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!