It's a great feeling to wake up in the mountains and have nothing on the agenda except for cutting firewood. This is Ponderosa Pine and Aspen. These were either standing dead trees that I fell or trees that were cleared for the house build. I'm very grateful for my life and the people in it!! Stay safe! All our best!!
Photo by Jeanne Jacobson
The Well House Build - September 2020
Every day I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this. “This”, is building an infrastructure for a home/homestead for Jeanne, and I. It feels like I’m alive again. The city life and hectic pace of all that was getting to me. And then COVID-19 hit and made it even worse. I’m so thankful we were able to escape that. Life here is GOOD. Even with the small inconveniences and little higher prices for everything, you would never be able to convince me to move back to suburbia. Ever. Life is so much better on the mountain. If you’re feeling blue and bummed out about the world and your life, make a change. Make a big change and invest. Don’t try to play it “safe”. Go for it. Whatever it is that you want to do, make it happen, no holds barred! Life really is too short.
Jeanne and I took on the Well House Project last week. We would probably be finished with it but a freak snowstorm moved in and we’re sitting by the fireplace for a day or two drinking coffee and planning. It’s a nice break, to be honest.
This is an 8’ x 8’ x 8’ Well House and Tool Shed. It covers our water wellhead and the line going to our house. The purpose of this is to protect the wellhead. However, I needed a place to put some general tools so we decided to make it worthwhile and do a full-on shed - about 500 cubic feet/64 square feet. If you were to buy something like this, it would cost at least $2500 USD. We’re doing all of it for about $900 USD.
I would encourage anyone to take on these smaller tasks and find out what you can do. You’d be amazed. For some reason (money) the world tells us that we CAN’T do these kinds of things. They say that we are not skilled enough, smart enough, etc. We can learn, we can experiment and we CAN do these kinds of things. Don’t listen to the lies. Don’t get trapped in an endless game of spending money just to spend money. Save some, get dirty, and sweaty. Make mistakes and learn. Live your life on your terms. Not someone else’s. After all, you’ll have the satisfaction of looking back and saying, “I did that!”
This is where we left off after the water line completed.
Here we have the 4x4 posts attached to the concrete we poured for the corners.
Concrete poured for the floor. We insulated and put a vapor barrier on this as well.
We have it framed in and ready for the walls and roof!
We ran short on 2x4x10 for rafters - after the storm, we’ll finish the project.
Homestead Build - August 23, 2020
Jeanne and I have been busy. I rented an excavator for a week and have been working on digging our water line trench. It’s dry and dusty. I did get 6’ + to 3’ ish. We used F8 2” board insulation and used a 6 mil vapor barrier over the 4” PVC encasing. We ran a 10/3 Romex wire for the water well pump for the house. If we have a deep freeze and our line breaks, we can pull it through and replace it. I think we’ll be okay. We’ll see.
We saved about 40% on cost doing this ourselves. I’ve been documenting everything for the past 6 years on our journey. It started with looking for land. Now, almost six years later, we’re putting up a house in October!!
More coming soon!
Poly pipe and wire going into 4” PVC encasing. This is a 300’ run.
Vapor barrier and insulation board.
Well head, 4” PVC encasing with 1” poly and Romex wire.
The first 100’+ completed and covered. I was a covered in dust head to toe after this was finished.
I rented this little excavator for a week - did a great job!!