March 14th, 2020 On Hold for Weather

Our new floor with the tent rail installed

I didn't post last week, for the most part because there really wasn't much to talk about. We had put the sub-floor in and insulated it, but we ran out of nails for the air-nailer on Friday and couldn't finish the job.

The air-nailer we bought at Harbor Freight was inexpensive. At the time we bought it there wasn't much cash laying around and we thought it would help build the tiny home, which it did. We were surprised to find that Harbor Freight discontinued the nailer and they also stopped carrying the nails for it as well. Finding the right angled nails on Amazon solved the problem. We finished nailing the floor down Thursday. But there were other problems to solve.

We put a vent fan in to get rid of any
water evaporating under the floor.

The floor, and the insulation under it, needs protected from the weather until the walls and roof are up and covered. Building in Winter is a gamble. Rain comes weekly and sometimes in inches, so there was a whole lot of water on the ground under the house which will eventually either sink into the dirt or  evaporate into the air, and a whole lot of water coming from the sky as well. To solve the problem, or at least make the water go away more rapidly, I cut a large hole in a scrap piece of floor and screwed a box fan to it. The panel fits over the access hatch in the floor and pulls air through the foundation vents and out of the hatch in the floor. This is doing the job of getting the water out from under the house efficiently but the rains will continue. Then we bought a large role of plastic to protect the entire floor from rain. The first time it rained we found the plastic had a few pin holes in it and some water was getting through. Not enough water to ruin anything, but we needed to do something about the problem.

We solved the problem by building a tent out of the plastic using fence posts bolted to the floor with a rail on top . The rail holds the plastic about five feet off the middle of the floor and the rain slides right off. Any holes we find are easily taped over, and the vent fan pulls the water out from under the floor drying everything out under the house. The floor is protected well enough to move onto the next steps.

A tent protects the floor from the rain and snow.

The floor plan we are building.
Click on it for a larger picture

We spent a bit of time one Monday laying out the floor plan onto the new floor. Ours will be a simple little house, just one floor, but the plans our architect Erik made for us needed to be put onto the floor to check it all out in full size. We carefully measured everything out and put it on the floor using a chalk line, some pencil, and crayon where key measurements needed to be preserved. I must say the view from our bedroom windows will be spectacular, the view of the Farm from the front windows will be great too. We had to adjust the plan a little to accommodate building the house we want, but overall the plan is the same.

At the beginning of our planning the Farm, we had decided to buy a manufactured home but abandoned this idea when we found that we couldn't get what we wanted for the money we wanted to pay. We had made an alternate building plan before deciding to stick frame our Farmhouse instead of dragging on here so we dragged the plans out last weekend to start putting together a lumber list to build the walls. Ann took the list and called around early this week, finding the best prices for the lumber. Ann did a really good job, saving us a lot of money. All the lumber was here by Thursday. Some of the stuff came delivered for free, some we had to haul to the Farm on our heavy trailer, but it is all here now.

A large pile of lumber waits for dryer weather

We are taking a bit of time off from building the house to wait out the late-Winter rains. It snowed this morning, so there are still a few weeks to go. The Farm needs work to be ready for planting at the end of April and we will spend the next few weeks weeding and tilling.

We are not doing a very ambitious farming plan this year, the house must be our highest priority, but we will be planting a lot of seeds this year, so the ground needs to be ready to plant when the Spring arrives and for house building once the rains stop.