

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/video/0,,20282799,00.html

redoverfarm, thanks for your post and suggestions. I'm going to try my best to break and dig the rock but if I can't get it I may just move a post a little to one side or the other (I hope). Thanks again!!!

First boulder removal: Almost: https://youtu.be/uNcWIMSmtww

If it were me, I would leave rocks of that size in place, as long as you can still get your post in. You're going to now need to fill the void now that the rick is gone.

Pmichelsen - thanks for posting. Your oh so right about leaving the boulders alone if possible. I was wondering about what you said: If there happens to be a very large rock/boulder inches away from where the post will be - is the rock as stable as dirt, will it move around when forces such as frost heave are applied? Logic tells me that if and when dirt happens to move around it displaces itself it can eventually end up filling any voids that were created but if a rock moves it'll stay where it moved to until it's moved again...I don't know - I'm just play'in with thoughts here. So I think that it's a bad idea to let the concrete that is holding up your pier be poured against a large rock or boulder.

Here's that large boulder I pulled out of the ground. Then I got my plans and dimensions were a little different than I thought. I didn't even have to dig up that boulder! So I put it back and buried it again. Another lesson learned:

(Pic coming soon)

I dug pier hole number 2 (in the right place). It's just about 3 feet deep.

(Pic coming soon)

Just before I poured into pier hole number 2, I wanted to see if my wife could fit in it. I also have a video of my wife in Pier hole #1 of my first countryplan house...here's wife in pier hole number 2 in 2nd countryplan house...

https://youtu.be/T2kmE8VOiY4

Friday - March 25th, 2016

Pier #2 Done! The hole took 860 lbs of concrete, that's 10.75 80 lb bags. That's almost getting too big of a hole. you can see how I was off a little bit from center line when I dug my hole. I will leave the string over the top of each hole as I dig so that won't happen again. (at least for half of the depth, then I'll remove the string to get it out of my way.)

I've calculated the cost of each pier at ten 80 lb bags and one 4x4x8 post: $50. I'll have 12 posts all together so that's $600 for all the posts.

(Pic coming soon)

Friday - March 25th, 2016

Here is a video that shows the condition of my soil at around the 3 foot depth. The red clayish stuff starts at about the 1 1/2 to 2 foot depth.

https://youtu.be/bezTUQz6J5I

Friday - March 25th, 2016

I thought I'd fill you in on our off grid water situation. As you know we are living in our 16x40 building while we build the CountryPlan house and we are totally off grid. The only 'on grid' thing we have is our $24 a month trash removal bill.

We heat with a wood stove and a large blue flame propane heater. We have a really nice small and narrow sized propane cooking stove that runs off of 1 small 20 lb propane cylinder and it'll last for many months with only one fill, we don't cook a whole lot and as we've gotten older we love to go out to eat...a lot! We also have a compost toilet and use really fine wood chips along with it. (It's amazing how poop turns into nice dirt through composting)

My electricity is by way of solar panels and a wind turbine. I presently have 500 watts worth of solar panels but really need at least one more panel. It hooks up to eight 6 volt batteries and I run a 24 volt system. I also have a generator that helps me charge the batteries on cloudy days. The wind turbine doesn't really do a lot but just kind of tops off the batteries in higher winds. My solar situation is pretty awesome and we always marvel at how great it all works. I will post future videos on how I have it set up and all the different equipment I use for my electricity.

You may be wondering how we refrigerate. What a lot of solar powered off grid people do is buy a chest freezer and also buy a temperature controller and turn the chest freezer into a frig and that's what we did. If you set the probe just right you can freeze stuff near the bottom and refrigerate stuff near the top.

I get my water from a few different places and we just recently began to get our water from the rain. Just a few weeks ago I installed gutters on one side of the building and it's amazing how many gallons you can get from just one rain fall. I also get water from a few different travel stops and gas stations and where ever else I run into 'safe' water.

I was at a rather large storage building sale and bought a used reverse osmosis system. I took all the parts and cleaned it up, bought new filters, and hooked it into my sink. I'm kinda still working on it. They use a lot of water to make a little good water, that's the only drawback.

I have a 35 gallon tank under my sink and it connects to a harbor freight well pump and pressurizes the system to the sink.

(Pic coming soon)

My Ford Festiva is my pickup car, I use it to build my house:

https://youtu.be/NFPHHj1KrzM

Hahah... reminds me, I had a 1992 (I think) dodge colt hatchback, I used to cram so many 2x4's in the back of that thing, I am tempted to say 80 of them but I can't remember now. 

Ya Adam, I usually take pics whenever I stuff a lot of things into the Festiva.

I've been able to fit a full size couch in there one time. The hatch backs in those Festivas are more than 4 feet wide and I always have the back seat taken out of them. Thanks for posting!

Here is the hardware that I'll use to connect the beam to the posts:

https://youtu.be/Q_ojGeN1Yb8

And here is a video of Pier hole number 3:

https://youtu.be/cuBviE_KaNs

And here's Pier number 3 with 5 bags of concrete in it, that's 400 lbs. (Finished it in the dark)

(Pic coming soon)

I find it interesting that you are already setting posts, but have not really decided on how many you want to set and possibly don't have a complete plan.  Versus myself who makes hundreds of plans but never seems to set a single post.    We all work a bit differently I suppose, but it looks like its coming along. 

Are you working alone most of the time, other than using your wife as a measuring stick of course? 

I am following CountryPlans 'Little House Plans' and they call for 6 posts on 2 rows of beams - I have the complete plans.

Setting posts is easy and fun to me, it gets more exciting as each one appears out of the ground. I've done this before when I built and followed CountryPlans 20x30 with loft and I used my wife as a measuring stick 'one' time there also (for a joke and a laugh of course). My wife does like to get involved and she will nail in a few things, help me hold up stuff - we have a lot of fun together. One time we had 5000 miles worth of fun when we bicycled across America on a 2 seat tandem bicycle, that's another story.

One thing I would like to re-mention here is that I am building this totally off grid and living totally off grid in the building beside the build. A neat thing I didn't mention previously is that I totally used rain water to mix the concrete for the piers - I thought that was a cool off grid idea!

I build totally alone and find ways to do difficult tasks with what ever tools I have available. I remember that there was only one time where I had other people come and help me other than my wife and that was on the previous CountryPlan 20x30 I built. It had 2 30' long LVL beams and I got 3 neighbors to help me lift them in place, those LVL's were about 28' off of the ground.

I have been playing with the thought of putting in a middle beam to rest the center of the house on. A middle beam is not called out in the plans but a middle beam can only strengthen the place. The plans call out for 4x8 beams with 2x6 joists on 16"centers for the floor. Maybe I'll use 2x8's for a stronger floor...haven't decided on that one yet.

I have never set a post in the wrong place and I hope that doesn't happen but I have dug up a boulder just for the fun of it. (No, truthfully it was a mistake but I tried my best to make it fun).

Ah, gotcha... adding strength can't be a bad thing.
 
5000 miles on a tandem bike with the wife... that must be one heck of story to tell!  If you marriage lasts through that, then you know you have a winner and someone you can rely on in the future.

Sounds like you are building at your leisure, versus having to rush through everything and not get to enjoy it.  Sounds like a nice way to go.  It adds a whole other level of complexity when you are also off grid doing the building, that's for sure. 

I'll be checking in often to watch the progress, thanks for sharing.

Nice to hear from you again Adam.

You said: "Sounds like you are building at your leisure, versus having to rush through everything and not get to enjoy it."

I don't know about that, the word 'leisure' sounds to laid back to me and I am kind of rushing but hopefully not so much that I make
mistakes. I try to never let a day go by without doing something on the build, that way there's a nice sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.
I still work 40 hours a week and work is over 80 miles one way so there's only one way to live in order to get things done during the week - and
that's...as little sleep as possible.

One great thing is that I work the night shift and so I have the mornings to myself. Now money is a different issue. I'm building this paycheck to
paycheck, it's not like I have a massive pile of lumber just waiting to form a house. I get in my Ford Festiva and go to Lowes just about every
other day. Yesterday I had 800 lbs of concrete in my little car!