Mass Update

 A lot has happened since our last post. After we got the roof on, it was time to put in the windows and doors. I won't go into detail on how to install windows and doors. There is plenty of information on that from people who have much more experience than us. However ... when I was looking for a good way to lift the behemoth that goes in this hole; I struck out. So I had to put the thinking cap on.

Since we already owned wall jacks from the wall raising, I decided we could use them to lift the window. We mounted some long 2x4s to the house set off from the house with 3 scraps of 2x material so that the window wouldn't be scraping against the house. With me on the lift and my Dad and Wife in the house to receive the window, here's what it looked like.

I have to admit, I wasn't sure that it would work and if it didn't; disaster awaited. It worked flawlessly!! 

Once the windows and doors were done, it was time to move on to the siding. Whilst the project was on hold due to our illnesses, I was thinking about what I could do over the winter to further the project. I got the wild idea that we could collect logs, haul them to a local saw mill operation and turn it into live edge siding.

Before we put it up, we also put a continuous layer of one-inch foil-faced polyiso insulation as an exterior thermal break.

To get it ready to go up, we ripped one edge straight to give us a straight edge to line up as we were putting it up. Then we ran it through the planer and put a finish coat of Penofin on the front and a coat of Thompson's Water Seal on the back side.

We couldn't be happier with the result of all the hard work. For the upper peak of the gable ends we opted to use LP SmartSide board and batten. It has a 15 year warranty on the paint so we won't have to get up there when we want to refinish the siding.

We are also very happy with this decision. The plywood in this image is a temporary placeholder for the back wall of the future, attached greenhouse.
While we were siding we hired out the plumbing and electrical.There, now you are mostly caught up.

Putting a lid on it

 We ordered two different styles of trusses for our house. One half has scissor trusses for a vault ceiling and the other half has an open web style truss. We rented a telehandler and assembled a team to put them on the house.

Things went pretty well .... that weekend. However, three days later the wind knocked them down before we could get out there to give them extra bracing (day jobs always get in the way).

We were heartbroken. The next weekend we got to work taking them down and repairing any breaks. We attempted to put together a couple small sections fully sheathed so that when we put them up they would be stronger. Lifting them didn't go well, the lifting straps were plenty strong but one of the d-rings broke loose from the set of trusses dropping it. By the grace of God it only fell a couple feet and nothing was damaged and no one was hurt. After abandoning that plan, I texted a friend of ours who is a home builder to ask him if he has a roof crew. He replied with his guy's contact and said, "I let him know you will be calling." Good friends are irreplaceable!

I met with the roof guy and he gave us a very favorable bid. We hired him.

They did such a good job with the trusses and sheathing, that we hired them to do the steel as well! 

The moral of the story is; trusses are doable IF you:
a) live in a non-windy area
b) can take off enough work to get them up, braced, and sheathed before the wind comes.

Up next windows and doors!!

Walls

 Seeing as the roof trusses are going up tomorrow, I thought I would do a post about the walls. We built and sheathed the walls laying down and stood them up with wall jacks.

The walls are 2x6s and the sheathing is a product called ForceField. They come with the weather-resistant barrier (house wrap) pre-applied. This saves time and keeps the wind from removing your house wrap. 

The wall jacks were totally worth it! These are the ones we used: Wall Jacks

Tomorrow we start putting a lid on it!

More Concrete

We finally finished pouring concrete for our basement (Hallelujah!). But let me back up to how we got to this point.
The first layer we needed was a layer of sand, six inches in our case. I ordered the sand from a local hauler I've used since the first time we built a house. I found out they wouldn't be able to dump it from the truck over the edge of the basement walls. So we rented a mini skid steer to get it into the basement and then spread it by hand.

Like a gladiator on a chariot, this guy

When we had it all spread out and level, we compacted it with a rented plate compactor.

Next came two inches of rigid foam board (extruded polystyrene). Despite trying to weigh it down, we did have one wind event but we didn't lose or break any. We just had to put them back in their places.

After that, we put down pex lines that are part of our radiant heat system.
Here you see Jenn stapling the pex to the foam board with a rented stapler made for this purpose. Side note, I have discovered Menards is a great place to rent weird tools like this!

After we had all the circuits for this zone laid out, we attached them to this premade manifold that came with our kit from Radiantec. Thus far, I couldn't be happier with the quality of materials from Radiantec. Even better, the tech support we have received has been top notch!

After everything was connected, we pressure-tested it. No leaks!! Radiantec recommends leaving it pressured to about 25 psi for the concrete pour, so you can see air bubbles in your concrete while you are pouring.

The day of the pour was exhausting and hot as is every time we pour concrete. We set up screed rails on the two long edges and put together a 24-foot-long screed board. Don't do this! It was very hard to pull. Fortunately for us, one of my closest friends showed up to help us. He also happens to be the strongest human I know. Thank God for good friends!!

All in all, it went well and we have a basement floor.

The rest of the weekend we got to start framing. It was hot but as it stands we are half done putting on the floor trusses.

They are 26 feet long and 16 inches deep. Stay tuned for walls

A Bunch of Concrete

 We filled our ICFs with 36 yards of concrete. It was our first experience on the business end of a pump truck. Don't worry, me and my bodyguard checked out the driver beforehand.

Jenn ran the pump hose while I ran the concrete vibrator.

Until this day, I did not know how much work this machine would be. It's heavy but doable.

We had two near misses during the pour. Our window bucks separated from the forms and we had to pause for my Dad to screw a piece of OSB across the buck and forms. Towards the end of our pour, my Mom (ol' eagle eye) spotted a bulging corner. Again we paused and my Dad and nephew screwed scrap lumber across the bulge. The day after our pour, I realized that all of our corners had separated a bit. Thankfully, none of them blew out. We used compact corners from LiteForm. I do not know their purpose, but I would not use them again. To be fair, LiteForm does make a full corner but they weren't available from our local Menards.

All and all, the pour went exceptionally well. We had a great pump truck operator who was very patient with newbies. After the forms were full, we wet set j-bolts that will lock down our mud plate. My bodyguard was also helpful in this aspect.

Currently, we are coating the forms with a foundation sealer in preparation for back fill. We all agree we are ready to move on from the basement part of the house. Bring on the framing!!

We're Baaaaaack!

 If that title makes you salivate for delicious veggies and bread, let me stop you right there. We are not back to growing food for a living. We are back to building another homestead from the ground up.

Let's start with what happened to the original homestead. We sold it and traveled the country in our camper for a summer. That trip ended with my (Jared) first bout with cancer (brain to be specific). I recovered, we moved back to North Dakota, and continued with normal life ... for a while.

We decided we missed living the country life and bought 3 acres a few miles outside of town. We did some dreamin' and schemin' which ended with some house plans. We hired a digger to do what a digger do.

That went well and was of course exciting. We promptly got started forming up the footings using a product called form-a-drain. 

That was going well, until ... we both got diagnosed with different forms of cancer 10 days apart. We put the project on the shelf.

By God's good grace, we are both still here and healthy again. So naturally we wanted to start building again. Except ..... there was a near record-breaking winter in between. Which left us with an 8-foot-deep hole full of snow.

Which turned into a couple feet of water in the spring.

The above photo is after the first melt had dried up giving us enough time to redo the footing forms .... and then the spring rains.

We pumped water, and pumped water. When we were down to mud stage, we did some research on how to dry it up. The answer:

The answer is, you spread 800 pounds of lime by hand and it will dry it up. Also, every muscle you have will be on fire! Then, once you are healed; you, your wife, your father and your nephew bust your collective humps pouring the footings.

For this homestead we opted for a full basement which we stacked up with Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF). The brand we chose is called LiteForm; mostly because we could get them from out local Menards. Stacking them has gone well. It's like legos for adults. The following pictures are where we are at the time of this writing; inspection tomorrow and then schedule a pour.

What you are looking at is my wife in all her grace and balance spray foaming what is known as the 'common seam.' If you are like me and a seam like that makes your skin crawl, let me assure you, it is necessary. If you were to try to act like a brickie and follow the rule of "two over one, one over two", you would be buying a ticket on the struggle bus. We followed the advice of everyone who has ever done ICF, but I can see now that the 'lego' nobs won't line up unless you work from each corner and meet at a seam.

This is yours truly standing on top of the scaffolding I designed in my head and desperately hoped would work. Phew!

The secret ingredient is these roofing fall protection brackets (I call them roof jacks). I had used them previously for their intended purpose of roofing and deduced they would work in this situation.

What's great about this system is that all the lumber will be used to build the next phase of the house. The 2x6's will be walls on top of the treated 2x10's that will be the mud plate on top of our foundation walls.

Here is a gratuitous shot of us lifting a heavy window buck. We got to lift two of them, twice. After we had them in place, we decided they could be a little lower in the wall. We built them based on
this method.

As previously stated, we will be getting the stacked blocks inspected tomorrow and then scheduling a concrete truck and pump truck. Stay tuned!

 

Off Grid Solar

This post is long overdue, but after we moved into our stone cottage on the prairie after 2.5 years of hard work; we sort of took a break. Alas, there are things that need to be shared, some of them major. For starters, we are living completely off the grid with the use of our self installed PV system. Our only outside source of energy is our 1000 gallon propane tank (I use the term ‘only’ loosely). Here is a rundown of our system. It starts outside with 8 REC 235w solar panels. They are wired in 4 series strings of 2 panels each and mounted to our homemade tilt-able solar mount. It is constructed out of what is called telespar (stop sign post) with no welding. It has been strong and sturdy even in our heavy winds, although if I had to do it all over again I might use uni-strut instead of telespar. It is better suited for bolting together and they make all kinds of connectors for it.

From the mount, the panels are wired into an MNPV6 combiner box. The combined output travels underground via #4 copper up to our loft. We bought a pre-wired E-panel from Midnite Solar which I would highly recommend to anyone who is a novice in producing their own energy. Our system includes the 240v E-panel, 4000w Magnum inverter/charger, the Midnite Solar Classic 150 charge controller and all the NEC required breakers and disconnects. It wasn’t cheap, but very very worth it. I don’t know that I would have been able to figure out the hook up without the components pre-wired to each other. Plus, inside the E-panel every bus and breaker is labeled so figuring out where to connect the wires to and from the system is a lot easier.

So, speaking of wires – this is how our system works.

DC power from the panels combined and sent to the E-panel via Classic charge controller

DC power is sent to 24v 500 amp hour battery bank (seen without finished enclosure) and inverter

• Batteries are Interstate Batteries DCM0100 sealed AGMs

E-panel sends 120/240v AC power to our house breaker panel via inverter

Generac standby generator is plumbed into our propane tank and AC output goes up to the E-panel

• From there we are either charging the batteries or running the house or both

The system comes with a remote panel that I have wired into my utility room so we can monitor /control the system from the main floor. We are constantly checking the SOC (state of charge). You can also monitor the input of the PV panels via the charger controller. I haven’t set it up yet, but I have an app downloaded to my computer that allows you to check the charge controller using a local area network (LAN). After spending some time with our system, we couldn’t be happier. We appreciate the sunshine even more than we did before.

So, that is the basics. Any questions?

On a side note. We also couldn’t be happier with our masonry heater. The constant radiant heat is awesome. And we are slowly but surely learning how to cook in the bake oven – including pizzas and rustic artisan loaves.