forest clearing: tiny house yard

To the East of the house is a beautiful view out at the rolling property, lowland, and in the distance Lookout mountain. Thanks to a few days of hard work, some spilled blood ( see chain saw accident) and the dedication of my wife we now have a clean "yard". The hammock fits wonderfully bestrewn the tall trees with no scrub scratching below. We can throw the ball down the hill and let Wrangler chase it with out fear of brambles consuming her. It is a glorious thing to have a well managed forest floor.

framing and planning

The picture associated with this post shows the joining we used to connect our 6 x 6 timbers as well as the angle bracing we employed. The beams are all oak and the angle braces are Cherry from a tree that my wife and I timbered this Winter. For the environmentally concerned, the tree was standing dead. It was killed by invasive English Ivy planted on an old city lot. The house long ago burned though the landscape plants survived and spread unchecked to kill over forty trees. Much of this house is constructed of those unfortunate trees. The poplar subfloor, the cherry bracing, the pear roof purlins are all a direct result of some 1920s city dweller planting a tiny little English Ivy plant. I am not sure whether to be grateful for the lumber or remorseful for the lose of mountainside forest. 

Back on topic, The upstairs floor is supported by oak 4x4 beams resting atop the 6 x 6 beams. The space created between would be excellent for storing dust bunnies but we plan to use the space atop the beams for recessed lighting. Depending on conditions once we move into the house we may run one inch ridged foam in the space to to dampen sound transfer between floors. Lets be honest its 400 square feet foam or not there is going to be sound transfer. The other thing the gap above the 6 x 6 beams affords us is the ability to run a couple of low profile air ducts. Currently we do not plan to run A/C but if the day comes that we do desire a flush of icy air in mid August then we will be prepared to run the duct work. Once all of these things are completed; wiring, duct work, foam, we will install a vice wood plank ceiling. We will not be using any drywall in the construction of this house or at least that is the plan. We will have painted wood walls, stained walls, concrete walls but no drywall. It is a small enough space to cover that we thought we would forgo the easy and normal and opt for something different. 

The West Wall

 Here is a photograph looking South at the recent excavation adjacent to the house. This is the uphill, Western, side of the house. We used our old garden tiller to break up  the hard soil and make it easier to shovel up the hill. I have done several projects with this excavation method. It is labor intensive though it does save money on equipment rentals. The other upside to this method is that the soil is not compacted by a large machine nor is it difficult to maneuver the small garden tiller into positions where a large excavator  would not fit.

Here I have dug out some of the up hill area West of the house. The plan here is to create a concrete path to the back of the house ( North side). The path will be covered and the soil will be retained. The retaining wall will create a nice border for planting shade tolerant plants. The plant root structure will help mitigate water coming down the hill ( assisted by gravel in fill and a french drain) Placing concrete on the ground around the house will help with reducing pest problems inside the house as there will not be vegetation and soil directly proximal to the house to provide harborage.

Here is another shot looking at the excavation. On another note: the roof covering over the concrete path will be approximately four feet. This covering will allow us to forgo guttering the upper roof as the lower roof will catch all of the rain off of the upper one. The best long term reward here is in regard to accessibility. The upper roof is difficult to access relative to the lower roof. Being tucked into the woods means there will be a decent amount of leaf and needle litter that will deposit into gutters. Gutter cleaning will be imperative. The lower guttering will allow easier and safer access to the gutters. The pollen dropped off the pine trees make the upper roof slippery to work on in addition to their elevation. Ultimately, I would rather avoid the upper roof and so the lower roof and guttering create a little work for today and less for tomorrow.

The house is wrapped! We are almost completely dried in. I have a door to frame up and then we are golden.

retro posting: raising the first rib

     I have been asked countless times, " how id you get the big beams up." Here is is the how we did the first one. I climbed a tree, Hung a climbing harness in the tree, and ran a rope through a pulley on the harness. We took said rope and connected it to a truck a few hundred feet away via several redirecting pulleys. We connected the other end to the first timber rib.
     We lifted the rib to an angle so it would not just pull flat along the ground. Once we tipped the rib we placed blocks behind it so it would not slide.
All set. Rope attached to truck, Truck in gear, pulling forward. As we moved the truck forward the pine bent lower and lower. I thought the plan had failed. I parked the truck where it was and when I went to examine the situation I discovered that the rib now felt like a 2x4. It was essentially spring loaded by the bent tree. Allowing the spring of the tree to do the work we simply positioned the rib where we wanted it and lifted the holding blocks out of the way. We nailed some angled boards to the rib to keep it from tipping and the first rib was in place.

   The other ribs actually had to be lifted eight inches at a time due to the angle being incompatible with our new found spring loaded tree. This slow raising of the other ribs was definitely an exercise in trust and cooperation. Building this house has been one of the best forms of marriage counseling. It has taken communication to a whole new level.

Roof work

     Looking up throughout the "vent" where the chimney will go you can see the roof is coming nicely. We used radiant bubble insulation under the metal roof. The bubble insulation is placed under the purlins so as to create an air space that allows the radiant barrier to do its job. We did not place insulation under the overhang outside the house as we did not feel it was essential to protect the air below the roof.
       The bubble insulation is rated to R-11. Considering that most 2x4 walls are filled with R-13, I feel R-11 is a great value for such a thin layer of insulation. We do still plan to put standard insulation in-between the roof trusses. The standard insulation will be rated R-30. This will bring our combined roof insulation to R-41 plus the radiant barrier that reflects heat. All together it should be a well insulated roof, keeping out heat in the Summer and keeping in heat in the Winter.

Inside

Here is a photo of the house in a stage of partial completion as seen from up the hill. It really is tucked into the wood nicely. We cleared the understory and fire ladder to allow for good air flow through the forest as well as excellent forest floor walking area. 

 And now for the first photos of the inside of the house. This photo to the left is taken from the corner of the living area where the wood stove will sit. The photo is looking into the kitchen area, South, The french doors will be just to the left of this photo and the stairs will ascend in the right of the photo frame, where the boards are leaning.

This photo looks out at the kitchen and living area as well. The window on the West wall denotes the location where the stairs will start. The wood stove will be placed just to the right of the red broom handle. The 4x4 beam in the foreground of this shot is a door post into the bathroom, which I am standing in. 

This photo is looking North. The air compressor ( which we have used for exactly 12  finish nails into the windows, all other nails where hand driven) is about there the wood stove will sit. The opening on the right of the shot is for the french doors. The 4x4 post denotes the entry into the bathroom. The bathroom will have a small step up which will help delineate the space. We used poplar for the subfloor and all of the sheeting on the outside of the house has been free oak and pine from the sawmill. The blue tarp hanging down from the second floor is hanging through the hole where the chimney pipe will go. I have left an area open in the floor for easy access as I am yet to get under the house and do plumbing. electrical, etc. . . 

second floor update

 The second floor is almost done. We have to a few windows to install and the stud work to support said windows. The roof is coming along nicely. We have all of the roof trusses up as of this past weekend. The pictures hearer show all but two trusses up. The photos also show the house before the North wall was built. More photos are to come. I often get distracted with building and forget to stop and take photos of the progress. We are using metal roofing and a radiant barrier on the roof. We nailed wide purlins in place to stabilize the trusses before placing the radiant barrier down. Once the radiant insulation was in place we nailed purlins on top of our wide purlins. These top purlins will allow us to screw the metal down while still maintaining an air space between the radiant insulation and the metal roof. This air gap is important in order for the radiant barrier to work properly, according to my reading.
The main floor is wrapped in tyvek. The windows are in and it is starting to feel like a real house. My next post will have the first photos of inside.

foundation

      I thought I would take a moment and write a little about our foundation. Many tiny houses are built on trailers thus reducing the foundation issue and in most cases eliminating the need to have the structure inspected by a local code enforcer. In our location there are no building codes. We have a health inspector that would come out to inspect a septic or field lines. We also have an electrical inspector that would come out if we were connecting to the grid.
     Our little house is built on one course of cinder block sitting upon two slabs of four inch cement that is laid over gravel filled mountain stone. Half of the foundation is laid over undisturbed sandy loam and sandstone. The other half was about a foot lower and so we compacted soil and small rocks to bring it up level. All of the rock and mountain stone was pulled out of a low exposed area about fifty feet from the house. Inside the foundation we poured a thin coat of concrete in most of the area to act as a barrier. We will still lay a vapor barrier but felt the extra thermal mass of cement would be nice under the house. All of the block is cement filled and we placed threaded rods into some so as to connect to the wood of the house. Inside the block we placed ridged foam in a hope of insulating the foundation and holding temperature inside better.
     As you can see in the photos we had to shim the bottom boards of our house to make it all level. This is mostly due to my lack of experience with pouring a foundation and making it level. We will  have piers about eight feet out from the house on the East to allow for the deck beams to rest level.

square thoughtage

The average American household is now over 2000 square feet. The average American individual has around 1000 square feet of personal living space. These statistics vary slightly depending on the source but hold reasonably close regardless. As the modern family has morphed and shrunk the homes in which we sleep, spend weekends, holidays, and special events has expanded. The expansion is something to the tune of doubling within one lifetime. This is an extreme reality of modern American life, we own larger homes have smaller families. Paradoxical? I think yes. 

There is a movement, a currently chic and trendy movement, toward small homes. Homes that are minimalistic in size. Homes that are even tiny. This movement is rooted in diverse beginnings, as diverse as the owners of such homes. Some build a tiny home because they want to create something unique. They want something that they themselves crafted and a tiny home is no so daunting as a two story colonial. Others buy tiny homes as a way to avoid debt. The smaller home carries a smaller price tag and allows the owner a freedom from debt. A smaller home with the smaller price tag afford these individuals the ability to fill their small space with quality over quantity. Still others, own tiny homes because the life they live are conducive to a small home. We sleep at home but we live in our cars. We cook breakfast at home but we eat lunch and diner in town. We work all day and spend the evening in the shops. Despite the regional and cultural differences across the county we spend less time at home today than ever before. It is time our house design reflect our culture and not that of our parents, or the aristocracy of past centuries. 

We are building a tiny home for all of these reasons. A tiny home is not limited by size. It is designed to evolve. It should be fluid as our lives are fluid. Our house will be 400 square feet. We will have outdoor living areas; covered porch areas, garden paths, rows of fruit trees. The design accounts for future additions. We may enclose a section of porch, converting a screened room to an extra bedroom if the need arises. If the need moves out it can always be converted back to a screen roof. It is fluid. We are accounting for desires such as creative work space. This may enlarge our house but not without reason, for thought and consideration for design. A tiny house is about creative use of space, multi purposing, quality over quantity. A tiny house is about purpose and freedom. It is not limited by size but empowered by it. We have chosen to build a tiny house.

Second floor

       This past week has proved to be productive. Partly due to the threat of impending rain and partly because we made a conscious effort to build on multiple days. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the camera for a daily snap shot. The photo to the left is our progress as of the end of the week.  The sub floor is done, save a small strip that will allow access to the crawl space. The second floor has half of the studs done. Yes, we are building the second floor with traditional framing as opposed to timber framing. Building the timber ribs was fun and interesting but there is no way we can safely raise ribs on a second floor. Not to mention we ran out of cured oak for the process. So, standard stud walls it is. We are using saw mill cut pine from the mill five miles away. 2x4x8s are 2.40 a board and that beats Lowes by a mile, not to mention it is locally sourced, cut and milled. Additionally, the wood from the mill is true cut as opposed to the "standard" lumber from the store that is labeled 2x4 but is really smaller.
      We were able to build a jig and finish half of our roof trusses this week. We lifted them into place with a reasonable amount of grunting and ladder climbing. The metal roofing and reflective bubble insulation was picked up this week and we will hopefully install it in the next couple days.
     Yesterday, amidst the rain, we burned four large piles of brush. Most of the brush was from clearing the site for the house. We also burned a large amount of brush from our recent clearing in the forest surrounding the house. The burning really helped to clean up the surrounding area and removing the downed brush from the forest will make room for our hazelnut planting this Fall.
    Below are several more pictures of the house in its current state, taken from different angles. The second to bottom photo is taken from the lower field and gives good perspective on how the house sits up on the hill.

site prep

       This is a retrospective photo. Here I am laying out the house site. We drover rebar into the ground at key points so as to allow us to visualize the size and shape of the house. This picture was taken mid July. We began foundation work shortly after this picture was taken.
      The house foundation now sits to about where I am kneeling. You can see the thick forrest in the background and the field to the South. We have since thinned the forest and trimmed the undergrowth to about seven foot. This Winter we will plant hazelnuts in the protection of that pine forest.
To the left you can see some of the foundation work in progress. We gathered mountain stone from near the house site and placed large rocks in a trench. Some of the rocks were excessively large , we laid these in the corners. in addition to the mountain rock we also took gravel from the old logging trail and filled the foundation with crushed stone in fill.
Following the rock and gravel we poured 4 inches of concrete base layer all around the perimeter. once this was set and cured we poured an additional cap of concrete over and around the first layer. The layering created a wide, firm and well established foundation on which we laid mortar and one corse of eight inch block.

Here is another shot of me working on the forms for the base layer of concrete. The photo shows the East side and the North side of the surrounding area. The East side drops off into the lower meadow and wetland and the North gives way to more dense woods. We cleared 3/4 of the East trees in order to create a healthy managed forest enviroment. We kept the maples, sassafras, a few interesting pine trees and sweet gums. The thinned forest will allow these trees to thrive and become stronger well established specimens. It also allows for more light in the house and a better view.