Shiloh

My youngest child is only two. Even so, he has been fascinated with the building process. While we were peeling logs he would take a garden trowel and try and peel his own. For Christmas, one of his uncles gave him a toy chainsaw, toolbelt and hardhat. Having seen my dad and I working with chainsaws he knew what it was. As soon as he left the travel trailer with the new chainsaw he made a beeline for the racks of logs. The chainsaw has an on/off switch and a plastic chain that actually runs over the bar just like a real chainsaw. On goes the switch, he hits the trigger button and  pretends he is cutting the log. This is with hard hat and goggles on..looking just like a little lumberjack.

Last weekend we cut down what I hope is the last tree we have to chop down.  We had wanted to have it in the back yard, but after we cleared the house site closer inspection showed that it had some limbs that were cracked. Being that close to the house I was afraid of limbs dropping on the house and such.

The tree was a 70 year old red oak. When felled we measured the diameter of the stump:

It was 28 inches across one way and 27 inches across the opposite way. Approximately 40 feet up the trunk of the tree I measured a diameter of approximately 16 inches.

I can’t stand the thought of cutting the trunk up for firewood so I am going to have it milled as red oak makes very nice wood for woodworking. I plan on building the door and window bucks for the next house out of it along with an entertainment center, a kitchen table, a new computer desk for my equipment and some bookcases. The rest  I will save for future projects. And there should be a lot of lumber left over..I am estimating there is 800 board feet of wood in that tree.

Twenty minutes after the tree is down we look over and my little lumberjack is hard at work:

I hope he never grows out of it. Only time will tell, but I think it would be great if he continued to want to help me build houses as he grows up.

This week will hopefully mark another milestone in the home building project. Earlier today I called the company we selected to dig our foundation and asked if they could begin work later this week. It looks like they might begin Friday or Saturday.

If this happens we will only be three weeks behind for this part of the project

Around the same time we finished peeling the logs Rachel and I decided to make some changes in the house plans. The major change was that we decided to extend the length of the walls from 26′ to 31′. It will increase the heated and cooled living area from something like 1200 sq. ft to just over 1700 sq. ft. Unfortunately it required an update of the interior and structural drawings.

Even so, the interior drawings are now complete and the structural plans will be done in the next day or so. Once these are done the building permit can be updated with the changes.

To make things simpler and allow us to as much of the work as possible we are using what are called “pier blocks”. These are essentially pyramidal constructs with flat tops. We are using a total of 17 pier blocks. They will be arranged around the edge of the structure to hold the logs with more inside the square to support the flooring and what are called ridge pole support logs and the girder support log. As with the interior and structural drawing updates, the increase in size of the house has meant that we have to increase the size of some of the pier blocks so some additional work was necessary.

The contractor and crew will come out with a bobcat and an excavator and dig the seventeen holes for the form. These holes must be accurately place and once the forms are placed they must be absolutely level and at the same height above grade (ground) as the other forms. In our case the top of each form will be 18 inches above grade. The bottom of the form will be 18 inches below grade for a total height of 3′ for the form. Once the form is in place and level the hole will be backfilled so that the form don’t “float up” when the concrete is poured. Even though the forms are heavy, it is possible for the concrete to push the form up or even blow the sides of the form out if the seams are not reinforced enough. This will create a huge problem in either case. We reinforced our forms with two by fours and brackets to keep this from happening.

We began building our forms quite some time ago. Along the way we managed to make some mistakes and learn a thing or two. When we finish nailing the last one together this week it will get us one step closer to living in our home!

Cutting a form:

The day we were cutting the majority of the forms it was only slightly above freezing for much of the day.

We also laid out the area where the foundation is going to be located. While it might not look like much in the picture below, the square marked out by the string is the exact area of the house down to the inch.  In fact, the front door be within a foot or two of the end of small pine log you can see “pointing” towards the foundation area. The kitchen will be to the right of the front door and the great room will be what you enter first.

A log home weighs a great deal. A single dry log is going to weigh something like 1,000 pounds.  It is important to have a solid, firm foundation or later we will have difficulties. While it has been a challenge to build the proper forms and it will be some hard work to place them correctly, in the end it will worth it knowing we won’t have issues with the foundation of the house.