Non Electric Homestead McMinn County (construction, to live, dangerous)

[Eat]

I'm voting with Harry Chickpea, Forest Breath. It is way underbuilt.

[Forest Breath]

Sure wish there was a way to give huge sighs and wring your head and hands and shed a few tears in a post. LOL

Oh well, you know, you just have to make the best of every situation you are dealt in life, if not....you die a young miserable person. So...we are not above correcting things and working harder.

We are adding 12 more pillars the next few days, we are adding more support, and you cannot see it in the pic but we do have those "tie-down" things that are used mostly on mobile homes. We are thinking we will have it more stable and in better shape by the end of the week.

It probably would work like it is, for awhile and awhile could be a year or forever, who knows really? BUT... I will fall on the safe side of things and we will work on that floor before we start the walls.

YAY.....I get to nail more nails! And I am being serious about that! LOL I am getting pretty darn good with that hammer!

So thanks for noticing that and saving me a huge headache later. I knew there was some reason I ended up on these forums. I had 2 contracots meet me over there and it can be fixed with no loss of wood and not too many tears shed.

Will update again when we sweat more. And will be updating the good with the bad so...expect both. LOL I am sure there will be a lot more things that will have to be corrected before it is all finished.

Again...thanks!

[harry chickpea]

Forest Breath, thank YOU for taking things seriously enough to get a couple of outside opinions. I'm glad you will be able to save the wood, I thought you might be able to re-use it as long as you shortened the spans.

You see, we have something in common. I have the pillars already set for a 24' x 24' summer house down by our creek. I had planned to have it built about ten months ago, but money is tight and there are other priorities. I had, however, already done the math on what I would need for flooring on that building. The cheapest I figured I could go was 8' O.C. triple 2 x 6 pillars and 2 x 10 beams and 2 x 8 joists. When I saw your long spans with the 2 x 6s, I knew your chances of a happy ending weren't good.

It takes a strong person to voluntarily re-examine something that has already involved so much work, and be willing to make revisions on it, especially when warned by an absolute stranger. I applaud your action and regret your having to go through the pain and frustration. You are wise though. When you say "It probably would work like it is, for awhile and awhile could be a year or forever, who knows really?" you never know if it could be a problem down the road, when there was a houseful of kids, or during some other situation where people could get hurt.

Anticipating your next stage of construction, corners of homes with stud walls generally have either diagonals or metal strapping on the diagonals at the corners, in addition to the normal studs and plates. Those get covered up later on, but make the house much stronger at minimal expense. Some people think that the sheathing will serve a similar structural purpose, but it doesn't. Keeping walls square in winds is vital if you don't want the walls to fold and the roof come down. You can easily push a square or rectangle out of shape, but the diagonals make triangles. As long as the corners of the triangles are strong, they can't be bent out of shape. Your contractor friends or the folks at Lowes should be able to guide you on that.

[Forest Breath]

Thanks so much and I am not above admitting error. As for pilars, this is what we are planning.....14 more to be exact. Two contractors saud we do not ahve to rip it down, we can actually jack up what we have and work from there. With "x" being the existing pillars and "o" being the planned additions:

x-o-x-o-x
o-o-o-o-o
x-o-x-o-x
o-o-o-o-o
x-o-x-o-x

The guys stated we can jack the floor joists up, that we have completed at this time, and add the pillars. We will be working on this all week after I get off work of an evening.

We are adding more of those "strap down" "tie down" or whatever they are called. We are also adding more 2x6's in the rows where you see the entire row of "o's" above. We are also adding at least one more of the spacer/stablizer (not sure what the technical term is) between the 2x6's on each one.

We have made an agreement to not start the walls until we can sit a glass of water in the mid part of each quarter of the floor and all of us run and bounce all around the floor and the water not spill out. LOL

I do appreciate your input because I plan to live in this little house until I die. I don't want to dance my jig to the grave and fall into it before my time was due. We will work on correcting this problem this week and then order the wood for the walls. It is due to rain again all next weekend, so we may not start the walls for about 7 days or so. We will see how it goes.

*who would have thought a totally small non electric home would take so much effort to build. LOL*

I still have hopes that we will have it completed by June. I know there are only 3 of us working on it, but we will get extras when we raise the walls and the three of us can work pretty hard at 11 hours a day with only 2 short food breaks. We will continue to shoot for our goal and if we don't make it, we will eventually.

Thanks again so much!

[zoarhikers]

Check out this link about a 20 x 20 log cabin. Good luck with. your homesteading. keep us updated on how things are going.

A cabin for one by Lee Greiman Issue #109

[marmac]

Very good advice given by harry chickpea.
If one has not built a house before, seeking advice --before-- starting is very beneficial.

The old carpenter saying is " measure twice,cut once"

Building without good advice is " measuring once,cutting twice" and makes the project more labor intensive.

[GregW]

If I were considering a new small house in rural location and wanted to build it myself, I would have looked at straw bale construction. If I want to build it rapidly I would have bought a stressed skin panel structure. Either one would have gone on a concrete slab that was insulated from the ground and included radiant heating coils. A small wood heater/boiler, solar collectors or the electric plant would be the heating source.

Being that far from the power lines I would have bought and installed a self contained electrical plant based on the old fashioned Lister CS diesels that will run very well on straight vegetable oil as well as regular heating/diesel oil. The engine house would have been built first. This machine could provide reliable electricity and or water for heating.

As you already have the platform built you are well on the way. However I would suggest looking for a stressed skin panel place and asking it they had any factory seconds you could buy for the walls and roof. In any case excess insulation installed now like 6 in thick walls and a 12 in thick ceiling/roof will save you a lot of money or work (cutting firewood) in the future.

I have been thinking about getting some land in New Mexico and building a retirement home. In that climate I would think seriously at straw bale of adobe but the heating system would be the same. I am thinking about starting a company to build and install this type of combined heat and power systems in remote locations.

Good luck on your house and farm.

[harry chickpea]

Forest Breath, the adding of new pillars seems like a reasonable compromise. I hope you have a good clearance in your crawl space, as you'll want to get underneath with shims after about six months and a year, and verify that every pillar is sharing the load properly and not settled out from under the frame.

Once you have the new pillars in place, you may want to lay down builders plastic with some borate underneath it on the ground to reduce the bug population and have a moisture barrier. The wood you chose is more prone to rot and insects than pressure treated lumber. Your choice of wood was fine, and common, you just have to take a little precaution to make it last a long time. If it were me, I'd also get a gallon of wood preservative containing copper or something similar, and paint the ends of the 2 x 6s with it to discourage easy entry to carpenter ants and reduce mold issues.

If you get some cheap wire to go under the joists, this is also a good time to install insulation. Just tack or staple the wire in place to the bottom of the joists, lay the insulation batts on the wire, and place the decking on top - no having to slide underneath and lift the batts into place after the deck is done.

One other thing - plumbing and wiring. You CANNOT cut into the 2 x 6s to accomodate wires or plumbing, (they are too undersized to allow it safely) so these will have to be hung underneath. I know you aren't planning for any of this now, so it might not be a concern, but if you have any thought of later retrofitting, you'll want to consider those locations and not do anything to block access or create future problems.

About the new pillars. The rows of them that are all o's in your diagram have fewer stresses on them than the other three rows, except under the exterior wall. On those interior six pillars, you can go light and save some work. Visit a lumberyard or mobile home dealer and pick up six oak primitive pillar caps, and a couple dozen shims. Buy a few pressure treated 2 x 4s and six solid concrete half blocks. Scrape off the uncompacted soil surface, lay a concrete block flat to spread the weight where the pillar will go. Top it with the oak block. Measure between the block and the bottom of the 2 x 6 and cut a section of pressure treated 2 x 4 to that length MINUS 1/2". Cripple it to the 2 x6 with a couple other sections of 2 x 4s and use the shims to get it in place. I'll try to diagram it here. J = joist, p = pillar, b concrete block, o = oak block, c = cripple > &< = shims, x is just open space to keep the drawing from collapsing

xxjjxx
ccjjcc
ccjjcc
ccjjcc
ccjjcc
ccjjcc
ccppcc
ccppcc
ccppcc
xxppxx
xxppxx
x>>
xxx<<
ooooooo
ooooooo
bbbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbbb.

ONLY do this on the indicated pillars. Those pillars will only be subjected to vertical loads and need zero lateral strength. The other pillars must be more robust.

There were some comments about stressed skin panels (expensive) hay bale construction (try it on an outbuilding first) and Lister engines and clones. Listers don't meet current pollution standards and can no longer be imported. They have a fan base, and similar engines are also known as hit-n-miss engines. They last forever and don't whine like a lot of other engines, but growing vegetable oil is a bit impractical. If you want a gallon of sunflower oil, you you have to plant 400 oil seed sunflower plants, then harvest, dehull, and press the seeds. Diesel fuel will continue to pace gasoline in price increases. You have available wood and brush, and there are ways to utilize it. Energy is much too involved to be discussing here, and you need to keep focus and get your home dried in as quickly as practical. Keep plugging away at it.

[Forest Breath]

I really cannot thank you enough. I feel like I should send you a check or a hidden hero award or something.

I understood everything in your post and will be doing most of that...and lol....I may have questions for you later....hint! As for electric wiring, plumbing, etc. We have made a promise to each other. The initial home will not have and will never have electric or indoor plumbing. It will forever remain as it is built as long as I am alive. After that, my heirs can do what they desire. Chris will be building a workshop later with solar power, but we are talking YEARS later.

If we get old and cannot handle living this lifestyle any longer, there is the house at the other end of the property that has electric, indoor plumbing and all that good stuff. If worse comes to worse, living in that home will be an option, but hopefully a very long time from now. I want Jimmy and Hazel to be here for a LONG time and moving into that home when I am old and grey would mean they are no longer here...and I don't like thinking about that.

Again much thanks! We will work this week on the extra pillars and foundation and all that wonderful stuff and then look at starting the walls maybe sometime next week. There is a good chance we will be nailing all of the nails! I called abouta generator and it is $120 a week to rent one and although we may do so for a week.....we won't for much more than that. It is much cheaper to use your arm muscles.

[harry chickpea]

Sometimes you can work out with a rental company that you want a generator for Saturday but won't be returning it until Monday after they re-open. Often they'll just charge for the single day. I agree that using arm muscles can be cheaper, but it is much slower than an air-powered framing gun.

If you haven't already done so, invest in a properly sized framing hammer. You'll be using it enough to notice. The difference between using one and a standard claw hammer is night and day. What to look for - the face will have cross-hatching to keep from slipping off the nail heads. It'll seem a little long at first. The weight and scale is dependent on your own size and strength, and the size of the nails you'll be driving. The most important point is the shape of the handle at the very bottom of the handle. If it is properly shaped, the best description of the stroke used for driving the nail is that you lightly throw the hammer at the nail from that bottom section of the handle. The mass of the head will drive in the nail and there will be minimal rebound stress on the hand. Ask to try out various sizes to find one that fits. Use coated nails, and in some places like the roof deck you may want to use ring shanked nails for a little extra holding power.

I've mentioned deck screws before. In some areas, you'll be able to visualize where the nails will have the possibility of being loosened or pulled out due to stresses on them. Example - the first two studs at a corner, where wind forces tend to try to peel off sheathing and siding. Using even a few deck screws at those points can make a stronger structure. There are screw guns and drills that are battery operated, and should last a session of light to medium use.

Keep asking questions. There are other people out there that can probably help you better than I can.