Part 1: Solar Powered

Well it’s been almost a month since my last update since things have been moving slow, but stuff has happened so here we go! We’ve taken a few days to just breathe since the house was no longer an immediate concern, so progress slowed down a little. We were able to finish hooking up our water pump so we have running (Cold) water! And hopefully in a few days we will have our water heater hooked up and have running hot water as well. But the big thing we worked on that took the longest was getting our solar panel system up and running. That stuff is complicated! We spent nearly a whole day spread out on the floor, reading manuals  watching YouTube videos trying to figure out how to make it work. We had to place the panels out in the field, connect them to each other, wire the end ones into a connector box, run those cords to a charge controller, which runs to the batteries, which runs to our inverter and surge protector and then finally into the house.. Needless to say, it took us a few tries to get the wiring right. (I think we only had to rewire the batteries 3 times.) But we have officially moved onto solar power only! And to celebrate, we bought a TV and played Halo 4 to test it out, and it worked just fine.

The main blockade for us right now is weather. The whiplash from 50 degrees and rain to 15 degrees and snow makes it really hard to not only plan but to be able to do anything outside. We need to get our water heater vented, the vent in the bathroom routed outside, and the bathroom ceiling in place. After that we only have to trim the corners and windows inside of the house before focusing on finalizing the outside of the house.

P.S. Hang tight for part two!

Liveable

So after celebrating that the furnace was working and deciding to sleep in the house, we woke up, freezing cold at 4am. It quit working and refused to work. We tried everything we could think of, from putting a heater in with the propane tanks to ensure everything was thawed, to facing another heater at our furnace to make sure it was warm enough to work. Because we had already somewhat moved our stuff out to the tiny house, we spent a few nights on an air mattress in the basement so we wouldn’t freeze to death. So I made another trip to Ickes and they swapped us for the same model, which works like a charm! So we were able to get the stairs built in one evening (Probably the smoothest project on the house yet!) and sanded and stained the next day.

Our plumbing lines and toilet work even though we don’t have running water yet, but we deemed it “liveable,” so we decided to go ahead and try moving in again. And we’ve been in process of moving all of our stuff from the camper and our parents into the tiny house, and we’re almost there! I’d say we’re about 80% moved in, but this thaw and mud is making that fairly difficult. But I must say, our massive bookcase is probably my favorite thing in the house. Most shelves are double if not triple deep, so the Hochstetler Library is good to go!

Of Furnaces and Propane

So this last week has been incredibly frustrating, besides being able to finish the floor and move in the couch and table and chairs. We had two time consuming problems to resolve. It revolved around the furnace and the propane lines. It took a while to get the furnace connected electrically, we had to wait for a part to arrive (And it wasn’t on Amazon prime, the horror!) It’s a fairly small furnace, about 17″x17″x9″. But once we got it hooked up and ready for the propane, it seemed to work well. Blowing air, clicking to light propane. So we turned on the propane. And Jacob, Wyatt and I waited. The air blew, it clicked to light, and WHOOSHBOOM.  The furnace jumped a few inches off the floor, and fire and sparks shot out the sides. We shut everything off very quickly, and my legs had gotten very warm very quickly, but no one got burned. We thought that maybe it just had a buildup of propane, so we reset everything, and tried again. BANG. It jumped again, but no fire this time, just a horrible mechanical noise. We thought, “Well, it’s broken for sure this time. Must be a faulty furnace, we’ll take it back and return it, and get a new one.” So the next day I took it to Icke’s RV supply. They hooked it up and it ran just fine, so it wasn’t something wrong with the furnace. It turns out that we’re all just idiots and sat the furnace on it’s exhaust vent which is what caused all the problems.

Our second time consuming problem was finding the propane leak in our lines. Every time we turned the tanks on, after about 30 seconds, we would start to smell propane. Our detector lit up at the furnace connectors, so we tightened those, but it didn’t light up at any of the other connectors. And after fixing those, we still smelled it, and would still light up near the connectors. That’s when we finally realized that inside the walls somewhere was a fitting/connection that joined two lines. Thankfully we were able to locate it, drill a hole to it, and get it tightened. And as of a few hours ago, the house was still propane-smelling free.

Crazy Christmas

There are so many things that have been finished in the last week in a half! Since we both had most of this last week off, we’ve been able to work on a lot of things. The bookcase is done, the cabinets are hung, the leech field is graveled/piped, the toilet is installed (But not fully usable just yet), our fan is installed, the large appliances are in place and hooked up, we bought a mattress, and our flooring is over halfway done! We had to chop through ice to finish running our water line, and it was so cold that water would freeze in seconds. My pants got splashed with enough water in the process that the lower half froze solid and stood on their without me! We leveled the one spot in our plywood flooring that sunk, so as soon as we finish the floor over that spot, we can move in our couch and table and chairs. Our countertops are almost ready to go, and so is our sink drain. And as soon as we get one more fitting for our heater(Which should be here Wednesday) and get it installed, we can start the process of moving in!

Let there be light!

So the paneling is done, (And it only took 4 boards to get the paneling around the octagon window done!) our electrical is almost done. The lights work, but we were having issues with one 3-way switch working properly. Our cabinets arrived and we made the cuts in the back so they would fit over the wheelwell. The carpet pad is down in the loft and ready for the carpet, and I finished the floor in the bathroom! The next big thing will be the drainage pipes for the kitchen and the bookshelf with our storage for our heater and electrical box. Thanks to Gavin, Jon, and Wyatt, we completed staining the bookshelf in record time!

Interior work

We are so close to having the paneling finished, but with a few panels to go… our jigsaw blade broke. But now we have a new one, paneling should be finished in a day or so! Our last work day we got quite of bit of paneling, electrical, and plumbing work done. And this last Wednesday, I spent 8 hours in the car to go pick up the solar panels and batteries(Thank you audiobooks). We also found out that our siding is back ordered, so that’s cool. But at least there’s still plenty of other work to be done first. Our cabinets are scheduled to arrive Saturday and we’re excited about that. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that maybe, JUST MAYBE, we can move in before Christmas.

Getting pretty!

We got our shower installed, finished the fiberglass insulation, and I learned how to wire an outlet. But, most exciting of all – The paneling is going up and it’s starting to look pretty! It gives us hope that we’re getting close. It just took some trial and error, buying a table saw, figuring out our circular saw blade was on backwards (Actually not my fault), messing up a few panels beyond use, but we have our system down now.  I had wanted a house to decorate for Christmas, so at our last stop at Menards on Saturday… we bought a tree. It’s a small little thing, a little less than 4 foot tall, but it was on sale and we both really liked it so our goal is to be able to put it up in the house before Christmas!

Insulation

We’ve finished almost all the wiring and plumbing, and insulation as well. We used spray foam first and then fiberglass. We were very careful with the spray insulation, we read the manual and when we were applying it we were wearing masks and keeping all doors and windows open. The manual said only to be cautious of fumes for the next few hours, but apparently there were still fumes in the loft 24 hours later when I went back up to scrape some of the insulation off the floor. My throat started burning and fairly soon I couldn’t stop coughing, and my throat started closing up. It got a little scary for a bit when I couldn’t breathe. But with benadryl to the rescue, I was out for most of the work day but I lived.

Since our shower walls arrived, we will be working on the plumbing for that and should have it done soon!

Roofed!

Our roofing order was delayed at “Midwest Shipping” before coming into Menards on Wednesday instead of Monday. So my parents came up with the trailer to get the materials, and it took over an hour to get our order loaded. (One worker busted his head on a shelving beam he didn’t see and knocked himself flat, they couldn’t find all of our order…) Turned out when we got back after driving backroads because 69 was backed up that they managed to forget some of our order. (Ridge cape and trim) Since that took so long, my parents decided to head home but swing past Menards and Kelley would get what they forgot. But the trim wouldn’t fit in Kelley’s trailer, so my parents swapped it back to their trailer and headed back to Marion once more. They eventually made it home at midnight!

But we had our roofing! And after a few late nights, we got it on. And Nate, you did too good of a job on framing the hexagonal window. The window barely fit in the frame WITHOUT flashing, and with flashing, it wouldn’t go in at all. So Seth and I spent a while sanding it down to where it would fit, and it’s finally in as well! We have the door and hope to have it on in the next day or so, and soon the house will be watertight and we’ll be able to start on interior work!

 

 

From the Walls to the Windows?

We’re still catching up to a point where we will be able to put a roof on, but it hasn’t come in yet anyway. But we finished framing the peak with our octagon window in it, the small pieces of plywood on the wheel wells (that were incredibly precise cuts to get and very frustrating), wrapping the house, and putting in the windows on the lower level! Saturday as we had just finished cleaning up, Jacob and Wyatt were still finishing up the house wrap when Jeri and I started pulling the tarps back on the roof. I had just finished spreading the tarps out and getting them ready to be secured when I felt a light sprinkle. “Guys! Here comes the rain!” I gave them about a 10 second warning before the sky opened and dumped buckets on us. Let me tell you, being on a roof covered in un-secured tarps that are threatening to take off in a downpour is not a fun place to be! Thankfully we got everything secured and stored, but we all got completely soaked! And as we’re planning to take this next Saturday off, the roof might be for the Saturday after!