Subfloor, Part 1

This morning we started by throwing out all the work we did yesterday, which was frustrating. But the end result was much better, and so by the end of the day we felt pretty good about our progress.

The problem was that yesterday we didn't have a table saw yet. This left us with several options for cutting the insulation by hand, none of which resulted in a very straight cut. We also were stuck in the mindset that we had to insert our insulation into the C-channels in our trailer in layers like a layer cake (this is the method we saw demonstrated on the Tumbleweed DVD). The problem with this is that while the C-channels were 1" wide and 3" off the flashing of the trailer, the weld points along the bottom of each one made the interior channel height more like 2 3/4". We had 1" thick rigid foam boards, and so we ended up cutting two 1" wide strips, sitting them in a C-channel (filling up the first 2" of channel height), and then cutting a third 1" wide strip in half  to make it +/- 1/2" thick in order to fill up most of the additional 3/4" of space. The end result was a bunch of wavy, loose fitting strips, which probably wouldn't have insulated the floor very well.

Enter Jeff. Jeff is Sam's uncle, and a builder by trade. He swung by this morning, and decided we could do better. Fortunately, with the addition of a table saw and Jeff's tutelage and assistance, he was right! Jeff had the brilliant suggestion of just cutting the 1" thick foam board into 2 3/4" wide strips, and turning them on their side in order to fill our C-channels. Immediately, this improved the quality of our insulating job 100-fold. He then helped us cut and fit the rest of the insulation into the trailer, and by the end of the day today, we had a very well insulated subfloor.

Lessons learned: use the appropriate tools for the job, and always trust the wisdom of an experienced builder. 

Foundations

A good topic for my first post! When you build a tiny house, your trailer is your foundation. And if we were starting from scratch - i.e., with a non-tiny-house-ready trailer - there'd be a lot more work. But our BWISE custom trailer from Tumbleweed came ready with flashing welded to the bottom of the trailer. And so we're almost all ready to build. Our first job was settling into the site and leveling the trailer with stabilizer and support jacks.

Leveling the Trailer

Next we started putting insulation in. We're using layers of 1" polyisocyanurate board. But they're too rigid to squish under the I-shaped joists. So we've cut strips to fill the under-joist space. Unfortunately, the under-joist space isn't quite as tall as the 3+ inch depth between joists. So we had to cut some strips in half to make things fit.

Just after we finished, an experienced friend stopped by and mentioned we might have put some construction adhesive in to hold the strips in place. We might go back and do that later, or use some expansion foam insulation (which we're told is pretty glue-y). Hopefully the strips will stay put overnight - it's windy in the barn these days!

Towing your Tumbleweed Trailer with a U-haul Pick Up Truck

As you may have gathered by now, Sam and I chose to pick up our trailer and SIPs ourselves and tow them home by renting a U-haul pick up truck. In the end, this worked out rather well for us, but there were a few things we had to trouble shoot along the way. Here's the rundown.

First of all, the U-haul pick up truck come with what's called a 4-Pin electrical fitting. It's located under the back bumper near the trailer hitch and looks like this:



Open up the rubber cap, and you'll see this:



Be sure to check this out before you leave the U-haul dealership, we didn't and found that ours had a lot of dirt and corrosion in there, despite the fact that it was a fairly new vehicle (only 6k miles on it when we picked it up). We had to do some significant cleaning before we could use it.

Now, if you're buying a Tumbleweed trailer like we were, your trailer will have what's called a 7 Blade electrical hookup, which looks like this:





So, you'll need an adapter to connect the two. It's very important that you get a "4-Pin to 7-Blade" adapter and not the reverse. Make sure that your adapter specifies that it goes from a 4-Pin Tow Vehicle to a 7-Blade Trailer. There are many adapters out there which will attach a 7-Blade vehicle to a 4-Pin trailer, but we could only find one adapter that would connect a 4-Pin truck to a 7-Blade trailer. Sean at the trailer dealership told us that there's really only one on the market and that it can be hard to find, so I guess we were lucky- point is, just make sure you get the adapter you need.

Most of the wires coming out of the adapter are there to attach the adapter to your truck's trailer braking system. Unfortunately, U-haul trucks aren't wired for trailer brakes, so we tucked these wires up out of the way.



There is, however, one wire that you need to do something with, and that's the white ground wire. This will need to be attached to the metal frame of your tow vehicle. This was accomplished for us through no small effort by a good samaritan, with the use of a self tapping screw and a couple of washers (because even when he pushed on his impact driver hard enough to lift the truck off the suspension, he still couldn't seat the screw tightly enough to get a good connection between the ground wires and the truck frame.  The washers helped fill that gap).



Once the wires are sorted out, you fit the 4-Pin portion of the adapter to the 4-Pin portion of the truck, and secure the 7-Blade portion of the adapter facing out. Usually, you'd secure the adapter by screwing the included mounting bracket into your truck, but as this is a rental and we don't want to be charged penalty fees for damaging the thing, we went a slightly different route, and made use of a good quality duct tape:

And you're off! Be sure to check your lights at ever rest stop you come to. Don't skimp on safety checks: check left blinker, right blinker, brake lights and running lights each time. You may have to pull off all your duct tape, reseat the 4-Pin portion of the adapter, and then duct tape the whole this up again. (You may have to do this several times). It's worth it. Drive safely!

Unloading the Trailer

Today we finally got around to unloading the SIPs from the trailer! We were super fortunate to have two great friends from school come by and help us: those SIPs are heavy! We were able to get them all stacked neatly on blocking on the barn floor, even if it did take all four of us and my dad to carry the largest panel (the back shear wall) into place.

Next up we'll have to level the trailer, insulate the subfloor, and attach the sill plates- after that, it'll be time to erect the SIPs!!

The Long Road Home

It was around 8 o'clock in the morning that we set out on our long trip home. We started the day with a thorough safety check: we tightened one of the ratchet straps which had loosened overnight; we checked brake lights, right blinker, left blinker and running lights; we checked that the trailer was still seated tightly over the ball of the hitch and the this hitch was still firmly attached to the truck. Everything looked good, and so wasting no time we hit the road.

The road from Culpeper, VA to Little Compton, RI is about 550 miles, add to that the 175 odd miles we had already driven from Danville to Culpeper, and in total we had to tow our load almost 800 miles to get it home. And to be entirely fair to the guys at SIPs of America who loaded the SIPs onto our trailer, their loading job preformed perfectly well for the first 650 miles of that trip. We drove lazily through Virginia, a small piece of Maryland, back through Chambersburg and continued traveling to the east on the wide, gently sloping roads of central Pennsylvania without the slightest problem. 

It wasn't until we got into western New Jersey that we started to notice that the load had shifted slightly forwards and to the right. We checked the ratchet straps, which were still tight, and continued on our way, but this time we kept a wary eye on the load. Movement was minimal as we crossed through New Jersey, into New York and began to drive over the Tapanzee Bridge. But the bouncing as we drove over the bridge ties seemed to be a bit too much for our overly stressed load, and the forward shift accelerated after that. It was a tense ride as we drove through White Plains, and we pulled over at the first rest stop on 95 North, just after crossing into Connecticut. 

There, we found the situation was even worse than it had appeared from the rear view mirror, and the load was precariously close to tipping off of the trailer. A quick Google Maps Search showed us that there was a Home Depot only 2 miles from our rest stop. We cinched the ratchet straps tight as banjo strings and drove slowly down the highway to the next exit, and from there to Home Depot. There, we were most fortunate again: after explaining our situation to the woman behind the Customer Service desk, we were directed to a store associate who was licensed to operate a forklift, he in turn was kind enough to drive his forklift out into the parking lot and help us maneuver our load back onto center. We thanked him profusely, and bought several additional ratchet straps, and tied down our load once more. 

By this time, the sun was setting. Although it had been a long day, we decided that now wasn't the time to cut corners, and so we started to do a full safety check before we hit the road again. The ratchet straps were tight. The trailer was still securely fastened to the truck. Running lights- check. Brake lights- check. Left blinker- check. Right blinker- che-- No right blinker. Glad we had thought to check these things, we started to disassemble our duct tape mounting system for the trailer's electrical adapter. Having had such problems getting the thing attached in the first place, we assumed that our current predicament must have been caused by a loose connection to the adapter. But once we confirmed that the 4-Pin portion of the adapter was firmly attached to the truck's 4-Pin socket, and the right blinker still didn't function, we grew more concerned. 

It was about quarter to 9 by this time. We were fortunate to find that just up the road from the Home Depot there was an AutoZone that was open until 9 o'clock. We jumped into the truck and drove to the AutoZone as quickly as we dared. As soon as we were in the lot I jumped out and ran into the store. They locked the doors behind me while Sam parked the truck. I bought several pieces of electrical equipment from AutoZone, but the only one that ended up being useful was a tester kit. This kit confirmed our worst fears: the adapter and truck were working just fine, the problem was in the trailer end of things. If it had been a problem with the truck's electrical system, we could have called the U-haul roadside assistance number and they would have handled it. But since it was a problem with our trailer, we had no such back up. 

Now, if we had been thinking intelligently, we would have realized that it was late at night, we were both tired, and that the best thing to do was to check into a hotel, spend the night, and tackle the problem in the morning after a full night's sleep. But it had been a long day. We had driven this load 700 miles, and we had maybe 100 left. We were so close to home that we could almost taste it. So, instead of getting some sleep, we just decided that we'd drive slowly and carefully. The truck's blinker still worked after all, and due to the inverted pyramid shape of our load, you could see the truck's blinker from behind the trailer. So we got back on 95, drove up the coast of Connecticut, and finally reached Rhode Island.

It was just around midnight when we hit the Rhode Island border, and that was also when I started to notice our ratchet straps fluttering in the wind in a way they hadn't been doing before. As we continued, the fluttering became more pronounced. We had already discussed pulling over to check the load at the first exit on 195 in Providence since we knew the roads there, and knew that it was a convenient spot to get a 20 foot long trailer off of and back onto the highway. As we drove over the bumps and potholes in the road on the ramp between 95 and 195, the fluttering progressed to flapping, and we were glad that that we had planned ahead to pull over. All of our ratchet straps save one were as loose as could be. The load was being held on by one, single strap which had managed to keep its tension. Terrified at how close we had been to spilling our SIPs all over the highway and causing a major traffic incident, we tightened down the straps once more, and continued our way, slowly, carefully, the last 50 miles to Little Compton. 

At 1AM we pulled into the drive way. We paused to check the ratchet straps one more time (we had been doing this compulsively since the last nearly catastrophic loosening of the straps in Providence) and snap a quick photo. We were exhausted, but we had made it.

The next day we were able to confirm what had caused our load to shift and our ratchet straps to loosen. The problem was in the blocking that had been used between the smaller roof SIP panels on the bottom and the wider wall panels on top. When we started out on our trip, all three pieces of blocking looked like the one pictured below. However, this rearmost block was the only one to survive the long drive home unscathed, thanks entirely to the ratchet strap placed directly over it. This ratchet strap kept the block in place for the entire journey home.

The middle piece of blocking wasn't as fortunate, somewhere during the bumps and jostles of the trip, it had flipped onto its side. Because the blocks were not as tall as they were wide, this meant that a sideways block didn't keep the ratchet straps as tight as a vertical block, and the load was able to shift when the block tipped over.

The forward block was in the worst shape- having flipped sideways and started to come apart.you can see here that the block is clearly not maintaining the gap between the two portions of the load that it was supposed to. 

Clearly, we were really lucky. While these blocks may work well for shorter trips, they are not suited to journeys of over 500 miles. We should have used solid dimensional lumber from the start, but failing this, should have thought to replace the blocks when the kindly staff at Home Depot were helping us out with their forklift. No blood, no foul, I guess- but still, it's a lesson I'm not going to forget in a hurry.

Windows have arrived!

Picking Up Our SIPs

The third day of our trip was SIP day. We started off bright and early from Culpepper and drove 3 hours across the state of Virginia to the SIPs of America manufacturing facility. I was convinced we'd have trouble loading the SIPs onto the trailer- and had even gone so far as to map out a route from the facility to the nearest Home Depot so that we could go and pick up blocking material if we needed to once we arrived. Fortunately, my concerns were completely unfounded. 

When we arrived at the plant, Jimmy, the owner, came out to greet us. He gave us a tour of the facility, including the incredible machine that's used to cut all the panels to the correct dimensions.  Then we moved into the warehouse where, amidst other projects, there sat our SIP panels!

Jimmy and the guys were more than helpful when it came to loading the SIPs onto our trailer. We thought we were in for a day of heavy lifting, but it turns out that all we had to do was give one of Jimmy's guys the keys to the U-haul. He drove it right into the warehouse (which was nice since it was raining out- the whole way down I thought we were going to have to load up the SIPs in the rain), and they used a fork lift to pick up the SIPs and load them onto the trailer. 

Because we've chosen to build on a drop-axle trailer instead of a deck-over trailer (read more about the difference between the two types of trailers and the implications each one has for Tiny House construction on the Tumbleweed Website) our wheel wells bumped up above the level of the trailer bed. For this reason, the guys loaded the narrower roof panels on first, which served as blocking to get the wider wall panels up above the level of the wheel wells. This gave our load something of an upside down pyramid effect. We had brought a few ratchet straps which had been lent to us by a friend, and the SIP guys augmented our collection with one of their own. 

All told, it took just shy of an hour to get the SIPs loaded up onto the trailer, strapped down tight, and ready to leave- they even wrapped it up in some type of house wrap to keep it dry on the way home for us. Sam and I tried to be useful, but the truth was that these guys were way more experienced at this sort of thing, and all we had to do was stand there and watch. It was really amazing. We kept thinking to ourselves how fortunate we had been to have come across such wonderful people on our trip- every time a challenge presented itself, the help we needed to overcome it was there for us. Before too long, we were ready to be on our way.

We were ready to take off, thinking that we had imposed enough of the kind souls at SIPs for America. But we had forgotten that our trip had taken us out of New England all the way south to Virginia, and- as Jimmy reminded us-

"Virginia is the birth place of freedom, and Southern Virginia is the birthplace of Southern Hospitality".

It turns out that Jimmy's family owns the oldest restaurant in Danville, and he was kind enough to invite us over for a bite of lunch before we hit the road. We were so glad that we took him up on his kind offer! Mary's Diner is a simple place, which serves amazing southern home cooking in an inviting cafeteria-style restaurant. The candied yams were to die for.

"You see," Jimmy confided to us, "I don't think I'm smarter than my grandmother was, so we make everything they way she used to".

It was a delicious meal, and we couldn't have asked for a nicer lunch. We  got to relax, eat some great food, and talk more with Jimmy, who is a fascinating character and just and all around nice guy. All too quickly we were finished and it was time to get on the road. We thanked Jimmy one last time for all the help, and set off North. We would stay in Culpepper again that night, and in the morning we would start driving back to New England.

Not in the Planning Stages Anymore!

So, it's official: We are no longer in the planning stages of our Tiny House Build! The first part of our actual build is complete: We've picked up our Trailer and SIPs and drove them back home! It's a long story, so I'll tell it in a few parts. First up is The Story of How We Got Our Trailer.

Sam signs the sales document, and the trailer is officially ours! 

Tuesday morning we woke up early to get our U-haul pickup truck from the rental location and drive it all the way our to Chambersburg, PA, where we would pick up our Tumbleweed Trailer. We arrived in Chambersburg late in the evening, checked into the hotel we had booked (about a mild away from the trailer dealership), and settled down for the night.

Wednesday morning we got up, helped ourselves to the complimentary hotel breakfast, and drove over to B-wise Trailers around 9 o'clock. It was my hope to  be on the road to Danville, VA (the place where our SIPs were made) with our trailer by 10, but that wasn't to be. When we got to B-wise trailers, we found to our dismay that the 4 Pin to 7 Blade adapter we had purchased to connect the U-haul's electrical system to the trailer's didn't work! This electrical system controlled the brake lights, turn signals and running lights on the trailer: without them, there was no way to to the trailer safely through traffic. (We also discovered that the truck we had rented wasn't wired to connect a trailer brake system- but our sales rep from B-wise said that there wasn't much we could do about it, and that if we drove slowly and carefully we'd be okay without them). So we had to get the lights fixed: even if by some miracle we didn't get into an accident, there's no way we could get to Virginia and back to New England without getting pulled over for not having working tail and brake lights.

Fortunately, a quick Google Maps search showed a nearby U-haul dealership, and so a few minutes later we were pulling into it's parking lot with defunct electrical adapter in hand. There was a middle aged man sitting behind the desk, with a well worn name badge identifying him as Lenard*. He had black and grey hair down to his shoulders and a rough southwestern drawl. He looked at me while I explained the problem we were having.

"Oh- I know what's wrong, alright," he said, reaching out to take hold of the wires protruding from our adapter. "You got to connect the ground to the frame of your truck, or else you don't get a complete circuit", he waved a white wire in the air in front of me. I signed with relief: that sounded like an easy fix.

"Can you help us do that, then?" I asked. Lenard looked at me seriously.

"So, are you askin' me to modify one of our vee-hickles which I am not s'posed to do?" Something about the way he spoke made the statement not quite a question.

"Oh- no, I don't want-" I started to backpedal. Lenard signed.

"Well let's go see what we can do," he interrupted, standing up from behind the desk and heading for the door.

It took Lenard about 15 minutes to get the ground wire secured to the frame of the truck.

"Now," he cautioned us, "be sure to take this out before you return the vee-hickle." Adding "and just between you, me, and the wall, even though you can tow your load without trailer brakes, if your trailer is rated to have 'em, and you get into an accident without 'em- you are lie-a-ble. Their lawyer will own you." And, with that ominous advice in our ears, we set out back to the trailer dealership.

Back at B-wise Trailers we found that Lenard had been right, and that with the ground wire in place the adapter did function. We had brake lights and turn signals on the trailer. We did not, however, have running lights and a quick investigation showed us it was in fact a problem with the U-haul's 4-Pin socket, not our adapter. This was both a relief and a worry: On the one hand, since it was a problem with the truck's electrical system, it was U-haul's responsibility to fix it and we wouldn't have to brake any rules to get it done. On the other hand, who knew how long it was going to take for U-haul to get the problem solved?

It was already 10:30, and Danville was a good 5 hours from Chambersburg. Even if we got on the road within the hour, we would still only get to Danville 30 minutes before the SIPs manufacturer closed at 5, and that just wouldn't be enough time to get the SIPs loaded onto the trailer. We would need to make some adjustments to our plans. While Sam called U-haul's Roadside Assistance number to find out what we should do, I called Jimmy, my contact at the SIP manufacturer, and told him that we wouldn't be able to make it today. Jimmy was extraordinarily nice, and said it would be no problem to meet us tomorrow instead.

It took Sam 30 minutes of navigating U-haul's automated Customer Service line to get on the phone with a real person, who told him to go to the nearest U-haul center, so at 11 o'clock we drove away from B-wise trailers for a second time, head back to Lenard and the U-haul center.

Lenard was as helpful with this problem as he was with the last. As we started to describe our trouble with the running lights, he broke into our story saying, "Oh- that's just a blown fuse. Lemme change it out for you. I'll charge it to the truck." It took him less time to change the fuse than it had to attach the ground wire, and in almost no time we were back on the road to B-wise trailers.

I smiled sheepishly at the woman behind the reception desk at the trailer dealership. "Third time's the charm," I said. She told me that Sean would be out with us momentarily. He was, and this time when we hooked up the trailer, all the lights worked. We firmly duct taped the adapter in place just beneath the truck's bumper and Sean went through the basics of how to hitch up a trailer, how to perform safety checks, and gave Sam lots of good driving advice.

It was around noon when we pulled out of B-Wise trailers for the final time, waving a goodbye to Sean as we left. It was too late to get to Danville, but fortunately, that wasn't going to be too much of a problem. We had planed to leave Danville around 5 that afternoon, and so had booked at room at a hotel Culpepper, VA which was about 3 hours north of Danville. As it turns out, Culpepper is about 2.5 hours southeast of Chambersburg, so we decided to just drive there from B-wise, extend our stay to include a second night, and we would drive from Culpepper to Danville and back the next day. With that plan in place, we drove to Culpepper, checked into our hotel room, and enjoyed a comfortable afternoon and evening there. The next morning, we would hit the road to Danvillle.



*This gentleman's name has been changed, however no other aspect of this story has been falsified.

SIPs Are Ready!!!

We got an exciting email from Joe Coover today: photos of our Tiny House! It's ready to go! We're going to be picking it up next week, and I'm really excited. I'm also really nervous. There's a lot of things that Sam and I don't have any experience with (towing a trailer, loading the trailer, towing the loaded trailer... okay, mostly towing and trailering related), but I think it'll work out well. Anyway, here are our photos!