The Farmhouse project will eventually take a few hundred-thousand individual parts, each taking some amount of time to put in the right place. We started digging out for the foundation in October of last year, poured the concrete in early Winter, and got the first wood laid in January 2020. The wooden frame of the house took ten months to complete. The wooden frame and roof are finished, for the most part. These still need their final coverings and finishes, but the house is dry on the inside and solid as a rock. But the Farmhouse framing isn't the only part included in the final County framing inspection.
The County also wants the rough plumbing and electrical work done prior to signing off on the framing. This is so that they can check how we routed the utilities through the walls and also so they can see we didn't weaken the frame with all of our hole drilling. So the past few weeks have been spent running wiring through and over the walls, and putting in water supply lines for the sinks and laundry. Our electrical plan will appear fairly simple once we cover everything in drywall, but wiring a house is a complicated thing to do.
Figuring out where things would go took a bit of thinking. We have been talking about this and modifying the picture at the top of the page for about four months. Each room gets the parts required by the building codes, but we added things to make the place more usable. Some of our outlet points are doubled up, having four places to plug things in. The modern house has quite a lot of small appliances and computers, so more outlets are a good idea if you don't want a bunch of cords draped all over the place. Then there is figuring out lighting and electrical heating, water heating, air conditioning, and the rest.
We had started the Farmhouse project with the idea of having a propane tankless water heater in the Pantry (to supply the kitchen) and a little tank water heater in the Bathroom (to save power and have hot water quickly available). It was a sound idea, but once we found that raising the water temperature from its native fifty-five degrees, to a solid one hundred - twenty degrees, would take a lot of heater and a whole lot of propane we switched things around. Now we will have a conventional electrical water heater in the pantry and a smaller electric tankless heater in the bathroom. The two person bathtub we are buying takes about seven hundred gallons to fill, that is a lot of hot water. The tub also has a water heater of its own but seven hundred gallons of hot water is not easy to make. The switching of water heaters will save about four hundred dollars initially and won't add much to the utility bills once the solar panels are installed.
Figuring out which types of wire would make the basic plan work took some time and research. Some circuits are smaller than others. Some carry more power (like clothing dryers and water heaters), a few will only carry a little power (like L.E.D. porch lights). We made this big plan with the intention of changing it to fit the reality of the house as we put the stuff in. The drawing at the top is complicated, but it was merely to give us a general sense of how things ought to look when completed. How high up on the walls switches and outlets would go took some thought. How many outlets in each room took some thought too. Then we had to decide how to move the wires into each room, then how to move wires between outlets or through light switches to the lights. In some places we needed four wires in a casing, some only three, some heavier wire, some the minimum.
There is also the problem of putting enough power to the proper uses. A refrigerator is a bigger thing than a light bulb, so we had to add up the power needed to make the plan and try to decide if we needed a bigger wire in some places. The Kitchen circuits above the counter are heavier than the circuits below the counter because a microwave and coffee maker draw a lot of power and we didn't want things to bog down so we used a heavier wire and a bigger circuit breaker to carry the load. Some places have more outlets, but all needed thinking about carefully. Then there is the problem of circuit breakers.
Any house built in the last half century has a switched circuit breaker panel and this hasn't changed. But the modern house must have both "Arc Fault" and "Ground Fault" circuit protection. These new types of breakers cost about ten times as much, but the Code is the Code. So to save money we had to plan around all of this and reduce the number of circuits as we put the wiring in the walls. There are few circuits that don't require these hugely expensive circuit breakers. Our interior ceiling lights and in-floor heating are the few which take the five dollar breakers. For some circuits we need very expensive outlets, some take the cheapest kind. All of this had to be thought through, then re-considered as we built the system. Then there is the problem of placing things where we think we will need them.
There is also the problem of putting enough power to the proper uses. A refrigerator is a bigger thing than a light bulb, so we had to add up the power needed to make the plan and try to decide if we needed a bigger wire in some places. The Kitchen circuits above the counter are heavier than the circuits below the counter because a microwave and coffee maker draw a lot of power and we didn't want things to bog down so we used a heavier wire and a bigger circuit breaker to carry the load. Some places have more outlets, but all needed thinking about carefully. Then there is the problem of circuit breakers.
Any house built in the last half century has a switched circuit breaker panel and this hasn't changed. But the modern house must have both "Arc Fault" and "Ground Fault" circuit protection. These new types of breakers cost about ten times as much, but the Code is the Code. So to save money we had to plan around all of this and reduce the number of circuits as we put the wiring in the walls. There are few circuits that don't require these hugely expensive circuit breakers. Our interior ceiling lights and in-floor heating are the few which take the five dollar breakers. For some circuits we need very expensive outlets, some take the cheapest kind. All of this had to be thought through, then re-considered as we built the system. Then there is the problem of placing things where we think we will need them.
Initially we intended to put a single circuit in to carry six outlets outside the house. This "Ground Fault" circuit would supply power as needed for landscape lighting and electric bar-b-ques . . . But as we built the electrical system it seemed an extra expense we might want, but didn't need. Now we have three outlets which extend from existing Ground Fault circuits, or can take a Ground Fault outlet. The move saves two hundred feet of wire and a hundred dollars in boxes, outlets, and the like. We added three high power security lights, and two Christmas light outlets to the final plan too.
Once we got the wiring in, we had to route it all into a circuit breaker panel. All in all there are twenty-four circuits in our little house, few of which are exactly as we planned in the four months preceding the building. And all of this had to meet code and be hidden inside of the walls. Somehow we got it all done though. The plumbing parts were much easier.
We had planned and installed the basic water and waste systems when we built the floor of the house. This plan hasn't changed except to reorder the water heaters. Adding in the supply line "stubs" takes some time, but is relatively easy to do. We are doing the whole system in PEX plastic pipe. Since we put in the basic system we have been collecting bits and pieces of PEX pipe from people on CraigsList. We have collected enough free PEX pipe, in enough sizes and lengths, to finish the interior piping and supply water from our well to the house. The main supply pipe must carry the well water to our new Utility Shed before treatment before sending it on to the house. This adds a hundred feet to the piping, but the freed pipe will cover it nicely. So far we've saved about five hundred dollars in PEX costs in building the Farmhouse and added quite a lot of water supply line out to the landscape of the Farm too.
Last week we also got the septic venting pipes and roof venting in. The rains were coming and I didn't want to work on a wet roof. All of the stuff which protrudes from the roof is hidden at the back of the house. We also poured the four by eight foot concrete slab for the new Utility shed.
All this stuff spelled out together, it seems we have been busy. It didn't seem like it, but there was still some time to move a few other things forward.
We also picked up a new Apple tree and placed it in the Peaches and Herbs Garden. The new tree is a Polka "Columnar" Apple which we found half priced at Farmington Gardens. I have wanted this tree for a few years but was holding off because the tree is about $130 dollars. The fruit is really very good though, worth the price. Finding the last one they had for $60 made the decision to go forward pretty easy.
The Farm is doing well. The herbs in the Peaches and Herbs Garden we planted in late Spring has settled in well and will re-seed itself for next year and some plants will
For such a slow couple of weeks, this seems a long post. So maybe we've been much busier than it seemed. Much to do, but it is all getting done.
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