February 14, 2020 A fairly nice week

St. Valentine's Day has come once more. We don't do much about it, but here it is anyway. The week went by quickly and quite a bit got done.

The sub-floor frame nearing completion.

First things first. The house build is going very well. On Monday the twenty-four foot beam we ordered came in and we wasted no time bringing it to the Farm and laying it on it's piers. We had about a third of the frame laid in last week, but this week saw the entire sub-floor frame put together. Each board in the sub-floor framing is 2x12 wood and about half of it is sixteen feet long and very heavy. But taken one at a time to work went smoothly and with few mis-steps. The nailing went well, but each nail took its appropriate time and sufficient number of blows. Fifteen pounds of nails went into the frame, the hammer getting heavier with each one.

Following the final board being laid down, on Thursday we began moving toward installing the plumbing that goes under the floor. We drilled holes through most of the joists and pulled the PEX piping through them. The plumbing system is small and very simple to do, but there are quite a few parts to it. The PEX system is very easy to use and much easier than copper. PEX is a system of poly pipes, connectors, and clamps which takes little effort to put together and doesn't tend to have hidden leaks. Unlike the water system, the septic system is a bit more abstract.

Aside from learning to do septic tanks and drain fields, designing a waste system is new to us. We had to pick through the building codes and envision the distances and slope measurements to bring waste water to the perimeter of the house. Our new septic tank is about twenty feet north-east of the house and the waste pipe will exit the house at the nearest point to it, so things are relatively short distanced. Studying the problem took about two hours before we could come up with a parts list. We went out to buy the stuff today for installation beginning tomorrow.

Our current plan is to finish the plumbing projects and have the inspections done by next Friday. Following approvals we will begin the next, slightly less laborious,  process of putting the flooring boards down. This will be done in three parts.

The first is to put in the underfloor insulation. We have found a way to chisel the cost of insulating down by nearly one half and figured a way to install it in about half the time, so our economical goals are in line with this part of the build. The insulation will be put in as each course of floor boards goes down. This is mostly because rain comes and goes and we certainly don't need watery insulation under the house. We are hoping for dry weather, but too often our hopes are dashed. We will cover the entire floor with sheet plastic if the rains show up and pull the plastic back between rainy times.

The second part of the flooring project will be putting the sub-floor cover down on the frame and securing it with glue and nails. There are a lot of nails going into this portion of the build. For this we will  use the pneumatic nailer we bought to build the tiny home cabin a few years ago. I found a way to chisel the price of the floor boards down a bit, but these things are fairly stable for price and competition hasn't allowed for much savings. It will take forty-seven four by eight foot boards to do the job, and there will be a bit of waste wood following installation. Hopefully we will find uses for the scrap in the attic flooring later on.

Once these two parts are finished the wall building project commences. This will be the fun part. The wood gets lighter, the nailing isn't low down or on the wet ground. The walls are designed to go together on the flat area of the floor, then be raised in small bites, there to be nailed together. The house is small and there are few interior walls to build, so this part of the project will give us a great deal of satisfaction as the house takes its final shape. The steps following the walls going up will take a bit longer to describe than I have here.

There hasn't been much else happening this week. Farming isn't ready to commence until mid-March. But the chickens are producing and our farming plans are going along despite nothing getting done in this area. But the house must be our priority. Earning a living really can't happen until the house is built and the new kennel put together and our planned schedule is pretty far behind.

The week ahead looks pretty fair and dry. Hope springs eternal.