Ann and I don't watch the news, we don't have cable television, and we don't believe that the COVID19 panic is really worthy of a panic at all. But it seems the rest of the world doesn't share our passive attitude so I am devoting a few paragraphs to this mass hysteria just to mark the week in our history.
I have always been a big believer in the power of stupid. Americans (a bunch of us anyway) are a bit too wealthy, entirely too accustomed to luxury, and mostly oblivious to how our actions effect our neighbors. This COVID19 panic is a great example of this, the best metaphor being toilet paper hoarding.
Nobody wants to be caught without toilet paper. So some people in the past few weeks have bought the store shelves clean. The result is an informal ban on over-purchasing at the store level and supply chains straining to push more product out from warehouses. The COVID19 pandemic likely won't allow restocking of the warehouses in the short term, so the people who bought too much may be proven correct after all.
I'm not going deeper into this today since it does no good to worry over things out of our control. As I wrote above, this article is merely to mark the calendar at the onset of whatever will or will not happen as the result of COVID19 pandemic.
If things go as I believe they might, now that the stampede has begun, all I can do is offer a bit of advice for the potentially murky days ahead. You might use a few unplanned vacation hours going outside and planting some potatoes.
My next article is going to be devoted to information on how everyone can plant potatoes cheaply, using very few resources, and do so with very little space. Potatoes are simple plants, not much to learn before you might be very successful. Most of this next article won't be new information but there are a few real simple improvements to raising spuds that might be fun to do and make growing potatoes more deeply satisfying. The worst that will happen is that you will have grown some of your own food. Whether the COVID19 panic proves itself necessary, or seems absurd in retrospect, having some spuds around will be a good investment of your time.
Saturday, March 21, 2020
Saturday, March 14, 2020
March 14th, 2020 On Hold for Weather
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| Our new floor with the tent rail installed |
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.
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| We put a vent fan in to get rid of any water evaporating under the floor. |
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.
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| A tent protects the floor from the rain and snow. |
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| The floor plan we are building. Click on it for a larger picture |
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.
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| A large pile of lumber waits for dryer weather |
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.
Friday, February 28, 2020
February 28th, 2020 Leap Year Week
The last week of February turned out to be very nice. Not much for rain until late Friday, very little cold or wind. Great working weather. The week started off pretty easy, but got a lot harder.
On Monday morning the Structural and Plumbing Inspector came out to look a under house plumbing and sub-floor frame jobs, which were the last of the foundation phase of the Farmhouse build. He gave us a bit of advice and told us about a few places where work was still needed. But he passed our inspection, allowing us to begin the next phase of building.
It took the rest of the day to order the parts for the next bit. The best price we could find on floor boards was at Home Depot at around $850, about half of Parr Lumber, two thirds of Lowes best price. The insulation came from a Craig's List warehouse vendor who sold us what we needed for $950. All totaled we paid $1800 for what might have cost us $3100 and saved another two hundred by using our big trailer to pick the stuff up. This hit the fifty-percent goal while hitting one hundred percent of expectations. We moved everything to the home site on Tuesday.
On Wednesday morning we tore into the short list of work the Building Inspector had given us. We added some vents to the foundation and put in a Radon removal pipe under the moisture barrier. It took all morning but left the rest of the day to try and get some floor boards down.
Because of the rain we are pulling a large plastic cover over the entire floor to keep the floor boards and insulation as dry as we can until the roof is put on. Wednesday we got the first four foot course in place by about five in the afternoon. We are putting the insulation in as each floor board covers it up. Doing it this way allows us to get the whole job done in one single pass. Wednesday had pretty well exhausted us both. The heavy lifting and constant climbing around wore us out.
Thursday morning we had scheduled a trip into town for doctor's visits, egg selling, and grocery shopping. Despite our intention to get home and put down more flooring in the afternoon it seemed we were too tired out to go back to work. We took a ride up the Banks-Vernonia Trail instead.
The Banks-Vernonia State Trail is twenty-one miles long and runs from Banks (about three miles South of us), over an old timber railroad bed, through the Coastal foothills, to Vernonia (about eighteen miles north of the Farm). Some days we use the Trail to ride into Banks for supplies. It's only three miles into town and the Trail doesn't cross any automobile traffic at all. But most days we ride North toward the Buxton Trailhead.
The Banks-Vernonia Trail doesn't cross traffic much. There is a busy street crossing at Manning, one gravel road crossing between there and Buxton, and one road crossing at Buxton. But you won't see much automobile traffic until you reach Top Hill Trailhead and have to cross Highway 47.
Once you start uphill toward Buxton the climb is pretty steady. We have e-bikes, so climbing hills is no more difficult than riding on flat ground. We used the batteries hard, trying to keep from working our sore muscles. It was a very happy trip and as we climbed the 800 feet it got colder at nearly every landmark.
We brought light coats and winter gloves but had stowed them in our bikes' carriers. At the Farm it was sunny and about sixty degrees. For Oregonians this is shirt sleeve weather.
At the five and one-half mile marker the warmth was broken up a bit with cool zones coming at random. Once you cross the Manning-Buxton Road the trail turns shady and you enter fairly dense forest.
Winter is usually cold in the shade, but we were riding without coats and it was very nice where the sun shone through the trees.
By the time we got to LL Stubb Stewert State Park we had already stopped to put on coats and gloves, but it was still quite cold in the shade. We turned at the crossing for home and warmer weather. A large dose of hot tub therapy, a few beers, some dinner, and an early bed time worked well for fixing what was wrong with us. On Friday we got two more courses of flooring and insulation put down without wrecking ourselves.
The end of our dry weather came in at around four on Friday, so we covered the house up and are waiting for clear weather to return.
The weather outlook is a rainy Saturday and a return to drier weather by Monday. We are crossing our fingers that we can finish the floor by Tuesday and begin buying parts to put up the Farmhouse' walls.
On Monday morning the Structural and Plumbing Inspector came out to look a under house plumbing and sub-floor frame jobs, which were the last of the foundation phase of the Farmhouse build. He gave us a bit of advice and told us about a few places where work was still needed. But he passed our inspection, allowing us to begin the next phase of building.
It took the rest of the day to order the parts for the next bit. The best price we could find on floor boards was at Home Depot at around $850, about half of Parr Lumber, two thirds of Lowes best price. The insulation came from a Craig's List warehouse vendor who sold us what we needed for $950. All totaled we paid $1800 for what might have cost us $3100 and saved another two hundred by using our big trailer to pick the stuff up. This hit the fifty-percent goal while hitting one hundred percent of expectations. We moved everything to the home site on Tuesday.
On Wednesday morning we tore into the short list of work the Building Inspector had given us. We added some vents to the foundation and put in a Radon removal pipe under the moisture barrier. It took all morning but left the rest of the day to try and get some floor boards down.
Because of the rain we are pulling a large plastic cover over the entire floor to keep the floor boards and insulation as dry as we can until the roof is put on. Wednesday we got the first four foot course in place by about five in the afternoon. We are putting the insulation in as each floor board covers it up. Doing it this way allows us to get the whole job done in one single pass. Wednesday had pretty well exhausted us both. The heavy lifting and constant climbing around wore us out.
Thursday morning we had scheduled a trip into town for doctor's visits, egg selling, and grocery shopping. Despite our intention to get home and put down more flooring in the afternoon it seemed we were too tired out to go back to work. We took a ride up the Banks-Vernonia Trail instead.
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| Click on this for a bigger image. |
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| Leaving Manning we go out onto the Prairie in full sun. |
Once you start uphill toward Buxton the climb is pretty steady. We have e-bikes, so climbing hills is no more difficult than riding on flat ground. We used the batteries hard, trying to keep from working our sore muscles. It was a very happy trip and as we climbed the 800 feet it got colder at nearly every landmark.
We brought light coats and winter gloves but had stowed them in our bikes' carriers. At the Farm it was sunny and about sixty degrees. For Oregonians this is shirt sleeve weather.
At the five and one-half mile marker the warmth was broken up a bit with cool zones coming at random. Once you cross the Manning-Buxton Road the trail turns shady and you enter fairly dense forest.
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| A nearly perfect day on The Banks-Vernonia Trail |
Winter is usually cold in the shade, but we were riding without coats and it was very nice where the sun shone through the trees.
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| Crossing the road from Manning to Buxton you begin to climb up to Stubb Stewert State Park. |
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| The air alternated between Oregon Spring warmth and late Winter chill. |
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| This is called the Hampton Turn. There's a picnic bench on the trail at the turn. |
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| Near the Buxton Trailhead while riding North there is a fork in the road. The right side is the Horse Trail leading down to the valley below the Tressel. The left side takes you across the Tressel. |
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| The Tressel is about six feet wide. Meeting oncoming bicycle traffic means slowing down. |
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| The Tressel is at the Buxton Trailhead. A wonderful place to go. |
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| Under the Tressel is a nice semi-private picnic area. The walk down is steep, but worth the climb back up. The climb down is not for people with limited strength. |
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| Just up from Buxton Trailhead we entered what we callthe Land of the Giants. |
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| Stubb Stewert State Park is a nice place to turn back for home. |
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| Headed back from Stubb Stewert into a Birch grove. |
The end of our dry weather came in at around four on Friday, so we covered the house up and are waiting for clear weather to return.
The weather outlook is a rainy Saturday and a return to drier weather by Monday. We are crossing our fingers that we can finish the floor by Tuesday and begin buying parts to put up the Farmhouse' walls.
Saturday, February 22, 2020
February 21, 2020 Plumbing completed
We had a great week, a bit hard on the body, but great. The weather was wonderful, fifty-something degrees and dry. Perfect weather for climbing through the floor joists and putting the plumbing system in for our Farmhouse build. No mud to speak of is always good news. We spent the week installing the plumbing system under the floorboards of the new Farmhouse.
Plumbing is like electricity in some ways. The building codes are archaic, hard to read, and there isn't much you can do to find information easily. And like electrical circuits you don't know if it works until you turn it on. We looked at a ton of YouTube videos, and did dozens of Google searches to find pertinent information. Eventually we got enough knowledge together to buy parts.
The County man who came out last week seemed concerned about our plan to use copper pipe everywhere. He worried over the probability of leaks developing immediately from bad welds. But copper has always be my go to material because it is easily worked and there are few tools required. But when the Building Inspector voiced his concerns I looked around for possible better stuff. We found PEX.
PEX piping is wonderful stuff. Pipe is inexpensive and the fittings are fairly inexpensive. Tools are a pipe cutter and a clamping tool with an indicator to tell you when you have the clamp tight enough. You can buy the stuff in three colors: red, white, and blue, so color coding hot and cold sides make mistakes much harder to make. All said and done, the PEX we put in cost half as much as copper and went together three times faster, all with nearly no chance of failure. The waste pipes were a different story.
There is a whole lot of stuff I didn't know about the simple task of piping the waste out from under a house. The need for venting the drains was a new experience. Luckily for us there are a lot of videos and images of the work out there, so cobbling a plan together only took a week or so. Figuring out the size of pipe to use was a matter of picking through the building code, but this only took a few days to find.Figuring out how to make the pipes slope downward at the right angles took a few days and three attempts. Until it is inspected we won't know if we got it right, but it looks good. Plumbing is hard to conceptualize and do, but it is also very hard on the body too.
The week of climbing around the floor joists took a hefty toll on us both. It is hard work just moving around in the space and each move was a chance to bang yourself up. Ann sustained a fairly nasty set of bruises on everything from the waist down . She will be healing up for a few weeks.
On Monday we'll get inspected, the sub-floor framing and plumbing. So the last thing we did after the plumbing was to cut a hatch in the sub-floor frame so that we can get under the house once finished. Not a big job, but figuring out where to put the hatch was a bit of a thought experiment. We eventually settled on the hallway because nearly all of the house where the pipes are is easily accessible there. Coincidentally the attic access is right above the crawlspace access. I like symmetry.
Once we pass the inspection we can begin putting down floor boards and putting up walls. the next flight of inspection will come once the roof trusses are up and wiring in. It will look like a house. The next bit is fun. Progress is being made every day. The coming of Spring, and its good weather will only make things easier.
Plumbing is like electricity in some ways. The building codes are archaic, hard to read, and there isn't much you can do to find information easily. And like electrical circuits you don't know if it works until you turn it on. We looked at a ton of YouTube videos, and did dozens of Google searches to find pertinent information. Eventually we got enough knowledge together to buy parts.
The County man who came out last week seemed concerned about our plan to use copper pipe everywhere. He worried over the probability of leaks developing immediately from bad welds. But copper has always be my go to material because it is easily worked and there are few tools required. But when the Building Inspector voiced his concerns I looked around for possible better stuff. We found PEX.
PEX piping is wonderful stuff. Pipe is inexpensive and the fittings are fairly inexpensive. Tools are a pipe cutter and a clamping tool with an indicator to tell you when you have the clamp tight enough. You can buy the stuff in three colors: red, white, and blue, so color coding hot and cold sides make mistakes much harder to make. All said and done, the PEX we put in cost half as much as copper and went together three times faster, all with nearly no chance of failure. The waste pipes were a different story.
There is a whole lot of stuff I didn't know about the simple task of piping the waste out from under a house. The need for venting the drains was a new experience. Luckily for us there are a lot of videos and images of the work out there, so cobbling a plan together only took a week or so. Figuring out the size of pipe to use was a matter of picking through the building code, but this only took a few days to find.Figuring out how to make the pipes slope downward at the right angles took a few days and three attempts. Until it is inspected we won't know if we got it right, but it looks good. Plumbing is hard to conceptualize and do, but it is also very hard on the body too.
The week of climbing around the floor joists took a hefty toll on us both. It is hard work just moving around in the space and each move was a chance to bang yourself up. Ann sustained a fairly nasty set of bruises on everything from the waist down . She will be healing up for a few weeks.
On Monday we'll get inspected, the sub-floor framing and plumbing. So the last thing we did after the plumbing was to cut a hatch in the sub-floor frame so that we can get under the house once finished. Not a big job, but figuring out where to put the hatch was a bit of a thought experiment. We eventually settled on the hallway because nearly all of the house where the pipes are is easily accessible there. Coincidentally the attic access is right above the crawlspace access. I like symmetry.
Once we pass the inspection we can begin putting down floor boards and putting up walls. the next flight of inspection will come once the roof trusses are up and wiring in. It will look like a house. The next bit is fun. Progress is being made every day. The coming of Spring, and its good weather will only make things easier.
Friday, February 14, 2020
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.
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.
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| The sub-floor frame nearing completion. |
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.
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