Putting Up the Walls and Building Up the Garden Area

We’ve resumed building on the house again, as Spring returns. It’s been raining a lot so now that we have the time and money, the weather is a challenge. Pretty typical for this time of year.

Surviving Winter

I wanted to post a couple winter pictures showing the house all bundled up waiting for the thaw: This was one our snow storms in January 2011. We don’t get a huge amount of snow, but it was still a long winter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see our hillbilly hotel with the straw around the foundation to keep us a bit warmer than outside. Despite this and other precautions, the water line did freeze when we forgot to keep it trickling.

Floor

Winter finally did pass and I removed the plastic, since it seemed to keep the floor from ever really drying out. So now the rains have come and I’ve just given up on trying to keep it dry. It will do what it will do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think the floor has swelled relatively evenly, so the subfloor is now an inch thick rather than the original 3/4”. (Should have used Aventec instead of standard OSB, as mentioned in an earlier blog entry.)

We finished the floor and prepared to do the outer walls. Notice the foundation for the masonry furnace. Also, you can’t see it, but the posts have warped out of plumb over the winter, which will make putting up the walls a more difficult task. Yeah! Another challenge.

Outer walls

A few of my friends from church and a neighbor family came to help me put up the outer walls. I had pre-built a few of them and they helped me lift those and build the rest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This wall was built prior to the “party” along with sheathing it on the floor, which is much easier to do, but results in a much heavier wall. I wanted to sheath this one first to ensure it stayed square, being the first wall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the long East wall. We laid this out,  built it, and put it up in about an hour. It was threatening to rain and my crew was needing to leave, so we hurried and finished this. At the end of the day, we had put up the walls on three sides.

The next day, Connie and I built and put up the wall on the west side. It was easier and lighter because it only had one door and I waited to actually nail in the header until we got the wall up.

However, as it turned out, I put the door in the wrong place and had to move it over about 5 inches the next day, which is not too hard to do when it’s just framed.  

Inner Walls

I want thick walls to attempt to super-insulate this house. I decided on double 2x4 walls rather than, say a single 2x6 wall for several reasons: First, I wanted more insulation than would fit in a 2x6 wall, which is roughly R-19. Second, because I introduced 5x5 posts extending into the ground and through the walls, and since I added a couple of rim joists beyond the posts, I needed thick walls to enclose the posts into the wall. Finally, I wanted to avoid thermal bridges by offsetting the studs in the double 2x4 wall. As it turns out, I won’t have to offset the 2x4’s in the inner wall from the outer wall because of the dead space between them.

My design calls for an 8-5/8” wall (framing members only). I’m considering just making that 9-1/4”, or whatever a 2x10 is, avoiding having to rip 140’ worth of 2x10’s. I plan to blow in cellulose into the walls and in the attic. Cellulose has an R-value of 3.7 per inch. So, if I go with the 9'-1/4” 2x10 walls, they will have an R-34 insulation value. Certainly overkill for this climate (Ozarks, or southern Missouri), but I overbuild. That’s what I do.

I’ll do the inner walls and finish the sheathing this next week (if we get enough hours without rain).

Compost Bin

Here I am building the compost bin. Strange how I always get in the picture when Connie takes it. We felt it important to take a small detour from building the house to finish at least one compost bin. I used cut trees as some of the posts and got some old barn wood from a friend who owed me a favor. Don’t look too closely or you’ll notice I used some left-over 5x5 pressure treated lumber. Probably not the best thing to have in close contact with the compost I’m planning to put on my garden, but I justified it in my mind, because they aren’t using copper arsinide any longer, it was easier using square posts, I only had to cut 4 posts for the compost instead of 8, and I already had paid for them. Cheap beat green this time around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  This is the first bin completed. There will be another bin on the near side. The middle bin will eventually be covered with a roof and will contain hay, or other cover material for the compost. I’ll also be extending the roof towards the back for another covered bin where we will keep saw dust. 

Garden

We also felt it important to get the garden started, at least part of it. We took the hay bails that were around the base of the trailer and made two raised beds 4’ x 40’, spaced 10’ apart. I then had a load (16 yards) of top soil brought in. When I rented the skid steer to drill the post holes for the compost and the vineyard/berry rows below, I moved the top soil into the raised beds. Connie and I then smoothed the dirt. We’ll be planting this week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We transplanted 16 thorn-less blackberry plants from our previous house. These came from a family at church who had been raising them for some time. We loved the the berries and they produce well. So, we made sure we dug some up before we left and planted these last fall. They are doing well, except for a couple of plants that didn’t make it. They will proliferate well enough, so I’m not concerned.

We also ordered and planted two Concord and two Reliance grape plants, as well as four disease-resistant apple trees (not shown). We aim to produce all our own food, eventually.

Hail Storm

We were sitting in the trailer yesterday when suddenly we heard this CRASH and then another SNAP, THUD, BANG, with increasing frequency until it was as loud as, well, as HAIL. It didn’t last long, thankfully, but occurred twice in the afternoon. We took these pictures just after the first storm. The hail appeared to be as large as ping pong balls. Today I noticed it did ding our truck hood (and probably the top). Oh, well. Not to worry. The dings will just add contrast to the scratches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We will probably have storms all night again and then we are expecting, and looking forward to, some sunny weather again.