Water & Sewer
As discussed in a previous post the depth of the trench for your water supply line should be just deeper than the freeze line in your area. The minimum depth in Northern Idaho is around three feet so with that in mind we dug down to the four foot line. If placing two different kinds of pipe in the same trench be sure to use the heavy 200psi line for your water pipe. It is recommended by contractors everywhere to use the one piece rolled water pipe. This comes in various lengths and is easy to trim down to meet your needs. We used the 1” rolled pipe and easily bent it around all the corners of the trench. The other main reason to use the heavy pipe (schedule 40 black water pipe) is that oftentimes, as in our case, we needed to run the waterline in the same trench as the sewer pipe. In these cases code officials will insist on and it is a good practice to use schedule 40 sewer pipe from your building to the septic tank. The cost of the roll of waterline will vary based on how many linear feet you need. I needed the 150' roll and after buying the various stop and waste valves, pressure reducer valves and the connector to go from the 1” pipe to my interior supply was about $400. Valves are expensive and you don't want to “cheap out” and not get good equipment. You could be sorry for that kind of decision in the long run.
The next part of your project could include the sewer if you are installing any kind of lavatory. Whether or not you have a toilet you still need to have the proper waste pipes for water in a wash basin of any kind. We would definitely recommend installing a toilet as it is cheap and will come in very handy. The pipe and fixtures for a complete bath are so inexpensive this is really not something that is even debatable. The expensive part of the sewer project is the septic tank.
Two thoughts on the septic tank:
(1)Using your current tank...
1.If your current tank is big enough – at least 1,000 gallons.
2.If you are only putting in a “part time” lavatory.
3.If the run of pipe allows for the proper drainage. Code calls for residential pipe to be at 1/4” drop for every 1 foot of length. So, every 4' the drop needs to be 1”.
4.This means that your existing tank will need to be fairly close so the run of pipe will be less.
5.The cost for this solution is only minimal – approximately $100
(2)Installing a new septic tank
1.You will need to find a big enough place to put the tank as well as the leach field required to drain the gray water. For a 1,000 gallon tank it will take a big hole and a couple of long leach field trenches. Our tank took a hole 10' deep, 8' long and 7' wide. Yes, we hired a backhoe to dig this hole. The two (2) leach line trenches are 50' long, 4' wide, and 4' deep as this is the code for our area. The backhoe and operator were invaluable tools for this part of the project.
2.From there everything in the first solution is needed for the second.
3.You will also need leach line pipe – the white kind with holes for drainage.
4.A big load of washed 3/4” rocks to surround the pipe with – up to 1' deep and at least 1' on all sides and bottom.
5.You need special cloth that rolls out over the pipe to keep the dirt and rocks out.
6.The cost of this solution is approximately $2,000 depending on the hourly rate of the backhoe and operator.
So you will need at least $2,500 for the most expensive solution for sewer and water. This does not include the plumber to connect the water lines if you cannot.
Until next post...
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Heating & AC
Think Heating & Air Conditioning Early in Your Project!
Depending on what you are going to use your building for will help determine what kind of heating and A/C you are going to use. Fortunately we live in a climate that does to require A/C – only heating. We decided to use radiant floor heating to take care of our heating needs on the first floor. This decision should be made as early in the process as possible. The cost for a radiant heating system large enough to do 2,000 square feet is about $6,000. Half of that cost will be for the high efficiency water heater. If you choose a different way to heat the structure there are many ways to go.
Infrared heaters fueled by natural gas. The cost involved with this system will be plumbing the natural gas pipe to local building codes, laying the PE pipe from your existing gas meter, getting the proper natural gas fittings and a plumber to hook it up. You can do all the black pipe yourself with some planning and care. Talk to your plumbing and mechanical inspector early on so that he/she can help with some of your preliminary decisions concerning how big the pipe needs to be, how many BTUs will be required to heat the place, and how he/she wants to see the job done.
We ran natural gas piping from our existing house meter by digging (by hand) a trench 4' deep and 100' long. We used a company called Keith Specialties in New Jersey for our pipe and fittings and everything came to about $400. Natural gas pipe does not generally need to be 4' deep but we needed our trench to house our waterline also. That pipe needed to be below the freeze line which is about 36” here in North Idaho. So we used the trench for both the water and the gas. When you put in the pipe be sure to include a solid core wire so that others can find the buried pipe if need be. A roll of 10 or 12 gauge wire will do just fine. Lay it on top of the gas piping and wrap it up the pipe to where it connects to the meter and where it goes into the building.
You could use a wood, pellet or coal fired stove for your heating and then your only requirement would be the proper venting and the purchase of your favorite stove. We did a cabin some years ago and the airtight wood stove from Vermont Castings, all the double wall pipe, roof jacks and raised hearth and surround came to around $3,500.
If you go with a heat pump then you have to consider the cost of the heat pump and the duct work that will have to be done. That means you need to have the pipe and all the registers and you will have to figure out whether it will be exposed or hidden in the walls or floor. We did not price this option as we wanted to go with radiant heating as we are barefooted most of the time. We run a Taekwondo studio and so the natural choice for us was to have warm floors.
If you choose radiant heating there are many factors to consider and we'll cover most of them here based on what type of foundation you choose.
Slab-on-grade
When choosing this option you are going to be pouring the concrete over the PEX tubing used for radiant heating. A great company for the do-it-yourself person is Radiantec. They can supply everything you will need for a “ground up” system at a very reasonable price. All of the manifolds for controlling the water flow is assembled at their factory and shipped to you with little work to do when the parts arrive. Before the concrete is poured and before you lay out your re bar you need to make sure to put down a good quality reflective insulation. You will want to both insulate under the slab as well as on the sides as this is where most of your heat loss will occur. Once you get your insulation down you can prop up the re bar on pedestals and tie everything together with wire. Radiantec recommends that you lay out one course of re bar in 4' sections and then lay in the PEX tubing. Then you crisscross over the top with the remaining re bar and tie everything together. Tie the re bar with wire and the PEX with zip ties – be sure to clip off the excess zip tie as you do not want a zip tie end to poke up through the concrete. Once the PEX is run you will connect it to the in-floor water distribution manifolds. These will be poured right into the floor during the concrete pour. Once finished you will have to knock the wood forms out for the manifolds and then you will have manifold wells established in the floor.
BEFORE YOU POUR CONCRETE: Pressure test the PEX tubing and manifolds. It would be a shame to spend all that money only to have a leak and not be able to get at it. Before the concrete is poured you have opportunity to fix any leak. Leave the system pressurized until after the concrete cures. You will have plenty of time before the next phase of the heating system. The only other cost you may incur is to have a plumber come and sweat (solder) the many fitting together. I hate that particular job and my plumber cost $40 per hour and it took him about 3 hours to do the job.
Plan on between $6,000 - $7,500 for this type of heating system.
Depending on what you are going to use your building for will help determine what kind of heating and A/C you are going to use. Fortunately we live in a climate that does to require A/C – only heating. We decided to use radiant floor heating to take care of our heating needs on the first floor. This decision should be made as early in the process as possible. The cost for a radiant heating system large enough to do 2,000 square feet is about $6,000. Half of that cost will be for the high efficiency water heater. If you choose a different way to heat the structure there are many ways to go.
Infrared heaters fueled by natural gas. The cost involved with this system will be plumbing the natural gas pipe to local building codes, laying the PE pipe from your existing gas meter, getting the proper natural gas fittings and a plumber to hook it up. You can do all the black pipe yourself with some planning and care. Talk to your plumbing and mechanical inspector early on so that he/she can help with some of your preliminary decisions concerning how big the pipe needs to be, how many BTUs will be required to heat the place, and how he/she wants to see the job done.
We ran natural gas piping from our existing house meter by digging (by hand) a trench 4' deep and 100' long. We used a company called Keith Specialties in New Jersey for our pipe and fittings and everything came to about $400. Natural gas pipe does not generally need to be 4' deep but we needed our trench to house our waterline also. That pipe needed to be below the freeze line which is about 36” here in North Idaho. So we used the trench for both the water and the gas. When you put in the pipe be sure to include a solid core wire so that others can find the buried pipe if need be. A roll of 10 or 12 gauge wire will do just fine. Lay it on top of the gas piping and wrap it up the pipe to where it connects to the meter and where it goes into the building.
You could use a wood, pellet or coal fired stove for your heating and then your only requirement would be the proper venting and the purchase of your favorite stove. We did a cabin some years ago and the airtight wood stove from Vermont Castings, all the double wall pipe, roof jacks and raised hearth and surround came to around $3,500.
If you go with a heat pump then you have to consider the cost of the heat pump and the duct work that will have to be done. That means you need to have the pipe and all the registers and you will have to figure out whether it will be exposed or hidden in the walls or floor. We did not price this option as we wanted to go with radiant heating as we are barefooted most of the time. We run a Taekwondo studio and so the natural choice for us was to have warm floors.
If you choose radiant heating there are many factors to consider and we'll cover most of them here based on what type of foundation you choose.
Slab-on-grade
When choosing this option you are going to be pouring the concrete over the PEX tubing used for radiant heating. A great company for the do-it-yourself person is Radiantec. They can supply everything you will need for a “ground up” system at a very reasonable price. All of the manifolds for controlling the water flow is assembled at their factory and shipped to you with little work to do when the parts arrive. Before the concrete is poured and before you lay out your re bar you need to make sure to put down a good quality reflective insulation. You will want to both insulate under the slab as well as on the sides as this is where most of your heat loss will occur. Once you get your insulation down you can prop up the re bar on pedestals and tie everything together with wire. Radiantec recommends that you lay out one course of re bar in 4' sections and then lay in the PEX tubing. Then you crisscross over the top with the remaining re bar and tie everything together. Tie the re bar with wire and the PEX with zip ties – be sure to clip off the excess zip tie as you do not want a zip tie end to poke up through the concrete. Once the PEX is run you will connect it to the in-floor water distribution manifolds. These will be poured right into the floor during the concrete pour. Once finished you will have to knock the wood forms out for the manifolds and then you will have manifold wells established in the floor.
BEFORE YOU POUR CONCRETE: Pressure test the PEX tubing and manifolds. It would be a shame to spend all that money only to have a leak and not be able to get at it. Before the concrete is poured you have opportunity to fix any leak. Leave the system pressurized until after the concrete cures. You will have plenty of time before the next phase of the heating system. The only other cost you may incur is to have a plumber come and sweat (solder) the many fitting together. I hate that particular job and my plumber cost $40 per hour and it took him about 3 hours to do the job.
Plan on between $6,000 - $7,500 for this type of heating system.
Dirt Work
An overview...
We built a 2,800 square foot building last summer and the education received was invaluable. Putting down some of the tidbits may help someone else who is not a professional builder or contractor so that the job will be understood and budgeted for. Some of the things that I'll go over in this writing won't have anything to do with the actual structure, but will nevertheless impact the overall budget of the project.
Who would have thought that “Dirt Work” would cost so much? What the dirt work consists of for your project may or may not be as extensive as ours but then again, it may be more. In our area of North Idaho trees needed to be cut down to make room for the actual structure. Once the trees were cut down then the stumps needed to be pulled out. Do not make the mistake of simply grinding the stumps into the ground. If you do you will risk the stump rotting under the building and undermining your foundation (unless you are doing stem wall construction). Slab-on-grade construction requires you to have a well compacted base of soil and gravel under your concrete slab. We chose the slab-on-grade method as the cost was nearly identical to doing a stem wall system.
Once the location is determined then the leveling can begin. Regardless of the foundation the building will sit on, it needs to be level. For the sake of this article we will only reference the slab-on-grade method as that is what we did. Another major reason for this choice was the fact that we wanted to put in radiant floor heating for the heating of the entire first floor.
Saving money is key to bringing in a project on a fixed budget and as long as you are willing to put in long hours and work hard, you will be able to do most of the actual construction yourself. I know that sounds daunting but really it is not. As this series goes along you will see that sub-contractors were used for various phases of the construction that we were not comfortable doing (or simply did not want to do).
Back to the dirt work... You will probably have to hire an operator with a small loader or Bobcat machine to help move the gravel you are going to buy and to level it onto the building site. We used 3”- (minus) rock for our base and for under the footings. We put down about a foot of this rock and every 4” or so we used a rented compacting machine to compress the rock. Once the 3”- was at the proper depth we put down another 6” of 3/4”- and compacted that into the other. Trust me... you will want to figure out just how much rock you are going to need; how much digging you are going to have to do; are there trees to get rid of; Is there a driveway or access needed to the structure? All this is going to eat into your budget. By the time we did all this our dirt work had run approximately $5,000.
We built a 2,800 square foot building last summer and the education received was invaluable. Putting down some of the tidbits may help someone else who is not a professional builder or contractor so that the job will be understood and budgeted for. Some of the things that I'll go over in this writing won't have anything to do with the actual structure, but will nevertheless impact the overall budget of the project.
Who would have thought that “Dirt Work” would cost so much? What the dirt work consists of for your project may or may not be as extensive as ours but then again, it may be more. In our area of North Idaho trees needed to be cut down to make room for the actual structure. Once the trees were cut down then the stumps needed to be pulled out. Do not make the mistake of simply grinding the stumps into the ground. If you do you will risk the stump rotting under the building and undermining your foundation (unless you are doing stem wall construction). Slab-on-grade construction requires you to have a well compacted base of soil and gravel under your concrete slab. We chose the slab-on-grade method as the cost was nearly identical to doing a stem wall system.
Once the location is determined then the leveling can begin. Regardless of the foundation the building will sit on, it needs to be level. For the sake of this article we will only reference the slab-on-grade method as that is what we did. Another major reason for this choice was the fact that we wanted to put in radiant floor heating for the heating of the entire first floor.
Saving money is key to bringing in a project on a fixed budget and as long as you are willing to put in long hours and work hard, you will be able to do most of the actual construction yourself. I know that sounds daunting but really it is not. As this series goes along you will see that sub-contractors were used for various phases of the construction that we were not comfortable doing (or simply did not want to do).
Back to the dirt work... You will probably have to hire an operator with a small loader or Bobcat machine to help move the gravel you are going to buy and to level it onto the building site. We used 3”- (minus) rock for our base and for under the footings. We put down about a foot of this rock and every 4” or so we used a rented compacting machine to compress the rock. Once the 3”- was at the proper depth we put down another 6” of 3/4”- and compacted that into the other. Trust me... you will want to figure out just how much rock you are going to need; how much digging you are going to have to do; are there trees to get rid of; Is there a driveway or access needed to the structure? All this is going to eat into your budget. By the time we did all this our dirt work had run approximately $5,000.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Determining Your Actual Working Budget
Determining Your Actual Working Budget
This sounds like it would be an easy and rather straightforward step in the process of building. It is not. You will need to figure out exactly how much money you have to build with and then make a commitment to stick to that figure. If you do not adhere to your budget then you either didn't need to work with a specific budget in the first place or you are now going to have an incomplete project on your hands.
Whether you are getting a business loan, refinancing your home, borrowing from uncle Louie or whatever, you are going to have to understand how much money you are going to need in order to complete your building project. If you do the ground work by determining the proper amount of funding you will need, you will save yourself and your family a great deal of heartache as the project gets underway.
With the Internet as a resource guide and price-checker you can get reasonably close in your cost estimation of building a building. This, of course, is assuming that you understand what is going to go into building a structure of any kind. How large is the building? What kind of foundation will we use? Will we use wood or steel or both? How is the building going to be heated/ cooled? What kind of flooring, cabinets, fixtures, furniture, doors and windows will we use? The list is quite extensive and the more you have listed on your estimate sheet the closer your budget will be.
This sounds like it would be an easy and rather straightforward step in the process of building. It is not. You will need to figure out exactly how much money you have to build with and then make a commitment to stick to that figure. If you do not adhere to your budget then you either didn't need to work with a specific budget in the first place or you are now going to have an incomplete project on your hands.
Whether you are getting a business loan, refinancing your home, borrowing from uncle Louie or whatever, you are going to have to understand how much money you are going to need in order to complete your building project. If you do the ground work by determining the proper amount of funding you will need, you will save yourself and your family a great deal of heartache as the project gets underway.
With the Internet as a resource guide and price-checker you can get reasonably close in your cost estimation of building a building. This, of course, is assuming that you understand what is going to go into building a structure of any kind. How large is the building? What kind of foundation will we use? Will we use wood or steel or both? How is the building going to be heated/ cooled? What kind of flooring, cabinets, fixtures, furniture, doors and windows will we use? The list is quite extensive and the more you have listed on your estimate sheet the closer your budget will be.
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