Preparing for a week of work banging nails

I am on vacation next week and plan to head up and build the floor platform and hopefully a couple of walls. I ordered some lumber from the local lumberyard. They will deliver it Monday morning; I'll be heading up late Sunday.

I'm packing all my tools and supplies. I bought some 2x3 x 8 to use for window header spacers. I cut up some 2x10's to 14.5" length to use as joist blocking. This week will be a good test to see if my electrical power ideas work out. I have a 110 amp marine battery that I'm bringing up with me. I have a battery charger for the 18 V Ryobi batteries which runs off a 12 V battery. I'll use the marine battery to recharge the Ryobi batteries for the circular saw and drill. When the marine battery voltage drops, I'll hook some jumper cables to the car battery and start up the Jeep to recharge it. Hopefully this will work well enough so I don't have to get a generator.

In addition to tools, I need to get my camping gear in order. First was setting up a screen house / tent, which I bought a few weeks ago. It sets up in 5 minutes with one person. This will be vital for sleeping and my sanity by keeping the mosquitoes at bay. I'll set up the screen house in the cellar under the floor platform initially. That way I'll stay reasonably dry if it rains.  I bought a cot today to sleep on; I still need to test it out and see if it is easy to set up. I have to remember my sleeping bag and a pillow - it is starting to get cool at night now; good sleeping weather.  I got a bucket loo cover for a potty. I need to get my LED lantern and all it's pieces together next.

I keep thinking through things in my mind. Today I was thinking about what pattern to lay down the plywood decking to minimize waste. Tonight I was researching the correct size nails to use with joist hangers. I'll only have a couple of joist hangers around my trap door to the cellar. I still have to decide on window sizes and add the correct rough openings to my wall framing sketches.

Sills and a dug well

I drove up to the building site this past weekend to install the sill plates. My excavator was working back filling the foundation. He needed extra soil to build up the ground around the foundation, so he moved dirt from the gently sloping hillside behind the house. This gives me a relatively flat backyard and will improve water runoff in the spring.

This is a view behind the foundation, looking southeast. My garden will be close to the house, where it will get the most sunlight.

While my excavator was there, I asked if he could dig a couple of test holes to look for water. The first 2 holes hit ledge about 2 feet down. The third hole, he was able to get about 10 feet down. The ground was moist and water was slowly seeping out of the ledge.

My excavator put a bed of gravel in the hole, followed by a well tile and then surrounded it with gravel. 16 hours later there was 6 inches of water in the well tile. We will have to see how this turns out, but I was happy to get some water. There is a lot of runoff here in the spring, so I will have plenty of water then. I planned to put in a 300 gallon water storage tank all along, so finding water is just an extra blessing.

I finished up the sills on Saturday afternoon.

As an experiment, I built some Jefferson alternating tread stairs. I lowered them into the foundation and tried them out. They work fine. I just have to remember I am on stairs and not a ladder.

I hope to get back in a couple of weeks to frame the floor.

We have a foundation !

The weather was good this week so my foundation contractor was able to get the foundation poured. The bump out on the right is for the bulkhead and stairs down into the cellar.

I went up on Friday to tar the foundation. First I had to remove the metal tabs left over from the forms.



I decided to prime the spots where the metal tabs had been, with tar.



The next day I rolled waterproofing over the foundation.




Here is the view inside the foundation.

I'll head back up in 2 weeks to start the sills and floor joists.
It is exciting to see what was once a drawing on a piece of paper become a reality.

Foundation hole

My excavator dug the foundation hole yesterday. He ran into some ledge in the first corner, about 3 feet down. We moved over a few feet and were able to dig another 2 feet lower. There is plenty of fill on the lot, so we can build up the finish grade around the foundation.

The ledge we found at the bottom right.

Down in the hole.

The plan is to get the foundation in this week.

Some excavating progress

It has been a wet spring with lots of rain and this has slowed down work on the foundation and septic system. It dried out enough to do some clearing last week. The current plan is to install the leaching field this week and pour the foundation the week after the 4th of July.

My excavator dug a drainage trench on the uphill side of the driveway to help things dry out quicker. This will be filled with gravel later.

Although some of the lot was cleared of trees about 10 years ago, small saplings had grown in the area where the septic system will be located. This is my excavator removing some of those trees after they had been cut down.

Here is a video of my excavator in action.

This is the area where the leaching field will go.

The 2 sections of my septic tank.

The excavator is sitting in my future living room!

This is a panoramic view looking north. The house will be where the excavator is sitting and the septic field is on the far right. The area in the foreground, behind the house, will be my garden.

Finally have the building permit !

The septic system design was updated and approved by the state of NH a month ago. I also needed some energy efficiency paperwork approved by the state. With both of those in hand, I applied for my actual building permit and received it 2 weeks ago. Hopefully my excavator can get the holding tank and leaching field installed before the snow flies !

4 stakes marking approximate corners of house; hat on stake at right rear!

View from future front door.

View of future back yard garden and woods.

Meeting the septic designer in the snow

I drove up to my lot the last Saturday in April to meet with the septic designer and excavator. There was still snow on parts of the lot. My neighbor had told me there is a lot of runoff in the spring. He was correct; it was very muddy. This may be a good thing because eventually I would like to collect subsurface water into a cistern, instead of drilling a well. The septic designer had put together the design over 10 years ago for the previous owner, who had not gone any further with his build. We found the 2 maple trees that he had marked 10 years ago. That will make his job easier when updating the design for my tiny house.

There was still up to 2 feet of snow on the ground in the shady areas. We plan to meet again in about a month when things dry out. Then we we mark where the house will go and the designer can update his plans.

This is my Jeep as far as it would go up the driveway in 4WD before the mud stopped it

This view is looking east at one of the maple trees previously marked by the septic engineer. The leeching field will be to the left of this tree.

This is the view looking west from the above maple tree. My tiny house will be in this area.



I have changed the dimensions of the house again to 14' x 32'. This is an updated sketch of my current thoughts. I added additional windows on the south side. The combined living room and dining room in my current house is approximately this size, so it makes it easier to visualize the space.