New House!

One of the rewards of selling the business and retiring that we’re looking forward to is a new house.  An actual NEW house (we’ve never had one that no one else has ever lived in) and one that, for reasons that I will try to make clear, is OUR house.

We don’t live a “normal life” in that most houses have too much or too little of what we want or need.  We started to look for a “retirement settlement” more than NINE YEARS ago.  We knew we wanted a smaller home with an open floor plan and a decent kitchen on some acreage.  That last part was critical – where we live now I can stand in our living room and look into our neighbor’s kitchen – and turn 180 degrees and look into our OTHER neighbor’s kitchen.  And we’re right next to a busy street (literally no front yard so our front room is about 12 feet from the street – we hear everything).  So some space apart was needed.

In looking for houses on acreage, we found old homes, huge homes and absolutely nothing even close to what we wanted.  We knew that building would be too expensive, so…we decided to buy bare land and build.  But we also decided that we could build modularly and get more of what we wanted AND save in the process.  So nearly four years ago we found the ideal two acres in Warren, OR (near St. Helens and Scappoose, about 30 minutes from Portland), and began the process.

THAT process took longer than expected, cost more than expected, and still isn’t complete, but as I indicated a few days ago – it’s at an “ATTA BOY” point that’s worth bragging about (I will bitch about the process in a future blog).  The house was completed at the build site in Auburn, WA taken apart (two modules), and delivered to our home site in Warren for attachment to the foundation that was built earlier this fall.  The “set date” was last Tuesday (which as you’ll see extended into Wednesday) and I took a bunch of pictures and video.  We’ll get to that in a moment.

A bit of an overview:  Day 1 was for delivery to the site, where the modules are unloaded from the transport trucks and left on site (not on the foundation – yet).  A second crew came on the next day with a “crawler” that moves the modules next to the foundation, where the crew “slides” the module in place with special metal tracks laid down on top of the foundation.  There had been some concern that setting the house this late in the fall would be problematic since (a) it rains a lot and (b) our property has a water issue (in that it doesn’t drain well and we have a lot of clay which, when wet, gets very muddy).  But fortunately this fall and winter had been one of the driest on record.  Well, it WAS that way until Sunday, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

The modules arrived from Washington on Monday.  It was a pretty quick trip, only about 3 hours (they took a shortcut recommended by Washington DOT).  We had a backhoe on standby in case we needed to help pull the trucks into place over the property.  Each module weighs 16-17 tons (31,000 to 35,000 pounds), and it was thought that they might get stuck in the mud.  Sunday’s rain wasn’t too heavy, but it was enough to make the grass slick, and we did wind up needing the backhoe to pull the truck and modules into place.

Boy, did we ever.

The delivery on Monday was supposed to take a couple of hours – that crew was here all day, as the wet grass made for lousy traction and extracting the trailers from under the house modules once in place took a very long time.  We expected Tuesday to be about the same, but the rains came again – almost an inch – and this turned the wet grass into a sea of mud.  What should have taken most of the day became a two-day affair simply because getting the modules from their spot on the field in position to slide onto the foundation took forever in the mud.  Amazingly, once in position they slid onto the foundation quickly.  They didn’t get to complete the “marriage” of the two halves until Wednesday (they did it early in the morning before we got there), but once joined together (for all eternity, we hope), things went smoothly.  Given the awful weather, the set crew did an awesome job (I’d hate to be the one to do their laundry).

From this point on there will be finishing work done around the holidays, so it’ll take longer than normal, which is nothing new with this project.  Drywall seam of the marriage line inside, electrical hookup, completion of flooring and painting, finishing the half of the garage not built yet, and we still have the solar installation to wait for (maybe next week?).  We expect that we should be ready to move in by the end of January.  Perhaps.  That’s the plan, anyway.

I started a channel on YouTube for my Modular Home videos – there are five in all

Three are at regular speed and show

•        The backhoe dragging the module through the wet grass on Day 1
•        The first module sliding onto the foundation (the “set”)
•        The second module moving through the mud thanks to the backhoe

The other two show “the complete day” as I recorded it (Day 1 transport and move, Day 2 position and set) but sped up to 8x fast (so it moves quickly).

You can see them here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdk0YlQ-JFnP7KafD0Hpozvof6CedCi8r

If you watch the two sped-up videos, the play-by-play follows at the end of the blog.  Know that I only shot video when something was happening – the reality was a very long day – both days – and there were many dull moments watching the crew talk about what they need to do before doing it (like a football game). 

BTW, I had to delete the audio, as it’s nothing but the roar of engines, rain, and grown men (and one woman) saying fairy inappropriate (and not-safe-for-work) things.

And here’s a picture of the two halves, together again for the first time on the foundation.  It’ll look much different (and better) in about six weeks.  

Weather permitting, of course.

Day One – Delivery Day

• The first module arrives, trying to navigate the narrow driveway of our neighbor in order to get behind the foundation on our property.
• It didn’t take long for the truck to get stuck on the wet grass, as the loose/wet soil made his tires spin (he was also going uphill a bit with 17 tons of house loaded).
• We see the first use of the backhoe to drag the truck and trailer (and house) back up on the driveway, where he could find more traction in the gravel and get into better position.  Moving about 30 feet took about 15 minutes.  Slow and steady wins this race. 
• About a half-hour later the first truck was up the driveway and the second module was almost in its “staying” position at the side of the foundation.
• Module one was able to back into position fairly easily, although we did need the backhoe.  From there the hydraulics of the truck lift the module up a bit so that the blocks can be set underneath, and the trailer pulled out.  THIS is where the backhoe was needed again, as there was very little clearance to get the trailer out from under the module.
• But an hour later both trailers were out and on their way back to Washington.

Day Two – Set Day

• We started out dry.  The module was loaded onto the crawler (which is remotely controlled) and backed into position next to the foundation.  This went pretty well.
• Soon the rain had begun, and it got harder as time went on.  The crew is setting the house on temporary jacks so that the crawler can drive off.  They are also assembling the rails that the house will travel from this point to its final location on the other side of the foundation.  This is actually the easiest and fastest part of the move.  Raining heavily now, and we’re just about to slide 17 tons 27 feet in 15 seconds.
• And here we go!
• Time for the second module to be moved into place, and it’s now raining like crazy.  The backhoe could only pull the module so far before IT was mired in the mud (no traction even with those huge tractor wheels).  So…they locked the backhoe in place and extended the arm, and then PULLED THE HOUSE using just the arm.  It looks awesome in the video.
• Not as awesome – the mud.  Note Willy’s (the foreman) pants – completely mud covered.  Also note that except for Jim, the backhoe operator, he’s the CLEANEST worker on site right now.

Day Three (the extra Set Day)

There’s no video, but the house was put on the foundation but not locked in at the end of Tuesday (too dark and rainy to finish the job), so they actually moved it back a bit today to get access to the protective covers on the inside of each module so they could remove it (white plastic, like what’s on the front of the garage here), then they moved the house back and “married” it to both the first module and the foundation.  Once that was done, they started to complete the setting operation (roofing, bolting the foundation, etc.).  No rain this day, so everything went pretty quickly!