The Pier Foundation

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Pier foundations are very common on cabins, outbuildings, and smaller homes, and are ideal for a number of reasons:

-The site does not have to be previously graded.
-There is less overall foundation work when doing piers . . . less cost, less labor.
-The building is elevated above the ground, and so the framing remains dry, especially when the area beneath the building is left open via a lattice, rather than permanently enclosed [think crawlspace].
-Plumbing and electrical can be put in after the shell of the building is up, and are easily accessed and altered at any time - a great help for amateur builders, who are usually winging it, and building as money comes in.

Two websites were key in the design and layout of my piers. They are BUILDING A CONCRETE FOOTING FOR A POST OR DECK, and AN EASY TO BUILD POST AND BEAM FOUNDATION. I did a lot of research elsewhere, but these two articles I specifically printed out and took with me up to Tennessee. And it was following these foundation designs more than anything that started me building a more conventional post and beam cabin rather than straw bale.

If I were following my original straw bale design I'd ironed out over the winter, all I needed was minimal piers (we're talking sauna tubes) for the posts to hold up my roof. Between the post piers would go the wide perimeter rubble trench foundation which would take the weight of my heavy straw bale walls.

But once I went down the path of building huge 16"x16" piers, all 6' apart, I began to realize that if I'd just stay with lightweight stick-framing, this was all the foundation I'd need. The thought of continuing more foundation work after I'd gone through the arduous labor of building 12 piers (the digging of a huge perimeter trench and infilling of gravel) was not a pleasant one. This project was about speed, low-cost, simplicity . . . it wasn't about reinventing the wheel. For someone with no prior building experience, just a little stick-framed cabin was challenge enough (of course I complicated everything by going post and beam - obsessed with keeping all of the weight directly on the piers - I do everything the hard way).

And as a sidenote on strawbale - I couldn't find it anywhere locally for a decent price. It rained nearly every day through the spring so keeping it dry would have been problematic. The only bales I could get readily in abundance were from Lowe's, and the quality was so poor they could never have been used for building. They were half as dense as the year before, a complete rip-off [and $4.50 a bale].

When the cabin and barn are done, I do intend to use alternative building techniques for the passive solar home. But I think the best candidate so far is dirt rather than straw. Our Tennessee soil is so clayey, that my excavated dirt from the footer holes cured into rock in the intense sun in a matter of days. I think if we added sand to it and found the ideal ratio, we could have some killer adobe, or use rammed earth or earthbags, some more monolithic technique. That is a building that would truly be low-cost and endure.

On top of the footers covered in my last post, went the concrete block:

I used mortar between the courses where I needed extra height for the pier - skipped it where it didn't. I kind of miscalculated here. I didn't realize the first course of block goes down in a full inch of mortar, I figured it would be a standard 3/8" joint. So there were a few blocks I had to trim down with the circular saw to keep the pier from getting too high. Other than that, everything went smoothly.

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Here's a shot of the worksite, with the two types of piers - footers cured within a form, and block above the footer:

The block will later get infilled with concrete.

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Here's a closeup of one of the piers after I'd removed the form:

I then backfilled it with earth so water drains away from it, and doesn't pool around it:

Here's a form removed . . . a true rig-job:

On top of the pier is bolted the large 2x12 treated sill plate:

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This idea was the product of a long discussion on the subject with a fellow homesteader up in the Catskills of New York. The reason for the large plate is so the massive tripled 2x10 25' girders have plenty of room to be positioned, so I can get the framing for the floor square. I also liked the full contact and distribution of weight the plate provided for the girders - the thought of a little post anchor and getting it in just the right spot (also the outrageous cost - $18 per connection) was odious.

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The only negative to such a large sill plate would be if it were permanently exposed to the weather it would be a perfect seat for water and ultimately rot. But these plates will be entirely covered by additions and siding.

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Here's a shot of the plates in, where the piers top out closest to grade:

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Patty comes up to stay with us a week, and so we a take a little break from building.

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We take a trip over to the local sawmill for sawdust for our composting toilet. A guy there says their incinerator is down, so they've been filling a trailer with the dust instead of burning it. He says a bunch of it spilled and we can go get all we want for free. It's a major score - there's a mountian of it - and it's so much easier to get than digging around their saws inside!

I fill up 5 doubled 30 gallon bags - that's all the room we've got:

We buy some apple trees from a local nursery. We get a Rome, a Grimes, and a Granny Smith. The Granny Smith is covered in flowers, and the Rome even has little apples! And the trees are tall and only $10 (online they're so much more expensive, and shipped bare-root).

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Here's the Granny Smith, which we plant up with the other apples, near our wild crabapples. We're hoping to someday have a productive orchard:

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Here's a Georgia wild peach we picked up to cross-pollinate with our purple-leaved flowering peaches:

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The girls have a lot done on their doll village . . . a post office, theater, school, a salon I think:

Here's a shot looking down from the apples:

It's Easter and we have a real Easter egg hunt. Patty's brought all kinds of sweets which we stuff in colored plastic eggs, then hide out in the grass.

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Here the girls are checking out their Easter baskets, while Mishka wonders where his is:

Here they're out looking for eggs . . . a perfect spring day:

The harvest:

I think Rachael found one more egg, and one is missing:

Frozen Head State Park is about a half hour away from us, and we take a trip over for hot showers. Remember Frozen Head from last year, the place we climbed 4 miles to the top and found a spring and all the cherries and wild apples? Well the trailhead has a small building with free hot showers, truly incredible. And they are very well kept:

It's such a luxury to bathe in hot water . . . so much better than the cold pool.

Patty and the girls are working on getting the garden going, tilling and planting lots of seeds. Patty has sown an entire bed with mammoth sunflowers:

Mishka of course is not supposed to be up on the beds.

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And we get a lawnmower:

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When you set out to go back-to-the-land, and embrace Nature, there is no uglier symbol of suburban life than the lawnmower. Ultimately we'll have grazing animals like goats or sheep [a friend of mine would like to see me out there with a scythe], but for now, as hard as our lives are, we need something to make them easier! Last year I mowed a whole 4 acres with a weedwhacker - that's the sort of stupidity I'm trying to move away from. The lawnmower not only keeps the grass down so we have room to walk, and with that keeps down the bugs like ticks, it also brings in a much-needed cover material for our humanure composting - grass. Why buy straw and have it trucked in from Nebraska when you can harvest the same thing right from your yard? I call the mower our 'cover-material harvester'.

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Here's the center chamber of our bin filled with the most nutritious stuff on earth - weeds and grass, ready to be turned into compost:

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My book on Humanure emphasizes over and over the need for thermaphyllic bacteria in the composting process, which needs hot temps to exist. Try putting your hand into the middle of a pile of cut grass after a few hours - it's almost on fire!

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We'll see how it works though. It's got the high temps, but can have a matting effect and cut out oxygen to the pile if overused. So it'll be trial and error for a while. I think in the end, no matter what, after a full 2 years the compost is going to be solid gold - if we waited only 1, not necessarily.

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I continue working on the piers:

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The low piers are done, and exactly in line:

The girders will run between the bolts.

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Here's a shot of some higher piers, built up with block, infilled with concrete, and later to be covered with surface bonded cement for extra strength:

Patty and the girls are still gardening. They've got big plans, and are planting almost 7 beds (each bed is 30' x 6'):

And for now, below is the last picture I have of the next 2 months of building the cabin - it's the site at evening, the piers almost completed. Hopefully Patty can find these missing 200 photos somewhere, so I can continue posting:

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