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CleverNickname

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Posts posted by CleverNickname

  1. 16 hours ago, Hornbeliever said:

    Surly wants to hold you accountable.  What is your depth goal by Dec 31 2024?

    I'd love to be at 13 ft by the end of year. Deep enough to drop the next set in. I figure it's about 36 buckets to do a foot. Im at about 9 ft now, altnough instell need to do the lagging for the second set. A good day is 18-24 buckets. Summer heat always slows me down, and the kids sports will start having games this spring.

  2. I have a tube that bypasses the lid, but it's mainly for venting humidity. In the heat I point a big fan down. But yeah, I should be more careful. Eventually I do want to use plastic corrupted pipe and forced air. 

  3. Got the 4x6s and hanging volts for set #2. Feeling pretty good about it. 

    The slotted angle iron is there to hold up shoring. 

    20240112_125021.thumb.jpg.4a78eaef443a8c3d73342ad979583fea.jpg

    Inevitably I find that some walls need to be widened a little. Pulled out about 16 buckets and didn't get any deeper. It's crazy how much volume is in a half inch of 3x4 surface area.

    20240113_102859.thumb.jpg.16be5e8cca2a6cdff684a34a95c35965.jpg

    Looking down. About a foot to a foot amd a half below the second set. The posts aren't really in yet, just friction fit. I'll nail the spreader to the main and glue. I probably should cut the 5/8 threaded so it doesn't poke me. 

    20240113_122134.thumb.jpg.45fe8a45aef909bcc678a836af53dbf3.jpg

    Bottom level view:

    20240113_122439.thumb.jpg.a416f5105534e9306faf1e332c6a31ca.jpg

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  4. Fwiw I did end up with a mule sx xc le. It's dope. I'm very happy with its modest speed. I've enjoyed 4 wheeling across old creek fords and places not driven on in decades. 

    Mooseoutfront's 6wd atv scares me. I wouldn't know what to do with a powerful throbbing machine like that between my legs.

  5. My rough estimate is that 14kw should power a 10,000 btu AC for about 10 or 12 hours. Maybe less if you arent supposed to go below 20 or 30%. I could be way off, im no engineer. Will you need to replace it in 10 or 20 years? Prices and capacity are improving fast, but I'm not sure it beats my $48/mo electricity cost on $8k install. It will eventually, I bet. But then if you could sell back power, the solar cells could probably help pay for themselves if grid tied. Sort of shame for kw of solar just sitting out there, doing nothing. 

    But modern advances in batteries makes off grid far easier. If you had something > 1 mile from a line, if was formerly about impossible to get economical power. Now you can. That's really cool for the boonies. Again though: off grid is best where you can do wood & propane heat, and electric isn't so damn important. 

    I will also say this, down below ground, deep deep, where the worm people whisper, requires no power to cool or heat at all. Mother earth's coddling bosom. It calls to me. Does it call for you, too?

  6. If it is weekend and rec use, a small rainwater collection is fine. Full time use you need troph's badass system or a well. I think well depth records are searchable, or at least someone in the county knows and can ballpark an estimate. Septic you can quote on pretty easily. Find out the nearest power line and make contact with the power company. The key to most of the above is having a knowledgeable local you can trust.

    The hard part is you may need the cash (or cash out equity on your primary home) for the well ($15 to 50k), electricity ($5 to $30k), and septic ($5 to $25k).

  7. @FirstTimeCaller

    1. I am not a slab expert, but we had a local help. Just a rancher handyman moonlighting to keep busy and his part-time hired hand more fully employed. Mostly handshake deals. A couple years later I saw him at the bimonthly county auction. Half his face had melted off. Accident at his hay barn. Nice guy.

    As for design, I think we used sketches in Google docs. Basic as hell. Nithing that would pass for plan review, but this is Texas daggum. Ours is 20x30 with a 2 inch lip down to a 10x30 porch. Roof is 34x34. I may later enclose the porch and put in another 10x30 porch. But I didn't plan it that way... I may have to move.the front door around. 

    Leveled with a front loader, an extending carpenters level, and beer. Not too much rock my way at the surface, but I imagine putting a cabin on Kingsland granite is a pain in the ass.

    I think the slab is like 8". I think the edges are deeper. I know there was a moisture barrier and rebar on chairs. The forms were just 2x nominal lumber and rebar spikes. Nothin' fancy. We roughed in a shower and a toilet drain in one corner. The other side of the interior wall is the kitchen, and I think it maybe just drains out the wall. Rough ins are way easier than you may think. Put in the pvc first, leave room for a toilet flange, and pour. You just want your toilet to be 12 inches from the inside wall, framing and drywall included. Decide now if you are doing 2x4 or 2x6 width walls. The shower and sink drains will meet up with the toilet just underground outside the slab and hit the septic tank a few feet away. We have a pvc that comes up through the slab for the water intake. Pex was later threaded through it from the water collection tank. A 12v motor home pump moves the water. Now that we have electricity the same pump is connected by alligator clips to a 110 inverter. 

    If I was building a bigger place, I'd spend a lot of time with plans. I think a little 4x8 utility room, with the kitchen and 2 bathrooms adjacent would be awesome. Put all the wet together. You want it on the side with the septic. Hide the instant on propane water heater and the water pump (and uv filtering if going fancy). Try to maximize usefulness and minimize plumbing, if that makes sense. Keep any leaks to one specific spot, that has easy access. Diy plumbing with pex is easy, but centralize the water and plumbing.

    While the slab was wet we put in metal plates to weld the metal frame on along the perimeter. 

    2. Not sure if you can avoid septic permits anymore. So that probably means a little bit of up front cost for survey and design. To that end: you probably can't be too close to a well, creek, or pond. So choose your building site carefully. 

    One way to go is a septic, slab, roughed in plumbing, and barndo shell with adjacent shop. That is your RV/trailer hookup you can stay in as you build your own place. And if you had to sell, land with a good to go RV hookup will sell.

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  8. To follow up on Orale: he spent $65K but probably increased the vale of the land by way more than that. It isn't money flushed down the toilet.

    Of course... that doesn't reduce the sting if the intention is to sit and enjoy the land for another 30 years. And know this: raw land loans are murder.  I'm talking 8.5% with a 5 year ballon. Maybe 9.5% on a more conventional term. Suddenly a nice 300k acreage is like $2500 per month. Ouch.

  9. Ha!

    Yes we bought land in about 2007. Originally 34ac, now up to 75. Unincorporated Mills County, so very few regs. Probably the only real regs are requiring a permit for septic. That wasn't even true until a couple of years later.

    We built a barndominium - the term didnt really exist then, but that is what it is. It was offgrid, but we got electricity a few years later. We still do rainwater collection. Propane, wood, and electricity for heat. It is a great DIY project. We had a crew pour the slab, and a local rancher and his welding rig did the iron framing. We put up the walls and roof amd everything else. Things get dried in pretty quickly, which means you can sort of build the interior on your own, amd leave building supplies inside pit ofnthe weather and away from minor thieves. We've had stuff stolen, but never a break in. Honor amongst the methheads.

    Electricity: I built my cabin in the most private and prettiest piece. In retrospect I should have maybe prioritized access and electricity. You gotta have electricity. Maybe solar and batteries will be cost competitive soon. But the reality is the ac sometimes has to run 24/7. Without it, it's basically not habitable when it's hot. So a battrry bank is key if all solar. A big enough system that can run ac all day and still top off the batteries should probably be grid tied so that you are selling them volts. 

    You could run a generator, but that's noisy and can get stolen. Our little Honda 2000 was stolen. One small bedroom inside our cabin is insulated even in the interior ceiling and walls, so that we had a cool place for overnighter even in the summer with our little genny. If you are in the mountains and the summer is nice, and all you need is heat from wood or propane then maybe electric isn't so critical and a small off grid system would be easy. 

    It always made me wonder why rural folks will have a huge spread, but their house is 80 ft off the highway. That's because running utilities is expensive. My original quote from the electric coop to run a pole to my cabin was like 18k. More than the slab and metal building cost itself! That's for like 1100 ft. They only would do 1 "bend" of the line. So figure out where the closest line is. They later changed the cost to be more for the first and last pole, and less for the line in the middle. Thay brought the cost down to like 10k. We pulled the trigger. Call or email the coop- they should be able tontell you basic costs ahead of any survey. They said my neighbor had to approve. So we asked kindly. I'm not sure what I would have done if the neighbor said no. I'd have been screwed.

    Access: the original 35ac crossed a creek. Now that I bought some more for the same neighbor, I could have avoided that. Not a huge deal, but it does require a truck or realish SUV to drive up to the cabin. Th3 creek floods sometimes, but usually not for a couple of hours. It's a recreational property, I just don't go up when it's that wet.

    The county now has subdivision regs, for things like the size and access, etc. That would impact resale, if the resale market is looking at cutting things into smaller lots.

    If you do a metal roof, and you probably will, then rainwater collection is easy. If you pour a slab, pour a couple pads for tanks. Locate them close to the gutter downspout. A single slope roof makes collecting rainwater easier. 

    We wired for both 12v and 110v. To be honest, I think I could have run conduit and just had a spiderbox for electric distribution. It's all in the walls now, but I worry about ever having to chase down problems. 

    Except for septic, Texas regs pretty much don't care about rainwater collection, solar, or in rural areas much of anything for building plans. County folks have never been to my cabin. But we are honest about the tax appraisal and anyway they use satellite photos to estimate buildings. 

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  10. Back at it it!

    Looks like I was at 102" back in Sept on the other side. About a foot deeper today. Probably deep enough to add a set. I think it's mostly wide enough.

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    20240106_132208.thumb.jpg.4444e04fcf609b6a16971adb18b47049.jpg

    Used our new mule to haul some of the dirt and rocks to some muddle places. 

    20240106_104200.thumb.jpg.cd34ccf00e37de2295a761d906b5b400.jpg

    Looking down. With the roof, I had to bring a light. 

    20240106_103641.thumb.jpg.840690969cd7322ca01abe39d5977ee3.jpg

    What the ground is like... some layers of stone, but mostly partially cemented aggregate.

    20240106_132217.thumb.jpg.60ca630d3186840d6a13cf67e4804795.jpg

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  11. Meh. I've been distracted by the roof and now building a shed for my side by side. But I did get 3 buckets out on new years day, and it was nice and dry. I may make some progress this weekend, because it may be too cold to pour concrete.20240101_112839.thumb.jpg.c6ced5bf57a459a565ff060034dbda4e.jpg

    also... is tiktok suburban mine lady on my corner? 

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  12. Question: I have an 8th grader. I guess at some point in next few years we need to do campus tours? What do you do on a tour? Is the summer a bad time to go since there are no srudenrs around? I did UT with minimal backup plans. I'm clueless. 

  13. 2 hours ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

    What age for stuffed animals to get the axe? 

    For my daughter  - again, mercenary af - we "bought" her old toys and then donated them. So like a buck or two per plushy, offers for old dolls etc. Worth every damn penny. 

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  14. Hell, my daughter was far too mercenary and pragmatic to believe after like kindergarten. I remember she asked me if we would take in grandma's cat if grandma died. I told her yes, and told granny to watch her back.

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