My Custom Home Build. All done. 061722

CHRIS_WNC

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Hello all.
My wife and I recently purchased a piece of property for our future home site. I wanted to start a thread following along with our initial planning and such.

We picked up 125.1 acres here in Rutherford County, NC. Price was $5300/acre on the start. We ended up purchasing for $3600 in a cash deal. The land is 99% pine on gently terraced terrain and has an active creek and spring head on it. It's very rural. Our current house/horse farm is on 106 acres now, but it is mostly open pasture land and has minimal trees on it. The new property is covered in trees. When we are in the center of it, it is like we are cut off from the rest of the world. We love it.

We have a house plan picked out and have been spending time riding our ATVs through the property looking for suitable sites. Where we are located, there will not be a view of the mountains so it is open game on location. We think we have the area for the house site all taken care of. Our plan is to harvest about an acre of the pine to make a home site. Harvest another 20 or so acres for a barn and pasture and some shooting lanes. And if necessary have the rest of the pines thinned out for future rotational harvesting.

I asked about creating a "driveway" in another thread on here that I slightly hijacked. The just of the answers was to contact the local DOT guys and see what they require. I made a note of that and moved on to contacting forestry people.

The previous owner did not have the property listed as "present use" with the county tax office, so we are going to have to initiate that. My wife's family has a forestry/land management guy that they have used for years. I called him yesterday and he is going to look the property over for me and give me options. We are going to meet over there in a few days and do some walking around. This will be our first experience with selling timber. I'm very curious on how it all works. We'll see soon!

That's the end of my first post. I'll update with new posts and edit the date in the title as things happen.

CHRIS
 
Tagged

DS

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Tagged this as well. Think it will be interesting to follow. Good luck in your new adventure.
 
Good luck and God bless you and your wife. My wife and I are preparing to move into our new home we started the process on in May 2018. Building a house has been one of the most stressful and trying things I have ever been involved in.

Takes a strong marriage to survive building a house!
 
Awesome! My wife and I are in the same boat we picked up 7 acres back in December and are looking forward to building in the next 2 years.
 
Hello all.
My wife and I recently purchased a piece of property for our future home site. I wanted to start a thread following along with our initial planning and such.

We picked up 125.1 acres here in Rutherford County, NC. Price was $5300/acre on the start. We ended up purchasing for $3600 in a cash deal. The land is 99% pine on gently terraced terrain and has an active creek and spring head on it. It's very rural. Our current house/horse farm is on 106 acres now, but it is mostly open pasture land and has minimal trees on it. The new property is covered in trees. When we are in the center of it, it is like we are cut off from the rest of the world. We love it.

We have a house plan picked out and have been spending time riding our ATVs through the property looking for suitable sites. Where we are located, there will not be a view of the mountains so it is open game on location. We think we have the area for the house site all taken care of. Our plan is to harvest about an acre of the pine to make a home site. Harvest another 20 or so acres for a barn and pasture and some shooting lanes. And if necessary have the rest of the pines thinned out for future rotational harvesting.

I asked about creating a "driveway" in another thread on here that I slightly hijacked. The just of the answers was to contact the local DOT guys and see what they require. I made a note of that and moved on to contacting forestry people.

The previous owner did not have the property listed as "present use" with the county tax office, so we are going to have to initiate that. My wife's family has a forestry/land management guy that they have used for years. I called him yesterday and he is going to look the property over for me and give me options. We are going to meet over there in a few days and do some walking around. This will be our first experience with selling timber. I'm very curious on how it all works. We'll see soon!

That's the end of my first post. I'll update with new posts and edit the date in the title as things happen.

CHRIS
Where abouts in Rutherford county?
 
Where abouts in Rutherford county?
Off of 221 on the South side.

UPDATE 060619-
We did some walking around a few days ago and picked out about 23 acres that we want harvested. We just got back from doing a quick walk through with the fellow that is going to handle the timber sale. He is going to set up another meeting next week with a buyer so that I can meet with him and he can look at the property too. I'll find out more next week.

CHRIS
 
I had the meeting with our guy and the timber guy today. They walked the property some and stopped by my work so we could discuss.

He has good availability and quoted what seemed like a good price per acre on our heavily thinned pine stand. Our family friend told me privately that is what he thought the trees would go for. He had some advice on our layout and seemed very willing to work with us as far as cutting boundaries. He discussed payment options (early check if needed, weekly, half-way, or all at the end) that are available for us too. We have a few weeks to go in and put up markers for the loggers and mark out where we want our entry way to go for our house site. . Plenty of time to get it all sorted out. They are going to work using the existing roads that are there with a little modifications and they did offer to cut a 40 ft swath for our entry road before they left. It was a good meeting!

Chiggers still suck! I had to get a prednisone pill dose for my almost 100 bites. If I had the money, I'd crop dust that place with Sevin Dust. lol
CHRIS
 
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Addendum:
I turned 43 in April. I’m now able to say that I’ve had chigger bites! Holy crap. I’m going to soak everything down with DEET before I go out there again.:eek:

CHRIS
That's what that was! I was getting hit on the backs of my knees hard the other day and never saw a thing. I ended up having to take a benadrill myself. Couldn't think of what it could be attacking me.
 
Not a huge update, but the loggers have moved in. They widened the old double track and put down stone at the portions that looked like drainage issues may arise. My wife and I have to mark where we want our home site and pick a path where we want our driveway to go and the loggers will strip those areas for us. It's looking like 25 or so acres of pine is going to be removed. The road was very compacted in when we drove in and they pushed back all of the brush on the side of the road. We can drive all the way in without touching any limbs now! And hauling in our four wheelers will be a breeze with the opened up entryway. :)

Some early pics.
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I spoke with a fellow that runs a landscaping/forestry business about clearing some of the stumps for a pasture. He has a forestry mulcher and a giant remote controlled stump grinder on tracks that he uses. He said that he would recommend using the stump grinder for the majority of the stumps and the mulcher for the pine tops that are going to be left. We can take the tree money and pay property taxes and cover a few days of him working his magic on the land. We're not sure how we are going to have the land cleared yet, but he is high on the list.

If any of you guys know of someone that does similar work, large area stump grinding and mulching, send me their info. I'm open to talking with other outfits.

CHRIS
 
Just saw this thread. Congrats on the land and good luck with the build!
 
Chris, congratulations on your new property and project. Creating your own "slice of heaven" can be quite rewarding and I wish you the best of success as you move forward.

If you don't mind I will share some advice with you that I have learned in over 25 years of living on and building on rural property. First in west Texas, and then in NC.
Lets start with your access road. From the pix it appears suitable for logging, but it's not well suited for permanent access. The reason why is that the way it's built water will flow down the road itself (rutting it and leading to pot and mud holes), instead of in ditches along the side.

I would suggest that you clear at least 24' and 36' would be better. Build a crowned road that is 16' wide with a gentle swell (shallow ditch) running about 2-4' further out. Center to center of the swells would be ideally 24', with an additional 4' cleared on the other side of the swell. Gravel the center 12' or so of road and then plant grass along the remainder of roadway edge and in the swells. You want to build the road so that any rainfall on the road runs immediately to the swells running down the sides of the road. What you don't want is a flat road where water runs along the road itself.

In the curves, radius them gently so that a tractor trailer can make it through them when the road is wet. That means that you may need to make the roadway slightly wider and gravel it across the entire curve.

Here is an example of what I'm describing, but with the exception that I prefer a more gentle swell on the side so as to not get stuck in a steep drop off:

Farm road design.gif

Next, regarding your pastures, if you're planning to have horses in them I highly recommend that you do NOT use a stump grinder. Stumps left below the surface of a horse pasture have a way of rotting out over time and then you have a hidden hole in the pasture that can break a horse's leg. Instead have a track hoe come in and remove the stumps completely, and then a dozer with a root rake attached follow through to grade out the land, remove the roots and ensure that no stumps were missed.

If you're not going to have horses in the pasture and don't mind filling up some holes in 10 - 20 years, then by all means a stump grinder is fine.

Re your home site, a few suggestions. First and foremost, build a pad so that water drains around and away from your home. If you're on a slight slope - great. Be sure to build up some type of slope on the upslope side of the house so that runoff is routed well away from the home. Build your pad up so that water slopes at least 5' away from the house (and 10' or more is better).

Personally I like basements on a home. They provide a safe area in the event of a tornado and typically stay around 55 degrees all year around. The key here is having a dry basement, which means going overkill on the moisture proofing on the outside of the basement walls, and having good drainage system around the perimeter. In a loss of power situation, a woodstove can keep a basement quite comfortable on minimal wood, and in the summer the natural cooling of the earth will keep it quite comfortable.

If you're able to situate your septic field well downslope from the house, then you have the option to install a bathroom in the basement where everything can gravity feed out.

You may notice a common them in my advice, and that is to minimize you dependency on electricity. I've been through quite a few power outages over the years (1-2 weeks or more), and the more that you can do to make life comfortable w/o power the easier it is to get by when the outage occurs (plus you'll save $ on power bills)

You mentioned having live water on the site. COOL! If it's spring source is located at a grade above the home site you can gravity feed fresh water down via pipe to use for drip irrigation systems, continual fresh water for the horses, or to have water close by in the event of power loss.

Downstream from the water source opens up possibilities for electric power generation - whether it is a simple turbine spinning a 12V alternator to recharge a battery bank or something more sophisticated.

I don't know if you're familiar with Nelson waterers for your horses, but they are a great product to use where water pipes (and troughs) tend to freeze. They use the heat from the earth to keep the water pipes unfrozen so energy usage is minimal.

Best of success to you and enjoy your project!

Scott
 
@Scsmith42 , lots of good info. Thanks.

The road that is being used now won’t be the entryway/driveway fir our homesite. The loggers used it since it was an already established double track. We are going to finalize the path in that we want to use and have them clear 20’ on each side of it, so it’ll be a 40’ swath for us to get the road built. We definitely will pay attention to drainage and accessibility with trailers.

We’re still undecided on which way to go with the pasture. It’ll only be 10 acres or so for a few ponies that we aren’t getting rid of. I’m networking with guys that have large equipment and hoping to invite them out after the loggers are gone. The stump/root rot thing with the pines is a legit concern. We see it now with the leftovers from the clearing a decade ago. Have to be careful walking in there!

CHRIS
 
Loggers have about two or three weeks left then they pack up and get out of dodge. They've moved a lot of pine out of there! We have a lot of dirt getting sunshine now ! :)

The pink colored dirt in this photo is the landing that they built...shown in my earlier pictures.
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This is looking back at the landing (in the top center-ish).
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This is looking back toward where I took the above picture. There is an active spring head? right inside the tree line at the top center of this picture. We have seen two active water sources on the property so far. I think there is another one in unexplored areas.
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My wife and I are happy with the work so far. They've been busy the last couple of days cleaning up around there. We're going to let things settle for a few weeks after the loggers leave then start planning work for some heavy equipment. A proper road/entrance will be a high priority and also getting the pasture figured out.

CHRIS
 
Looking great!

One other comment.... if any of the trees that you left behind in the cleared area area oaks, if you want them to stay healthy you need to put a few inches of mulch around them from the trunk out to the drip line, and then 50% more.

In a forested environment the tree canopy allows the soil to retain moisture, so the hardwood root systems are not as extensive as they are in an open pasture. When you clear around them, the soil dries out and the root systems are insufficient to keep the trees healthy, and they will die off over a 3 - 7 year period.

This is amplified when pasture grass is planted, as the grass competes with the trees for nutrients. Mulching to the drip line plus 50% helps retain moisture in the soil so the root system can develop further, and the mulch discourages grass growth.
 
Is that a fish farm next to you?
It appears the soil will hold water.
Is it possible that your spring head could be an outlet from those ponds?
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Looking great!

One other comment.... if any of the trees that you left behind in the cleared area area oaks, if you want them to stay healthy you need to put a few inches of mulch around them from the trunk out to the drip line, and then 50% more.

In a forested environment the tree canopy allows the soil to retain moisture, so the hardwood root systems are not as extensive as they are in an open pasture. When you clear around them, the soil dries out and the root systems are insufficient to keep the trees healthy, and they will die off over a 3 - 7 year period.

This is amplified when pasture grass is planted, as the grass competes with the trees for nutrients. Mulching to the drip line plus 50% helps retain moisture in the soil so the root system can develop further, and the mulch discourages grass growth.
Some of the stragglers in there are "not" pine but I haven't had a chance to really see what all will be left. A bunch of the bigger trees are pine that will be taken at some point. I hope to be able to keep some of the non-pine growing so the mulching will definitely happen.

CHRIS
 
Is that a fish farm next to you?
It appears the soil will hold water.
Is it possible that your spring head could be an outlet from those ponds?
View attachment 147444
That was a fish farm in the past. I'm not sure what the new owners are using it for. They have some small livestock over there I know.
The pictures are a bit misleading. We have the high ground here. The creek and spring both run in that direction. The higher point in these photos is at the landing and along that firm treeline that runs "down" in the photo. It gets lower as it heads toward the ponds.

CHRIS
 
September 29th update.

The loggers are gone! The pulled out their last piece of equipment maybe a couple of weeks ago. Since then, we've received our timber payment and had a couple of quotes on our next phase. Payment for trees was lower than estimated but we still made a few bucks. Total acres cut was estimated at about 23. Our tree check was just under $16k. My wife and I are happy that we had so much land opened up without paying out of pocket on it. So a very nice net win for us. :)

Next up was the estimates for prepping some of the harvested land for pasture and having a driveway graded in. The timber purchaser marked out a nice sweeping path from the landing out to the main road for our driveway to follow. It's still full of stumps though so it needs work. We had one of our larger local earth moving companies out and they gave us an acceptable bid on de-stumping 10 acres and grading and building our half mile long driveway. They are going to dig the stumps and stack inside the wood line and in close ditches and re-grade everything somewhat flat for the pasture. The driveway will end up with 4" of gravel and have proper drainage/crowns/ditches installed. We are very excited to have this next stage started. The company will be out in a couple of weeks. I honestly think that with their equipment they will be done with everything in less than a week. Price will be about $50k for this work.

When the heavy equipment is all gone I'm going to schedule a consultation with a local builder and have them out to look at the property. We need to get a timeline/check list set up for us to follow. Planning our next stages. My wife has contacts with someone that can drill seed the pasture for us. She's going to take care of that part. We want to talk with the builder so that we can figure out what the heck we should do next. We'd like to go ahead and get power out there and maybe start on one of the water wells. We need to see what is going to be required for that. First structure going up will probably be my workshop so we might be able to use that to get permits for the utilities. We'll see.

Immediate stuff on the to do list is : 1.Post the hell out of the property with No Trespassing signs. 2. Installing gates of some sort at the entrances. We already have people driving into the property at night and doing "whatever". I hate trespassers!

Anyway...here are some photos I took with my drone today. These are from about 500ft AGL.

This is above one of the state roads that edges the parcel...looking back toward the cleared land. The path coming up from the lower left is where the driveway will come in. It goes up toward the center of the road and connects into the old logging road. That road goes north for a bit then veers toward the east. The driveway follows that and sweeps south back toward the other small clearing in the photo. That clearing is our prospective house site.
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This is at the north of the property kind of looking back toward the state road. You can see the driveway path toward the top right of the photo. That light colored soil is where the logging landing was. In the photo...from the landing directly to the left will be the line for the stumping and pasture work. Again, in the photo, from that point left and down will be the portion that is getting worked. It'll be a nice little place for a couple of ponies.
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This is from the east looking west back toward the house site, driveway, and cleared land. The pasture will be that part on the right of the landing.
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Better look at the pasture site.
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Better look of where the house site will be. Its at the top center of the clearing.
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That's it for now. I'll try to get some photos of the stumping and driveway work happening. Next update will be soon, hopefully.

CHRIS
 
Have you found any old homesites or clues as to what the land was used for in years past?
Tobacco barns? Old roads? Old fence?
Any indication that the spring may have been utilized?
 
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@Slacker

Nothing interesting yet. There is a place that has a lot of older brick but it was near the old logging trail. I’m not sure if that was a dumping site or not. I’ll get my metal detector out there one if these days.

The land was planted as pine decades ago and its had at least one full thinning done. I’m not sure much of anything will be left after all of that equipment went through.

We are going to clean up the creek banks this winter. We may see some cool stuff when we do that. I just bought a 72” grapple for our 55 hp Deere. I’m going to be spending a LOT of time using it this winter.

CHRIS
 
Before going to bed at night, most outdoorsmen (myself included) get on their knees and thank God above for giving us the following product. Chiggers and those tiny ticks you can barely see love pine forests! You spray your clothes and let them dry before putting it on. I've actually watched a tick crawl up my sleeve, go crazy and die. It will stay in your clothes through about four washes. Be sure to spray your underwear and socks as well.

https://www.cabelas.com/product/Sawyer-reg-Duranon-Permethrin-Insect-Repellent/714807.uts?slotId=0
 
I'll post some recent photos in a day or two. Going to launch the drone again. Haven't done a lot other than having the trees removed, some of the land de-stumped, and having the new driveway built. The guy we chose to seed the "pasture" area has only spread lime so far...but it looked like the freaking moon for a week or so! lol.

CHRIS
 
http://mikeandlisaworld.blogspot.com/p/our-off-grid-story.html

The blog above is an unbelievable story (over 150 chapters) of a husband and wife building a TN mountain home. You MUST read it (and anyone interested in off grid homes). Its pure DIY cabin porn...no its like DIY cabin porn meets 50 shades of freedom. I remember reading this for like 5 hours straight a few years back, just becoming more and more mesmerized at each new accomplishment along their journey. VERY cool.

Let me know what you think after you check it out. Anyway, please continue to share your experience here. I definitely want a secluded rural property at some point and am very curious to the various costs, challenges and triumphs along the way
 
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I'll hit that blog up this weekend. Thanks.

Here's a quick pic of the Xterra I bought to fart around with out with at the property. It's turned out to be really handy for me. This is the main gate now. The logging road has debris spread across it to stop traffic.
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No drone but I took my new gopro out and tried one of the time lapse modes. Let me know if the resolution shows up ok. I can't see it very well on my slow internet.



I drive in from the gate on our newly established road. It veers left at the top of the immediate hill and runs somewhat straight down the hill. Toward the bottom it veers to the right and runs into the old logging road. We had it turn left onto the logging road and follow it around to the opening that you see. We turn right at the opening and follow the road a short ways then turn around. The turn around point is close to the proposed house site. It'll be in that area at any rate. On the way back to the gate, I point off over the destumped acres. That will be where we have the small barn and my shop.

CHRIS
 
Small update, no pictures or anything. Property is looking ok. The pines weathered the storm and nothing crashed down on our driveway.

The update. Our pasture/grass guy wasn't able to get fescue n the ground in the fall after the loggers left, so it has been sitting there with nothing planted. They went out yesterday and scratched it up with disks and dragged the terraces with a giant power pole to smooth things out. Then they drill seed planted millet for a spring crop. Peas of some sort will go in this summer. Then finally fescue will be in in the fall. The field looked good with the terraces smoothed out. My boy and I will head out with my Foreman and a small trailer and start picking up the rocks and root pieces that were uncovered.

Small progress but it fits in with our timeline. We are getting quotes on a steel building for my shop and a small 3 stall barn for my wife. That will be the next phase for us. Shop, barn, and power/septic for each of those. When we pull permits for the utilities we can request a street address. I can't wait for that. :)

CHRIS
 
Blast from the Past!
Things have been very slow around here. lol. I finally decided to add a bit of storage out at the tree farm. I ordered a 40 foot high cube shipping container and it was delivered today. We now have a place to store a grill, some charcoal,and lots of chigger spray.
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Oh, and Google Earth snapped a pic of our dirt before it started turning green again. It's beautiful.
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CHRIS
 
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Another little update. We've been talking with a local GC/Builder about the home build and shop construction. They do higher-end builds, which is what we want, but the cost per square foot was way higher than we were budgeting around. :eek: So we've gone back to looking at designs and will find something with less square feet. It's just the three of us..

The shop I drew up is with their engineer and estimator. They are running the numbers on it. I came up with a simple barn looking shop that will work for me.

In the meantime, we have a survey scheduled early October. They will do the property line and annotate the driveway and the one power pole that is on our dirt for us too. That will help with permitting and site layout drawings. Just over $4200 for the 125 acres on the survey end. Ouch.

CHRIS
 
Another little update. We've been talking with a local GC/Builder about the home build and shop construction. They do higher-end builds, which is what we want, but the cost per square foot was way higher than we were budgeting around. :eek: So we've gone back to looking at designs and will find something with less square feet. It's just the three of us..

The shop I drew up is with their engineer and estimator. They are running the numbers on it. I came up with a simple barn looking shop that will work for me.

In the meantime, we have a survey scheduled early October. They will do the property line and annotate the driveway and the one power pole that is on our dirt for us too. That will help with permitting and site layout drawings. Just over $4200 for the 125 acres on the survey end. Ouch.

CHRIS

FWIW, our contractor, the guy who built an addition to our house a few years ago, is going to build us a deck. He said prices on pressure-treated wood right now is insanely expensive; so much so, we can get Trex for not much more. He and his son build high-end custom homes, he said that those clients can afford the difference, but a lot of people wanting an addition, or a deck, are backing off because of the cost.
 
FWIW, our contractor, the guy who built an addition to our house a few years ago, is going to build us a deck. He said prices on pressure-treated wood right now is insanely expensive; so much so, we can get Trex for not much more. He and his son build high-end custom homes, he said that those clients can afford the difference, but a lot of people wanting an addition, or a deck, are backing off because of the cost.
Yep. He mentioned lumber prices being outrageous across the board. Can't avoid it on the home, but the shop may end up being a full metal building! lol.

CHRIS
 
Lumber cost has gone up big time and it's reflected in new home prices
 
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