Building a stick frame house in the woods in 90 days

[pclausen]

Wow, you are one of those "power shoppers." :laughing: That is the sort of shopping that gives me a headache--besides feeling "poorly" in general.

I hate shopping, but when I have to go, I try to get as much knocked out as possible. But yes, today was quite the drain on the old wallet.

I would leave some more space between the mechanicals, room for servicing, inspecting and cleaning everything from all sides.

You're right. I'm going to rearrange it some more.

 

[FairfaxStu]

Just 2 zones (5.1 in the living room, and the pair of in-wall speakers in the bedroom). Her current receiver is getting a little old in the tooth and the remove volume stopped working a few years back. This new one will be much easier to operate for her and she can stream Pandora directly from it. If/when she adds more zones, I'll utilize her Yamaha integrated amp, which features A, B and C speaker connections. I'll just feed it a 2 channel analogue source from the Denon (if supported) or directly from the media server if not.

Does your Mom have an iPhone or an iPad? The apps they are developing for those devices are absolutely killing the customizable remote market place. First the demise of the Phillips Pronto (my favorite) and more recently the demise of the Logitech Harmony series. I am a bit surprised that your Mom did not want an outdoor zone on the deck for entertaining. I remember a few meals out on the deck at your Mom's old place that were quite fun. And, of course, the food was over the top delicious.
-Stu

 

[srs]

It was a bit of a pain walking down the stairs at just under 200lbs

Tight fit through the door

Peter, just curious why didn't you drive the truck around back to unload? You have double wide doors that would have made it very easy to get the heater into the basement instead of going down the steps. My thought is maybe you didn't want to mess up the newly seeded lawn. It could be quite muddy with all the rain that you've been getting. Stanley

 

[pclausen]

It was tempting Stanley, but you're exactly right, the seeded area is still very moist from the rain, so I decided to do it the hard way.

I got quite a bit done this afternoon. Burned down a pretty good sized pile of roots and tree trunks that had been around for a while

The area that will be inside the deer fence is starting to look pretty good

I still got a lot of small trees to chip up along the fence line. Once the fire is gone, I can clear a path to get the tractor/chipper to it. I'm avoiding dropping any more mature Yellow Pines right now as the ground to too muddy for me to be able to skid them out without making a mess.

 

[pclausen]

Does your Mom have an iPhone or an iPad? The apps they are developing for those devices are absolutely killing the customizable remote market place. First the demise of the Phillips Pronto (my favorite) and more recently the demise of the Logitech Harmony series. I am a bit surprised that your Mom did not want an outdoor zone on the deck for entertaining. I remember a few meals out on the deck at your Mom's old place that were quite fun. And, of course, the food was over the top delicious.
-Stu

Lol, so do I!

She has no Apple devices so she won't be using the Airplay feature of the receiver, although I will configure it so that when my wife is over (and others with iPhones), she will be able to play back iTunes content. I'll be configuring DLNA so that she can stream music from the server (running J. River Media Center of course). I'm with you Stu on how it sucks that everything is going iTunes. My wife got an iPad, and I gave up on trying to figure out how to make it steam TV Shows and Movies (and music) from my media server. Heck, I can't even get it to pull up pictures from my server, everything has to be "cloud" based... It works great for streaming Netflix, etc. I guess that's just where everything is going...

I'm pretty sure I'll end up setting up other zones later. The key will be to make it all easy to operate. I think she will really enjoy Pandora as it will allow her to have background music going indefinitely when she wish, without having to worry about putting in another CD, or a playlist ending, etc. I'll also need to rip all her classical music CDs to Media Center and archive all those CDs like you and I did years ago. Mom is turning 79 next month, and I'm very impressed with how computer/tech savvy she is. She is still learning/figuring out new stuff all the time!

 

[Pixguy]

Pete, I really enjoyed your build and it's finishing great.

Could you tell me what the hose valve shut off is called that you have in the back yard?? I've used them at RV camps and would like to have one for my RV pad.

Thanks

 

[dave1949]

Pete, I really enjoyed your build and it's finishing great.

Could you tell me what the hose valve shut off is called that you have in the back yard?? I've used them at RV camps and would like to have one for my RV pad.

Thanks

It's called a "yard hydrant" or frost-free yard hydrant. There is a thread here somewhere about them. IIRC Woodford is a good brand, but that's sketchy.

 

[FairfaxStu]

I'll be configuring DLNA so that she can stream music from the server (running J. River Media Center of course).

When you are setting up JRMC be sure to also configure Gizmo. That will allow you to control audio in any zone from a web interface. Chris and I have been using it for over a year now and once you get used to the quirks, it is quite awesome. If you really get into it, contact Chris and he can set you up with the customizations that he created to make it more user friendly.
-Stu

 

[fosterchild420]

It may have already been covered but i am curious about the deer fence: how high, what type of wire and in general why? i know i have them in my yard all the time and have just learned to live with it. I have put up wire around my fruit trees until they get tall enough to be out of deer reach.

 

[pclausen]

Mom has constant deer issues at her current house, not only in the vegetable garden, but with trees, bushes and flowers in general, throughout the garden. She also has dogs and need to contain them. We put up a 8' deer fence which made all of those problems go away. It was probably 10+ years ago it was put up, and other than having to add a rodent barrier to deal with small animals trying to chew their way in, it has held up fairly well.

The current fence is the Polypropylene type (from Benner's Gardens). I'm trying to convince mom to go with the 1" Metal Hexagrid Fence fence with a black PVC coating for the new house as that would eliminate the need for rodent barrier, which would actually make it less expensive that a Polypropylene fence + 3' rodent barrier, and it should last at least 20 years.

The only downside is that the fence would be approximately 7' tall instead is 8' with a rodent barrier, but from everything I have researched, deer are no more likely to jump a 7' fence compared to a 8' one. White tail deer can jump as high as 12' if they get startled.