#36 – 1/15/2023 – Crunch Time!

Hey everyone! It is 2023! I am so excited for this year. This is the year we are going to build our cottage!!

Let’s start with the boring paperwork stuff (I find it all very exciting…. for the record ). Almost 2 months ago in my last letter, I mentioned starting with an engineering firm. Well I am pleased to announce we have achieved an ~85% completed design draft! It’s a lot of mumbo jumbo, but there’s one main lesson I learned that I want to share. A traditional footer is 2 feet wide.. Our footer is designed to be 6′ WIDE!!! It turns out when you build on the side of the mountain and your foundation is stepped, the foundation requirements increase a lot! The top wall with the huge footer is the back wall of the garage and it is holding back 8′ of dirt. The front wall of the garage, with the garage doors, obviously has no dirt around it due to the fact that we want to drive cars into our garage. Since the dirt is not uniform all the way around .. the back wall of the garage becomes a full retaining wall and can’t count on the front wall of the garage to counteract it by providing support. Usually foundation wall’s opposite of each other are tied together by the floor joists and the subfloor so that they work together and counteract each other. Hence the massive footer. Anyhow, food for thought, if you ever build a house, building on flat dirt is a lot easier for foundation requirements (and you are thinking… obviously… )

In the last letter, I also mentioned the Manual J – or thermal analysis of the house. I am pleased to have that completed as well. This one is actually really boring on the surface, but it is one of the most critical pieces of paperwork I need in order to build an off-grid house. I have been discussing at length with Karianne and also with her brother Doug about how to design the HVAC system. One night… Karianne and I hashed it out on our bathroom mirror. All good times!

One of my last big hurdles for paperwork for the building permit is a plat map that shows where the cottage will be built on the property. It also needs to show elevations lines and how it is all going to work. I am trying to do that myself since there is no requirement to have an engineering firm do that. It is a little intimidating! And I’ve had a few ups and downs with it and my confidence levels… but I think I can pull it off.

Next item of business.. money. I never know how much financial stuff to share and hopefully you find it all interesting and don’t judge our life decisions . It is a major part of the project and I think it gives a good picture of what is going on. That being said I am working through financing in parallel with the building permit. I have had to fill out a cost sheet of each item for construction in order to secure a loan as an owner builder. I was originally hoping to build the cottage (this is just the cottage, land is already purchased) for $350k. And surprise surprise when I get into the details and account for everything and all of the massive inflation it is looking like it is going to be more like $450k to build the cottage. It’s definitely more than I wanted it to be. And seems crazy that it is so high with me doing all a huge chunk of the work. I have been somewhat conservative in my numbers… but sometimes I wonder if I am conservative enough. Some of the extra cost is due to the infrastructure of the well and the septic being sized for both the cottage and the main house. Another major cost adder is that we have to over dig the foundation by 3-5′ and bring in structural fill because the dirt we are building on is not good.

Apparently I have a lot to say today! I want to close with some winter fun! We have been to the land twice recently. The first trip was me and the 4 older kids with 2 of their friends and their dad for a sleepover in the shed.

Then yesterday we went up for the whole day as a family for some fun in the snow. And there is SOO MUCH snow. Which is good. Utah needs moisture desperately.. but of course it is the winter before I want to build. It will take some time to dry out! The first trip for the sleepover I was shocked when we arrived to find 2 feet of fresh snow up there! We had to park at the top of the driveway and carry all of our gear (and a kid or two) the 400+ feet down the driveway through the snow. It was a workout.. and I was wondering what I had gotten myself into! That night I got the excavator out and was able to drive through the snow, in the dark, up to the car and back. That gave us a much better walking path! And to be honest .. smashing down that much snow in the dark was probably one of the coolest things I have done in that excavator. It was super fun… I was like a little kid on Christmas morning . Yesterday was a lot of fun as well. There was lots of sledding, snow cave building, cards up in the loft after lunch while warming up, snow balls, the works! Trying to get as much time in with the family before it gets crazy.