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kastein posted:We haven't clipped that one as we both feel it will be more intuitive. That's how mine works from the factory, and it was pretty intuitive, yeah.
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Nov 16, 2021 15:23
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We accidentally derailed my other thread so just gonna bring the latest discussion from there over here now.Leperflesh posted:The Vashon Till is a formation of glacial till. Glacial tills vary in exact behavior, but they're all basically a mix compacted bits of rock and sand, all jumbled together. First of all, thank you very much, I had no idea you had any background in this subject! I'll need to read that when I get a chance, if only so I can understand what my geotechnical engineer writes better. In our case, the geotechnical work done so far was minimal. We had a 6 year development moratorium on the property when we bought it due to the particular permit type the loggers chose. That needed to be lifted before we could do any permit applications for residential construction purposes, including the well. We needed to get the septic location checked and system designed before doing the well, also. All of that (and just applying to get the moratorium lifted for residential construction purposes in fact) required a landslide assessment as the slope in one area of our lot exceeds the minimum. So we had a local geotechnical engineer do that and it came back fine, as expected - the slope is fairly low compared to what I'd expect a landslide to occur on. There is definitely going to be more geotechnical work involved, and yes, I plan to seriously exceed the minimum codes for earthquake safety. I'd very much like the structures to survive an earthquake since I don't feel like building them again, but we'll see. 9.0 is pretty loving big and I'm not sure I can design to truly withstand that. I'm half considering basically building the foundation to withstand worst case point loading so it'll stay intact even if it's only supported in a few places still after the ground stops moving, but that'll probably require a buttfuckton of rebar. Simpson Strong Tie also has some interesting steel construction parts and specialized alibi brackets at this point that are basically designed to be the structure "fuses" so if you get hit by a quake you can cut a few corners open, jack it back into shape and replace just the stretched brackets without having to replace the beams as well. I'm not sure that will work out or be needed for this project but it's an interesting idea. We'll certainly be looking at earthquake insurance.
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Dec 17, 2021 02:27
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Right on. I figured you were doing your usual level of due diligence, lol! I am not a geologist, but I studied geology in university, almost took a minor but decided I didn't want to bother with the math. So I have just enough understanding to get through a technical paper without being too confused. I edited in another bit to that post you quoted, in the other thread - it was a quote from a seattle times article from 1997, quoting a geologist who said the Vashon Till is very hard and compacted and a lot of Seattle is built on it. That's encouraging, although obviously not definitive. Part of the deal with the Big One is that even if your structure survives, the infrastructure of the state won't, so you'll still probably have to evacuate since your job, your utilities, and the transportation networks, will all be hosed for at least six months. Plus the horrific death toll on the coasts, etc. etc. I'm not sure how hyperbolic that is, it makes a lot of assumptions, but my gut feeling is that whatever, my interest in a house is in surviving first and foremost, and then keeping my investment intact as a distant second. Building for occupant safety and then having insurance is the least expensive approach: building for building survival is potentially ruinously expensive depending on a lot of factors, so while I just got done saying "do always overbuild", I'd also caution you to beware of pouring vast sums into trying to make a cube of steel reinforced concrete that can survive the apocalypse. Anyway I'm looking forward to the build log.
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Dec 17, 2021 02:50
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Leperflesh posted:I'd also caution you to beware of pouring vast sums into trying to make a cube of steel reinforced concrete that can survive the apocalypse. spoilsport
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Dec 17, 2021 03:01
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In several years people will be wondering why there are no more coil springs in any junkyards in the PNW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU5nFvfCGsE&t=46s
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Dec 17, 2021 06:40
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Leperflesh posted:Right on. I figured you were doing your usual level of due diligence, lol! Ours isn't super hard, at least on our lot. It's fairly easy to dig in with a mini excavator, at least. We're lucky/unlucky on the infrastructure front. Unlucky in that there isn't jack poo poo out here, lucky in that that means if we're not connected to it in the first place we'll already be used to doing without. City sewer? Nope, septic. City water? Nope, well. City gas line? Not within miles, we'll be on propane if at all. City comms? Nothing for miles. We'll be on cellular or microwave point to point. Roads? That does worry me... But we're on a dirt road and have 4x4s. Electric grid? It's going to cost us 30 grand to connect to it in the first place and the power regularly goes out for hours or days, it's extremely likely that we'll be fully set up for solar and generator power so I'm not super worried about that. As long as the house doesn't sink we should be fine... Though we might need to redo those things after a quake now that I think about it, or at least patch up broken pipes and stuff.
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Dec 17, 2021 06:43
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Infrastructure includes things like "can any gas station within 100 miles pump gas" and "is there any prospect of a grocery store being open in the next month" but yeah a lot of that stuff sounds pretty mitigating. Re: hardness, how deep have you gone? The top foot or so has been disturbed for several thousand years by weathering and vegetation etc. so you might find you don't hit hardpan till you go deeper. Or it might not be hard at all, that's definitely also possible.
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Dec 17, 2021 07:04
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True, I should have thought about that since I was literally ranting about preppers not taking that into account days ago. It's fairly weathered at least for 5 or so feet. That's about how deep they dug the soil log pits for the septic design, and it seemed fairly normal that far down. Given how easily the well drilling went I suspect it's the same story for a good ways, but I can't guarantee that of course. I'm kind of hoping it'll be hardpan about, oh, 8 feet from surface, though.
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Dec 17, 2021 08:56
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Galler posted:In several years people will be wondering why there are no more coil springs in any junkyards in the PNW I was actually going to ask if anyone here had any idea of how feasible roller systems are for houses (presumably with slab foundation or basements since rollers wouldn't make any sense for post and beam). By feasible I of course mean cost. Is it something where if you did want to go total overkill you could justify it, or is it gonna be $500k added on to any house build because right now it mostly seems aimed at giant commercial buildings?
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Dec 17, 2021 23:18
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I don't know about rollers necessarily, but the broader category is "base isolation" or sometimes "seismic isolation" and yeah as far as I know it's not available for SFHs, yet, but I see a fair amount of recent articles and promotional stuff promising it any day now. e.g., https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/125734835/prototype-base-isolation-system-for-houses-can-stop-earthquake-damage and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KazUH9xpi-0 These are both in New Zealand and they're using much cheaper but still very effective base isolation techniques (not rollers). IMO it's awesome, but also not really necessary. Foundation-up design principles exist (e.g. https://cdn.ez-pdh.com/course-material/CV502-Homebuilders-Guide-to-Earthquake-Resistant-Design.pdf ) that get you all the way to "survivable" for the occupants" for even very severe earthquakes, and then insurance is probably a lot cheaper than the cost of trying to make a one-story one or two thousand square foot timber built residential house survive an 8.0+ (or really a 7.0+) without major damage. Check out page three for an illustrative photo: https://peer.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/peer2019-05_ssc19-01.pdf That house is obviously condemned, but nobody inside would have been crushed to death, at least not by the structure failure (a bookcase can still kill you, strap your bookcases people) But I'll repeat I'm just some rear end in a top hat who read some textbooks in the late 1990s, so don't take my word for it. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 08:17
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There's no accounting for what can happen if one of these mega quakes does strike. The kind of devastation possible is almost beyond comprehension. Same with the historic mega volcanoes. Shudder. But most of the time building a residence to survive a 9.0 is gunna be a pointless waste of money. "Not killing you" is the goal. Weird poo poo happens though:  ~50 year old timber frame concrete block and weather board house ON TOP of a fault line in a 7.8 quake. Thrown 8m sideways. Occupant unhurt but "visibly shaken". That quake, Kaikoura 2016, 2 mins long,25 separate faults went, caused 10,000 landslides, seabed thrust 5.5m up in some points, land ripped 8-10m sideways, damaged modern concrete office buildings 200km away beyond repair. Some routes took more than a year to reopen.   Sorry if this is a further quake derail but poo poo's interesting. Another disaster related question though, do you have to deal with wild fires? I'm a city boy so don't know poo poo about wells, can you pump a fire-fighting amount of water?
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Dec 18, 2021 11:52
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If the earth decides to move beneath your feet nothing man-made is going to stop it. You can only try to live. Strap your bookcases, tie a pair of shoes to your bed or put them in a drawer you can physically reach from the bed. For wildfires the focus would be on defensible space around the habitable structures. You wouldn't want to be pumping that water out of the ground in real time but holding it in non-potable reserve tanks. It might even be something that could be easily filled through rain capture if that is legal.
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Dec 18, 2021 16:40
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Calling a earthquake victim "Visibly Shaken" is top tier news writing.
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Dec 18, 2021 17:09
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H110Hawk posted:For wildfires the focus would be on defensible space around the habitable structures. You wouldn't want to be pumping that water out of the ground in real time but holding it in non-potable reserve tanks. It might even be something that could be easily filled through rain capture if that is legal. Obviously getting the gently caress out is the move regarding large fires, but I was thinking anti-fire design/construction methods, and if some kind of soaker system would be feasible to help chances of having something to get back to. But on that last line, do you mean to say it can be illegal to collect rainwater?
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Dec 18, 2021 18:19
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BuckyDoneGun posted:But on that last line, do you mean to say it can be illegal to collect rainwater? Absolutely. Water rights west of the Mississippi are wild. Rain barrels capturing water from your home's gutters can be considered stealing from the downtsream water rights holders.
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Dec 18, 2021 18:23
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Yeah. It's rare, though, and also more or less unenforceable, and nobody's going to care unless you're doing it at a huge scale. Building a structure that can withstand a wildfire means all-masonry construction, though, and that's a bad idea in earthquake country unless it's steel frame, and that in turn is hideously expensive, and we're back to mitigation (defensible space, keep your land maintained), appropriate roof material choices (mandated by code out here for decades), make sure you have more than one way out (see: Paradise fire), and be properly insured. Maybe also make friends with your local volunteer fire fighters in your rural area. Hell, maybe volunteer. Another thing you can do if you have a bigger chunk of land is actually conduct your own controlled burns. My wife and I know a guy who has around 20 acres in California, he made friends with his local firefighters, studied forestry controlled burn practices, and does small burns in the winter after it rains a lot. You have to schedule them, so the fire dept. knows when and what and how, and inform all your neighbors, and have a crew, etc. but it's not impossible to do and it could lead to your patch of land not having an intense burn even if an otherwise-intense wildfire intersects with it.
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Dec 18, 2021 19:18
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah. It's rare, though, and also more or less unenforceable, and nobody's going to care unless you're doing it at a huge scale. This is kastein we are talking about here.
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Dec 18, 2021 19:21
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I imagine it is regional but where I live in the PNW municipalities have incentives/grants for rain water collection here, summers are only getting drier...
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Dec 18, 2021 19:35
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I don't mind this kind of discussion at all tbh, it gives me stuff to think about when planning. Our well tested to be good for up to 50gpm draw. I don't know what type of fire suppression system will be needed but due to climate change it's only going to get worse, so I have been considering it even though I suspect I can avoid needing it per the code. From my research it seems like rainwater collection is legal and even encouraged as long as the structures were not built specifically for that purpose, ie I can collect rainwater from my roofs and roads that were built to be roofs and roads without any issue but if I start building things specifically to collect rainwater I need to get water rights and permitting and such in place for it. We'll probably collect rainwater off the roofs for irrigation, fire suppression, and runoff mitigation purposes if I'm right. I looked at putting together a water tower to have static water pressure but it looks like we'd need something like 150 feet of head to maintain normal pressure without a pump, so that idea is out. Currently debating a two stage system (lift pump in casing, bladder based pressure tank feed by aboveground pump with a high limit switch at like 150psi and low limit at 80 or so, regulator from there down to 60psi or so) so that we have nice constant pressure instead of having the weird low and surging water pressure that my in-laws place has. That's likely next on the actual construction list as we hope to have the RV out to the property very shortly and need a functioning well sooner rather than later. Good thing we just got the generator out of storage I guess.
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Dec 18, 2021 21:00
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I know about those bizarre laws where you are a criminal if you collect rainwater…they could come enforce that over our cold dead bodies here don’t know what people put up with that
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Dec 18, 2021 21:03
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everdave posted:I know about those bizarre laws where you are a criminal if you collect rainwater…they could come enforce that over our cold dead bodies here don’t know what people put up with that Water rights are, like, one of the fundamental challenges of civilization. If you're downstream of someone else, do they have the right to consume all of the water that you would normally have access to? Usually, the answer is "no". But enforcement of that decision ends up manifesting as a bunch of really weird-looking laws that, at their root, are intended to ensure that people don't consume so much water that their neighbors run dry.
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Dec 18, 2021 22:44
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Water rights are, like, one of the fundamental challenges of civilization. If you're downstream of someone else, do they have the right to consume all of the water that you would normally have access to? Usually, the answer is "no". But enforcement of that decision ends up manifesting as a bunch of really weird-looking laws that, at their root, are intended to ensure that people don't consume so much water that their neighbors run dry. Except it's been corrupted. Replace people with corporations, and it makes more sense why it's a poo poo show now. Nestle can extract millions of gallons of water while down the street people's taps run dry. Why? Number must go up! sharkytm fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 22:52
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Usually, enforcement consists of regulating retailers. If you aren't allowed to advertise and sell rain barrels, it'll be a lot less common for people to have them. Another one of those cases where only the hardcore have one and they're negligible. Colorado basically supplies water to almost everywhere, so rain barrels are restricted and everyone knows it.
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Dec 19, 2021 20:47
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Man, I knew there was some wild poo poo out west, especially with California, the Colorado River etc, and hell we have some problems here too, but gently caress me, what falls on your roof is yours.
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Dec 19, 2021 22:51
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Controlling how you can use the.water on your land is not fundamentally different from all the other ways the government restricts property rights. I'm sorry for all the people who were misled into thinking that a land title or deed confers absolute ownership, but it doesn't, and never has. Restricting water catchment is no different than restricting number and type of structures, setbacks, mineral rights, animal husbandry, maximum building height, and a thousand other things. Also as kastein already said, it's fine, he can legally catch his roof runoff etc.
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Dec 19, 2021 23:33
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Anecdotes aren't data and certainly don't replace proper Geotechnical engineering, but my house is built on 50/50 hardpan clay/the shittiest, sandiest most subsumable glacial till ever. It was also built to no codes by drunk morons, near a much steeper grade than exists on your property, and it's survived 5 6.0+ tremors in that time period. That being said I'm probably hosed in a megathrust earthquake type scenario, if I don't end up in Puget Sound, there's a good chance I end up with a hill on top of me. Either way, Washington has pretty stringent seismic building codes, and I'd be pretty comfortable in a home that meets them. Simpson has a lot of really cool technical information about all their anchoring systems, I read their PDFs a lot when I was trying to figure out the whys and wheres of earthquake tie downs. From my experience digging, Seattle's brand of glacial till is massively different from out here on the peninsula's, it's rock hard clay shot with an absurd amount of stone, this article by the City of Seattle seems to back that up. Obviously a well put together document  I should buy my buddy an account, he's a construction manager and has been rebuilding Santa Rosa in the aftermath of the wildfires they had there a few years ago, apparently there's some really cool ecologically sound and earthquake resistant cast-in-place masonry building techniques that are being used in CA now on high end homes, along with sprinkler systems being mandatory on SFHs there now. I love all the discussions on these topics in this thread, my whole construction related education is from "big man says put steel here" trades types or self taught, it's really enlightening reading stuff people with actual education in the area have to say. E: the two stage well systems are really nice, I had one in NY and the water pressure was amazing. My current setup is a 3 stage 1/2hp centrifugal pump with about 50 gallons of pressurized storage fed by city water, and that provides constant pressure to 5 houses, I looked up installation costs awhile ago and all the equipment for an overkill setup like that is only a few thousand, installation looks dead simple. Elviscat fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Dec 25, 2021 |
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Dec 25, 2021 08:13
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A few more things to fix but today I knocked out a couple that were high priority, since the rain is finally abating. I repaired the traps on both the bathroom and kitchen sinks in the RV (they were all leaking badly) and finally got the ten rusted screws holding the clearance lamps onto the back of the RV to turn. Why is that important you say? The clearance lamps were full of water and leaking it down into the structure inside the rear endcap. Which is not good. So I removed them (never had ten self tappers in fiberglass break the tips off two demo drivers and a regular screwdriver before... Holy poo poo) and replaced with actual waterproof LED ones, well sealed to the body with dicor. And used stainless screws this time, so I should be able to get it back apart again without this level of frustration next time I have to mess with it. Remaining important things to do before moving to our own property: - build well pump house and install well controls - fix water level sensors in fresh, grey, and black water tanks - ideally get a bit of solar power set up out there so we don't have to run on generator on an average day (this will mean retrofitting most interior lights with LEDs, which we want to do anyways) - add gravel to the driveway so it doesn't turn into a mud hole after we start driving on it daily
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Jan 22, 2022 09:50
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Kind of excited to see just how sturdy this pump house ends up being.
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Jan 22, 2022 12:46
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Arrath posted:Kind of excited to see just how sturdy this pump house ends up being. I'm assuming fortified bunker.
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Jan 22, 2022 13:40
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EVERYWHERE 
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24" of reinforced concrete for the walls and 36" for the roof should suffice, right?
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Jan 22, 2022 15:33
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Mill the entire thing out of a single block of aluminum.
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Jan 22, 2022 16:25
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Honestly it's a temporary one since the well controls will be moved into the air compressor room in the barn as soon as it's built, so probably just a few 2x4s lag bolted into one of the remaining stumps near the well with a plywood equipment panel and pressure treated plywood roof over it. I'm not even sure it'll get fully enclosed. It doesn't have to last very long and the budget is still nearly non-existent.
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Jan 22, 2022 18:18
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sharkytm posted:24" of reinforced concrete for the walls and 36" for the roof should suffice, right? Now envisioning Ken touring Normandy, staring at the German bunkers for a bit, and going "well if it were me I would have added ten more feet of ultra-high PSI concrete on each side, these guys clearly didn't have a clue how to build properly."
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Jan 22, 2022 20:15
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Arrath posted:Kind of excited to see just how sturdy this pump house ends up being. I know of an old house out east that some nutter reinforced, could probably drag that pile of wood west and use it to store a well pump.
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Jan 23, 2022 06:52
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I wish everyone except the inventor of polybutylene pipe a good evening Went to replace the hosed up 28 year old leaky bathroom and kitchen sink faucets in the RV. I am sure those of you who have experienced the wonder of plumbing are expecting what happens next. So first I unscrew it all and the 1/2 NPS (not NPT... NPS... this will come up soon) swivel fittings on the plastic water lines to the faucets lose their gaskets. Half crumbled to nothing. Half were jammed the gently caress in there and I had to pick them out with dental tools. I go to replace the gaskets and zero companies sell the correct gaskets or I didn't know the correct search terms. So I bought the ones with the right OD but the wrong ID. My punch set is 3000 miles away so I order a 3/8 punch on Amazon and it arrives today. Punch the centers out, massage them slightly with a utility knife, insert, hook the bathroom sink up. Go to hook the kitchen sink up and it turns out the old one was a 3 hole 8 inch set and the new one is also a 3 hole 8 inch set but all the pipes go through the middle hole because it's a modern fancy designer fuckin thing instead of the old two knob style. And this thing was built by junkies armed with staplers and caulking guns full of seam sealer, not plumbers, so they used ZERO shutoff valves or flex whips and piped directly to the swivel fittings. So one pipe is 4 inches too short and the other is 4 inches too long, and they're not flexible enough to just wing it. So I buy flex whips, but they don't come in 1/2 NPT male to female at Lowes, so I end up with 1/2 FNPT to 3/8 compression and a 3/8 compression to 1/2 MNPT (yeah...) 90deg adapters to make it work. Try to screw it all together and guess what? The MNPT adapters split the NPS swivels down the side. Because faucets are loving National Pipe Straight thread not National Pipe Tapered. I had no idea we used straight pipe threads anywhere in the country still but here we loving are in 2022 doing that still. So off to Lowes to get new ones and some PEX to fix it. Wait, why does this grey PEX say PB on it? What the gently caress is polybutylene??? And that's the story of how I ended up learning about lovely plumbing we don't use anymore because UV and chlorine eat it alive, and that zero companies make polybutylene fittings anymore, except for PB to PEX adapters, so I bought some of those, some crimp rings, and some shut-off valves and now it is all back together. It only took like 4 Lowes trips, an Amazon order, and two days, not bad. If you have polybutylene pipe in your house or RV, expect it to fail at some point if you have chlorine in your water. It apparently eats that poo poo alive. I guess this RV was mostly run off wells and unchlorinated water supplies because it looks undamaged on the inside but I have redoing the entire water system with PEX on the list now for the restoration after we build the barn.
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Jan 25, 2022 05:59
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Pb in your plumbing always ruins your day.
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Jan 25, 2022 07:05
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H110Hawk posted:Pb in your plumbing always ruins your day. 
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Jan 25, 2022 08:38
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H110Hawk posted:Pb in your plumbing always ruins your day. Guess I really buried the lede on that one
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Jan 25, 2022 11:53
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In my day job we call that "the fittings game" where you try and make fitting x adapt to fitting y with an increasingly bizarre set of adapters. It's no one's favorite game. E: I've only ever seen NPS in electrical conduit and some weirdo specialty fittings that use face-sealing Teflon gasketed washers. Elviscat fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Jan 25, 2022 |
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Jan 25, 2022 14:26
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My parents bought a doublewide several years ago that the home inspector said on his report was plumbed with PEX. There was one leak underneath during the inspection period, which the sellers paid a largeish local HVAC/plumbing company to fix, and nobody there mentioned any potential plumbing issues either. Sure enough, about a week after moving in, another leak sprung in the laundry room, and a plumber FROM THE SAME COMPANY came out and immediately said "oh yeah your whole house is clearly plumbed with polybutylene which will continue to fail. it all needs to be replaced." They ended up spending about $3500 to get it all done. I talked to a lawyer for them, and he said my parents would have a great case to bring forward in small claims court against the inspector/prior owner/plumbing company (I guess you can bring them all into it and the judge will assign fault levels to each), but my parents were worn out from the whole moving process and just paid the bill and called it a day. tldr gently caress polybutylene
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Jan 25, 2022 18:50
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