Living in an "offgrid" barn while building our dream timber frame home.

Good day everyone,
After my (Part III) post about living in an “offgrid” barn for a year while building our home several folks let me know they’d like to see more on our home build. So, here is the progression of the exterior with the finished product first. Admitedly it may not look like a house for the simple life. We didn’t give up a lot when it came to building our dream and forever home. But, living in a barn without water and electricity service for a year ensured that we will never take it for granted. Also doing a lot of the work ourselves, using our own timber, stone and reclaimed barn wood helped a lot.

We designed a timber frame home and used our own trees to mill into timbers. The walls are SIP (structural integrated panels) They are basically 11 inches of high density foam sandwiched between sheets of plywood. They were built off site and shipped here to be put together like a jigsaw puzzle. They make our house extremely efficient. In fact it is 5x more efficient than standard 2x4 houses. The SIP panels on the roof are over a foot thick!
Once the house was completed we had to do a blower test where they hook up a big fan to the house to measure how much air escapes. The house was so tight that in order to be safe and allow the fireplaces to work we had to add an air exchange unit to bring in fresh air from the outside. Also an 8” pipe for fresh air had to be installed into the fireplace.

A concrete pump truck puts the concrete in the wall forms.

The plumbing was put in the ground/gravel before the floor concrete was poured

Basement framing completed. It's standard 2x6.

Decking on the 1st floor. Getting excited now as we could see the view from the main floor

Dry fitting the timber frames at the shop

The main lodge room timbers are in place! This was the most exciting day!

The house faces Southeast and is designed to let the sun/heat in the house in the winter but to be shaded in the summer when the sun is higher in the sky.The basement walls are poured concrete and we worked to ensure the house was seated down low into the ground so there is no more than one step to the front porch. This was for two reasons: so when we are old it’s easy to get in and out, and so that more of the house is underground to provide even more insulation. It all seems to work out very well together because it takes very little to heat and cool this house even though it’s over 4000 sq ft with a 30 ft ceiling in the main lodge room.

SIP panel pieces going together like puzzle.

From the rear of the house after all the SIP panels were installed. You can also see the detached garage

Timber frame for the deck completed and moisture barrier installed

Wife checking out the view from the deck taken through the opening for what will be a 20 ft door

Getting There!

Stone work getting done on the walkout basement in the back of the house

Stone is done, pavers going in, hardy board siding complete. Deck stairs in progress

Next I’ll post pictures and details on how we finished the inside of the house. We used reclaimed wood from an old barn on the property to build cabinets and the sideboards cut from trees that became our timbers to do a lot of the carpentry work inside. I also used a new product (for me anyway) to finish the basement floor. It is a metallic epoxy that looks like marble.
Other future post ideas are the building of our timber frame greenhouse, and in depth details on our rainwater catchment and solar systems on the barn we lived in. I'll scatter some travel posts in there as well. We have a lot to share when it comes to the trips we've taken.
Have I said how much I'm enjoying Steemit yet?

Don't miss the three introduction posts to see how we got here!
(Part I) (Part II) and (Part III)

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