Above 1200 Sq/FT I bought the farm

[ericm]

Shop is finally started!



The builders finished the poles this week. I was there for a few days to have a look at the shop and to meet with various people on the house. One problem the shop crew found was that the pad wasn't exactly lined up with the barn behind it. It's probably my fault for laying out approximate lines and not insisting hard enough that the pad crew do their own measurements. But the shop crew managed to fit it on the pad. It's not lined up exactly with the barn. It's about 18" offset but parallel, at least as far as I can see by eye. It's not a big deal and the direction they moved it gives me that much more room from the cut bank (out of the pic to the left) to the building to turn vehicles into the bay doors on that side. Other than not looking good on satellite photos it'll be fine.

There was a crew at the house digging a trench for power from the pole to the shop. It's about 600' the way they went around the house. There will be a tombstone transformer about 100' from the shop and a meter on the shop. As part of the trenching they dug out the septic tank the new trench would be passing near so they'd know where the outlet pipe went. And they found that the outlet's got a hole rusted through and it's packed with ****. They cut out a section of pipe while I was there and it's packed through that section. They were going to try farther down and if they can, snake a camera into the leach field to check it. But it's probably bad. Which we had been expecting until the guy who pumped the tank told us it was good. Of course he meant the tank not the field.

 

[Farmall450]

Better to get those surprises out of the way now than in 10 years. Looking forward to this build!

 

[ericm]

Coming along!

 

[ericm]

Progress! The outer metal is nearly complete.



Inner wall between the shop and equipment storage:




The solar company and I decided to put the panels on the tractor shed. I'll also have power run out there so I can at least have a couple lights and outlets for charging batteries. Of course the shed doesn't have a permit so we need another ag exemption (yay farming!). I went to the county to deal with that. I should have taken a picture: the planning dept is in a grand old government building made from granite with marble floors and nice wood on the inside, not a ****** tilt up. Later on my wife remarked that it was from back when people still believed in government.

The planning dept was great to deal with. We need a second fire inspection but other than that it went smoothly.

 

[Sumboodie]

Inspections for a shed?

 

[ericm]

Inspections for a shed?

The ag exemption requires a fire inspection. But I wasn't clear what that entails- it's not the building. They want to see that we mowed the required 100 feet around the building and that they can get trucks in. When it was done for the shop he said the road to the shop needed improving. Which was true, one of the excavator trucks nearly slid off when it was wet. So it cost me $5k for rock and rolling.

 

[Sumboodie]

The ag exemption requires a fire inspection. But I wasn't clear what that entails- it's not the building. They want to see that we mowed the required 100 feet around the building and that they can get trucks in. When it was done for the shop he said the road to the shop needed improving. Which was true, one of the excavator trucks nearly slid off when it was wet. So it cost me $5k for rock and rolling.

Gotcha.

If i want to build, I start by going to the lumber yard. No inspections.

 

[ericm]

Gotcha.

If i want to build, I start by going to the lumber yard. No inspections.

The solar needs a permit. The solar company told me the building needs to be permitted for them to put panels on it. Instead of trying to permit it retroactively I can get an ag exemption. Those require the fire clearing and access inspection.

They are pretty serious about fire in this location. So is my part of California but the requirements are very different. I greatly prefer the ones in Oregon.

 

[rharman]

That is a nice looking building.

The construction with poles buried in the ground and the slab poured afterwards still confounds me. What's the life expectancy of the poles?

 

[larry4406]

That is a nice looking building.

The construction with poles buried in the ground and the slab poured afterwards still confounds me. What's the life expectancy of the poles?

Thank you for questioning this. I too have been leery of pole barns for this exact reason. They do make special pole bases for this reason.

 

[Notgrownup]

I question the pole buried in the ground life expectancy as well. We are toying with the i of a pole barn with living quarters but I believe I’d rather have top mounted beams.

 

[ericm]

That is a nice looking building.

The construction with poles buried in the ground and the slab poured afterwards still confounds me. What's the life expectancy of the poles?

There's pole barns built in the '80s on the property that are still in good shape and that's with rain gutters dumping next to the poles. I'm going to put in proper drains for this building and the existing ones. It'd be great if I'm still alive and working in the shop in 40 years but given my age, statistically it's highly unlikely.

I think it depends in part on the local soils, rainfall and water table. There's a lot of pole barns built with this construction in the area.

 

[borgdog]

I question the pole buried in the ground life expectancy as well. We are toying with the i of a pole barn with living quarters but I believe I’d rather have top mounted beams.

They also make 'poles' that have concrete bases with wood bolted on above grade if that is a worry. more money than just wood for sure, but still way less than standard foundations.

 

[pima67]

Think power/telephone poles that last for many years. Buried part treated like treated lumber or with asphalt like stuff. Now many are steel probably due to lack of suitable timber. and around here steel holds up better during thunder storm downdrafts. Wood poles snap off. Happened this summer on a main street near me when numerous poles were wiped out during a monsoon storm.

In a previous life I was a timber sale prep/administrator in NW Montana. Western Larch were excellent as poles for the small taper and height.

 

[rharman]

Yeah, I get that they're treated but it still bugs me. It's a lot easier to replace a power/phone pole than one of those poles in a building.

 

[jblnut]

When I built my farm shop (and 4 later buildings) I used wetset brackets on concrete piers. Two buildings were built this way and two were built with the brackets set into a concrete wall. The brackets in the foreground are for the shop and you can see the other style brackets in the background on top of a poured wall.


They were awesome to use but were a challenge to get foam to fit around. It all worked out but took longer than if a guy was to just dig down next to a conventional post.



They finish off nicely and are completely hidden in the wall cavity. Younger me was quite proud of all the extra insulation I put in the walls. Every post got insulation on both sides and the North and West walls got foam insulation between every purlin as well.

 

[ericm]

That looks nice! The foam is a nice touch. I'd be able to do stuff like that if I was there all the time but I'm only able to make short trips so I kinda have to take what I can get. I did get the building company to say they'll put up an additional internal girt at 4' on suggestion from the electrician I had out.

When we were up there last one of the neighbors stopped by. We only had a short time to talk but we did find out that there's a lot of black bear in the area. I thought I'd seen a lot of bear **** on our place near the fence with that neighbor so I'm not surprised. We're going to have to put up bear proof fence around the garden and chicken coop, and get bear proof garbage cans. We're much more remote in California but no bear, just mountain lions and they leave the chickens alone (unlike every other predator).

 

[ericm]

We went up this week to meet with the interior designer and to inspect the finished shop building. It was a bit exciting due to the snow storms. I-5 in far NorCal and the Siskiyou pass had chain controls or outright closures. My wife spent most of the trip up with her phone out looking at the various apps to get the latest chain status. About two hours before we hit the first chain control they switched to chains not needed on 4wd with traction tires, which was what we were driving. I've put chains on exactly once, in my driveway when it was nice and sunny. I didn't want to do it on the side of the road in the snow if I didn't have to.

Getting through chain control was the worst part. The semis were all over the place. Once past that the road itself was packed snow and easy to drive on with good tires, even for me being not that experienced driving on snow.

When we got into town there were stuck cars all over. A lot of businesses were closed but the place we were staying was open and we found a restaurant that was open. I think in total this snow was close to the record number of inches for the area.

In the morning the rep from the shop builder called and asked if I'd actually come up! Id have told him if I didn't. He then cancelled. Which when we got to the house and checked out the shop, turned out to be a good thing. It's no where near done. There's still panels that need to go up and most of the trim as well. There's too much snow for the crew to work so I don't blame them but I'm kind of pissed at the rep for not knowing. They have most of my money now and it seems like they're putting in less effort to get the remainder. Good thing I'm not in a hurry.



Most of the doors open on the sides of the building so when the snow slides off it piles in front of them. I totally didn't think about that but I wouldn't have been able to do much other than make the overhangs a little larger. The land dictated the shape and door locations.




It's a bummer that they didn't line the wall and ceiling ribs up on this side. It's not a structural problem it just looks sloppy. The other side's only a little off and it's close enough to look ok.

We went to the planning dept to finish up the ag exemption for the tractor shed so we can put solar panels on it. We got it finished in just a short time. This county planning dept is so much easier to deal with than our county in CA.

Last thing before heading home was to take lots of pics of the electrical wiring before they start insulating. I'd wanted to get a 3d scan like the Matterport ones that are used for selling real estate. Matterport charges reasonable fees for the scan but their system keeps the data on their servers and you have to pay an annual fee to keep it. My wife found an app for her phone that will use the lidar in the phone (I didn't even know phones have lidar!). It will even import into sketchup. But the open walls confused it so it wasn't useable. Instead she took narrated video while I tool photos.

By the second day the snow pack was about a foot deep. It sounds like this is becoming an annual thing. Two of the three garage doors have roof lines that dump snow in front of them, and four of the five garage doors for the shop do. And then there's the driveway and road to the shop. Between all that I think I'm going to be moving a lot of snow at times. Maybe the tractor bucket and a shovel will suffice.


It does look lovely though




On the way back down the pass was clear but I-5 turned into a ***********. Every semi in Oregon was heading to SoCal. I think they'd been waiting until the chain restriction was lifted. It took us three hours longer than usual due to the truck traffic and trucks with blown tires because they ran over dropped chains blocking the road. There were chain tighteners and dropped chains all over the road.

 

[kj_mustang]

If you get a lot of snow each winter, you may want to consider a snow plow for the front of your tractor if it can handle it.

 

[hobie18]

Sounds like you need someone to oversee the builders

 

[ericm]

If you get a lot of snow each winter, you may want to consider a snow plow for the front of your tractor if it can handle it.

I could put one on the Branson, which has a loader. It's a heavy tractor so it should do ok.

Sounds like you need someone to oversee the builders

If I was there I'd be checking out their work after each day. And bringing donuts more often. But I usually leave people alone to do their work rather than sitting there watching them. If I was doing the work I'd prefer that. In any case I don't know of anyone who could oversee them in my absence. I just have to hope I did a good job of vetting contractors and they do work to their normal standards. And accept that not everything will be exactly perfect.

Heck even the GC for the house, who is very experienced and really has their act together, has missed some stuff. They failed to talk to the solar company when they had conduit run from the house to the tractor shed, and it wasn't right. That work was done in a hurry between storms and I think they just forgot to check. They said they're going to fix it on their dime. The electrician put the panels for the house and garage in different places than I had discussed with the GC without asking me about it, or checking with the solar people. They're not the locations I wanted but they're not terrible, and the solar people think they can make it work, so I'm just going to live with it. I think the problem there is the electrician not wanting to communicate. They didn't tell the GC they were moving the panels. I have already marked them down as one to not use myself.

I was looking at other folks pole barns on this site and mine isn't the only one with a ceiling to wall rib mismatch. So I'm not going to get too bothered by it.

 

[kitdoctor]

The construction with poles buried in the ground and the slab poured afterwards still confounds me. What's the life expectancy of the poles?

I've always thought the same. I don't think this is ever done in Australia. Here, it's a concrete slab first, then the frame.

 

[roger440]

I've always thought the same. I don't think this is ever done in Australia. Here, it's a concrete slab first, then the frame.

Indeed. Makes no sense to me. Timber in the ground only last 5-10 years absolute max.

 

[Geoff289]

I've always thought the same. I don't think this is ever done in Australia. Here, it's a concrete slab first, then the frame.

Ditto.

 

[kitdoctor]

Indeed. Makes no sense to me. Timber in the ground only last 5-10 years absolute max.

...and as far as I can tell we're talking about pole barns constructed from softwood. It might be treated and embedded in concrete but that just further highlights that a slab first, with localised thickening under columns and timber to concrete bolted connections would be a similar but an actually better construction technique.

 

[kj_mustang]

Indeed. Makes no sense to me. Timber in the ground only last 5-10 years absolute max.

The poles on my building been the ground 10 years already, zero issues. Wood poles in the ground rot close to the surface caused by fungal attacks due to damp soil and wood. Keep the water away from the poles and they last.

 

[Mr onetwo]

use these https://www.homedepot.com/p/Post-Pr...-slGHG6Z4GcMRQ-FwxWB75NoBuWPOfaITD3vldQ&gQT=1

 

[larry4406]

use these https://www.homedepot.com/p/Post-Pr...-slGHG6Z4GcMRQ-FwxWB75NoBuWPOfaITD3vldQ&gQT=1

I have been looking into these. Concrete fully below grade.

Permanent solutions for post-frame construction foundations

ICC-ES-certified Perma-Column® precast concrete foundation solutions last generations, protecting consumer investments and builder reputations.

permacolumn.com

 

[ericm]

This is a useful video showing the different options:

 

[Mr onetwo]

Perma-columns are the gold standard...price and shipping is not cheap

 

[Cdubu52]

Also, remember, Pole Barns/Post Frame construction uses the poles as the load structure. The concrete floor is a floating slab with zero load. Its only there to walk or park on. That is why it is poured last, after the building is completed. Mine has concrete piers that the posts are bolted to, so I do not have wood directly in the ground, but many of the ones that I have seen that do, have zero rot or any other issues. I would have zero problems with that.

 

[roger440]

The poles on my building been the ground 10 years already, zero issues. Wood poles in the ground rot close to the surface caused by fungal attacks due to damp soil and wood. Keep the water away from the poles and they last.

I guess it ok in a reasonably dry climate?

In the UK however, theres no such thing!

Maybe you still treat wood properly over there? Here, the treatment is useless compared to the past. No chance of 10 years, unless you can use old telegraph poles.

 

[kj_mustang]

My area averages over 3 inches of precipitation a month. Just had 7 inches of snow and expecting 1-2 inches of rain over the weekend so expecting some small stream flooding. Prepare the building site properly for slope away from building, minimum 1 foot roof overhang around the whole building, gutters with buried drain lines to carry water away from site, and yes the poles are pressure treated but the chemicals used are not as good as 20 years ago.

 

[ericm]

My area averages over 3 inches of precipitation a month. Just had 7 inches of snow and expecting 1-2 inches of rain over the weekend so expecting some small stream flooding. Prepare the building site properly for slope away from building, minimum 1 foot roof overhang around the whole building, gutters with buried drain lines to carry water away from site, and yes the poles are pressure treated but the chemicals used are not as good as 20 years ago.

I think a lot depends on the soil conditions. My place in CA averages 45 inches of rain a year. Yesterday we got six, which is not that unusual. But the soil is sandy and drains well. The barn that is on the property is a pole barn. We think it was built in the late 1800s or very early 1900s. When we bought the place part of the roof had collapsed. We rebuilt it with the help of a neighbor. The poles themselves are in good shape. When we rebuilt it we found they'd used a lot of square nails.

 

[ericm]

Another trip up, it was pretty eventful. No pics though, I was too busy.

First thing I did was to spend a few hours picking up nails and screws with one of those magnets on wheels. I don't want any contractors (or myself) getting flats. I got about 5 lbs.

The shop building shell is finally finished. It's all good except the mis match of the wall and ceiling ribs as I noted earlier. And none of the doors shut properly. It's not the barn builders fault. The doors are decent steel framed insulated doors but the assembly wasn't all that great, and the dead bolts either don't go in to the jamb at all or only with a lot of force on the door seals. It's easily fixed with some filing or grinding. The main man door has a lot of space between the door and the jamb where the deadbolt goes in. The knob striker only just engages the jamb. I'll find or make a thicker striker plate for it.

The plumber I hired went to get a permit and was told the ag exemption didn't have plumbing on it. I hoped that they had been looking at the other ag exemption I filed for the tractor shed but it turns out they were right and we'd left it off. I think we didn't put it in because we were not sure that we could get the sewer line to the septic tank to work. I spent an entire morning at the county trying to fix it. They were super helpful but now I need to get the DEQ to approve it, and that will take at least a few weeks.

This throws off the entire schedule as I had the concrete guy lined up for next week. So I had to call everyone and apologize for being an idot. They were all pretty understanding, at least on the phone. The concrete guy will start guiding fishing trips in a month, so I may have to try to get it done in between his fishing trips.

I also found out that with the aq exemption the county considers it a commercial building, even though the excemption forbids me from having the public in the buildlng (like converting it to an event space). That's fine with me but it means I have to make the bathroom ADA compliant, and have to have a commercial meter base which costs more. There's no final inspection so no one will know if the bathroom isn't fully ADA, but ADA size is only 6" longer than I was going to make it, and I was going to put in blocking for grab bars, so I'll be able to meet that part.

I drove up in the diesel 3/4 ton 4x4 Chevy I recently bought used. It's a decent road trip vehicle but it rides rougher on bumps than the Tundra or the GX460. The Tundra is 2wd and I wanted a 4x4 for when it snows. And decent towing capacity as there are trailers in my future. I wanted diesel so I can run renewable diesel. It's made from vegetable oil like biodiesel but it's a better process. Renewable diesel has a super high 70+ cetane rating and does not pick up water like biodiesel. It makes my tractor run noticeably better. It's better for the environment to be using vegetable oil vs crude that had been safely buried for millions of years. It's common in California. Oregon's got a plan for it but it's not common there yet. I had to refuel with regular dinosaur-based fuel there.

Also the truck makes a huge amount of hp and especially torque which makes it amusing to drive.

 

[hobie18]

I wosh you had a supervisor to monitor, guard, and work for your interests

 

[ericm]

Another trip up to deliver $3k worth of lights for the shop. The electrician has gotten some work done:










The plumber is pushing the permit/exemption process through with the county.

I think I mentioned that the tractor shed we want to put solar panels on wasn't permitted. We got an AG exemption for that but we had to have an engineer come out to inspect it. That happened while I was up there. He made drawings of the building and its framing and will come back with a report in a few weeks.

A couple weeks ago the GC went to get a inspection on the existing garage/ADU that they are remodeling and found out that it didn't have permits either. Not even for a garage. So they are getting an AG exemption for that building as well. We're fortunate that the AG exemption exists and we can use it. Now we have three buildings with it.

My wife was digging through old county records and found a tax appraiser document where apparently the tax guy showed up and the previous owner said he had to go move a sprinkler in the field and couldn't show him around, sorry. Which doesn't surprise us.

 

[ericm]

I went up recently to mow. As much as I'd like to cut hay or run cows, they're not something that I can do without living there (and water and power in the case of cows). I've not been able to find someone to do either. So I'm just going to mow it again this year.




The mower with the world's dullest blades still actually mows, more or less. At least when it's green. I had plans to try the blade removal again this time with a torch, but I mis understood what "the house has power" means and the garage I was going to work in had none. "Has power" means the meter's live and they wired up a couple outlets in the house so the drywall guys could run a heater and fan. The impact wrench I had is air so without a compressor it's useless. After my trip I got a battery one for next time.

DEQ approval turned into a complete cluster ****. At the same time I was trying to get approval for the single toilet in the shop, we found out that the leach field was totally clogged. We had the septic contractor dig test holes for a new leach field and they stayed full of water, which is not what you want. It rained and snowed a lot in that time and that part of the field below the house got pretty soggy. The basement flooded too. To cut the story short we had to get french drains put in all around the basement and move the new leach field to a different location that's up hill from the tank.

While this was happening, DEQ got hacked. They're not admitting how bad it is but it's been a couple months and their computers are still down. The septic company knows people though and was able to get the shop toilet approved. They'd have gotten the new leach field and tank approved but for a new requirement DEQ has put in place that needs another inspection. They tell me they found a retired guy with the right certificates to do that inspection this week.

I asked the GC for the house if we had an unusual number of problems and while their answer wasn't quite "we'd quit if every house was like this" it was definitely yes. Hopefully future updates will be more actual progress and less complaining about the lack of it.

 

[Jeff C]

Beautiful piece of property. The headaches will all be worth it once you get moved out there.

 

[ericm]

We finally got doors on the shop! It feels like a real space now.





Sitting for a few months without doors collected some critters. The most alarming was a barn owl in the rafters of the equipment storage side of the shop. I didn't get any pics of the owl but here is some of what it left



They put the doors on while owl was in there- it was hiding up in the rafters, didn't move and was hard to see. I only found it when I went in and turned on the lights and it flew around. The garage doors didn't have their springs then so I could not open them. The owl did not want to fly out the man door so we left it while the guys finished up. That evening I came back, turned off the lights and opened the doors then stood quietly outside until the owl left.

The next morning I started cleaning the floor.




I'd gone up with the intention of cleaning the floors so I can put down sealant but the door install was going on for most of my time there so didn't get much cleaning done. I did spend a lot of time meeting with contractors though so it wasn't an entire waste.

Owls aren't the only wildlife problem. I have ground squirrels digging dens in the gravel under the slab. I got some traps:



The description of the traps on the web site made it sound like ground squirrels would be lining up to run though the tubes. I also put in some bait to entice them. No luck so far. Maybe the owl will get them.

The house is coming along. There was a problem with the cabinet guy not reading the drawings from the designer right and he's redoing some kitchen cabinets. Once that's done the other subs that are waiting for the kitchen cabinets to be done can get to work.

The whole house RO system is installed and waiting for inspection before it gets turned on.



There's even more equipment behind the water tanks on the right. The big tanks store filtered water and that gets pumped to the house, garage and shop (this room is in the house basement). The electrician wired up the RO and house pump controllers to the wrong panel so they won't get power from the whole house battery system when there's an outage. So that's got to get fixed.