Timber Frame Hybrid Home - Owner Builder

[Dr Dave]

Thats a good price, I have gotten quotes from $1.25-$1.50 sq ft per inch.

Dave

 

[jk96]

Thats a good price, I have gotten quotes from $1.25-$1.50 sq ft per inch.

Dave

My next closest quote was around $1/sq ft.

 

[MotorSeven]

Awesome build!

 

[jk96]

Awesome build!

Thanks for the comments everyone. It was a rough week week with all of the rain. We lost three days of work but did get the crew in today to make up a day. Most of the rafters are up now and we should be sheeting the roof or at least be ready to by the end of the day Monday. The chimney for the fireplace has also been framed and I started nailing boxes for outlets and light switches. A cousin of mine and myself are going to wire the house.

I'll be out digging with a mini-ex that I rented tomorrow. The water is finally hooked up and unfortunatly we have a leak somewhere. It looks like we are loosing about 14 gallons a day which is not enough so far for it to come to the surface. I dug up the line where the new line we ran meets the old line and put in a shut off valve to isolate the line. It looks like our leak is on the new section which cuts my searching from 4700 feet down to about 1500 feet. I'm really not sure of a good way to find it other than cutting each section in half until we narrow it down.

Jeremy

 

[Dr Dave]

What kind of water line is it, and how long is each length? If its black plastic, in 300ft lenghts, measure 300 ft from first connection, and insert a rod with a T handle into the ground. If water comes up, dig there, if not go 300ft and recheck again.
Most leaks are at a connection.

Dave

 

[jk96]

What kind of water line is it, and how long is each length? If its black plastic, in 300ft lenghts, measure 300 ft from first connection, and insert a rod with a T handle into the ground. If water comes up, dig there, if not go 300ft and recheck again.
Most leaks are at a connection.

Dave

The line is 2" pvc gasketed in 20' sticks. I'm assuming one of the sticks pulled loose a bit when we dropped it in or maybe has a bad gasket. I still have the line open where we found an initial leak that is about 900' from the house. I'm going to place the shutoff there next which should cut my searching down to either 900 feet or 500 feet. After that I may pressurize the line and do some more searching with a rod as you suggested.

 

[dave1949]

I'm curious as to why 20' lengths of pvc are used for water supply line in some areas. My brother in Kansas has that and he is on his second leak in five years, it's a county water district. What's up with that?

I don't think I've seen that used around here. Not sure what they use in town, but the well to house supply lines are done with the rolls of black plastic pipe here.

 

[Dr Dave]

Thats a lot of potential points for leakage. Black plastic in my area, is common, we have been using it since the late 70s. I use 2 stainless steel hose clamps per connection, with the screw 180 degrees from each other, and brass barbed fittings when I can. We have run pressures from 60 to 80 psi. We even had a pressure switch weld the contacts on our well, it popped the water heater pressure relief valves in our neighbors and my home. Two blue pressure tanks in the well pit bulged to about 2 inches larger diameter, and ho leaks, im not sure how much pressure, it takes to cause that. We have six homes on our well.

Dave

Now it seams that Pex is more common.

 

[EddieWalker]

I'm curious as to why 20' lengths of pvc are used for water supply line in some areas. My brother in Kansas has that and he is on his second leak in five years, it's a county water district. What's up with that?

I don't think I've seen that used around here. Not sure what they use in town, but the well to house supply lines are done with the rolls of black plastic pipe here.

The advantage of using pipe with a gasket is that it can contract and expand with the soil. A common reason for pipe failure is fatigue from movement in the ground. Black Poly pipe is one of the worse for this and in my part of the country, it's a full time24/7 job for several crews in the city to repair them.

If the leak is happening right after it's been buried, the cause is probably from being able to move too much in a bend or curve. The fill is never as compact as the undisturbed soil and that allows the pipe to move more then it should. Sacks of concrete should be placed in the hole to keep the pipes in place until the soil compacts.

Did you use grease to slide the pipes together? Not using it can cause the gaskets to turn and result in a leak.

Before doing anything drastic like cutting the pipe, dig down at intervals and look for moisture in the trench. 14 gallons isn't very much and it will take awhile for it to surface, or it might never come to the surface. The bottom of the trench should hold enough water that you should be able to see it when you get to it. Of course, with rain, that wont work until everything is dried out.

How do you know you have a leak? I had an issue with a water district on a house that I was flipping that said I used 40,000 gallons of water in one month in an empty house with the water turned off at the house. I spoke to a guy at another water district and he said that if the water supply was surging, and it was an old meter, then water would go through the meter under pressure, then back when the pressure dropped. Every time the pressure increases, the meter reads it as water going through, but when the water pressure drops, the meter doesn't read it, resulting in thousands of gallons on the meter that I never used. In this case, they replaced the meter and added a backflow device. Problem solved.

How much water pressure is at your house? If it's too high, over 80 pounds, the water might be going through your toilet. Ideally, water pressure in a house should be around 60 pounds. If you go much higher then that, the valve in the toilet bowl will leak water through it. That water goes through the toilet and down the drain without you ever knowing it. You wont hear it or see it, but it's ongoing all the time. Usually this adds up to thousands of gallons a month. You need to measure the water pressure at the house. You can get a gauge in the sprinkler department of any home improvement store to that attaches to an outdoor spicket that will tell you how much pressure you have at the house. A house downhill from the supply will increase water pressure from gravity.

Good luck,
Eddie

 

[MacLawn]

What he said. :thumbsup:

Yep, what they said!

And, what old Eddie said about pipes. But, what about using this new fangled (to me) Pex mess? Would that do for a very long underground run?