Building my home

[brianl703]

If you have the PDF open in an active window, one of control-printscreen, shift-printscreen, or alt-printscreen will copy the window to the clipboard. (I don't remember which one it is. Try them all. One will copy the entire screen to the clipboard).

Then open Windows Paint and select Copy from the Edit menu. Whatever was copied to the clipboard will appear. Crop as desired, and save as a .jpg.

 

[Amkeer]

Update! If the woodpecker doesn't roost on my lot I can start building after I pay my ransom. (impact fee)

Met with site developer to clear lot today. They can clear the pad in one day and level, compact soil next day. Estimated fill is 3 truck loads. Estimated debris is about 6 loads. All trees stay except those within the pad and around 15 feet of home.

More to come.

 

[Slick17601]

I have those windows in an addition we built a year ago. Now that I know more about windows I wish we would have went up to the 5500 series with low e glass and vent locks.

 

[Tosh]

If in doubt go higher with the foundation. It gets really wet there.

 

[drm7]

I love craftsman style homes. I keep telling my wife that's what I want to build for our retirement. I'm only 39 so it's going to be a while.

Amkeer, what do you do for a living that you can put it on hold? (if you don't mind me asking)

BTW, I'm in the middle of a build myself. We bought a 5 acre lot last year and broke ground this past December. I wanted to contract it myself but just don't have the time. We found a builder that charges cost + 10%. By my estimate we are still building the house $75k+ under market value. We bought part of some farm land with a barn and an old tobacco barn so we settled on a primative 2-story farmhouse with a full width front porch. We are turning what would be the garage into a family room. Fortunately a friend of ours is an architect so she did our plans for us (FREE!). I can get them printed at a local shop for $3.85 for all 5 pages. Right now we have it under roof with full electrical rough-in. I believe the plumbing is waiting on our air tub and it will be roughed in and the HVAC should be done this week. Once these are done we can get our inspection and start with the insulation and drywall. In the meantime I'm going to run Cat5e for home network & phone and I'm gong to run the RG6 coax for TV. We are going to bite off some of the painting to save money. The family room (garage) and basement will be unfinished and I'll do them myself once we're in. Can't pay full price for everything.

My wife jokes that she would pick the color of the nails if she could. I think she actually would. We've had a great time designing the house. There are so many details to pick out it's amazing. So far everything has gone well and we are right on budget.

 

[Amkeer]

slick, I believe mine are the 5500. You like the windows?

tosh, the home is about 180' above sea level and my finish floor elevation will be approximately 36 inches above crown in the road. No floods to worry about!

DRM, I build handcrafted furniture and cabinets for a living. I have extensive construction and real estate background. I went to trade school for carpentry (voctech) while in HS. After graduating went from foreman to superintendent for large General Contractor. So all in all about 25 years building experience.

My business will be this home and my customers are aware of this. I have scheduled it accordingly.

Your home sounds nice! You actually brought up what I was thinking about the past couple of days, the home network and cat5.


Update no woodpecker!

 

[drm7]

I wish you the best on your home! We are having a great time with ours.

About the network, I'm a computer programmer but not a network guy. I'm going to run the cables then seek help at work to hook it all up in a patch panel in the basement. I'm going to run 3 Cat5e (2 for network, 1 for up to 4 phone lines) with 2 RG6 quad shield coax to each outlet. 1-2 outlets per room. Here is a good read on a guy that did this in his home, http://www.swhowto.com/. May seem overkill on the number of cables but there are reasons to do this. For instance, you can route devices back to other locations over the unused network/coax. I did this in my last house. I ran a coax output from my sat tv back to my bedroom. It had a UHF remote so I could watch tv in bed w/o paying for a second receiver. If you want to stream HDTV the wired network will give you the best performance. Of course in a few years we'll have gigabit wireless and I'll have all those "wired" outlets to look at. Of course wired are more secure.

 

[Slick17601]

The link you attached is for the contractor grade which is what I have. They are fine except I wish they had vent locks.

 

[Razl]

Have you considered what you are doing for insulation and HVAC? This is an area that can save you in the long run and reduce your use of fossil fuels.

Unfortunetly, we were a little late jumping into our build (it was already framed with 2x4). I would have preferred to go with 2X6 to take advantage of the larger insulating wall cavity. Take a look at energystar.gov and maybe you can put in the little extra to make it as green friendly as possible. I wish you all the best!

 

[drm7]

Razl: I'm with you on this. I had intended to go with 2x4 walls and use Icynene spray foam insulation. Well, this is near the end of the build and the $5000 additional $$$ to go with foam over fiberglass is straining my budget. I'm going to have to go with fiberglass. However, I am installing SEER 15 heat pumps along with .92 rated water heater, and Low-E windows with Argon. I'm in the country so propane or all electric are my only options. I'm going all electric due to the cheap electric here and expensive propane. With what I am doing I don't think I can recover the $5000 foam insulation in less than 8-10 years.

 

[brianl703]

quote:

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May seem overkill on the number of cables but there are reasons to do this.

---

I have five cables (two cat5e, one cat3, one RG6, one cat0 telephone) going to my computer room upstairs. Why? One (the cat3) is for the 802.11b wireless access point which works better when it's on the top floor, two (RG6/cat5) for the cable modem, and one is to connect the computer to the rest of the network.

The cable modem is connected to a broadband router/print server (with a laser printer) in the basement. There's also a Linux machine that the wireless access point is connected to (it firewalls the wireless access from the rest of my network--the interface that the WAP is connected to is set for 10megabit due to the cat3 cable). Since the Linux machine is also a file server and is therefore equipped with two 3.5" full height SCSI drives (one of them a 10K RPM drive), it tends to run warm and that is why it's in the basement.

 

[Amkeer]

Great advice guys keep it coming!

 

[beanoil]

Run more structured wiring than you think you will need. Make it all "home run" (each leg point a to point b) and bring it to a central spot in your media closet or basement. Technology is now there for whole house intercom, video distribution, streaming audio, and security. There are lots of websites that deal with this, and Electronic Home magazine is a good resource. Might as well make the lights, and HVAC controlled by the master system as well. Security can be tied in so that you can check on the house while away, or it will page you, and call the authorities in case of break in, or fire. And of course, don't forget high speed for access to BITOG!

 

[Slick17601]

Take a look at the Carrier Infinity system. It will work exceptionally in cooling and humidity removal.

 

[drm7]

I finally got the gmail web space so as a test I created a page showing my build progress.
http://dougm7.googlepages.com/home

A suggestion I have for you, Amkeer, is to take pictures of every wall in every room after your plumbing/hvac/electrical rough-in. Later, when you want to change or add something you'll have photos that will allow you to "look" behind the drywall. I did this on my last house and it really comes in handy when you want to change something or say add a curtain rod and you want to know what the window header looks like. I always like to tap wood so the curtains don't come down. I didn't have a digital camera back then but I do now so I'm going to shoot 100's of photos next week now that the rough-in is complete.

 

[TheLoneRanger]

So what are you using for roofing material, Amkeer? I assume tile?

I replaced my asphalt shingles a few years ago with a metal roof. It installs in sections and looks exactly like flat tile, but is much lighter weight. Also cat 3 hurricane proof.

Copper makes an excellent roof, and will outlast the house built under it, but is very, very expensive.....

 

[Amkeer]

Lone,

Great point about the metal, I considered doing this, but had to keep things within a budget. I agree the metal would look great!

D,

That home looks huge! I love the porches! What are you using for ceiling material in porch area?

 

[drm7]

Amkeer: the way the house sits up out of the ground gives it a larger appearance. We set it up that way on purpose. The footprint is 40'w by 28'd. The basement has 9' poured walls along with 9' main floor plus 20" trusses between floors. So it looks bigger than it really is. Each floor is 1120 sq ft to save you the math.

We're shooting for primitive farmhouse so I'm considering leaving the porch unfinished like the picture and just paint it. The other option is to finish out with some sort of bead board. I'll make that decision after I move in.

The back porch will be finished with a solid wall for railing. I'll screen it in after I move in to keep the skeeters out and to make it a 3 season room.

I'm having the front and back porches roughed in for additional lighting or ceiling fans that I can add after I move in. Can't afford to pay full retail for all the work.

 

[drm7]

I added a new page to show where some of our inspirational ideas came from:
http://dougm7.googlepages.com/buildexamples
If you click on the actual pictures you'll get a larger picture so you can see the details better. We just drove around and kept our eyes open for ideas. We are going to have green metal roof on the house and porches. It will match (close enough) to the window trim.

 

[Amkeer]

D,

So you have about 2240 heated and cooled space? Thats a big home. Also when you consider you may add another 1120 when you finish off the basement that would make it 3360.

If you are going to paint the exposed framing I would do it now while everything below is unfinished. You can rent a professional sprayer and get 1 coat of Porter Acri-Shield bonding primer and 1 top coat of Acri-Shield before the work below. When the job is complete roll and brush the last coat with rest of home.