Long term Homestead project

[Wa11banger]

Hey TBN,

been looking at everyone's posts here and even created/responded to a few myself. Have had a great time learning from the site.. So now time to stick it out there and learn some more.

My brother and I bought 20 acres in Tn. We bought it near two years ago and have done a ton of work to it so many of the first posts as I go have already happened but I wanted to show where we came from through where we are going. Also being new to this whole documenting your work thing.. Pictures are plenty but action is scarce.

I plan on starting home construction next spring and if I can keep my savings goals this home is going to be build all out of pocket. Final construction for the home hasn't been decided yet although I am leaning towards a traditional stick built home.. I really am interesting in trying new things and have been really studying using 40ft high boy containers for the structure and according to the wife if we go that route there will be no outside nor inside ability to identify said construction mechanism.. but it interests me as it can have a wind and water tight ~1800sqft structure up in no time and I have all the tools to work with metal where I have no clue what I am doing with wood (which you will see as we go through this. My theory on the stick built is relatively easy to do.. no special equipment necessary and mistakes are a wood order away. My theory on the container home.. is I will cut these apart and create a design quickly that meets what I need and have a tornado proof home. If you weld 8 containers together and then weld them to the ground ( more on this later) they aren't going anywhere.. at worst all the windows get blown out and the exterior facade and roof get removed but the home stays in place and intact.

Additionally I will be primarily solar with city service back up.. I am nearly 3/4 of a mile from the street so utilities will come at a premium however I will have them. I currently have 3700 watts of solar up of a total 4400 watts capable first array.. I plan on having 4 of these arrays in all by the time the home is complete. I started with this in mind so I have a very large 220v inverter. and since I didnt plan on being grid tied just using the grid as my generator no inspections required. I also have a generator installed that covers me for the time being.

The place is almost 20 ares square, had about 7 acres cleared in the middle some 20 years ago but was all 9ft to 13 ft tall when we purchased it.. It was also used as the previous owners dumping ground. We hauled over 300 tires out of the place and there are more to go. I took 22k pounds of roofing shingles to the dump, and we burned old house construction for months to get seriously huge piles of demo stuff whittled down.. Turning those piles was a massive undertaking as I didnt want to burn plastics or paints, or all the other crap just wood and rubble that we could bury the remains of later. This was quite scary as it was the first time I had ever lit a big fire.. Pile was 30ft in diameter and about 15 foot tall.. as soon as it got going it was 35ft of flames and so hot we had to move 50-60ft back.. I kept the tractor idling in case I to push something back in lol.

Anyway I know the first post is a long read and somewhat unfocused I will fix that as I start posting what has happened to now.

 

[Wa11banger]

Sorry all no pics of us trekking in and finding our way but here is a pic from atop my tractor day 1. I can just barely see over the overgrowth. and there are a zillion small trees all trying to compete for some sun

First mow down with an old beat up bushhog. I am glad we did, I found more crap.. tires etc in this field than anyone should we made our base camp here. We ended up using that poor bushog for the whole place and it stood the test of time. It will get a well deserved rebuild this coming winter

Work day two and more hawgin.. Now my brother isn't the tallest of people but this is what I was hawgin through just to clear one upper field and the center. This was against the upper field and it wasn't as tall as the other places.. But plenty of crap and stumps to find in there. second pic is that same field after but a slightly different place taken

Just in time work day three (the next weekend) arrives and we have enough cleared to move around and the temporary container/barn shows up. I haphazardly cleared an area down to the dirt to place it on and built a ramp to it with some river rock to make it easy in and out.. We kept all of our tools and the tractor locked up in it in the beginning as there is no one living here or even close to us for that matter to watch the place. We only make it out on weekends for work.

I'll end with our first casualty of the week.. I had a busted up fence section drag up and rip my quick connects apart for the FEL which drained every ounce of Hydro I had in the thing, and promptly after getting that fixed I found another section of that same fence that claimed a tire. That fence was exacting revenge for sure

 

[Wa11banger]

ok need some help posting pics from onedrive.. I copied the URL's for those that onedrive game me into the IMG code format but they show up broken

 

[EddieWalker]

I'm looking forward to seeing your progress and admire your thinking outside the box. As a builder, and somebody with a little experience with containers, I will caution you that if you build your house out of containers, you will be severely limited in your design and your final costs will be much higher then a traditional stick built house of equal size and layout.

 

[teg]

...My brother and I bought 20 acres in Tn...

This would be a problem for me in the long haul. Are you planning to divide the land or continue to co-own?

{edit}, what size are the photos you are trying to upload, they may be too big.

 

[Wa11banger]

teg sorry for the late response, I have been off my feet the last couple of weeks due to a back injury and just now getting back to getting around to caring to sit in a chair. So far laying down on the bed or couch were the only options until the last few days. I got the epidural and finally have my *** realigned under my shoulders instead of walking around in pain looking like a question mark.

I'm not concerned at all. We have pretty much the same goals and its all drawn up as a no sale "ever" deal.. Well until long after I am gone and it matters not to me by that time We are working on getting it legally documented that the property cant be sold outside the family for 200 years or whatever they will let us get away with.

Size of the pics could be it.. I sent them to one drive at whatever size they were taken at. I will start the process of downloading them all back to my computer and resizing to fit this weekend. Although honestly I thought the forum did that so I will find what the default size and restart documenting and discussing this little adventure.

 

[teg]

There are 2 "sizes". physical pixel size and actual file size (megs). I think if it's under a meg you are good... Lots of time you can just re-save a jpg without changing the # of pixels and it will be a smaller file size.

Good luck with the back, been there.... don't want to go "back".

 

[Wa11banger]

Ok think I figured out this picture thing. Here goes the previous post again only with pics.

Sorry all no pics of us trekking in and finding our way but here is a pic from atop my tractor day 1. I can just barely see over the overgrowth. and there are a zillion small trees all trying to compete for some sun



First mow down with an old beat up bushhog. I am glad we did, I found more crap.. tires etc in this field than anyone should we made our base camp here. We ended up using that poor bushog for the whole place and it stood the test of time. It will get a well deserved rebuild this coming winter


Work day two and more hawgin.. Now my brother isn't the tallest of people but this is what I was hawgin through just to clear one upper field and the center. This was against the upper field and it wasn't as tall as the other places.. But plenty of crap and stumps to find in there. second pic is that same field after but a slightly different place taken


Just in time work day three (the next weekend) arrives and we have enough cleared to move around and the temporary container/barn shows up. I haphazardly cleared an area down to the dirt to place it on and built a ramp to it with some river rock to make it easy in and out.. We kept all of our tools and the tractor locked up in it in the beginning as there is no one living here or even close to us for that matter to watch the place. We only make it out on weekends for work.


I'll end with our first casualty of the week.. I had a busted up fence section drag up and rip my quick connects apart for the FEL which drained every ounce of Hydro I had in the thing, and promptly after getting that fixed I found another section of that same fence that claimed a tire. That fence was exacting revenge for sure

 

[Wa11banger]

My first big fire built with a tractor.. Hint for you other folks like that have never used a tractor before this purchase... See all that dirt?? it dont belong in there.. Makes it take a terribly long time to finish burning but we had a big time some of these fires got 35ft tall or maybe better they were big.. Much bigger than I really felt comfortable with.. But we burned everything wood, and scrap bushes and trees that we mowed down. This fire was lit Friday night and was still smoking Sunday morning.. If you look at that Sunday morning pic you can see the fire went down before burning all because of that dirt.. It's ok I rolled it over and burnt it again it was all gone the second time

 

[Wa11banger]

Here is a pic of 300+ tires being loaded late into the evening.. I had arranged with the local dump for them to be brought down first thing in the morning.. They usually charge by weight!!! :shocked: But since I was cleaning up land in the county they decided to let me off at a dollar a tire. May sound pricey still but some of them on the other trailer were still on rims.


If you haven't ever driven one of these it will be both the highlight and most painful memory you can have lol.. So much destruction. so easy to cause that desctruction, then clean it over and make it beautiful.. Only have a picture of me cutting the top of the drive in but I have a pic of it getting finishing touches afterwards


A quick pic of the wife showing off after the rains came and halted my driveway finishing.


Closing this post with some good fun.. We worked very hard to get here its about 4 months in at this point and we havent taken a moment off except for when the rains came.. it was good to have some fun and get inventive with cooking ideas. Thats my son prepping coals for dinner