Second floor walls get built on the first floor deck, which, in this case, is about nine feet above the ground. Three of us need to be able to lift the walls after they are framed. Nailing the exterior sheathing to the walls before standing them will make them super heavy. Nailing sheathing after they are standing will require working 12-18 feet off the ground. We need a way to sheath the walls laying flat on the deck and to be able to raise them with that extra weight. Wall jacks solve that problem.
I wish I had a patent on these. We had a bit of difficulty with the wall on the right of the photo. The wall is 18′ tall and very heavy. Called balloon framing, in the parlance. We used tow straps and come-alongs to raise it into place.Framing boards, used as braces, which will be used later, maybe two or three times, hold the walls temporarily.
After a few more gyrations, we will be ready to set trusses, which is a whole other thing.
I lived in a motel in Springfield, Ill. I had a little portable record player and listened to David Bromberg’s Wanted Dead or Alive album and drank cheap beer. I had a ’69 Ford truck, for which I paid 600 dollars. During the day I would drive around and install cable TV. I had some metal braces, with curved blades at the bottom, which were strapped to my lower legs. I would use these to climb telephone poles in order to make the connections for the coax cable going to the houses. I was paid according to how many installs I made every day. I did this in Leavenworth, Kansas and Anaconda, Montana too. But that is a different blog post.
There was, and still may be, a bicycle shop in Springfield which had on display a Motobecane Champion Team. A beautiful orange, full Campy bike for the same money my truck cost. I would have bought that bike but I still owed my parents for my truck.
I was often paid cash by the customers. One time I used that cash to buy groceries or beer. Probably beer. When the day of reckoning came- when I was supposed to turn over the proceeds from my work tickets- I didn’t have the money. I told them I had spent it. My boss just said, “Don’t do that shit no more”. And I didn’t. My boss lived in the same motel. We watched the movie Casablanca one night in his room with another fellow. He referred to me as the Montana boy, and he wondered what I did with my money.
I had a Peugeot PA-10 bicycle that I rode down to Champaign-Urbana on my days off. There is not really anything there, so I would just ride back to my motel and listen to David Bromberg and drink cheap beer.
This beam was heavy. Our neighbor’s Dad had a backhoe and didn’t charge us to raise it.Making sure we are plumb and square.The center bearing wall.All the I-Joists are in place and ready for sheathing.No, this is not a Kansas landscape. It is the floor sheathing completed.
Bryan volunteered to travel from Idaho to help us frame the walls. We started out, randomly, on the north side. For the first wall we cut slots into the pressure treated bottom plate lining up with the anchor bolts in the concrete slab, thinking that this would make it easier to stand the walls. Turns out, it was just as easy to take a couple measurements and drill holes for the anchor bolts.
Bryan nails the first board. We should have been using galvanized nails to nail through the treated sill plate, because the treated wood can corrode nails. I went back after the walls were up and toe-nailed the studs into the plate (code approved) with galvanized nails.This is the easy part. Everything looks simple and clean. The beams to carry the second floor framing can be seen. The OSB sheathing panels on the corners will keep the walls square and plumb.
We worked our way around framing the exterior walls. Then we went back and stapled OSB sheathing on the corners to keep everything square. The next phase is laying out the second floor joists and rolling them into place. Holderness Supply in Tucson designed the I-joist floor system and sent the whole package, including beams, hangers, layout drawings and, the 3/4″ sub-floor.
February 2023. Bryan and I built the form work for the slab and we got all the reinforcing steel for the footings in place.
After some major weather inflicted delays, in early March the plumbers installed the ground work (all of the drain pipes and vent pipes for the eventual plumbing fixtures) which will be buried in the ground under the concrete slab.
What a mess!Shit flows downhill and payday’s Friday.
With that work finished, we were able to backfill the trenches and bring in the ABC material for under the slab. ABC means aggregate base course and it is a mixture of course and fine gravel and dirt. It’s called different things in different parts of the country, but it’s used under slabs because it’s easy to get level and smooth, it compacts nicely and it provides drainage.
The ABC fill almost done
At 5000′ elevation it gets cold here during the winter, even though we are 30 minutes from the Mexican border. A heated slab is the most comfortable and quiet way to heat at least the lower level. We decided on a hydronic system which uses heated water running through loops of pipe buried in the concrete. A propane boiler will heat the water and pump it through the embedded pipes via a manifold system which feeds five circuits and two separate zones. There will be two thermostats regulating the two zones.
Mock up of the manifoldsHydronic layoutDocumenting the position of pipes Manifolds in place and pressure tested
We were lucky to find a good crew to place and finish the concrete slab. Originally I was going to place a 6 mil poly vapor barrier under the slab, which is standard practice in some parts of the country. Luis convinced me that doing that here would create more problems than it solved. Namely, the top of the slab would cure more quickly than the bottom which would result in cracks. All concrete will crack, but might as well mitigate it as much as possible. He also helped layout the control joints which are tooled into the wet concrete rather than cut in later. The slab will remain exposed in the finished house, so this was an important design element. ( editor’s note: 10 months later the slab still only has one minor crack outside the control joints)
Shit getting real!Hand made!
Getting the slab poured was our goal for this winter, and we barely made it! Now we get to go back to out summer jobs to make some more money so we can carry on in the fall.
I learned from one of the first general contractors I worked for after college that every time you start a new job you are preparing to go to court. I learned to keep a daily diary recording the weather, who was on the job, and what happened. I was never in court (for that) but it’s a practice I try to keep now.
Today is February 22, 2023 and it is starting to snow in southern Arizona, after a night and day of winds at 35 m.p.h. with gusts that might blow a man down. We have the footings excavated and the form boards in place for the slab on grade. The plumber is scheduled for Friday to put in all the drain pipes that need to be under the concrete.
I rented a mini excavator on Saturday the 11th and Russell came and finished the footings Sunday. He makes it look easy, but trust me……it’s not. The outside edge of the footing trench wants to be in line with where the form boards will go for the outside edge of the slab in order to minimize wasting concrete.
Giving new meaning to the word “mini”This is the objective, even though there may be a little bit of hand-work left at the end. These 2×8’s were left over from building the chicken coop and we will be able to re-use them in the house.
Steel was delivered on Thursday, the 16th and we finished the forms, 99% anyway, on Friday. After the plumbing inspection we can lay down the 4″ of gravel sub-base and finish tying the reinforcing steel.
Santa Cruz County has approved our application for a building permit. Bless their hearts. $2000.00 for a house smaller than 1400 square feet seems reasonable.
Because contractors here are either unresponsive or terribly expensive, we will be doing most of the concrete slab work , and, probably, as much as we can after that, ourselves. We know a former general contractor from the area who is very generous with his time and skills. He has another day job now, and does this kind of thing on the weekends, so we are sort of at the mercy of his schedule.
Skid-Steer SavantScraping Off The Organic Material“The First Cut Is The Deepest”
To my surprise, the first couple of feet of soil on this part of the lot were clay, still saturated even though that far below the surface. Last year, when we excavated for the chicken coop and for the septic tank, the soil was more of a granular sand and gravel type, and that’s what I expected.
Montmorillonite, smectite and bentonite, oh my. Expansive clay is bad for supporting any type of structure, because when it gets wet, it expands with a force that can break dreams.
The next morning I reserved a skid-steer tractor from a local rental place. I was able to dig out the cohesive clay material down to a more granular, and more predictable, substrate.
Here we have the batter boards and string lines which define the outer walls of the new house. The strings locate the top of the slab floor. 18″ below that the bottom of the thickened edge resides, well into durable native soil.This corner is the lowest elevation and the control point for the top of the slab and for the excavation of the thickened edges.
Next weekend we hope our guy can dig the thickened edges and interior footings. The week after involves setting the forms for the slab, which we will do. The plumber is on notice, since then it is his turn to put in all the drain and water supply pipes.
It is winter solstice in southern Arizona and the solar panels on our coach don’t get enough sunshine to fully charge the batteries. Additionally, it is so fucking cold (50’s during the day and high 20’s at night) that the furnaces run a lot. The battery voltage has been as low as a little over 11- barely more than dead. Running the generator during the day helps to top them off.
Regardless, we are planning to make the new house totally reliant on solar power. The chicken coop roof is designed to carry 18 solar panels and is oriented to the south with a slope of 25 degrees. We plan on using 48 volt lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries to store the sun’s power. These batteries store tons, or more accurately, kilowatt hours, of power and can be drained to 80 and even 100% of their capacity without damage. A line buried in conduit to a sub-panel will power everything in the house. This will work for two reasons: -because I want it to, and -because in order to run new lines to our property, the utility company wants the same amount of money an off-grid solar system will cost.
After all, we are in southern Arizona and it’s a shame not to use all the sunshine we get. Plus I trust the engineers at Northern Arizona Wind and Sun to provide me with a system which has the ability to power the house even when the sun doesn’t shine for a few days.
The house footprint is staked and I am meeting with excavators and concrete placers to get prices. The first bid for the concrete had me considering buying a mini-excavator and starting my own business. We are still willing and able to put as much sweat equity into the house as possible, but forming and placing and finishing concrete, while it might look simple, requires a lot of practice. And we will hire a pro for that.
Well, we have decided to scrap the house plans we have been working on for the last 6 months in favor of the idea we originally had when we found this property and thought about building.
It was important that the living spaces take advantage of the desert sunsets and of the views of the Santa Rita Mountains. The idea was for a 2 story house consisting of a living room with a western exposure, and a kitchen oriented to the east for the morning sun- all on the 2nd story. The 2 bedrooms would be on the first floor along with the entry.
We were not crazy about the resulting elevations which looked sort of like a fire lookout tower. Not that there’s anything wrong with fire lookout towers, it just seemed out of place.
Then I thought I wanted a sort of “compound” with several buildings of different scales and materials looking as though they were all built at different times. Like some precious old west reproduction. Fuck, I might be a hipster. We already have the shop/carport and thought we could build a casita between that building and the main house that would make a nice transition between the buildings and would create some drama. There were problems with the new plans too. After staking out the footprint, the house didn’t really inhabit the site like I thought it would. And there was some awkwardness with the floor plan. There was also awkwardness with financing and we started discussing building in phases. Those discussions led back to building the simpler, original house.
Those plans are now with the architect and engineer who will provide the information the Santa Cruz county building department needs in order to issue a building permit. The goal is to have the slab on grade poured this winter, the house closed in next winter, and the finish work done the following winter. That’s a ridiculously long time to build a 1400 square foot house, but hey, we’re old folks.
As soon as I typed this title I thought of Christine McVie. R.I.P.
Our chicken coop was built in response to a particular building, but also as an attempt to build something that reflects a history. A long time ago, people would build shelters which fit into the landscape and which provided shelter from elements like wind and sun and at the same time provided some sort of comfort. In the desert southwest there is a ubiquitous form which goes a long ways towards meeting these goals. Mainly as an outbuilding, lean-to sheds proliferate like Blue Grama grass in southern Arizona.
The ubiquitous lean-to shed was the inspiration for our shop and carport building
This particular building captured our attention when we first explored the area. The proportions and colors seem just about right. It may be just a work of art though, since we never see anybody around.
But, more about Christine McVie (Perfect). Really good blues pianist who, in her role in Chicken Shack, a British blues outfit, contributed a rollicking barrelhouse groove. She went on to write and sing for Fleetwood Mac after Peter Green left, which is ironic because Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac was a pretty hardcore blues band, and after he left they started changing direction. When Green left, along with Jeremy Spencer, I think the band sort of lost its way. They put out a couple of good albums but, after the “Future Games” album, Stevie Nicks joined the band and it all went to shite, in my opinion. Christine McVie died in 2022.
I wanted to build something which could be completed by hand, like a ten year old kid building a fort. Can I just bury poles in the ground, nail some supports to them, build a floor platform, bolt on some rafters, put on a metal roof and siding, and call it good? Apparently so.
Establishing rough grade.Big kid’s hole digger.A little hand work from a little brother.These posts weigh a metric shit ton. We set them in the holes, then shoveled dirt and gravel into the holes and compacted it in 6 to 8 inch lifts, all the time trying to keep the posts plumb.
