The Barn, Roof Framing

After a lot of research and math, I was ready to frame the roof. Now, the plans called for 2x6 on the roof, but after a few conversations with the head inspector, I determined that 2x10s were needed to achieve R-30 insulation in the roof.

I will admit, I am not, nor do I ever plan to be a roof framer. While my angles, math, and gussets were good, my cuts and assembly of the gambrel rafters were a little less than perfect. This was discovered as we were raising the rafters. They weren't bad, in fact, they were better than I thought they were going to be, but they were just a little off.

This phase, unlike most was NOT something I could do on my own, but I was able to get my brother to help raise the rafters.  After some ladder blocking between each rafter, the roof was pretty firm.

The Barn, Framing-2nd Floor

As for wall framing on the second floor, It seemed like it was going to be pretty simple.  Just frame up two gabel ends and a bathroom. I can honestly tell you that there was nothing easy about framing a gabel end for a gambrel roof. It is of course likely that I over complicated it, but I don't think it was by much.

By looking at them they look a little thin on support, that is because they will not be supporting anything besides a window and sheathing. The roof will be self-supporting. I had to get some help raising this one. It wasn't heavy, but it was an acrobatic feat just to nail down the bottom plate with that stair opening.

The front gable was a lot easier, but I still had some help as I did not want to be chasing the wall over the edge. The bathroom wall was simple, nothing special. And the half wall was much easier. 

Most would ask why we did a 36" wall, which technically reduced the square footage of our bathroom. The reason is that we will need a flat wall to put the tub, toilet, and sink against.

As for the wall framing, that's pretty much it. The rest of the second floor will be roof framing.

The Barn, Framing-1st Floor

Now, before you get to all the pictures, keep in mind that I tend to overbuild things a little.

There is not much to framing a wall, just follow the "instructions" laid out by your architect. If framing a wall is a little above your scope, keeping things square is key. In order to keep your walls square, make all of your markings on both the top and bottom sill with them together. This is never more important than when you are roughing in the windows, doors, and triple studs.  But you also need to cut your jack studs and cripples at the same length. For the rest of the studs, I used the pre-cut 92 5/8" s-p-f studs. They cost a little more, but save you a lot of time. All of your studs will be 16" on center, but remember you sheathing will have seams at 4' increments, so an adjustment will need to be made on the first stud to end up on 4' and 8'.

The #1 reason I did not pre-build the walls off-site was because it it important to have a flat surface to help keep the wall straight. That, and they tend to get really heavy.

Speaking of heavy, the wall above consists of over 30 studs and 4 2x12s at 39". If you do this all on your own, first, get a hard hat (you may never use it, but it's always nice to have it on in case you need it), second, take it slow and use plent of supports. I had to raise the wall a little at a time and go back and forth from one end to the other, walking it up slowly. I also screwed scrap 2x12 blocks to the beam to keep the wall from slipping off of the subfloor.

This wall was much lighter and easier to raise.

The third wall, which will end up being the kitchen, was probably the hardest. Space was very limited, and once I got it up it almost went over. And if it had done that, there would have been no way to recover it on my own.

The final wall was about like the second, but I had to leave out the double sill on the ends until after it was up otherwise I would have had to push the side walls out a little because of the overlap.

The Barn, Framing-subfloor

After the tedious work of setting the footers, laying block, filling the block, and setting the anchors, it was finally time to take delivery of our lumber. 

It doesn't look like much, but that's mostly because had yet to pick up the studs and a few other pieces of lumber. But this was enough to get started. 

Before I could start the framing, the termite shields needed to be installed. This was as simple as taking 10" galvanized flashing and cutting the roll into 18" pieces, then bending the edges over the blocks.

I know this may look small but the main joists are made out of triple 2x12s.

 After about 2-3 days of work on my own, I managed to frame up the entire subfloor. This was one of the most difficult steps to do solo. In fact while attempting to hang the cross joists, I smashed my left index finger so bad that I had the drill a hole in my nail to relieve the pressure. Trust me, you want help with this step.

After a few day's break to tend to a client, I cam back to place the decking and start the wall framing.  The decking, while difficult on my own, did not take but about 3 hours. Because of the size, I only needed to cut 2 sheets of decking, as each row called for 2.5 sheets.

The Barn, Foundation part 3

With the inspection approved it was time for concrete.  After some measurements, I decided to pour 12" thick footers instead of the 10 inches that the plans called for. My reasoning behind that was that code calls for a 24" ground clearance, and a 10" footer would have required me to add an additional block, lifting the barn to almost 30" off the ground. I would be okay with this if we weren't using 2x12 as the subfloor, as this would have put our door 42" off the ground.

After putting a call in to a local concrete company, we were scheduled to pour.  Here's some wise advise about concrete that I'm glad I did not have to learn the hard way. DO NOT mix or pour concrete if the temperatures are bellow 34F. That day the low happened to be 34F, so I opted to pour after 10am to give the temp time to rise.

Here are the tools I used: 6'cu wheel barrow, standard shovel, float, and a hired back (the same friend who helped me dig the holes). 

If you do this your self, don't be cheap and skip the wheel barrow. The extra money spent on a GOOD one was well worth it. However, be careful, it gets heavy when it's half full. Why not just pour directly into the holes? You could do it for the outer holes, if you have the clearance, but I recommend asking the driver to take it slow, so you don't end up with too much in the hole. We could only do this with 1 hole, but I didn't want to risk knocking over a batter board, so we did it all the hard way. The end result was worth it.

We used an estimated 1.7 yards of concrete for the 12 footers.

After they set up for a day, I went back out to work on the the piers. This part is why I did not want to hit the batter boards. Setting the first pier too about 20 minutes from start to finish, without fill.

This step was pretty simple as long as the lines and rebar are in the right place. I just stacked 5 blocks with mortar in the joints. I think the hardest part is going to be filling the voids with block fill and setting the anchor bolts.

The Barn, Foundation part 2

Day 2 of digging holes for our footers was a much more successful day! I was able to get 6 more holes dug before my auger, and I, ran out of fuel. Sure the holes weren't pretty as the first, but they were a lot quicker.

In case you were wondering, this is how I used the auger to help me dig the holes.

On day 3, I was able to hire a friend to help me dig the final 5 holes, and we were able to knock them out in about 2-3 hours. All 12 holes were complete! Next, was what I assumed was going to be the easy part, rebar.

That day, I made a trip to one of the "big box" hardware stores in search of rebar, 5/8" #5, to be exact. All I could find on the shelves was 1/2" #4, and that was not going to cut it. So calling the "orange" hardware store, I was not given a definitive answer about what I needed. But, the nice folks at the blue store informed me that Mobile Lumber should have what I needed. Now I don't normally indorse hardware stores like this, but not only did they have what I needed, it was about $0.50/ft whereas the orange store was $1/ft.  While ML had what I needed, it was only available in 20' runs, and that was not fitting on top of my SUV. Refusing to leave there without it, the guy managing the lumber yard kindly volunteered to bring it the short distance to my folks house, where I planned to cut the 20' down to 96 - 18" pieces and 24 - 5' pieces. Of course, I had to pick up an angle grinder and some cut-off wheels (insert sly laugh, as I just "hate" buying new tools).

What the plans called for was a square of 8 - 18" pieces and 2 long verticals with a "J" bend, like this-

To hold th squares off the ground, I used 3 short runs of rebar as legs, although, it would have been better with 4. I would like to note that working in a tight spot like this was not easy.

Thankfully, we passed our first inspection.

The Barn, Foundation part 1

Today was an exciting day! We officially broke ground on The Barn!  

After doing the tedious work of lining everything up and setting steaks for all of our footings, I was able to officially put a shovel into the ground to start digging for the first footer.  After about 2 hours of switching between two shovels and a power auger, I had successfully made a 2'x2'x32" hole in the ground for the first of 12 footers.  And after consulting an experienced home builder I know, it was a pretty hole... Maybe too nice.

I will walk you through the process, if you want. If not, the pictures are below.

  After getting everything as square as I could, I checked level and determined that I need to dig 10" deeper on the high side, in order to reach 22" on the low end and still have everything level.  After marking out the 2'x2 hole, I started with the 8" power auger in all 4 corners and in the center to loosen the clay. That made it much easier to dig with a shovel once a good portion of dirt was removed and some was loose.  Then it was a repetitious process until I reached depth.  Once the proper depth was reached, I made sure the hole was still 24"x24" and leveled the bottom a little. 

The Barn

   The barn is what we are calling our temporary house that I am building for us to live in, while we wait on the plans for and build our cob. We have called it our barn because that is what we have designed it to look like.  In fact the inspiration came from a 16'x16' shed we found at one of the big box hardware stores. Why dont we just purchase the one from the store and modify it? Because we looked into it and saw how little you actually get, and how much work would need to go into it. At that point, we decided it would be cheaper, and just as hard (as they do not come assembled) to build it from the ground up. So we took this opportunity to make a few design changes. What we ended up with was a 16'x20', two story, 614 sq ft house with a barn style roof.

It's Electrifying!

   I love the fact that our land is "off the beaten path", out of the way, and a little hard to get to. But when it came to getting power out there, holy crap it was hard!

   Apart from the endless back and forth conversations and emails that my sister had to endure with the local engineer and surveyor to make sure that we were covered logistically, the physical labor was taxing... that word doesn't even sum it up.  As for costs, the power company was going to supply poles to get to our land, and all of the wire we needed to make the 800'+ run underground to our transformers. As for the conduit ($1600.00) and digging, we were on our own.

   Once logistics were solved, it was time to start the hard stuff. We could have hired someone to dig the 52" deep trench, but it would have cost us close to $2k to have it done and we would still have to assemble the conduit. So we chose to rent the equipment and put in the "sweat" equity, emphasis on sweat! Keep in mind, this is early September in south Alabama. Since my schedule was the most flexible, I chose to spearhead the work to get it done as fast as possible, well sort of. In my first partial day on the Terramite T7, I was able to do only about 30-40 feet in 3 hours. I was praying that I could make this go faster as I got more comfortable on the backhoe, because at this pace it was going to take forever.

That was about 3 hours in.

the next day was much better, and I was able to knock out about 150' that day.

This was taken mid-way through day 2.

Day 3 is when I really found my groove, and destroyed over 200' despite having to fight a lot of roots and 3 stumps. But by this point, my butt was so sore from sitting on the backhoe for most of the day with very few breaks.

It's hard to see, but I started way down just before it turns, and kept moving until sundown.

Day 4 was Saturday, which meant soccer had priority over work. By the time I got out there it was already 12:30. But, brother-in-law came out shortly after me and took over digging. I took this opportunity get some conduit put together. Of course, that was so easy. I was able to assemble 53 runs of 3"x10' conduit in about an hour, but had to stop because I was waiting for us to finish the ditch. 

   Take this lesson from me, schedule 40 conduit filled with nothing but air is very buoyant. If there is water in your trench, you have a few options; put something heavy on the conduit and throw enough dirt on it to hold it down, strap on the waders or mud boots and stand on it while dragging dirt in the trench with you, or get a sump pump to move the water out. Not having any of the above, my stupid self left it to deal with later, praying it would dry up, yeah right! Another note, when you put conduit in a trench, be ready to fill it back in IMMEDIATELY. I left it open until the end, and I'm sorry I did. Not only did the rain compact and harden the piles of clay, but on the day I was pushing everything back in, it rained so hard that the conduit was floating less than 2' deep when it was supposed to be 48" deep. For those who would think, "just push the dirt in on top of it, it will sink." you probably slept through high school science and physics. I'll let someone else explain it to you. The other issue with the rain, was that this backhoe was not equipped with tracks, man could have used one with tracks.

   Back on track to day 5. After church I headed out to the land. My brother-in-law calls me over and points to the right rigger and says "watch". Now, I know hydraulic systems are usually a little leaky, but this was like a small geyser spraying out of one of the knuckles. Did we stop, NO! We had work to do. So he went and got hydro oil and I babied the riggers as long as I could. Until it went dry... We dumped 2 gallons into it and I kept on trucking. Still taking it easy on the rigger, it made digging a little harder. The next day, I got her returned to to good folks at Blue Rents and they had it fixed in a few days and back to me to finish up. 

   That day it rained was such a setback, I had cave-ins and conduit floating in several places. I devoted hours to re-digging areas, pinning down conduit with the bucket and dumping dirt in by hand, and fixing separated pipes. Let's talk about re-digging areas on a trench. Take it from me, you do not want to park the heavy end of a 4,000 machine on the edge of a 4 foot deep hole. It's not a fun feeling.

   In the end, 3 temporary power poles were up, inspected, and a week later, the power company was out there putting their poles up and running wires!

Why I needed tracks.

Temporary power pole.

poles and wire finally going in.

A transformer! We finally have transformers!

Water!

   There are three essential utilities that we needed to tackle next; power, water, and sewage.  I'll back track to the power once that is complete.

   As we discussed our water options, there are only 2 options; county water (available in our area), or well water.  Now, because of the self sufficiency of a well, that was my first choice, but the family out voted me by 2 to 1 for county water. While wells had a higher upfront cost, company water was going to cost us in the long run, and in the wake of the West Virginia water contamination debacle, I was strongly urging us to go with wells.  As logistics unfolded, we learned that the water company in our area draws their water from 5 different wells, additionally they stated that they would have to place our meters at the edge of our property, as they would not come onto private property to read a meter. Why was this such a big deal? Anyone with expereince in a field relative to home construction or repair can tell you that running water lines 300'-500' is not only a pain, but it is also costly. Add in the $1200 meter and other hook up costs from the water company, and it was starting to make drilling a well look  like a wise financial idea.

So after some back and forth with a local drilling company and my family, I initiated the process of drilling our three wells.  Since I did a lot of the leg work with this and I was out there first to spectate when they arrived on Friday, we started with our well. It had been a rainy week and they ended up getting their big drilling truck stuck in the mud trying to get it on-site. So they pull out this slow, little "mud slinger" on a track system, to which I gave a little chuckle, as I knew what they were about to do. I promise you, this little thing that couldn't be bigger than Mini Cooper, but sure enough, they hooked it up to this giant diesel truck and pulled it out of the mud, and made it look easy.

   After getting set up, they started drilling. If you've never seen a well get drilled, you're not missing anything. Honestly the highlight was when they were cleaning it out and the pipe cap poped of and sprayed water everywhere. Of course, that was the moment when all of us had just put our cameras away.

So, after drilling 63' they stopped and put PVC down the hole and cleaned the well, only to discover that the water table was only 11'. Since it was not good enough, the expert decided to keep drilling. As a handyman it was almost disheartening to see them pull 64' of 4" PVC and cut it just before every collar. Thankfully, I learned today how they were able to salvage those collared ends of the pipe. I digress. Once they got back to drilling, I decided to get back to work myself and wandered off to continue digging for electrical conduit. I guess I shouldn't have left them alone, as we were paying by the foot after 65'. By about the 15th time checking their progress, I really left them alone this time. So once I saw them moving their equipment to the next lot, I walked over. This was the kick in the pants I was not expecting, yet fearing based on how long it was taking. So I asked, 123'! They went an additional 60', what! I mean at 123' I think my water is imported by the time I get it up and to my lips. They tell me that was just what 'mother nature' required, stating that they were still getting sand, and hit "a rock" at 123'. Half joking, and 100% serious I said, "You probably hit bedrock", they agreed. But after they checked the water table, we have water at 63'. For those who can't add, 60' is one heck of a well. The question is, is the well half full, or half empty?

All joking aside, these guys did a fantastic job, and I cannot wait to try the water. At 123' it better taste like a pure, Austrailian waterfall.

In The Beginning

  Being a year into this journey I struggled with where and what to start with, so I figure we'll just start at the beginning, like Star Wars Episode I, except without Jar Jar Binks.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... Just kidding.

   This all started with my father's vision of having a family compound and farm for him to retire on here in the Alabama gulf coast. When we were all approached about the opportunity and he pitched his vision to us, my older sister and I (and our spouses) were the only ones truly interested in taking part. So the search began for a piece of property large enough for my parents, and us five children and our families (just in case the other decided that they wanted to join us).  He started looking for something around 40 acres, which would be plenty of room for 4 houses, farm land, pastures, orchards, greenhouses, hunting preserve, and a hardwood forest.  And a creek was also a plus.  I know, thats a lot for 40 acres, but it can be done, we've seen family homesteads on less than an acre.

   The first 40 that we looked at was beautiful, very picturesque with a house, hunting grounds, out-building, shed, and even a creek. After walking around, we all liked it, but it wasn't quite the one. Since we had all gotten our hopes up for the first one he showed us (I tend to see something or catch a vision and run away with it, and of course I'm disappointed when it doesn't happen like I imagined it), I asked that they not show us one until they were ready, after all, it was their money, their retirement, and their legacy to pass on.

   The next one we looked at was a blank slate if you would, it had a "creek" in the wetland area, and a little hunting plot. They originally talked about just buying 20 acres, but when it was all said and done, my dad was convinced that we needed 40. I'm glad he went with more, it will give us more room to do everything we want. 

   They made the purchase in the late spring/early summer of 2013. Since then we started by planning divisions, marking lots, posting "no trespassing" signs, exploring, and began the VERY strenuous and stupid process of trying to clear thick underbrush with machetes and other hand and gas tools. It was like trying to kill an elephant with a pellet gun or chopping down the mightiest tree in the forest using a herring. One day my brother and I managed to cut a 20' wide, 200'+ long path/road with gas powered weed wackers with a the brush cutter attachment in about 4 hours. After taking pictures, we heard, "that's it?" as if we were just piddling around the whole time. If this was a deciduous forest, it would have been no problem, we could have cleared this with a few chainsaws, but this was thick innertwined underbrush, in the middle of an Alabama summer, in pants and long sleeves! It wasn't just hard, it was stupid. Eventually we dug into our pockets and hired some experts to do some clearing for us. 

The next phase was to look at setting up essentials like power and water. Stay tuned...

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! We wanted to start this to document, record, and share insights about our homesteading adventures. As it stands we are beginning the process of creating a place to call home.

Over a year ago 40 acres were purchased, of which we were given a little over an acre to do with as we please.  In the last year we have been through the tedious process of clearing underbrush, cutting down trees, making roads, and building gates.

My eventually goal is for my family and I to create a completely self-sufficient or nearly self-sufficient homestead here in the heart of the gulf coast, complete with rabbits, chickens, goats, cows, sheep, bees, huge gardens, orchards, greenhouses, and even aquaponics, and much more. Of course everything will be non-GMO and organic.

Thanks for checking out our blog and following it, there will be plenty more to come as we continue getting all of the essentials and build.

Blessings,
Gulf Coast Pioneers