Building/moving to a new home – day 9

I have been offline for a few days while I was general contracting in Floyd. Things are really beginning to take shape and enough other people are involved that the project is beginning to take on a life of its own.

Module239The four modules of our new home are being built bon a factory floor in Rocky Mount, VA. They have progressed to the point where electrical wiring is being installed. One of the nicest parts of having our home built in this way is that we are welcome to visit the Southern Heritage Homes factory and see what is happening.

It is slightly disorienting to stand in one room and look through a doorway to the adjacent room which is a separate module ten feet away. After a few minutes this feeling fades in the excitement of seeing our drawings come to life around us.

The house will be ready to load on trailers for the trek to our home site in about four weeks. That puts the pressure on me to have the foundation ready for its arrival.

We have already widened the half-mile-long unpaved road off the main highway so the house modules can be safely hauled to the home site. The garage/workshop is under construction by a separate contractor and the house foundation has been excavated.

The purpose of this trip to Floyd was to get the permits for constructing the house and to make final arrangements with the contractor who will be pouring the foundation next week. At this point all is well and the foundation should be done and sealed in the next two weeks.

Homesite277aA last few trees are being removed to provide more space around the house. I was standing where the living room will be and I noticed that these trees could fall on the house in a storm. After losing a roof to a falling tree in hurricane Isabel, we don’t look at trees in the same way as we used to. We enjoy them, but at a safe distance! Our new house is located in a clearing in the woods – a big clearing.

For the next few weeks our clearing in the woods will be alive with activity. We have the permits posted and a porta-potty installed, so it already looks like a first-class operation.

I ordered a modern wood stove by Dutchwest to make use of the abundant hardwood available in this area. It is a free-standing unit with 100% outside air supply and a sealed combustion chamber so it actually heats the home without sucking room air up the chimney. This makes them far more efficient and provides more uniform heating.

Fireplaces and older wood stoves have the unfortunate problem that they create a vacuum as they burn so that cold outside air is drawn in through every door and window. The hotter the fire burns, the more cold air is drawn into the house. The net result is that the family spends their time in front of the fire, because this is the only way to stay warm.

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