Tag: metal

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Laying out Tiny’s New Location

I’m going to move Tiny down from storage onto the lot; I’ve been spending lots of $$$ keeping it up north and it’s time to push things forward! Before I can do this, I need to prepare the land.

My plan was to put down a gravel driveway for a couple of reasons:

  • It’s more eco-friendly – using recycled materials instead of concrete, which is a major contributor to CO2 greenhouse gases.
  • It is better for the watershed – gravel is permeable, allowing rain to soak directly into the ground instead of running off into drainage ditches.
  • It is cheaper – building a 11’x50′ driveway should cost about $3k instead of ~$14k.
  • I can do most (all) of the work myself.

In addition, I need to ensure some level of security for Tiny, as it will be sitting out all alone with no one to watch over her! I’ll need to prepare the land by adding a fence to keep looky-loos out and make it harder to get onto the property.

Land Preparation Steps

Bare land where I've been marking and digging
Prepping the location for the gravel

Driveway

  1. Mark out location with stakes and twine ✅
  2. Dig out area to 6″ deep 🌀
  3. Lay down weed barrier
  4. Purchase gravel
  5. Purchase grid
  6. Spread out bottom layer and compact
  7. Assemble grid
  8. Spread out top layer and compact

Fence

  1. Mark out location with stakes and twine ✅
  2. Determine approach: wood, SS40 pipe or steel post (see Resources below)
  3. Source materials
  4. Install posts
  5. Attach cross beams
  6. Install pickets
  7. Build/install gate 😱
Metal Fenceposts
Stack of Metal Fenceposts

Resources

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CS 14 Strapping Installed

We got the CS 14 strapping installed all the way around the house and it is looking great.

CS 14 installed
CS 14 installed

As with many things in his project, it involved some compromise and flexibility. When I laid out the blocking (the wood between the studs), I neglected to get them exactly lined up with one another, so when it came time to install the CS 14, it was obvious it wasn’t going to match.

As with everything else that “went wrong,” I had to remind myself that any job worth doing is worth doing poorly.

Coming to the master bedroom’s window, I had to cut the CS 14 to make it work.

CS 14 on master bedroom window
CS 14 on master bedroom window

It turns out that tin snips don’t work, but an angle grinder does the job nicely. So with that out of the way, it is time to work on the loft.

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Attaching the House to the Trailer

From my own research, this is a “controversial” topic: some folks say it is required and others say not to bother.

Someone is *wrong* on the internet!

Does it make sense to attach the house to the trailer? The weight of the house should be enough to keep it on the trailer as in, will it blow off while you’re driving down the road? No. If I’m worried about tipping over, then the house is destroyed anyway.

Tumbleweed suggests welding threaded rods onto the trailer that are then passed up through the subfloor, sole plate of the wall and a HDU5 holdown. I decided to not go this route, because I would have had to strip the paint from the trailer and I didn’t like the position of where I’d have to place the rods (too close to the interior of the house).

So what to do?

It turns out that my trailer has stake pockets for adding a railing. So my idea is to create a bracket that will clip to the bottom of the bracket and hold a threaded rod.

The completed bracket with rod
The completed bracket with rod

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Here’s a video of me welding the plate and then grinding and polishing it.