Our New House is On Its Way

[Gerowen]

8 hours ago, Arachno 1D said:

Thats an awful narrow road down to the homes are there passing places build in?

Oh and having not seen that type of build before do you remove the underlying wheels and axles once finished or leave them in place in case you want to move again?

No there's no passing zones or anything, the road was actually built by my grandfather years and years back, and the county eventually put gravel on it and called it a day.  If you meet somebody one of you just has to back up to a wide spot or a driveway.

 

I'm pretty sure they will remove the axles and the tongue, but if it needs to be moved again for whatever reason, people who move these things professionally keep axles and tongues of various sizes on hand.  Some people leave them, but since this is a double wide they'll probably take them since they're seen as being more "permanent".

 

I'm not up there because I have to be at work, but my wife is up there and there's one crew putting the two pieces together and leveling it and a separate crew who happened to show up at the same time to install the septic.  Here's the footage I recorded yesterday.  I handed my wife the camera today so I'm not sure what she is or isn't recording, but if she got any interesting footage I'll string that together, and I'm off work until after the first of the year so when anything else happens I'll be able to record it.

 

Anyway, here's yesterday's footage.  It's a little longer at 24 minutes.

 

 

[+Raze Subscriber²]

Congratulations, Gerowen!  My wife is from Harlan, KY.  We often visit her family, it's a beautiful area with hollers and camps.  Do you do any ginseng harvesting (senging I think they call it)?

[xendrome]

9 hours ago, Skiver said:

I understand if you don't want to answer this but, just for the house along, not land or cost of shipping etc... how much does something like that cost?

 

I have to admit your video made me chuckle a little, I don't think I could have described a more stereotypical American... dressed in camo, with a massive gun, driving a truck

Best part is, he's not a stereotypical American, he's a stereotypical American who lives in the hills of Kentucky (not a dig at all). There really is no such thing as a stereotypical American since the US covers such a wide area/range of people. There is a perceived view of Americans just as we perceive the UK/British, which isn't a good representation either

[Gerowen]

1 hour ago, Raze said:

Congratulations, Gerowen!  My wife is from Harlan, KY.  We often visit her family, it's a beautiful area with hollers and camps.  Do you do any ginseng harvesting (senging I think they call it)?

I do but it's hard to find.  I dig bloodroot and yellowroot still, but Ginseng is hard to find.  A Ginseng plant takes 4-5 years to mature enough to harvest, and a lot of people who don't care would dig yearling plants and not even bother planting the berries or leaving a piece of the root behind, which means no plant to take its place in the following years.

[Gerowen]

11 hours ago, Skiver said:

I understand if you don't want to answer this but, just for the house along, not land or cost of shipping etc... how much does something like that cost?

 

I have to admit your video made me chuckle a little, I don't think I could have described a more stereotypical American... dressed in camo, with a massive gun, driving a truck

I'm not sure to be honest because when you buy one new the cost of shipping it and stuff is included; but since the sticker price was $49k with shipping/insurance, a warranty for any damage done, etc., I would guess the whole-sale price of the house we bought would be $35k-$40k. (USD)  We're doing most of our utility hookups out of pocket because of where we're at, but the $50k we paid still included moving it in and setting it up, and since that has included separate crews of people from different companies doing different tasks (one crew poured footers, one crew moved it in, one crew put it together and sealed it) and is also going to include the supplies and money to cover a year's worth of repairs (we get a year warranty on damage done during setup), I'm gonna guess they spent $5k easily just on setup fees, and probably quite a bit more because when we first started this project and before we decided to buy a new house, I was quoted $3,500 just to move the 14x70 we're in now up there, and we're only like 3 miles away.

[Gerowen]

So I've got a little bit of footage from today.  Not as much as I would have because I had to work and my wife had the camera most of the time and she spent some time wrapping presents, but there is some footage I might be able to put together.

 

To make up for the lack of details on how the house is assembled though, there's some bonus footage I'm going to tack onto the end.  It involves a brown four legged animal, roughly 200 pounds in weight and the front end of my truck,

[Gerowen]

7 hours ago, xendrome said:

Best part is, he's not a stereotypical American, he's a stereotypical American who lives in the hills of Kentucky (not a dig at all). There really is no such thing as a stereotypical American since the US covers such a wide area/range of people. There is a perceived view of Americans just as we perceive the UK/British, which isn't a good representation either

Yeah the culture in this country is SO varied from place to place, and on some issues (gay rights/marriage, freedom of/from religion) I'm actually pretty liberal for this area.  I've driven most of the length of this country (not counting Alaska or Hawaii) and it's a hard 4-5 day drive.  Around here everybody owns a gun, a lot of people hunt and even more people own a pickup truck because even those people who don't do manual labor for a living do it around home for their own pet projects or side jobs, and it's a heck of a lot easier to do things if you've got your own pickup truck to haul stuff when you need to.  I couldn't own an electric car here even if I wanted to because there's no charging stations, and it's a half an hour to our nearest Wal-Mart, let alone shopping mall.  However, go to L.A., NYC, Chicago, etc. and the cultures/mindsets are completely different than they are here.  If I went cruising around L.A. with an AR-15 in the back glass of my truck or a pistol on my hip, I'd probably wind up shot by the cops on the six-o'-clock news.  Likewise, if somebody from L.A. came cruising around here, they would probably feel pretty uncomfortable with the country accents, chewing tobacco, guns, deer and pickup trucks everywhere.

 

That variation in culture is part of what makes America great, even though we joke about how all city people are pansies and city folks joke about how all country folks meet their sisterwife at the family reunion, :P.  That variation in culture is also one reason that I think there's lots of issues where we should give the states more control over things than they currently have.  Attitudes and cultures vary wildly from place to place.  What's normal in one place might seem like insanity in another place, and blanket legislation from Washington D.C. that tries to solve problems which only really affect specific areas are not the best answer in most situations I think.

 

Anyway, sorry for going off topic.  My wife got some footage today and I walked around for a few minutes and got some footage after I got off work.  I'm trying to weed out all of the unnecessary fluff right now to get the video time under 20 minutes.

 

[Skiver Veteran]

12 hours ago, xendrome said:

Best part is, he's not a stereotypical American, he's a stereotypical American who lives in the hills of Kentucky (not a dig at all). There really is no such thing as a stereotypical American since the US covers such a wide area/range of people. There is a perceived view of Americans just as we perceive the UK/British, which isn't a good representation either

 

I did think that when I wrote it, perhaps one of the many stereotypes would have been a better way of saying it.

10 hours ago, Gerowen said:

I'm not sure to be honest because when you buy one new the cost of shipping it and stuff is included; but since the sticker price was $49k with shipping/insurance, a warranty for any damage done, etc., I would guess the whole-sale price of the house we bought would be $35k-$40k. (USD)  We're doing most of our utility hookups out of pocket because of where we're at, but the $50k we paid still included moving it in and setting it up, and since that has included separate crews of people from different companies doing different tasks (one crew poured footers, one crew moved it in, one crew put it together and sealed it) and is also going to include the supplies and money to cover a year's worth of repairs (we get a year warranty on damage done during setup), I'm gonna guess they spent $5k easily just on setup fees, and probably quite a bit more because when we first started this project and before we decided to buy a new house, I was quoted $3,500 just to move the 14x70 we're in now up there, and we're only like 3 miles away.

 

That's cool, something you wrote in an earlier post made me think you'd paid for the shipping etc separately so that still answered it perfectly, thanks

[Arachno 1D]

Looking good so far Bud the building looks well made and roomy too, I think in the UK they would have flipped taking it down that road they certainly have the delivery system well worked out.

[Gerowen]

Got yesterday's footage stitched together including a quick, in the dark walkthrough of the house.  The "bonus footage" starts at 21:50.

 

 

[MikeChipshop Member]

Great videos mate, keep 'em coming!

 

You actually don't need that gun in your cab, you'd just drive in to anything instead

[Gerowen]

Not a whole lot particularly interesting, but I started digging a hole for the electric pole,

 

 

[+Raze Subscriber²]

Love your little dachshund friend while digging the post hole.  lol

[cooky560 Veteran]

Cool video! Reminds me of a show I saw once about uplifting and moving buildings in Australia

[Gerowen]

10 minutes ago, Raze said:

Love your little dachshund friend while digging the post hole.  lol

That's Jake.  He's another one of our vicious man eaters,

[Gerowen]

I've got some more footage, but I don't know if I'll bother making another video just yet.  I may wait until tomorrow and add whatever I get then to it to make it longer because I wasn't able to get a ton of footage today.  My wife was at work until 4 in the evening and she had the carseat, so I wasn't able to leave the house for quite a while.  She's off work tomorrow though, so I'll be able to leave much earlier and hopefully get more done.  I'm still editing today's footage, so it just depends on how much I end up with.

 

[Gerowen]

Got the electric pole set last night, there's a guy up there digging the ditch for the water line right now so I'm going to go work on running that water line and maybe get somebody up there to run wire from the pole into the house, :-)

 

 

[Arachno 1D]

Certainly coming on, did they winch the two house parts together once they were levelled off by the contractor?

Im suprised you didnt get the digger to make your trench and hole for the Pole it would have saved you all a bit of sweat

 

EDIT Just a thought on that can you just install a plastic pipe for the cable to the Pole footing so you can concrete it to ground level?

[Gerowen]

6 hours ago, Arachno 1D said:

Certainly coming on, did they winch the two house parts together once they were levelled off by the contractor?

Im suprised you didnt get the digger to make your trench and hole for the Pole it would have saved you all a bit of sweat

 

EDIT Just a thought on that can you just install a plastic pipe for the cable to the Pole footing so you can concrete it to ground level?

I picked up the conduit for the wiring today, that's why I didn't put any more cement than that in the hole, I'm going to install the conduit for the wiring so that I can go ahead and finish the cement without obstructing where the wire needs to go.  I'm going to do cement the entirety of the 3 feet so that hopefully the pole won't rot too fast.

 

I didn't really get an up close of how joining the pieces worked because the day they joined the two halves I wasn't there until later that evening, but from what I understand there's basically plates in the floor and ceiling that have huge bolts ran through them and they use an air drill to crank down on those bolts and draw the two halves together, and then they re-level the whole thing as a unit.  They had to level them somewhat beforehand though to make sure the bolts/holes would line up enough to join the halves.

 

I'm doing a lot of the utility work myself so that it's done "my way", and also to save a dollar.  Everything I can do myself is one thing I don't have to pay somebody else to do, and if something goes wrong then I have personal knowledge of where everything is located at and how it's put together.  Plus it's good exercise, :-)

 

Got the water lines spliced and stretched out today, but not connected on the ends.  Picked up some more hardware and one guy finished digging the ditch for the water line as a favor so I don't have to spend any extra money on that work.  I've got lots of footage to go through, and tomorrow is Christmas Eve so it may be a few days before we get anything else done and this footage gets uploaded, but progress is being made one step at a time, :-)

[Arachno 1D]

Wishing you all a good Christmas, I bet the family cant wait to move in

[Gerowen]

This one is rather long (34 minutes) but I got the water lines stretched out and spliced together, as well as burying part of them.

 

 

[Arachno 1D]

Just a suggestion but mark up where you have the water line joints just in case you have a leak [i.e. pooling water] when you turn the pump as they may be the likely cause if faulty.

I know you said earlier about being protected from severe weather but do you get much ground frost in that area that would get to the water line?

[Gerowen]

49 minutes ago, Arachno 1D said:

Just a suggestion but mark up where you have the water line joints just in case you have a leak [i.e. pooling water] when you turn the pump as they may be the likely cause if faulty.

I know you said earlier about being protected from severe weather but do you get much ground frost in that area that would get to the water line?

The freeze line usually stops about 8 inches or so down, the shallowest portion of the trench is 16 inches deep.  I'm also planning on, wherever there's a splice or connection, placing a bucket over/around the connection.  Basically I'm going to cut the bottom off a bucket, cut notches in the sides of the bucket for the line to travel through, flip it over on top of the line so that the splice or connection is in the bucket.  I'll then stuff the bucket full of insulation, place the bottom back over it to keep dirt out, and bury it, bucket and all, then plant a flower or place some other marker over top of it.  That way, if I lose pressure one day, I only have to remove 5 or 6 inches of dirt, remove the bottom (or in that case it'll be seen as the top) of the bucket, pull out the insulation and inspect the connection.  There's also already a shutoff valve in the well itself so that if there is a problem, I can shut water off at the well without having to spend time releasing the pressure before I can work on my lines.

 

A couple of years ago it got down to -25 degrees here (fahrenheit), which is the coldest I've ever seen it, and my parents' water line, which I also buried at 16 inches, never froze so we should be fine at 16 inches.  Their water did freeze though, up inside the house because they didn't leave the water trickling and it froze right where it came out the bottom of their water heater because the power also went out, so even if they had left the water running, the pump had no power and the pressure would have ran out in a couple of hours.

 

I'm also not going to bury the splices and connections until after everything is hooked up.  I'm going to cut power to the pump, release all the pressure in the tank, make the connections, and then power it on.  That way I can check all of my connections as well as all of the connections in the house to make sure that nothing popped loose in the process of shipping it.

[jnelsoninjax]

@Gerowen any updates? I've been enjoying watching your progress!

[Gerowen]

43 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

@Gerowen any updates? I've been enjoying watching your progress!

Mostly just battling the cold and waiting on inspectors and such.  I got the wire connected to the house today from the service box on the pole we set in the ground.  I didn't get any footage of that because I, like an idiot, forgot my camera, and I had to get home because my wife works this evening.  However, it's still uncovered because the inspector has to come by tomorrow and bless off on it, so I'll take the camera and give an overview of it tomorrow.

 

I also got some footage of a buddy of mine who brought up his 4 wheeler with a snow plow blade and covered 90% of our water line so when I connect it, I won't have nearly as much work to do covering it up.

 

I haven't published any new videos because there hasn't been anything particularly video worthy, and the clips I do have are just that, short, intermittent clips, so I'm holding onto them until I've got enough to string together into something longer.

 

It's supposed to warm up tomorrow, so I may try and get our septic line connected to the tank.  We already have the sticker so it's not stopping us from getting the power turned on once the electrical inspector looks at the wiring, but I need to get it done as soon as possible.  Problem is the ground is frozen solid right now.  When digging the last little bit of dirt today for the electric wire I basically had to take a wedge and hammer it into the ground and cut out little squares of frozen dirt where I had left a small amount of dirt on the side of the pole where the wire was going to come out.

 

After the inspector blesses off on the wiring, I can call the power company and they'll be up to spend a day running a couple hundred feet of wire and setting a new pole in the yard, so I'll try to get some footage of that as well. :-)