My plan is this in july of this year .. (mattress, hotel)

[henry1]

Ok here is my basic plan for July when i have two weeks off and iam going to fly to the big island and start on the basic floor and roof of the place when iam there with the family ..

about end of may iam going to have someone who i hired to do this allready put in the concrete footers for the outside liveing room area to make up the first part of the pouch set up and then let them cure and be dried by the july 1st rolls around and i will be ready to have enough wood need delivered from home depot like the morning i get there to build the simple one room outside pouch area with room and floor of the unit with open sides for now and have the place bult and ready to go when they get there ..

the place roof and floors waterproofed and painted and shingles on the place and semi ready to have people camped out on the pouch area when we are there to keep them from beening rained on and be able to keep dry here ..

the first section is 10.ft wide-x-20.ft long -x-12.ft tall with a above ground hieght of three feet with a wide open area for everyone to sit under or sleep under as it need with light wieght sleeping bags or sheets and air mattress for them to sleep on ..

part of the plan was to hire a couple of local people i have met and feed them lunch and few beers after work each day to my saying thank you for helping me ..

so by the second week when everyone in the family shows up there should be at least a basic set up for them to sleep under if it raining .

[mdand3boys]

What subdivision are you in?

[OpenD]

Shingles? Not on the roof I hope. They are the worst roofing to use for rainwater catchment. The standard here is corrugated roofing... steel if you want to go old school, Ondura plus paint if you want something new that's lower cost and easier installation. But shingles, no. They're toxic.

Even as siding I don't recommend them. It leaves way too many openings for bugs and rodents to get in.

Look around... 95% of the houses in the area are solid siding and corrugated roofs. And there are very good reasons for that.

PS. Concrete footers only take a coupla days to cure enough to start construction, in case that affects your planning. Personally, I wouldn't want that done until I was on site, because if they are done wrong it will throw everything off.

[henry1]

the plan was useing a sheet metal roof for the roof .

[mdand3boys]

Originally Posted by henry1

the plan was useing a sheet metal roof for the roof .

Go with white for the color. The more heat you can reflect away from the inside, the better off you will be. There is also a material called "reflectix" (spelling?) that makes a big difference in the amount of heat that your attic builds up. Home Depot sells it. It comes in rolls.

[hotzcatz]

Solid siding instead of shingles will be a lot faster to install. If you are going to hope to be able to have the paint dry enough for folks walking on the painted floor and get it done within your weeks' time frame, you may want to have some folks pre-painting the plywood sheets for the floor while you are doing site work and framing up the flooring. You'll still need to touch up the paint afterwards but that might give you enough time for the floor paint to be dry. Or is it a poured concrete floor?

It also might be a good idea to have a back up plan in case the construction isn't finished or in case weather or lack of supplies at the hardware store slows up your construction. Maybe have tents in case the building isn't finished? What about plumbing? Will there be an outhouse and shower of some sort?

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by henry1

the plan was useing a sheet metal roof for the roof .

Not sure what you mean by sheet metal. Do you mean rolled metal roofing? Why not go with corrugated roofing? It's "da island look" and it's less expensive and more durable than anything else... which is WHY it's "da island look."

Here's what a lot of people miss at first about corrugated roofing... you do not deck the roof with plywood first. That saves a lot of money right there. You have rafters, and the smaller purlins are laid at right angle over the rafters, spaced as required for the corrugated, then the corrugated is nailed directly to the purlins.

Use a modern polyurethane sealant along the overlaps and proper sized ringed nails with neoprene washers to fasten it down and you'll wind up with a roof that will not leak, even at a low roof angle, like 2 in 12, which is ideal for rainwater catchment

Also, hotzcats is right on the money about the deck and flooring... prepainting the plywood will save time once it's down.

And ditto for the backup plan. July is usually pretty dry, BUT, not necessarily on the most critical days of your project. That could throw your whole schedule off considerably.

[hotzcatz]

The new building code requires metal cross strapping diagonally across the roof purlins (somewhere around 2' or 3' on center) if you aren't going to put the roof sheathing on it. Just another little thing to do in the one week's construction time frame. It's generally installed with those short fat "tiko" nails which I find to be a complete PITA. Use a pair of needle nose pliers to hold the nails for the initial hammer strike and you'll still have some finger tips left after the metal is in place.

Also if you want this building to survive very long in Hawaii, you'll be using galvanized nails and fasteners which are usually nailed on with a hammer instead of a nail gun, aren't they? Can you get strips of galvanized fasteners to use in nail guns? I've always hand hammered all the buildings I've built so I've never looked.

For your initial space, 10' wide by 20' long by 12' tall isn't that workable of a final space. Figure walkways to be a minimum of 30" wide (although 36" is required by code if it's a hallway) and if you set a small table and chair against the wall on one side and a cabinet on the other that pretty much just leaves a walkway between them. Also having it higher than it is wide will make for some odd spacial feeling when you are inside of it - a "pit" or "rut" comes to mind. Try for twelve feet wide and ten feet tall and you'll be using the same amount of material and have more usable floor space when you are done. Just in my opinion - but folks pay me to draw up blueprints for them so livable room dimensions is something I work with a lot.

Depending on the slope of the hill behind the wall, setting it that far into the ground may not be a good thing. Hillsides here slide a lot and you'll end up with dirt migrating down to the side of the house and putting a lot of pressure on that wall. If it is over three or four feet tall, then it's a retaining wall and will require an engineer's stamp if you are getting a building permit. Also a bit of engineering would be a good thing to make sure the wall doesn't crack because of the pressure of the soil against it, too. Most people use wind to cool their house instead of an earth berm. It's also a lot less expensive to build above ground but you've had that dig into the ground thing going for awhile, so perhaps it's something you want to do anyway? If you do go for that route, get an engineer involved if you want the structure to survive.

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

Also having it higher than it is wide will make for some odd spacial feeling when you are inside of it - a "pit" or "rut" comes to mind.

Agreed, plus a 12' ceiling makes it hard to heat. I just visited someone in Hawaiian Gardens last night who has a gorgeous cathedral ceiling, and all he could talk about was how expensive it is to keep warm this time of year because the heat all rises to the peak.

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

Depending on the slope of the hill behind the wall, setting it that far into the ground may not be a good thing.

Did he say that? I thought he meant a 3' crawlspace under the house.

Henry, one of the things that will help communication about this is to try to use standard construction terms, to avoid confusion. And while you are at it, I suggest you spend $15 to buy a new keyboard, since it appears that your SHIFT key is broken. That will make your posts more readable.

[henry1]

here is the basic deal with the whole thing it was a choice i gave them as a group who was comeing the big island that week

1-sleep in a hotel and pay for it yourself for iam not going to spend moeny that way when it can be saved by camping out and spending more on doing local things without spending alot of money

2-live out with me on the land dureing the week saveing money by roughing it and sleeping and cooking out for the week at the place and the night before we all have to go back to the mainland go to thehotel rooms that we haved booked that for the night and clean up and get ready for the flight back to the diff places we are going the next day ..