Good idea. Advice taken. I saw Ted, the guy who framed the place, at breakfast one moring and he said just to use the cheap carbide tipled saw blades from Harbor Freight and just use more of them and not to buy the expensive ones specifically for concrete siding.

Please do. I sounds like a fun project. I'm going to start looking for some old wood and tin for certain areas of the inside to do some finishing work.

You get a little more dust that way(because of more teeth) but works out less expensive and you always have a sharp blade to work with.

You know I certainly hope not. I'm looking forward to a long retirement up there and I don't want it to be in some post apocalyptic World where I'm having to pick off Zombies from the second floor deck. Perhaps the good Lord will keep blessing this old World, despite our failings as a human race.

I am planning on a nice big green field out there with some tasty deer attractant so I can walk out onto the upper deck from my bedroom in my jammies with my 30-30 Winchester in hand and surprise a deer or two in my back yard to put some meat on the table.

Start another thread about your build so it does not get lost in this one with lots of pics. That would be awesome to see.

So current drought not withstanding, I still plan to use rain water collection for our first few years and then drill a well perhaps when we retire up there. Here is the tank I am going to buy:

This tank is over in Tallapoosa, GA. For $979.95 so we could ride over there with the utility trailer and just pick it up and save the astronomical shipping charge.

http://www.rainharvest.com/water-tanks-plastic/above-ground-tanks.asp

And if we order that we get the complete rainwater harvesting system for $679.96

http://www.rainharvest.com/rainflo-ags-above-ground-rainwater-collection-system.asp

I think the only thing else we would have to buy is piping and a demand water heater…

According to all the data I have read we should expect to receive 55” of rain per year up there. We have 700 S.F. of roof area. Each square foot of roof collects 0.6 gallons of water per inch of rain. So… 700 x 55 x 0.6 = 23,100 gallons of water collected per year / 12 months = 1,925 gallons per month

Assuming we use about 60 gallons of water per day each that’s 120 gallons a day on the weekends. 4 weekends per month would mean: 60 x 2 x 8 = 960 gallons per month usage…

So we should be fine for even guests and longer stays because we would only average using half our rain water collection per month. And one full tank would provide us with weekend water for almost 3 months.

Eventually we will drill a well and put a float switch in the tank and when it gets below a certain point, the well pump would kick on and fill the tank or pump “X” amount of gallons in there.


At least that's the plan...

Trying something new with my photo sharing. Instead of using Flickr, which has become a pain in the butt because they have chosen to add a bunch of extra code to the shareable link, I am trying switching over to Google. Let's see if this works:

Took a vacation day and went to the cabin yesterday to see what I could get done. Trying to finish up all the electrical, so I made a bunch of pigtails for the electrical outlets and switch boxes. I know you can do this several ways, such as looping the wires around the electrical connectors, or simply running the current through each outlet or switch, but of all the different ways I read, the method I used seemed to be recommended by more electricians. Unfortunately it also was the biggest pain in the ass. I will only have to do it once thank goodness. My fingers are sore this morning. twisting all those wire nuts on nice and tight gets old after about the first 25 or so...

Some pigtails:




One of my many outlets I had to wire up:



End of a good day's work:

2016-12-03_09-50-54 by markvdowning, on Flickr

Edit: Well that didn't work so well either. Google is a bigger pain in the butt to get a JPEG link out of than Flickr.

Good work, have you seen the wire nut wrench that is available? It is a screw driver with a recessed area in the handle. Saved a many a sore finger!
Beautiful view from what you can see!

Son of a... I wish I had known about that yesterday!

What do y'all think about this?:



I'm thinking about staining and sealing the cedar trim and just going with 1/2"x 24" corrugated galvalume on most of the exterior with maybe some cedar shakes around the entrance way.

We were going use this around the top 1/3rd of the cabin anyway, but I'm kind of warming up to this. If we ever get tired of it, it would be easy to take down and replace with "real" siding later on.

If you decide to use the galvalume, I would definitely use the 26 gauge instead of the 29 gauge.

One of the downfalls of using this will be sealing the top and bottom of the corrugations to keep bugs out. You will need some kind of "J-channel" I would think similar to a metal building for the metal to sit on at the bottom.

I wouldn't do anything to the cedar trim. Let it breathe

I'm going to use a "J" channel at the top and a "Z" channel at the bottom of any panel and at the tops of any window or door and I'm more than likely going to use a "J" channel at all vertical interfaces with trim too.

Probably going to use the same Olympic stain/sealer as I used on the decks.

Time for an update since I'm sitting around the house sick today.

Last weekend was a very productive weekend. We took Friday and Monday off so we had a 4 day weekend, although Saturday was kind of a bust due to the rain, which I was thankful for.

One of the first projects was to put a corrugated tin roof under the top deck and make the lower deck weather resistant. probably going to run a gutter along the exposed edge of the tin. Flashed around the 6x6 posts and sloped it using a 2x4 flat at the mid-point and one on edge at the outer edge of the deck. The back wall that you see there will be covered in cedar shakes stained lighter than the trim.



We finished up all the trim around the windows and all the corner trim that we could reach with my 24' ladder.



On the North side we will put cedar shakes around the entrance way in between those two vertical pieced of cedar trim and the rest of that side will be corrugated tin.



We built an 8'x8' deck off the kitchen for an outdoor kitchen area. It is on temporary supports right now, but there will be some 6x6 posts in the corners that will run up about 8' above the deck and they will support a small roof that will cover the cooking area and the grills.



Got to take time to enjoy the sun rise with a steaming cup of java...

On your rainwater collection: you might think through sizing based off a reasonable "max tolerable drought" timeframe rather than an average yearly type sizing. Meaning, look through weekly average data over the course of the year to see prolonged time frames where little rain is occurring, then factor in a good 3 or 4 week time without significant rain. This would likely cause you to upsize significantly relative to an "average" type method, but would give you a little buffer.

Cabin looks great BTW!

We are only going to use the rainwater collection during the time we will be using it on the weekends. Once we move up there full time we are going to drill a well, but still collect rainwater to supplement.

But yeah, you make a good point. Thanks for posting.

I'm sure everyone is probably getting tired of the slow progress on this place, if y'all are let me know and I'll quit posting about it...

When you only have the weekends to work on something and your only helper, as good a helper as she is, is your wife you can only progress so much at a time. Anyway, on to the pictures:

Once we put the corrugated tin roof/ceiling over the lower rear deck, we knew that we didn't want to put corrugated tin on the back wall down there, so we bought the cheap cedar shingles at Lowes in Ft. Payne. These shingles are like seconds and they aren't treated, which makes them great for the cabin build and also great for grilling with the left over pieces.

I made gauge boards by driving nails in at every 8" and then using a string and a wood gauge to offset every other shingle 1" to give it a rustic staggered look. I like it and Mrs. Irish likes it, so that's all that really matters.



I put them up with 1/8" x 1 1/4" galvanized air staples...







We'll be starting on the side of the cabin that faces the road the next pretty weekend.