Going Off Grid in East Tennessee (Kingsport, Baneberry: houses, construction, utilities)

[SPLIT]

YL: The clear sunshine pictures look like a movie theater. You are thinking about moving two things at once. Maybe some of your metal roof on one of the trusses. Or next confident truck driver. Something that the HEAVY shipping container mover / driver made the summit, but lighter loads go half way .
. If not all trusses up , yet , SLIDE some of them across from either side. Even upside down, then flip into position. Some extra lumber out from ones already screwed. IMO.
. OUr backyard similar with Flat parking slope. Did not do any building , but
almost opposite as 750 miles away. Picked out a few colors, but showed up 3 days early and could not get in with wet / fresh cement driveway.
..

[Tinman313]

Looks like about 1200 square feet..? Again Thanks for sharing, That view !!!! You will have to crop that out from now on....... How are the cows doing? Do they stand around and watch?.....

[younglisa7]

Tinman-

Close. The house is 30 x 38(outside dimensions) = 1140 sq. ft.

Just for you. Here are some of the cows:



Lisa

[belloisec]

It's absolutely gourgeous! But where does the dock and boat go? I'm hooking up my pop-up and heading out to squat on your land!

[Bones]

Originally Posted by belloisec

It's absolutely gourgeous! But where does the dock and boat go? I'm hooking up my pop-up and heading out to squat on your land!

Be careful of the cows....

Beautiful view Lisa....

[Tinman313]

Love those cows....... If you talk to them they will look at you!! I'm serious talk to them in a normal voice and look at them... they will give you a indication that they hear you, if you see one with a ring in it's nose... be careful....... Love the view !!!!!!

[jabogitlu]

Looking good. We built a cabin a few years ago but stickbuilt the whole thing. One of the most frustrating things is coming up with alternative ways of doing things when your plans just don't quite work. When my parents built their house last year, they just hired someone to do it. A lot of extra money, a lot less headache.

But, anyway, thanks for keeping us updated. It's really coming together now. I know you must be totally excited.

[Shenandoah]

Lisa, Great home and land planning! Keep up the updates. I've subscribed to both your postings and ForestBreaths.
Your description of the building of the house, and the care to waterproof the walls brings back memories.
Back in 1978, at the age of 72, my dad planned and built an earth sheltered home, here in southwestern PA. It was in the newspapers. 3 sides and the roof were all covered with earth. He had a sun room in the front, off of the kitchen. It was pretty funny, when salesmen from window companies would call and try to sell him windows. He'd tell them he only has 1 window in his entire home (about the same size as yours), and invite them to come see it. I think only one guy took him up on it, just to see the house. My dad talked about getting a wind turbine, but somehow never got around to it.

Well, my dad died in 1998, others are living in the house, and it's out of the family now, regretfully. Nothing 'green' about him, he just didn't care to pay the high heating bills. The furnace was hardly ever run, altho they did have a fireplace with a blower to warm things up, which worked out much better than a furnace. When more than 3 people were in the house, just our body temperatures were enough to heat the house. He built a system of fans thru the house in the ceiling to maintain air circulation, and strategically placed mirrors for light and space. The roof was concrete 'beams', running the width of the house, about 20' long, normally used in office buildings, with hollow tubes running their length for the wiring, etc. A crane was used to place them on the roof. A fallen oak tree on the property was taken to the sawmill to make into one long beam, brought back to season it, then placed as a support beam for the roof.

All the grandkids had alot of fun, and we'd all joke about playing on the roof of grandpaps house.

I'd love to build one for Lou and myself. It's on my 'someday' list.

Blessings to you and yours on this endeavor,

Shen

[Tek_Freek]

If you haven't finished the trusses yet build a temp wall in the middle of the house parallel to the front wall and slide the rest of the trusses across using rope tied at each end. The center wall should avoid the end of a truss coming off one end and causing no good. If one slips you should be able to keep it from falling by pulling on the rope at the other end. Tie the rope off while you get the slip fixed. From your description it might be easier to build the wall than continue the way you're doing it now.

I am impressed. And a bit jealous...

We have started getting serious about our next home. We have the lot and I'm really antsy now that I've seen your story.

Great photos.

[younglisa7]

Hi everyone. I hope you all had a good weekend. It rained most of the day here so we had a forced day off. I am going to finish Chapter 5 starting with Thursday June 26.

Thursday-
We were determined to finish the trusses. We had a good system and we knew what to do now we just had to do it. Mike was having a rough time because his arm was really sore from the past 2 days using the screw gun. We decided to put up 2 trusses, take a break, and put ice on Mike's arm. This was working fine and we got about half way done.



Then Howard, the man who owns the cows, showed up to see how we were doing. He had great timing because it gave Mike a chance to take aspirin, ice his arm some more, and take another break. We talked for a while and by the time Howard left Mike was feeling much better. This is a view looking at the front of our house.



It took us most of the day but we finally finished all the trusses. I am so, so happy.
These are the finished trusses.



This is what it looks like from inside the house



Mike is also very happy that we got the trusses up because we didn't have to pay for a crane to help us.

Friday-

All we had to do today was put up 40 sheets of 4 x 8 plywood on top of the trusses. Sounds easy, right, and it is but it took us much longer than expected. First we chalked off the plywood every 2 feet to make it easier to screw the plywood to the trusses. Then we picked up the plywood, and put it on top of the trusses at the back of the house and pushed it foward. Once we got the plywood in place we glued, H-clipped, and screwed each board down. This is Mike working.



And me. See I really do more than take pictures.



We got about 5 rows done(25 sheets) and a new neighbor stopped by. Once he left the weather changed and it looked like there was going to be a bad storm so we packed everything up and went home.

More pictures of the roof



And we were so close to finishing



Saturday

We got to the property at a reasonable time and started working on the roof. We had 15 sheets of plywood left to get on top. It was very windy this morning so we had to be very careful with the plywood sheets so they wouldn't fly off the roof and knock one of us out. By the time we got most of the boards up it was getting pretty hot so we took a break and had lunch. While we are having lunch, Mike says to me " I think I know how we can get the metal roof up to the top". Oh no, now I know I'm in trouble. Have you ever heard of "Bob The Builder"?(it's a cartoon) Anyway, his motto is "we can build it yes we can". Well Mike thinks the 2 of us can do everything. O.K. honey, what's the plan? We will take the trailer behind the jeep down to the metal roof(you know that pile on the side of the road?), put 2 sheets of plywood on the ground to protect the roofing, and move all the metal roofing onto the plywood. The reason for this is we have to get to the skid at the bottom of the metal roofing. O.K., so we move 26 sheets of metal 3 feet x 26 feet long. It was actually pretty easy. Then we put the skid sideways on our trailer than screwed and bungeed it on. We loaded 2 sheets of metal roofing and strapped that on. This was going to be our test run. We get to the top with no major problems. We go back and load up 1/2 the metal roofing, strap it down, and bring it to the top. We unload the metal roofing onto our plywood roof. One more trip and we are finished. Now everything is at the top and we are done.

Finishing the plywood on the roof



Mike bringing up the metal roof to the top



Now everything is at the top



Now Mike says to me "we should load 10 4 x 8 sheets of T-111 plywood onto the trailer and bring them down in front of the house so we can bring them inside. Oh heck, why not? We get the 10 sheets inside the house(which is nice and shaded now). Now we are ready to side the front of the house this coming week.

That finishes up our story for the week. By the way today is exactly 1 month since we started grading our property. I think we are moving along nicely. Mike told me we would take our time on this house. He's told me that before but we always end up working like nuts. It's all good though because we love doing this kind of work together.

Now we are all up to date. I will be posting a couple of times a week from now on.

As usual, I hope you are enjoying our story.

Lisa and Mike