Day 650 - It's not up to code

BPO3 is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220 CRZ mill or one of many Foley hydraulic options, go to TimberKing.com. Dog hair gets on everything. It's on this wood, on this piece of OSB. It's like the dog shed, and just cover the world. You're okay. You're okay. You didn't lose the belly. I need one more piece. Okie dokie. All right, so inspections and building this up to code. I'm going to address that in just a second, but I was hoping to spray the insulation today. I've got most of it unpacked sitting on that table. Unfortunately, the cans aren't warm enough to spray. I think we can get this environment, this room up to an appropriate temperature to spray the insulation, and as soon as the insulation starts going on the wall, the heat will be a lot more maintained in this space, obviously, but the cans, they have to be a certain temperature before I can spray them, and I haven't been able to get them up to temperature. I think I've got something rigged up to where they will actually get up to the 68 degrees that they need to be so that we can spray tomorrow. All right, I've got two 1500 watt radiant oil heaters, and both of those, they're on two separate circuits here running wide open. Thermostat set as high as it'll go. Just keep going and keep running up my electric bill for the next day or two. Heat rises, so I got them hitting this box, right? This box that I nailed up here and put a bungee on, and it's pushing all that heat underneath this table, and all the cans are right there on that table. Heat rises, that's going to warm these up. I was hoping to do this like I said today, but they're not quite up to temperature just yet. It's looking good, like they will be up to temperature tomorrow, so we should be good to go to start the insulation tomorrow, which I'm super excited about. So to address the elephant in the room, and I don't mean Percy. Some of you may get that reference. Anyway, is this building, is this shop, what am I standing inside? The apartment. Is this up to code? Am I going to pass inspections? No, it's not up to code. I probably, I have no idea if it is or isn't. Some people in the comment section says that it's not for XYZ reason. Am I going to pass inspections? I don't have to worry about inspections here. This property, just from a reference standpoint, is essentially treated as say an off-grid cabin in Alaska. I'm not subject to building code. I'm not subject to an electrical code, and I'm not subject to the fire marshal coming in here and signing off on anything. That being said, I still want to do things safely, but I have the freedom to do as I wish, and experiment, and try new things, and try and figure some stuff out. What's the whole point of the building code? The whole point of the building code is to protect the consumer and protect people regarding safety. It's not to mandate that you build a certain way. It's about safety and protecting the person, because think about it, right? You want to hire a contractor to build a brand new house. Well, that's a big investment. You want that house to be up to standards and whatnot. However, this is a us. So, we're doing things that we think we're okay with. I've looked at so many different scenarios, and we're okay with what we're doing right now. Regarding the electricity, is it safe? Yes, it's safe. I know how to calculate voltage drop over distance, and how to calculate the load and size wire needed. Size wire, there's a little asterisk there. I know how to calculate and figure out the size of the breaker for the circuits that we're running. I'm very comfortable and confident in my ability to figure those out on the front end, get the job done, and then also test everything that I have done to make sure that nothing crazy is going to happen. I tried to max out what I think we're going to be using on these circuits. No hot wires, nothing to be alarmed of. I tried to overload the circuit by running two 1500 watt heaters on each one of these circuits, and just as expected, the circuit breakers trip because I'm purposefully overloading them. So, I'm testing everything. Nothing's getting hot. Everything, like I said, is done to the best of my knowledge and ability, and I feel safe that I've done a good enough job to live in this space for just a little while. So, again, not subject to an electrical code. All risk lies on us. Well, me. I'm the one doing the work. So, there's electricity. About that 10 gauge wire that I used. A lot of people, 10 gauge is overkill. Yes, I know it's overkill. I had a whole 250 foot roll of 10 gauge, and I didn't want to come out of pocket and need to buy anything if I didn't have to. So, I was like, you know what? It is kind of overkill. It is actually, there's no kind about it. It is overkill, but I think it could still be done in a safe manner, and I can use what I have on hand rather than spending a bunch more money on another roll of wire. That being said, now that it's done, I regret that decision. I wish I would have bought another roll of 12 gauge wire simply because this 10 gauge stuff was just an absolute bear to work with in these receptacle boxes, and I was frustrated and said a bunch of choice words I should not have said a couple times just trying to manipulate these bigger wires. And, yeah, I think I learned my lesson there. Don't cheap out on using something that you've already got even if it will check the box. Just go get the stuff that will probably be better for you to, for me to install it. So, again, I think everything's safe. I tested everything to the best of my ability. I don't see any signs of danger with electricity. So, there's that. Now, this framing situation. Is the framing up to code? I have no idea, but you know I do know how to calculate the load requirements for the ceiling joist above for storage above it. I do know how to calculate, or I did calculate, how many, what size joists are going to be needed for the bathroom for the weight of a full bathroom tub. 16 inch joists on center. Windows and doors with headers above them. Appropriately sized headers above each one of the windows and doors. An appropriate sized, I guess you could say, header above the trap opening into the bottom of the bathroom area. There are some things in here that probably don't make sense to someone who is a professional home builder. This is another thing, like I'm not a pro at doing any of this. This is the first time I've done stick framing. I'm learning a tremendous amount. I'm not afraid to put myself out there, and if I make mistakes, I try to own up to them, and most, more importantly than that, learn from them. And there's that. So, about the only thing that's kind of really goofy about this whole build, I think, everything is pretty much standard stick framing, but the only thing that is kind of sort of goofy is the the flooring in the bathroom. So, when I designed this this apartment in SketchUp, now again, I have no frame stick framing experience. I'm not a contractor in that regard. This is all new to me. I'm just trying to learn as I go and do the best that I can with my very little experience, with the help of some other people who have more experience than me. So, when I designed this in SketchUp, I made four stem walls for the bathroom. Then I did the floor joists and rim joists all the way around it for the floor of the bathroom, which is the same perimeter as the perimeter of those stem walls, and then a full deck on top of that. And then I had the four more walls in SketchUp design to go on top of that, and that would give me essentially a box on stilts, essentially, for the bathroom. That would give me my overall height. Then I would use that overall height to build the full height walls that are the rest of this apartment. That's what I had in my head and as I was thinking as far as how the project would go. When my help arrived, we talked about everything and talked about, well, we're not under, we're not subject to code, so we can do things a little bit differently if you want to speed up the beginning process versus, you know, the final stage processes of the bathroom. So, what we ended up doing instead was we built all of the perimeter walls and dividing walls full height at that point and stood everything up. And at that point, we could essentially build a floating floor inside the bathroom area. So, is it up to code? I don't know. Like I said, is it still safe and appropriate to last? Appropriate. Is it still safe to do everything that we needed to do? Probably so. I think so. I'm confident that it is. So, what we did is we put two by fours horizontally on the studs, attached to the studs, so that way we had a mounted platform to lay all of our joists. So, all of our joists were laid on top of those horizontal two by fours mounted to the studs, and then secured, the joists were secured into the side of the stud. So, the studs essentially go into the walls just a little bit. Then the decking was laid on top. Now, when this is all said and done and the walls are done and it's all going to look the same, whether we did it the way I had it designed in SketchUp or the way we did it just because trying new things and speeding up the initial process, it's all going to look the same at the end. But there are some details that are slightly different. For example, because I didn't build a wall on top of this floor, I don't have a sill plate right there to secure the bottom of gypsum board or sheet rock, right? I'm not going to screw sheet rock. There's nothing there, but that's okay because I knew from the beginning going into it that I was going to do a horizontal solid wood shiplap or v-groove siding throughout the whole apartment, even the bathroom. So, I don't necessarily have to have one right there. Something else that it allows us to do is on the inside of that cavity a couple inches down below is blocking left and right. So, when I do the foam insulation, when I do the insulation, it's going to go down under the deck of the floor by two or three inches and have a right there. Does that really matter? Probably not, but that's what we did. That's what I did. It's a little bit of an experiment. So, yeah, I keep iterating this once again. Is it up to code? No, it's probably not up to code. Is it okay? I think it's okay. I'm making calculated decisions here. It may look a little bit differently, but in the end, it's all going to function the same. Speaking of function, one of the cool things about putting myself out there and discussing all this stuff and people yelling at me and telling me I'm doing things the wrong way, which I'm okay with, there's a lot of really, really good valuable feedback that I very much appreciate. For example, this trapdoor down here isn't like, it's not to the point where it's 100% irrelevant, but it's nowhere near emphasized for me anymore because my plan was always to just pop through there and scoot off to the other side for the water shutoff. But I don't know if you've noticed that box right there. A gentleman suggested looping the water supply from where the shutoff valve is to this door so that way it'd be much easier to shut off and just pop the door open, shut it off. But if I was to loop it right here, that would be 12 feet this way, 12 feet that way. That would add 24 feet to the system before it runs through anything else. So instead, let me, actually, I'm just going to climb up here. So instead, I looped it up right here. The water comes out of the cement right there. So I looped it up two feet. There's the shutoff and it goes right back down two feet into the rest of the system. So essentially accomplishing the same thing, but now I don't even have to open up that panel down below. That panel down below is just going to be for installing the plumbing. And if I do have a leak, I can work on it and access everything. But I no longer need to access it to shut off the water. I can shut off everything right here. So the goal is to insulate around this, figure out how much I can spray foam in here to do some of the installation. And when I do underneath the floor, I'm probably going to spray up underneath this board right here and spray as much as I can around that. But anyway, I'm going to have probably a panel with a handle and some magnets. Something simple and easy that says water shut off on it so everybody will know where it's at. And then right here in the bathroom, you can get rid of that panel and immediately shut off the water to the entire shop right there. That is way more convenient than what I had in mind and such an awesome and super great suggestion from the comments. So thank you so much for that. One final thing that I did, I just didn't want to overload the bathroom when the heater's running plus Jamie's curling iron or the straightener. It's just, I just didn't want to do that. I don't care what, you know, how goofy this looks with two receptacles here. But what I ended up doing is running a second, I'm sorry, a third circuit dedicated. This is the only thing on this one particular circuit. I did this earlier today and added another GFCI right there. That way the heater can be plugged in here and now there's no worry whatsoever of whatever Jamie happens to be using like a hairdryer or something while the heater is going. So this may not be used hurriedly at all. If we ever get many splits in here with the heat pump, I don't know, but hey, it's there. And yes, that is a different color. That's ivory. That's white. That really does bug me, but that's one that I had in my toolbox. I installed it. It'll get the job done. And when the time comes, I definitely will swap that out for another white one because that's going to bug me. It may even bug me that I've got two side by side. I don't know, but hey, it is what it is, right? I know someone's going to mention that. This again goes back to me and my help were rattling off all kinds of conversation without focusing as much as we should have on what we were doing. And this bathroom is eight foot by 12 foot, but we transposed the dimensions while we were laying out this wall. So eight foot from over there would terminate right here. And that's not where this wall needs to be. That wall needed to be at 12 foot. So we had this extra block right here as the wall was going to go right there. I never cut it out. Just leave it there, whatever. That's going to be totally fine. But I did drill a bunch of holes in it. That way I can squirt some foam inside there as I'm doing the spray foam. Not going to go crazy with it because I still want the foam to expand and cure properly. So you don't sit there and just hold the nozzle in there. Don't throw that out there, right? But you can do a little bit at a time, come back a half hour later after that's fully expanded, do a little bit more at a time and get that done. That's right there. And then I got another one right there for the exact same reason. We were talking and there's a three and a half positive and we went three and a half negative or whatever the case was as far as what side of the stud that needed to be on. So that did the same thing. Again, I'm taking a big risk putting myself out there with all this stuff I'm learning a lot. Like I said, I'm trying to do things safely and I still think I am doing things safely. This is all one big learning experience and one big guinea pig really. Just seeing what works, seeing what doesn't. And I'll learn from everything that we're doing here how much I can do by myself, how much I need help with, what do I need help with, what do I need to avoid and just hire out when the time comes to build the house. So, you know, it is what it is. We're moving on and I'm excited about moving on. However, that's it for today. These cans have to warm up overnight before I can actually spray them tomorrow. And tomorrow is the big insulation day for the walls. Just doing the walls tomorrow.