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!!

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.

Progress Update

So, things are (finally) in the works: A week ago at the Tumbleweed workshop we put a $500 deposit down on our trailer, and this weekend we sent our drawings to our awesome SIP kit coordinator, Joe Coover. He's an amazing resource for us, as neither Sam nor I are Google Sketchup users, and the next step is to make a 3d model of the SIPs, approve it, and send it off to the SIP manufacturers. All of which is very exciting.

We're going to get quotes for our roofing, windows and siding this week, and hopefully I'll talk to Joe more about potentially coordinating the Tumbleweed Trailer delivery to the SIP manufacturers in Virginia, where we'll be able to have the SIPs loaded onto our trailer and hire a driver from UShip to tow it up to New England. This way we'll save on trailer shipping (it's cheaper to ship to VA than to RI) and on SIP shipping (it's cheaper to hire a tow vehicle than to hire a tow vehicle and trailer).