build my own cabin

There is no wasted space:

http://www.ezlogkits.com/andrea.htm

I picked a place out i the yard that would give very good coverage.

I don’t think any of the neighbors would notice.

I’m planning on building a tiny cabin using mainly found materials.

We own the land here but i refuse to pay for any fucking permits. Why the hell would you? Its our land so fuck them.

I have alot of the plan out in my head. i just got to work it out a little more then im putting it to paper and then to work.

I have seen alot of really cool tiny houses but these people seem to think they need to have expensive ass wood and shit and spend like $20,000 on a tiny house. Yes its cool but man why would you spend so much? I bet i can find most of my materials. It will be solid it just wont be as fancy as all those other ones but once again it doesn’t matter. Its just to hold me over until the bus conversion is done.

According to my brother-in-law, it rains too much where the cabin site is, for solar to be a real viable option – but, hydro-electricity is almost a gimmee. I’ll have to investigate. I have not been to the building site yet. It is “beautiful land” according to my mom and it is on a south slope – but I do not know if it has a stream.

I do know I would only need a small solar system. I do not have a need for many things with big motors.

Things with big motors impacts the size (and thus the cost) of the system. Things with big motors are water pumps, my Amama Fridge, a washing machine, and an air conditioner compressor.

I am hoping to set up a rainwater catchment system for water, which would only require a 12Volt pump like is used in an RV.

There are super high efficency fridges that don’t require as much electricity as the brands sold in the home improvement centers. If I remember correctly Sunfrost is one brand. They are super-insulated and have very efficient compressors. They also make models that operate off natural gas. (I don’t know how – but it is so.)

I can live without AC in the mountains.

I don’t know how important keeping a washer in my house is. Now it is very important as I need clean clothes to go to work every day. When I build the cabin I’ll be retired from my day job and hopefully writing and spinning tales for a living. I am going to investigate a mini-washer and Japanese and European brands.

Everything else in my life pretty much runs off AC adapters (iPod, Laptop, Cell phone…) or natural gas (stove, hot water heater, ovens). These things can run off of a solar system that is miniscule in size. (They’d run off a car-sized battery for a number of days.)

Solar panels are usually good for about 20 years… but batteries age out at about 7 years – if not before. So, batteries are a recurring cost item. The smaller the solar system, the fewer batteries required and the lower the recurring costs.

That is all I know for now. b.

OK I am sitting here trying to figure out how to save money and I got the idea of getting a rain barrel to water the garden in the summer…. one thing led to another… and I starting thinking about a cistern as a water supply for the cabin of the future.

Even untreated, the rainwater is totally ok for washing clothes, showers and flushing the toilet – 90% of a household’s water usage. The gutters themselves are covered with hardwire cloth to prevent contamination and small leaf particles and such are strained out through a bed of sand and granulated limestone.

To make the water potable it has to be treated (read Clorox). But, since only drinking water is treated, and at the actual point of consuption, less chlorine is needed than in public works water. Municipal water companies have to treat the water that is traveling through many miles of pipe. All of it has to be germ-free when it comes out of your faucet… it takes a lot of chlorine.

I could set up two 5 gallon water coolers…. To treat clear water, you stir in about 10 drops of Clorox per gallon of water and wait 30 minutes. You can drink it right then, but the water will taste better if has a few days to let the fresh chlorine smell dissipate. Two coolers – drink out of one while the second one mellows. If I run low, I can do like I do now, I use a Brita filter to get rid of the taste of chlorine or bring home spring water from the grocery store.

I don’t know if the building inspector would agree with a new house being built without potable at the faucet. I know some folks in the county that still use gravity water systems – a cistern fed by a spring up the hill. They get by with it legally because of a grandfather clause. They get by with it safety-wise because they are lucky and they have consumed the water since birth. Too, there is so rain there, the water springs out of the hillsides – which lowers the chance of the spring water getting contaminated before entering the closest reservoir.)

With a 2000 gallon tank, I’ll have 2-4 months of water stored. Total, I use about 1000 gallons of water per month now. If I replaced my old washer and toilet, my water consumption would be reduced to about 500 gallons a month.

Here’s a great website:

http://www.montana.edu/wwwpb/pubs/mt9707.html

As I said, the area has high rainfall amounts – 80-120 inches a year. With a 850 square foot roof, I can save 500 gallons with 1 inch of rain. (I think I did the math right. I’ll check it again – to be sure!! :-) There are dry spells. But it never goes > 2 weeks without at least one good thunderstorm.

I’m afraid there will be the opposite problem: everything will have to be built to withstand deluges. I need to figure out how to divert the water when the tank gets full.

They said on the website, with less than 5000 gallon tank, then all you need is a small 1/2 HP pump and a pressure tank…. like you’d use with an RV…. which could run on 12 Volts… About here I had another mental leap frog: a 12 volt pump could easily run on a solar or small hydro-electrical system.

SO if I can get a building department to go with a cistern idea – being 100% off the grid may be an option.

It all just makes me wonder however. Thomas Jefferson designed a simple, sanitary system to have fresh drinking water on the side of a dry mountain 200 years ago. Why have we forgotten such wonderful technology?

As usual, thanks for listening. b.

Photo from Monticello from:
http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/virginia/charlottesville/monticello/servicetop.jpg

Here’s my friends house. She got the house plans from here.

http://www.countryplans.com/

I like the post and pier foundation because there is no grading required - just ditches for water, power and sewer lines and cutting a driveway. (It will be a different story for the cabin as I’ll have a septic system.) With post and pier, the house is up off the ground so there is no dampness from the soil under the house. Time will tell as how hard my friend’s house is to heat with its bottom exposed - that will be more of an issue in the mountains.

One of the things I like about this site and these plans is, it is geared to people building their own structures—or working as their own contractor.

I have been my own contractor for a major kitchen renovation and deck building and have seen my friends working with subs too. It is the toughest part of building: finding the right people AND getting them there. A small, one-time project doesn’t get the same priority as one for a contractor that is building 25 houses this year. This is a nightmare on a calendar, but you can do it. You pretty much have to get one project/sub finished before you schedule the next one.

Like when I was doing the kitchen, I scheduled the subfloor installation, the heating contractor, the electrician, the painters, the cabinet install, then the floor finishers, the counters, then the appliance installation. But, the flooring arrived and it wasn’t up to par. It took six weeks to get more, so everything past it on the calendar had to be postponed, renegociated, rescheduled…. A few more delays like that and I quickly learned just schedule one step at a time.

It took forever—11 months I think it was. But I was not insane by the time it was finished. And, the job was done correctly.

(I think it took seven tries to get the cabinets all in as ordered and not damaged in shipping. I said about 100 times to salesmen, managers, cabinet representatives: “You can put particle board in a 100 year old house if you want. I am not going to. You need to reorder them.”)

The other issue was supplies—“just in time” is not a good system.

Like if the plumber called at 5PM and said, “I am coming tomorrow,” I had to drop everything to go get the sink, fittings, faucet, drainpipe and dishwasher. I knew what I was going to buy—I had spent many hours picking things out. But I didn’t have a staging area, so I didn’t buy the dishwasher until the last minute.

I spent too many evenings driving around to home improvement centers, looking for the item I had picked out but couldn’t find in stock anywhere. I think it will be a good idea to either build a shed first - or rent a storage facility - to put every single thing in there I can get in advance.

It is important to save receipts and know where they are. Most places will take back even concrete blocks and unused drain pipe.

Open boxes when I go to pick special orders up. There is nothing like driving all the way home (20 miles) and finding out the color is wrong or something is broken and they need to order a new one. Plus, if it is wrong, the item is not taking up staging space or costing me interest on my credit card. As long as the item is still at the home center, it is STILL THEIRS. It is STILL THEIR PROBLEM. This principle is sort of the reverse of squatting - ownership is 9/10th of the law. If it is the wrong thing and you are waiting on someone to get motivated to get you the right thing - you don’t want to be anywhere near the wrong thing.

I also found out it is important to work with a locally owned building supply place, appliance store, plumber, etc. especially if I need a special order. They need my business. They will work miricles to make sure I am taken care of. At the warehouse places, I am just another person with a problem. The overworked clerks have good intentions, but they have no time for follow through.

The warehouse places are also huge time-sinks. I spent 4 hours looking for the right nails for a nail gun one night—going to 3 stores. If I had been able to go to the locally owned building supply place, they would of walked straight to the shelf and got me a box. If I had called or faxed my order in, they would of had it waiting at the counter for me, or would of loaded it in my truck and I could of signed the Visa slip without ever getting out of the drivers seat. Sure, I might spend a couple of extra dollars at the Mom and Pop store, but I will also save $40 in gas, and numerous hours of my life.

Keep a notebook with sheet protectors in it for brocures, lables off boxes, warranty cards, manuals, installation instructions. (It is amazing how easy a manual sitting on top of an appliance will get knocked in the floor and lost in the rubble.) Add receipts; special order invoices; phone numbers; names of whom you talked to and notes on converstations; contractor change orders; samples of everything (even nails); paint chips; specs and sizes; model numbers of nail guns, staplers, sanders, etc. etc. When I get a call at 4PM “go get more nails for the flooring….” then I’ll know what to buy.

I need to put tarps on the ground before garbage. When the tarp gets full, I can drag it to the truck or dumpster and haul it off. With the kitchen renovation, I ended up with the back yard full of bits of wood, chunks of plaster, nails, boxes, packing materials, wet insulation…. We stopped counting after 9 pickup truck loads. I still don’t know if we got all of it up. I will never let anyone walk barefoot back there ever.

That is all I can think of now. This is good. Has reminded me of things I need to remember!

I love the book: Not So Big House.

A friend just finished a 12×18 foot house with a 12×18 screen porch and a 12×12 deck. It has a full bath. It has one room kitchen/living space, with cathedral ceiling and two large patio doors facing south. It is very open and sunny. For me, it would need 1 large closet and a washer and dryer for my clothes-horse-self—but otherwise, it really is enough room. She will be living in it year round.

She built it for about $45,000 – the permits, water and utility hookups were probably $12,000 of that. Our culture really is geared to 4000 square foot monster houses.

I live in a 100 year old, 850 sq.foot house now with 2 large decks (16×14 and 12×12) and a small screen porch (6×15). I have lived here since 1983. It is small but it is all floor space: not much closet space or space wasted in hallways.

I have way too much furniture and stuff…, Decluttering it again now drastically is another of my goals. But it is plenty big enough. In fact, I don’t use the corners enough and that is where the dust and junk accumulates.

But my mom has told me I can have some family land up in the mountains if I want to build a cabin. Either a small cabin to visit on the weekends, or maybe live in once I retire. I am in the “thinking about it” stages now. I am thinking I will be starting in about 5 years.

I have renovated this house, help build my friend’s house, helped with Habitat Houses, and dreamed about a thousand houses—planning is the fun part!