Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Second Week of Construction

With two days of pouring rain last week, I’ve totally lost count of what day of construction we’re on so I’ll just give a summary of where we’re at. As of right now, the four windows and two doors in the barn are in. The roof is finished (we had to wait a couple extra days for the ridge vent. It is special kind for metal roofing). The siding is done on the back and left side of the barn.

What’s left to do are the gutters (for rainwater harvesting), build the barn door, enclose the front above where the barn door will go, put the snow rail on the roof and put the metal above where the greenhouse butts up against the barn wall. The crew hasn’t worked yet this week….they are off doing a sheet rock install somewhere. Yesterday it poured rain most of the day, then the temps plummeted and as I write this, we have a wind chill of –3. Crazy weather. Yesterday I was trying to dig little trenches to divert the water away from the barn (because the guys dropped a giant rock in the middle of the drainage ditch and blocked it up). Yesterday is was wet and muddy….today it’s frozen. Luckily I got most of the water drained away so it wouldn’t turn into a giant skating rink.

My son, Jay worked with me last week and we kicked butt on getting the insulated panels installed. It is so much easier to deal with the large panels when there are two people to muscle them into place. We were mighty sore and bruised by the end of the week. The goal was to get at least 10’ up with the panels because according to the electrical code, they can run romex (the wrapped wire like you see that comes into an electrical receptacle) at the 10’ height and then drop down from there with conduit (the wire goes inside a metal pipe). Jay brought his drill and I had my cordless one. When the battery would die in mine, we’d switch over to his drill and keep going while mine charged. The screws that we use are called Fastenmaster Headlok screws. 005We have two different thicknesses of panels, 4.5” and 6.5” thick, that were given to us so we use a 5.5” and 7.5” screws to fasten them to the purlins. I ordered the screws from Amazon (it’s amazing the things you can find at Amazon and I just found out about ordering Amazon items from Smile Amazon so you can support your favorite non-profit) and within two days they were delivered right to our door. I don’t know if you can see from this picture but the screw has a really short area where the spiral is. Most of the shaft is smooth which lets it pass through the foam and then bite into the wood and draws it down tight. A regular screw, with the spiral the whole length would push the panel outward and be hard to draw it together tight. When you’re working as high up in the air as we are, it takes all your strength to pull a 20-30# panel up the ladder and then wrestle it into place and screw it. When I am working by myself, I cut the panels into smaller pieces but they are still really heavy to deal with.

We’re using the thinner panel on the shared wall between the greenhouse and the barn. We used the thicker ones on all the other walls. That way, the north, east and west walls have the higher R value. Since our winds come predominately from the west or north-west, we have the most insulation on those walls. Our contractor says we’ll have the best insulated barn that anyone has every seen…better than most people’s houses. Between the Prodex and the SIP’s (structural insulated panels), we’ve got close to R-48. We are filling any cracks with Great Stuff foam to make sure there won’t be any drafts. So back to the panel installation…Jay left early Friday evening and we had made great progress. I continued to work on them Saturday, Sunday and Monday. By 5:30 last evening, I had reached at least 10’ in all of the areas where there will be an electrical run. It made quite a dent in the pile of panels we had accumulated too. I had one 6.5” panel left and still quite a few of the 4.5”. We’re thinking about using the panels to insulate the greenhouse walls too. If we get more of the 4.5” panels over the next week or so, we’ll use those along with the Prodex on the greenhouse walls.

Last Friday the local NRCS agent came to the farm to do a farm plan. We talked about goals over the next 10 years. Most of our goals are spelled out in our permaculture plan that we did this past spring. He will take that info and incorporate it into our plan, which he and I will tweak. Since most of the acreage will be in the CREP program until 2016, we can’t do anything right now with that land so we will focus on the plans for the greenhouse. One of the first things we’re going to look at is doing an energy audit to see the viability of wind or solar for the property. Since 80% of the power needs for the aquaponic system are from the air pump (provides oxygenation to the fish and plant roots), I want to see if a windmill powered system would work at our site. If you recall from an earlier post, there are water aeration windmill systems out there that might be a big help to us. An energy audit would determine if our site is suitable or not. We had a great chat and it’s great to have someone in our corner who “gets” what we want to do, in a permaculture sense. He said there is funding available to help with the transition to organic and with organic certification so we will definitely be looking into that. I spoke with an organic certifying agency last week and she sent me a packet of papers that I need to fill out to get the process rolling. It’s no wonder that organic food costs so much more. Between the additional cost for organic seed and the certification costs (estimated around $3700 per year), it is a pricey investment for a farmer but an important one. I see it as an investment in our land. An investment for the future of our food supply to feed my family and others.

I think that brings us up to where we are right now. We’re ready for the electrician to start. He might not come until Monday but that’s ok. The goal right now is to get the barn door up and the barn cleared out because Linda comes home with the rig this Saturday. With winter making its’ presence known, we need to get the barn buttoned up so the rig will be ok. I’m hopeful that we can get the greenhouse up and closed in before the weather gets too bad but time will tell. At least we’re not in Buffalo, NY where they are expecting 3 feet of snow.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Barn Construction Underway

 

First thing Monday morning Emmanuel’s work crew arrived, set up their tool trailer for the duration of the project(used horse trailer) and got started. They worked pretty much non-stop on Monday except for a 10 minute lunch break. These guys are workers! We learned some valuable lessons on this first day of construction. If you plan to build a pole barn, in northeast Pennsylvania and want to use a skidsteer-powered auger, it may not work. Have a Plan B for bringing in a backhoe. That’s what happened for about 1/3 of the holes that we needed to dig. Due to bedrock being so close to the surface in the back corner of the barn, the auger wouldn’t even make a dent. Emmanuel had to call a local rental place to bring him out a small backhoe to finish the holes. Due to the rock issue, they spent a day and a half getting the holes finished. Emmanuel just moved here from western Pennsylvania and said he didn’t have that issue out there. He was surprised at how tough the digging was, even though his brother (a local resident) warned him it would be that way.

The next lesson I learned was involving how deep water lines are buried vs. how deep you need to dig to set your poles. I thought that the water line was 4’ down so when Emmanuel said he needed to dig 3’, I thought there would be no issue with the water line. Wrong! The water line was 3’ down and since one of the water hydrants is on the barn side and one is on the greenhouse side, the water line crosses right through the path where the posts for the shared wall will be. They hit the line twice so it involved repairing about 10’ of water line. Amount of time wasted: 2 hours. Cost of repair: $28 in materials + labor. Wisdom gained: Priceless

While Emmanuel used the various machines to carve out holes in the earth, the boys set the posts they could after all of the intricate stringing of lines, mathematical equations to make the whole thing square, etc. I get the part about measuring from corner to corner to make sure it is the same, lengthwise and side to side. But the positioning of the 2 x 4’s and strings is like those string games I used to play on my hands as a kid. Confusing how the shapes are developed with the various movements of your hands but it all comes out. Sort of like what they did to get it all set up to start building. Probably why I didn’t care for algebra as a kid and why I don’t do construction projects of this nature.

By lunchtime, the posts were set and they were off and running. They made really good headway on Tuesday and I was feeling pretty optimistic that we’d finish the barn on Friday.

While the guys have been working, I’ve been ordering materials for the latter stages of construction (things that I will need to do inside the structure), contacting the organic certifying agency, researching organic seeds that we’ll order and what feels like a million other odd tasks. Being a detail-oriented person comes in handy for orchestrating a project like this but it can also give you a massive case of “busy brain”. I need to put a tablet next to the bed so I won’t have to jump out of bed when I remember something that needs to go on my “to do” list. Note to self….

Yesterday was a whirlwind of activity to say the least. By the end of the day they had all the purlins on the roof. The two young men did all the work on the roof, while Emmanuel handed the trusses and lumber up to the guys. Using a chainsaw and cordless saw, they trimmed the long pieces off and walked confidently all over the roof. When it came time to set the trusses in place, it was sheer poetry in motion. Emmanuel would tie a rope to each end of the truss and the boys would pull each one up to them and let the ends rest against the wall they were standing on. They’d untie the rope and with a deft motion they’d swing the truss right side up and set it in place to be nailed. Using this process they had all of the trusses up and in place within about an hour. Amazing!

Day 4 – Barn Construction

Pouring rain today so no construction going on. Too hazardous for them to be on the roof and just not a good day to be out. Tomorrow is out too as Emmanuel needs to help his nephew move. Saturday might be a possibility but it will depend on the young guys’ plans for their weekend. Emmanuel said they might be able to get a half day of work in. Emmanuel ordered the barn door track this morning. He said it is best to go with a cannonball type track, because it rolls the easiest. Our door will be 14’ tall to accommodate the motorhome (which is 12’9”) and the overall opening will be 16’ wide so we’ll have (2) 8’ doors. I want hand-made wooden doors for the front that Emmanuel will build. If the doors opened in the center and each went outward, like they typically do, it would mean that we’d have a piece of wood extending past the left side of the barn. Our motorhome will be parked on the left side of the barn but we need a door wider than just the RV because we might want to pull something smaller in on the right side. We also have to skooch the RV over to the right to hit the turnaround area, at the right spot, when we take it down the driveway. Hence the reason we need the full-width door. Emmanual will put up a double track so each will roll to the right, towards the greenhouse. No dorky board hanging off the left side of the barn. He got all of the hardware ordered for the door and he will pick up the lumber from his brother. It will have more of a rustic look (smooth on one side and rough on the other side – our choice which side will face out). I drew out the door design but I think he’ll tweak that a little bit because he knows that we want a tight, draft-free area.

So as Emmanuel’s father used to tell him: if you can see a patch of blue in the sky big enough to make a pair of blue jeans, it will clear up and you’ll be fine. Hoping we get that “blue patch” so they can go back to building. All in due time. Today it’s sunshine of the liquid variety.