Winter Delays

Cold weather, rain and snow, and lack of funds have pretty much stopped our progress on the house. We were able to get most of the sub-floor laid over the floor joists. More on that in a minute.

Here’s a picture of the pump house, the most “built” building on our property. Still not done, but functional.

It was a very good thing that we stopped working on the house and built this when we did. It’s now December 31, 2010. We’ve been in the trailer for four months now and I don’t know what we would have done had we still been hauling water. I insulated the pump house pretty thoroughly. Along with the help of a heat lamp on a thermostat, it stays pretty much above 50 degrees in there. I’m also glad I made it a bit bigger (5’ x 6’) than it needed to be. If I had to do it over again, I would have made it even bigger.

We put bails of hay around the outside of the trailer to try and combat the cold. The floor is always cold anyway, but I think it helps.

A friend of ours stopped by and said “It’s kind of hillbilly but it looks like it works.” Yep, we’ve focused pretty much on the practical and what works rather than aesthetics. Living on the edge, as it were, quickly lets you see what’s really important and what’s not.

Now back to the floor. When I purchased the sub-flooring material, I had a choice. Around here, and probably everywhere else in the country, most builders use Avantech, which is an OSB plywood product that is pretty much water-proof and costs about $25 a sheet. This is important when it rains before you get the roof on. Regular OSB plywood, which only costs about $15 a sheet, tends to soak up the moisture and swells. As you might have guessed, I didn’t use Avantech, but decided that instead of spending the extra $300, I would just put a tarp over the floor until we could dry-in the house.

WRONG. The tarps I used, it turns out, were not water-proof. And the older the tarp, the less water-proof it becomes. Here’s a picture of where we’re at now:

It looks covered, but under the tarp, the OSB is pretty wet. And when normal OSB gets wet, it swells, especially on the edges, as you can see:

  So now what? Connie and I have thought we might have to tear it up and re-do the sub-floor with Avantech, which we still might do. However, this kind of thing happens to the builders who still aren’t using the good stuff all the time. I did some reading on-line and found others who were concerned as I was.

First of all, the structural integrity of the plywood is not compromised by rain or moisture, unless it sits in water for some time. Secondly, the swelling that does occur is usually sanded down before applying any flooring treatment. The edges swell the most, but it seems that a good floor sander could handle the problem. A link I found helpful:

http://www.askthebuilder.com/304_Plywood_and_OSB_-_Which_One_Is_Better_.shtml

So, it is possible to recover from this kind of moisture problem. Frankly, I’m not sure if it would have been better to leave the floor exposed rather than covering it with the tarp. My concern is that the moisture trapped under the tarp may take longer to dry. But, it is what it is. I’m not taking the tarp off until I’m ready to dry in the building.

The other reason I should have used Avantech was to make the next step of drying in the building easier. With OSB needing to be kept as dry as possible, I’ve felt we should wait to proceed until we have the money, materials, and man-power lined up to get it done as quickly as possible. As soon as I remove the tarp (assuming it’s doing any good), we need to put up the walls and sheathing, place the trusses, and finish the roof in one swift move. If I had used Avantech, I wouldn’t feel quite so much pressure for speed. So, the extra $300 sounds like a bargain at this point.

Incidentally, regardless of what is used for sub-flooring, especially if standard OSB is used, the building should be allowed to dry after the roof is on before proceeding with any finish work.

So here we are, stuck in winter, stuck in a 30’ trailer, bumping into each other and waiting for a break in the weather and enough money to pile up to buy the materials for drying-in the building, which I think will cost about $4,000-5,000. In the meantime, I’m busy with my software development work and studying to take the ham radio technician class FCC test. I’m gonna’ be a ham. Also, our branch of the church has an orchestra! We’ve become involved with Connie picking up the viola again (which she played as a youth) and me conducting and arranging pieces. I’ll try and post some music that I’ve arranged (using the Finale PrintMusic program) in the future. Cool stuff.