Living with Nature

Material & Tool Acquisition

Now, part of going with a "Little Home" is to save money, and just looking at the handtools needed demonstrates that there will be some expenses involved.  Decisions of what kind of materials to use, as well as where to get them is a question that will be answered by you, and the factor of time versus money.  When it comes to tools, some will say "that can't be done without machinery."  Well, the machine is a relatively new thing.  In colonial days, everything was done by hand, and even Pre-WWII most carpentry was done, expertly, with hand tools.  A circular saw and generator should be prioritized, but a miter saw, compressor, and nail guns may need to wait.  A good cordless drill is invaluable, and should probably be prioritized.  A high quality chainsaw is critical to Living wih Nature.

The easiest way to get your materials is to take your truck and trailer down to the local builder supply store and buy them.  You can get them in the planed smooth dimensions you want.  The dimensions are fairly standard, with only small deviations,  but the wood is still fairly green, so bows and crooks are still likely if you let it be exposed to moisture for long before you get it in.  By "very long," I mean if it gets rained on over night, you could wind up with a pile of rocking chair rockers.  If there's dew on your plywood, it may look like a pie pan when you show up.  Using ratchet straps to keep it tight and plastic to keep it dry, and/or staining it can help avoid that.  Getting it cut and installed and dried in, will also keep  it straight.

Another easy, but less expensive way to get your materials is to buy from a small lumber mill.  This will mean buying "rough cut" lumber, which will probably be full dimension, i.e. a 2x4 will be 2" by 4" with a rough texture, instead of 1 1/2" by 3 1/2".  You can get a splinter from either, and the "rough texture" is more fuzzy than splintery.    If you stain it, it'll act like a sponge and really soak up the liquid from a much greater surface area.  You could buy a planer and smooth it down, but that does not make it any stronger.  When it comes to trim, a planer can be key, but there's little value in planing the framing materials.  Add a plunge router to a planer, and you can take that rough cut lumber from framing materials to fine trim, particularly if you buy hardwoods instead of pine.

Insulating the Little Home

Now, I should cover plumbing and electric before I cover insulation, but I'm leaving plumbing to others, and I've touched on electric elsewhere.  If you went with solar and DC, it will be different than if you run 110 AC, and chances are you want to run both, and you should have taken that into account in sheathing and siding, which I didn't cover.  If you're completely off the grid, you'll probably want a generator connection to an internal AC connection, and if you're running solar, you'll probably want your batteries outside the structure but protected from the elements, but separate from the structure protecting your gas generator, and your power inverter inside.  Wherever anything penetrates your framing, I suggest you seal it up tight, and caulk can take care of that.  This keeps out creepy crawlies as well as breezes.

You'll need to build a "chase" around your heating vent, and frame up any skylights before you insulate.  The "chase" is that area the vent runs between the ceiling and roof.    The primary concern is that it is air tight, so that if a fire breaks out, it is contained for a period of time, rather than immediately spreading to the entire attic.  Generally the walls are plywood, but you can add fireproofing by using "rockwool" or more  accessibly, firerated drywall.  A piece of 1x pine has a 1 hour fire rating, as does 5/8" drywall (if memory serves).  Fireproofing caulk is generally not required, but runs about $20/tube.  Also, you'll want your chimney vent to be at least 2 feet higher than anything within 10 feet of it, which generally means 2 feet higher than the ridge, and codes will limit the overall length of the vent, with a 10ft penalty for corners in it, so you'll want it as straight as possible.

The skylight is slightly different.  All you need is to frame up walls from the ceiling to the rafters.  If you want to dress this up, you'll need to header off the part of the ceiling joist you cut out to do that.  It's the right thing to do to cut the ceiling joist out, and header it off and that means two pieces of 2x of the same dimension, on a double joist hanger, and doubling up the ceiling joists on either side of the header.   I would recommend that you spaced your clear roofing at equal spaces on the south side of the roof, cutting that expensive piece of clear into two 6' pieces.  That will give two skylights, and plenty of natural light, reducing the need for artificial light during the day.  "Normal" skylights have a bad habit of leaking, but the one we're working with is actually the roofing itself.

Cornish & Siding the Little Home

When we stepped away from the framing project, it was "dried in."  At that point, the building inspector is going to want to look at it, to make sure you used the right amount of nails, the right sized lumber and tied it all together in accordance with the local building codes, which aren't much different than the building codes laid out for your area in the International Residential Code.  He's going to want to inspect plumbing and electric, insulation and HVAC, as well as the final product.  Most inspectors are willing to combine the inspections, but unwilling to pull back insulation for the first three.

Foundation and Floor:  Start and finish there
Walls and Ceilings
Framing the Roof
Roofing the Little Home
Insulate the Little Home

Before he gets there, you'll want to run out your gable studs (between your plate and rafters to extend your wall to your roof on the ends.)  The most important one is the one that supports the ridge.  It's also the easiest, because it is a square cut.  The other gable studs will be cut on a bevel, and while it isn't required, running a 2x4 plate to the bottom of the rafter, will make installation easier.  The bevel you use on the saw is equal to the pitch of the roof, but marked in degrees.  You figure  this out with speed square, but if you used a 4 pitch, the bevel is cut at 18.4 degrees.  Alteratively, you can run these studs "flat" (3 1/2" side will be what you nail siding to) and cut them on an angle instead of bevel.  You'll also want to support the ridge from the break between the two boards, down to the strongback, with a 2x4.  After you have the gable ends studded up, you'll want to run out the plywood sheating. 

Sheds have a different standard than do residences, to include the fact that sheds won't have plumbing and may not have electric.  The cleaner your cuts and more precise your work, the less deep he'll dig in his inspection.  Walk through with him.  It shouldn't take long, as this is 4 simple walls.  He'll point out the mistakes you made and leave you a list of things to correct.  Some of those might be correctable on the spot, before he finishes writing it up, if your helper tags along.  The "re-inspection" may be his second walk around. 

Often there is a bit of animosity between the builder and inspector.  It should be noted that his job is to make sure that proper construction reduces the chance for structural and component  failures.  It's sort of like a quality control inspector.  There's no good reason for either party to be belligerant, but humans are prone to negative characteristics, and having bad days.

But there will probably be a few days between the phone call to inspect, and his time available to do so.  During this time, you can start working on things that don't hinder his vision of your framing.  Put up the wall sheathing if you didn't already.  Install the windows and doors.  Frame out your skylights.  Run your electric.  Run your plumbing.  Trim out your soffits and put up your siding.

Free Food!

Nature feeds the mouths of prey and predator alike, and as omnivores, we can eat most of the things they do.  With a little planning, education, and work, we can greatly reduce our expenses at the grocery store.  If you're living with nature though, I strongly recommend that you have a very good storage security system. 

My policy is that any food near the abode is completely consumed once opened.  What I don't eat, I feed to the fire.  I'm fairly lazy, so part of my cleansing policy is throwing the plastic ware I used into the fire.  Occasionally a crumb or two will make it to the ground, but it's important to consider the food chain.  Bugs and rodents like crumbs.  Snakes and other predators like rodents.  My secure food storage system starts with trying to prevent the smell of food (sealed cans and containers) and then trying to prevent the access to those containers by sealing them in others, including the type that animals have a harder time penetrating.

In embracing Nature, we need to take into account nature's opinion on easy feed, but also where we stand in the Food Chain and how much of the food chain can be on our tables.  And if we want to lower grocery bills, consider buying flour and sugar rather than cake mixes.

When the average person walks into the woods, they think of snakes, wolves, bears, and poison ivy.  They see scary shadows, and fear being on the bottom end of the food chain.  They rarely think about the free nuts and berries, or meat.  I'm no expert on all the free foods and medicines that can be foraged, but like Einstein, I know where to find the expert.  The author at "Eat the Weeds" has been foraging for foods for decades, since the first time his mother sent him out to pick up something off the forest floor.  I can't match his knowledge or experience on the subject, and won't try to replicate his site.

I will point out that from one tree, I picked up 30 gallons of unhusked black walnuts.  That was just from the ground under half of one tree.  I picked up a gallon of pecans, and there's still more to be picked up.   This is without truly exploring the possibilities for acorns, hickory nuts, and beech nuts.  Fall and winter is nut season.  Pick em up now and they'll store all year long.

I most definitely recommend investing in plant and tree identification guides.  The National Audubon Society has the best versions I've seen.  It crossreferences pictures and descriptions so that you can find "red berries" or "red flowers" or "orange leaves" in the fall, with pictures, and then look up the pertinent information.  It is very well organized.  They have other guides on mushrooms, rocks, wildlife and reptiles and bugs and birds.  If you can find the plant in the book, you can find out how to use it at "Eat the weeds."

Don't ignore the food that is literally falling at your feet.  Be smart about it, and make sure that what looks like food is edible or otherwise usable and start looking around to see what is less obvious, like the blackberry leaves which are evidently highly popular for tea.

Roofing the Little Home-2

Run out your firring strips with nails or screws, and then pull a tape and double check that they are straight and write down the locations.  If the bottom firring strip is 2" (on center) from the bottom, and 2' on center, then you'll end up with centers of 2", 26", 50", 74", etc.  Draw that out on a piece of wood (carpenters always use wood, not paper) and through it into your tool pouch, or on the ground in a place you can find it. 

Pull that metal roofing onto your sawhorses and flush up the ends.  Measure and mark the top sheet at 3 1/2", 2' 3 1/2", etc.  Despite the roof edge, we want to run the roofing below it, for a little added protection.  Pre-drill the holes for the screws.  If you get it wrong, this will be a spot for the rain to come inside.  If you don't pre-drill, you're going to be battling gravity and metal to get it in place.

Have your helper hand you up the roof edge and metal cutters.  You just changed professions.  You want to run roof edge around the entire perimeter of the roof.  This key component is going to save your carpentry from the water than runs down your roof, and would otherwise splash up and rot your fascia board.   You don't need a lot of fasteners for the roof edge; 3 per piece is enough.  After you have the roof edge down, you're ready to run roofing.  The first piece is key to the whole thing.  Put it down crooked and you'll be fighting it the whole way.  Pull out a chalk line at 37" from the end.  Make sure that is squared to the ridge   (A basic way to check square is to mark 3' on one side of a square angle, 4' on the other side, and the intersection of the diagonal will be 5'.  For greater precision on bigger squares, double the measurements or triple them: 6, 8, 10 or 9, 12, 15.)  You want a gap at the ridge.  You're going to put down a ridge cap, and you want the air in your attic to vent out here.  If you have a 6" ridge vent, you'll have a maximum of 3" to play with gap at the top.  Make sure you know how much play you have, and enough overlap to prevent wind blowing the water uphill and into the gap.  There are also foam strips specifically designed to seal this up, without blocking the air flow.  That will keep leaves, bugs, critters and water out, while allowing hot or cold air out.

Roofing the Little Home-1

Foundation and Floor:  Start and finish there
Walls and Ceilings are next
Installing Metal Roofing

Roofs are a style of their own.  They can be complicated (think a barn roof or hips and valleys) or simple (shed roofs).  Theoretically, you could cut the rafters before you pour the pads, but there always seems to be something that slightly changes the plan and risks changing the calculations  for the cuts.

If you want to go very simple, the shed style roof is it.  It is a straight shot, on an angle, with no hips, valleys, or ridges.  One side is simply higher than the other.  The hardest part is calcuating and cutting the "bird's mouth" which is the angled cut which sets on the 2x4 plate.  On a 16 foot run, your rafter has to be longer than 16 as well, so you can either buy longer, specialized lumber, or come up with other innovative solutions, such as running a ridge at the 8 foot mark, or plan for a smaller home.

The "easy" way to calculate the cuts is to lay the board across the bottom plates, with one edge in the corner, and measure up the difference in height,  then use some 2x4 to mark  where your rafters will set on the plate.  But first, you have to have decided what kind of roofing you'll use, what the pitch of it will be, what style roof it will be, and how much of a overhang you'll have.

The farther North you live, the more snow you get, and the steeper the pitch of your roof needs to be.  Snow gets heavy quick, and gravity is your best friend in getting it off the roof in order to keep it from breaking your rafters.  Metal roofing is a good option.  It requires less pitch, because it is very slippery when wet, as opposed to asphalt shingles, which seem too help grip snow with all those tiny embedded pieces of gravel. 

Framing the Little Home-2

Foundation and Floor:  Start and finish there
Walls and Ceilings are this one

Now, if you've exercised a decent amount of perfectionism in square, plumb, level, and centers, the rest is going to be easier.  If you were sloppy about it, the building is going to fight you to the bitter end.  Your walls are next, and what you decide to use for siding will determine some of how you build them.  If you go with metal, you'll want to use firring strips.  If you go with vinyl siding, it'll be plywood or osb (or possibly a mixture of that and rigid insulation.)  You also have to decide between 2x4 studs or 2x6.  If you go with 2x6, you'll be able to fill it with R-19 insulation.  If you really want to make it energy efficient, you can go with 2x6, with exterior foam insulation.

You'll also want to have your doors and windows planned out.  The first things you'll want to cut are the headers and the jack studs (which support the headers).  For a 36" door, your header will be 41 1/2" long.  This accomodates the 3" that rest on the two jack studs, the 1 1/2" of door trim (1x4 on each side) and leaves you 3/4" to shim it plumb on each side.  Normally, your jack studs will be 81 1/2" tall, which gives you rough opening height of 83" when you set that jack stud on the bottom plate.  Some doors are taller than the "normal," so double check the height.  It's not a bad idea to use the same length for your jack studs for windows.  A 36" wide window gets a 41" header, with the difference being the area used for shims.  You're going to want to see out, so plan on at least one window per wall.  As long as you aren't building a two story structure, 2x6 uprights and either 2x4 or 2x6 top and bottom plates (same as your wall studs) will suffice for headers.  If you think you might add a 2nd story, go ahead and use 2x8 uprights.  The headers distribute the weight of the structure above to the jackstuds where the stud is missing.  If your window is more than 6' wide, you'll need to add 3" to the header and double up the jack studs.

The first thing you'll want too nail (not screw) together are the headers.  After you've built the headers, nail the jack studs to the king studs (the full height 2x next to the jack stud), flush to the bottom of the king stud.  Next, you'll need corners.  Find 12 pieces of short 2x4 scrap and nail 3 pieces (top, bottom and middle) between two studs.  This gives you a place to attach the other walls to, as well as a solid surface in the corner for drywall.  If you're building 2x6 walls, you'll need to build your corners differently, so that the inside 2x6 is exposed on the inside of the wall, when the other wall is built.  This can be done by using 6 pcs of scrap 2x6 on edge rather than flat between the studs. 

Framing The Little Home-1

There is a lot of value in going small in the lodging you build.  This is particularly true if you invested your money in more land rather than more things.  The smaller the abode, the less area you have to heat, and the less you have to light, and the less furniture you have to buy to fill it.  The smaller the space, the more likely you'll want to get outside and enjoy nature.

My aha moment came when the Army had sent me on a long TDY and I had brought along more of my stuff than I actually needed to stay comfortable.  I started looking at how small a space I was living in comfortably.  Combat Veterans have lived in even smaller spaces than that for months on end.

I do suggest that you assess your space needs before you start building your small home.  If you go too small, cabin fever is going to set in quickly.  One trend I've seen is people building their small home on a trailer.  This greatly restricts the width of your abode, and makes it more of a hallway than a room.  I would suggest that 16'x16' is plenty small while still allowing you room to move around.  And I recommend planning your building on 4' lengths and widths.  This will maximize the efficient use of construction materials.  Plywood comes in 4' x 8' lengths, so 16x16 would mean 8 pieces of 3/4" tongue and groove plywood, with basically no waste.  Before you start buying plywood, you're going to want to identify the site. 

Living in the Wild means you're going to want some basic tools including an axe, sledge hammer (splitting logs), a wheelbarrel, round and flat tipped shovel, rake and pickaxe.  You'll also want a good quality chainsaw (gas operated), leaf blower, circular saw, 30' and 300' tape measures, cordless drill, a hand winch, a 100ft/12 gauge extension cord and 20ft/10ga multi outlet extension cord, hammer, and good old fashioned handsaw.  While living with ready power, few would reach for the handsaw, but when you have to power up a generator to run it, the handsaw is quicker and easier  if you only have a small board or two to cut.

The question of a foundation is going to come up fairly quickly.  A poured slab may be a good idea for some, but that means you're either going to be mixing a lot of cement (which gets old quick), or have a cement truck pull up to a site that you have prepared.  It also means that your house will be on the ground.  There are certainly some cost savings in this, but there is a value in being off the ground.

The first thing you want to build is a set of sawhorses.  Cut five 8' 2x4's into 32" lengths.  (Alternately, you can reuse the wood of a pallet for this.)  Nail (or screw) 2 sets of 3 32" boards into an I beam and nail 4 legs below the top of the I beam, two nails into the bottom of the I beam and two into the top of each leg into the upright of the I beam.  One nail is a pivot, two holds it in place, and three secures it. Five, in this case, just weakens the boards.  Stain your saw horses.  They may be cheap and easy to build, but they're invaluable to have around the place.  The top board of the I beam is going to get cut up, so you'll want to screw it rather than nail it, so you can replace it as needed.

Off the Grid Electricity

It won't take long in the wild before you realize how much you've come to depend on electricity.  It truly is a luxury, but one we don't want to live without.  When you come face to face with the costs of producing it, you'll get more serious about conserving it.

The quickest and easiest solution is to buy a generator, perhaps even two.  They're noisy and gas is expensive, so this is a short term solution, but a good thing to have on hand.  The small ones (1k) are less expensive to buy and operate, but won't run things as simple as a toaster or power saw.  They're also quieter, so not a bad thing to have around for the small things, but a good 5500+ watt generator will power most things you need powered.  Like I said, they're noisy though, so eventually I'll come up with a way to muffle mine down.  They'll cover you in a pinch, as well as in the higher wattage usages.

You'll also want to look at gas powered equipment rather than electric powered.  Few buy electric powered lawn mowers, but leaf blowers, weedeaters, and chainsaws are more common in electric versions.   Why power up a generator, when you can just power up the specific device.

You'll want to look at power cords that are DC powered rather than AC inverters, particularly when considering phones and radios.

Soon after getting that generator though, you're going to want a less expensive solution.  If you do it efficiently, solar power can provide what you need.  As I said, you'll want to conserve energy, because powering a modern home with solar would be pretty expensive, and counter productive, compared to just staying on the grid.

Building on the Basics in the Wild

Previously, we discussed the fundamentals of "Living in the Wild."  Next, we'll want to decrease the "embracing the suck."

Chances are, you'll want a more efficient heater than the open campfire.  Woodstoves can provide you not only heat, but also a flat surface to cook on.  Iron skillets are awesome and ceramic coated pots are easy to care for.  Woodstoves can cost as little as $250, and you'll want to keep the exhaust pipes as straight as possible.   They can also cost thousands and replace a full size home's heating system, or just supplement it.

You're going to need water for more than one reason, from drinking to bathing to washing dishes.  The water you drink needs to be free of debris and bacteria, but what you use to wash off the sweat of your brow mostly just needs to be free of debris, and that you use for gardening needs even less refinement.  The bulk of your water needs/desires doesn't need purification.  It may very well be worth it to buy gallon jugs of drinking water, but that bathing water is probably better attained from the rain or spring.

Most places on earth have water only slightly below the surface, but it is far easier to keep what falls from the sky.  A 300 sf roof will overfill a 5 gallon bucket with less than a 1/4 inch of rain.  The question becomes how to store more than 5 gallons at a time, and the answer is simple: buy some 55 gallon drums.  A gutter costs about $15/10 ft, and used drums can cost as little as $5 each.  You want the right kind, so avoid the used motor oil drums and buy the used food oil containers.  And then run some dish soap through it to get rid of the oily residue.    How many you buy will determine not only your water reserves but also be determined by your daily usage and how long your area goes without rain.  A rain water system can be used  in the city for watering your lawn or garden as well as used in the woods to wash your sweaty pits. 

Living in the Wild

After the decades of ever bigger and ever more decadent abodes, there is now a counter-trend to "little homes," with small footprints and small utility bills, if any.  Most pictures I've seen seem to be built on top of a trailer frame, which seems like a waste of resources to me. 

If you want a mobile home, you're probably better off buying a camper.  The benefits of buying a camper are that it's already on wheels, and professionals have developed space saving efficiency which includes all of the basic appliances.  There's really little advantage to trying to re-invent the wheeled living style when it has already been refined.  The disadvantage is that you're likely to dump a lot of money into this initial investment, and often, you pay for what you get.  Additionally, campers are designed to conserve weight, so you'll have thin walls, with little insulation, and barely the space you may need to move around.

And regardless of your "off grid" desires, the camper may very well be a good place to start.  You're going to pay for the convenience of someone else building your abode, but you can buy used and the deal you get will depend on your willingness to accept wear and tear.  If you look hard enough, you can probably find something that will keep water off your bed for a thousand or fewer dollars, but chances are it will come with a lot of worn out parts.

As important, if not moreso, is where you plan to live.  Campground living can sound romantic and nomadic, but the daily rental can quickly grow expensive.  For a retiree with a good nest egg and desire to travel, this could be the way to go,  but if you're looking to cut costs, that daily rate can get expensive fast.