New Land, New Home Build

[Pete6114]

Nice......i wish i could build my own home.(Wife is not willing to do that at this time)
Just hope you don't leave that new tractor there all by itself when your not there.

 

[Martian]

You should have gotten a New Holland so the title could have been - New Land, New Home, New Holland!

Sorry I had too...

 

[flusher]

My wife, two kids and I have sold our suburban home and have purchased 10 acres. In approx 90 days we will break ground on our new home.

I am going to be Owner-Building the home, and have been working on the plans, process for approx the last 9 months.

I recently purchased an L3400 to help with tasks around the farm.

Our land is a 10 acres in Kansas City, used to be an old Christmas Tree farm. No home or anything ever built on it before.

The land requires of work. There are about 200 old down X-Mas trees I will need to clean up over time, and lots of down wood everywhere. I will need to build a road, and bring utilities to the home site.

I will use this thread to document the build process and will hopefully help someone else who wants to take on something like this themselves.

I went through the same exercise about 7 years ago--bought 10 acres of flat pasture land, bought a new 2005 Kubota B7510HST (small, but OK for a starter tractor), and set out to build my own home with me as GC. After beating my head against the wall for about 6 months trying to line up reliable, experienced subcontractors and get them on-site when they said they would be there, I punted and had a nice 1800 sq ft manufactured home installed on a permanent foundation. That turned out to be one of my better decisions.

Good luck.

 

[idaho2]

Do you plan on staying beyond retirement in this home. Seriously consider handicap baths, over size doors and hall ways to accomodate wheel chairs. I know my house when I build it in 3years will be handicapped friendly even if we never have to come to that. I also will plan on a walk out basement. Just my .02 cents worth.

idaho2

 

[extrakt0r]

We have a long way to go before I need to worry about handicap baths. A good 40 years or more I hope. The house will definitely need updating in that time :thumbsup:

And we will have a walk out basement.

 

[Nissan197]

Congratulations on the land and future build. I am also in the KC area and was my own GC when I built four years ago. It was a fun experience and I saved quite a bit of $$ doing it myself. I think I just timed it right when the market tumbled and there were tons of subs looking for work. I never had a real issue with any of them not showing up when they were supposed to. I did lots of research and the building inspector helped me out a lot.

In reference to burning wood. I also have a wood burner in the house and I burn hedge, locust, or oak for the most part. Hedge gets very hot so you have to be careful. It also has a tendency to "pop". I cut and split one year and will burn it the following. I have also cut down several cedars on my property, but those are for the outside burn pile.

Good luck to you. I am sure you will have a good time building. There is nothing like moving from the suburbs to some acreage.

 

[edlegault]

Like Idaho2, I too, recommend from the beginning building for wheel chair accessibility. In 2006 my wife's parents found themselves in a situation where they could still live by themselves, but they needed a wheelchair/electric scooter accessible home. They could not find one to buy (very rare), so we sent them on a 2 month vacation while my BIL and I converted their existing home to a handicapped home. Gutted the kitchen and bathrooms. Moved walls to make hallways wider (to be able to turn an electric scooter around or go into rooms). Changed all of the interior and exterior doors to 36" wide doors. Built ramps at entrances as needed. Built all new handicap/wheelchair accessible kitchen and both bathrooms. Removed a couple of non-loadbearing walls in the kitchen and breakfast area. With my BIL and I doing the demolition and hiring out the new construction, cabinets, drywall, electrical (yes, some had to be moved and some had to be brought up to code), etc., it still cost about $80K, of which about $10K was new refrigerator, kitchen sink, new range hood, compactor and indoor electric barbeque which we didn't plan on, but decided to do anyway. So about $70K for the construction conversion. The good news is they now have about the only nice large home in the area that is ADA handicap accessible. When the day comes to sell it, we should get a premium for it because of the work put into it. If we had to do it all over, we would have built a new home with all the ADA handicap features in it. When I build my new home it will have wider doors, hallways, etc., to get 90% of the ADA stuff done.

 

[mjncad]

I'm assuming you're building a 2-story house to save on roofing and concrete costs. To me stairs are evil, and I suggest you look into dedicating some space for a future residential elevator even though your Master Suite is on the main floor. My first house that I bought was a tract home 2-story. A good house for the most part; but never again will I own a 2-story house. I got sick of stairs in my mid 30's, now I'm in my mid 50's and I sure hate stairs more so. Using a conventional forced air heating/cooling system with the T-stat on the main floor meant in the summer time if I got the upstairs somewhat cool, the main floor was freezing. During the winter months the upstairs would be comfortable and the main floor was cool due to the heat rising.

Our current house is a ranch.

Regarding pocket doors...put them in a 2x6 wall to get some wall stiffness in the pocket. I'm thinking of pocket doors for a wet dream house build, and a friend gave me a Johnson pocket door kit he no longer needed. It was meant for a 2x4 wall and I built a pocket door mock-up in our basement to see if the wifey and I liked it. The wall over the pocket is so thin, one can squeeze it against the door with just your thumb and index finger. Johnson Hardware® SLIDING, FOLDING AND POCKET DOOR HARDWARE

Personally all man-doors should be 36" wide.

I like how you expanded the Master Suite's walk-in closet and created a true mud room. I also agree with another poster's comments about the entry to the Master Suite being just off the Breakfast area being odd.

Do you plan on staying beyond retirement in this home. Seriously consider handicap baths, over size doors and hall ways to accomodate wheel chairs. I know my house when I build it in 3years will be handicapped friendly even if we never have to come to that. I also will plan on a walk out basement. Just my .02 cents worth.

idaho2

You beat me to it concerning this suggestion!

We have a long way to go before I need to worry about handicap baths. A good 40 years or more I hope. The house will definitely need updating in that time :thumbsup:

And we will have a walk out basement.

It's way easier and cheaper to make it residential ADA now rather than renovate later. Here is where to get the ADA regulations free of charge. ADA Standards for Accessible Design Since this is a residence, you can pick and choose what you need or want.

 

[sriddle1ny]

extrakt0r,

I've acted as the GC for 3 of my homes in the past 13 years and never had any problems with finding good subcontractors. Here are some lessons learned that I'll pass along and a couple of recommendations on materials, etc.

1) Be sure that you become familiar with the Building, Plumbing and Electrical Codes. As you create a detailed Statement of Work to send out for bid in each of the trade areas, i.e., Plumbing, Heating and Cooling, Electrical, Concrete and Flatwork, Carpentry, Carpentry, etc. Sit-down with your local gov't rep that will issue the Building Permit so you are aware of all the requirements. With your plans that's a good place to start. I always sent a minimum of (7) SOWs out for bid and ask them to supply references and a statement of Liability Insurance in their response.

3) Make sure you have a handle on the materials that will be used, i.e., exterior clad , shingles, windows, etc. and again go out for bid on those materials along with the roof and floor trusses, you'd be surprised at the range in prices you'll get but again the trick, to be detailed as possible so you get apples to apples responses. I used the James Hardie line for my exterior envelope + 40 year rated shingles and after a heavy hail storm I'm glad I did. I've always used an 18 inch open web design floor truss system that makes the job easy when running ducting, wiring, etc.

4) Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs) - I used 8 inch core ICFs for the basement level creating R-40. I believe with the price of energy going up & up its a good investment.

5) BioBased "Soy" Spray-in-place Polyurethane Foam (Closed Cell) - For all my 2 X 6 exterior walls I had voids filled with foam, approx R-6 per inch and boy does it stiffen everything up. For the attic I used fiberglass batting, two layers = R-58.

6) In-Slab Radiant Heat - I had 1/2 pex installed over 3 inch rigid foam then poured the 4.5 inch slab over the top.

7) Two Heating Sources - Since A/C needs to be supplied via ducting I installed a LP forced air furnace for temperatures averaging above freezing then I switch to a Radiant Heat Boiler and have 3 zones, Basement, 1st and 2nd floor. I used Slant Fin's very slim profile radiant baseboard on the 1st and 2nd floor and used copper (with insulating wraps) runs, not PEX. My home has 4700 sq ft and my LP and electric bills for the year average $250.00 a month.

8) Generator Interconnect Panel - I have a 5,000 watt portable generator that I've used during power outages that supplies power to 6 critical circuits: LP Water Heater; Boiler & Zone Pumps; refrigerator; blower fan on fireplace insert; light source where generator will be located and a general circuit for lighting say in the family room. I had the interconnect panel installed next to my electrical panel inside the house. The panel has a local power source cable input that you can run to the generator. Caution: When planning that location be mindful of the Carbon Monoxide hazards.

9) In MN a homeowner can wire their own home and so I pulled out the Electrical Codes and ran all the wire to the panel then had a licensed electrician complete the box & interconnect panel hook-up. If you do the wiring be sure you run 3-wire to support an integrated Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector system (with battery back-up) so when one unit detects an issue all the alarms go off.

10) Frost Free Faucet - Install these faucets for all your exterior supplies. I went to the next step and ran a hot and cold supply to the garage for car washes, again all my water suppply lines are copper throughout the house.

11) Septic system, be sure you have a system installed that can support any additional room that may be used as a bedroom.

Can't think of anything else at the moment, I just purchased 14 acres in NH and had the build area cleared and grubbed in July. I'm designing our final (I hope) retirement home with all the things mentioned in the other posts, 3-0 doors, special access showers, etc. This go-around it will be a smaller one story home with a walk out basement and using ICFs all the way to the top of the 1st floor.

 

[dlauffenburger]

Great posts on the home build.

My only concern with your ground plan is the mulch. If you just spread the piles out and want them to rot into the ground, depending on the thickness, it may take years before you will ever get grass to grow. Obviously this is not a concern away from the house but i think you said one pile was only 200' feet away. Additionally, if you grade everything level now as the mulch rots you will end up with low spots.

If it was me i would haul all of the excess mulch away from your building area.