@NotBruceZ Buy a safe that can be mounted to the wall instead of the floor.
Most of the things I found seemed to be focused on gun safes. The easiest thing would be to have a big safe and add enough lead bars to make it difficult to move, which goes over my budget. And I am not going to bolt it to a huge piece of steel.
I’ve done a lot of research on this, so I’ve already seen those sites you mention. I was just wondering if anyone here had considered this problem while grinding live poker.
Foam concrete functions as insulation too - roughly the same as regular insulation. Cost of materials is supposed to be lower, though that may well not be true.
Labor will be higher than stick built, but maybe that’s not necessarily so dramatically true for an individual as opposed to a framing crew with just throws walls up so fast.
“Aircrete” is not popular, but there are a fair amount of commercial products that are similar (autoclaved aerated concrete). A professional building crew just doesn’t have the time to let sections of the walls cure for 7 days.
Meh? Houses I see with piers and beams usually have a concrete perimeter. You need something like that so that even a little tiny earthquake doesn’t make it fall down, don’t you?
Not exactly sure where it would be, but could be in the mountains.
I’m sure you’re right about the ecological footprint being better with conventional insulation and wood or steel framing. The concrete construction CO2 emission being not too high depends on the calculation that the structure lasts a long long time, but this is not a building that’s likely to sit there for 300 years.
As far as infestation goes though, it’s not so much the framing rotting - I like the idea of pests (mice and such) not being able to ever be inside the walls.
I assume you’re talking to me and not about the safe.
I mentioned 400sf max, but probably more like 150sf with a loft. Budget is unknown. Depends on if others are interested. The guy I know irl who is has reasonable cash. I’m thinking on the order of a few thousand for the building materials. The land cost is a bigger deal though - even in a somewhat remote area without utilities. It’s not going to be like the absolute middle of the Nevada desert or anything. Seems like you can find spots that seem possible at like $20k+ though.
No, especially not for a small cabin. I’d think your best bet would be to stick it on the ground and not have a foundation at all. I’m not super up on seismic engineering, but one of the more common tactics is to decouple the structure from the ground as much as practical. In a tiny building you can do that by just letting it sit there unsecured to anything.
Would you just lay out some gravel and have like a couple of floating treated boards as the “foundation”? Rail road ties?
I’d probably go pressure treated 4x4’s at 8’ OC with 2x6 joists on top, also PT.
Or go 4’ OC with the 4x4’s and use 2x4 joist framing and it’s one comfortable step up from the ground to the interior.
Thanks. If it happens I’ll definitely be posting a lot about it.
My budget is $200. I was looking at Amazon Basics safes for under $100. Nothing fancy. If I can’t mount one to a wall, I am looking at some options like a diversion safe. Because of other meanings for the word “safe”, it is a pain to search online.
Oh, if you do end up building somewhere cold you’ll want to change that floor design for deeper insulation. Bare minimum of 2x8 with spray foam insulation, or 2x10 with fiberglass batts.
Is that copper? I’ve never seen a copper pipe that big. You Canadians sure are fancy.
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Most of the houses around me that are > 50 years old have copper drain lines to all the fixtures, which eventually transition to cast iron somewhere in the basement.
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that’s too cool!
seen many old, copper drain installations. back in the day when quality was valued. (or other modern materials that do a good job weren’t invented yet)
that type cleanout, though, I’ve never seen. 2 bolts and a gasket secure it and make it water-tight. looks like
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How urgent is this, like can I flush the toilet until I get a plumber here, or do I **** in the woods for now?
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We don’t have basements. Old houses have cast iron drain lines, newer houses have ABS. I don’t think I’ve ever seen copper on a drain line and I’ve been under a lot of houses. I guess you don’t go under houses in Massachusetts. But you didn’t have copper drain lines in Texas, did you?
Not PVC? I hate ABS.
Not in the stuff I usually saw. Too new. I can’t remember ever working on anything more than a few decades old in TX.
IIRC, ABS is recommended (required?) for exterior use because it lasts longer than PVC.
wtr to this guy. I’ve seen horizontal copper drain lines, that over time due owing to the greater stress horizontal conduction of water causes a pipe(of metal composition. don’t know that to be true of the modern plastic pipes), become paper-thin. You can literally poke your finger through the pipe-wall with little resistance. Not sure I’ve seen it on vertical ‘stacks’ drain lines.
If the wall of the old copper drain is no longer strong enough, I imagine a compression-type coupling as seen here (Fernco is the manufacturer and slang. Say “Fernco coupling” and specify the diameter in any plumbing supply house and you good) could deform the pipe under the pressure of tightening the hose-clamp(it certainly can iirc if used on lead-bends. lead-bends are another long-obsolete method the old-timers used that you still regularly encounter in old homes.)
I’d say thoroughly dry the pipe and get some mastic and apply it to the pipe, over which the coupling then slides, then be sure to adequately tighten with 5/16th nut-driver @microbet and torque wrench.
the above is kind of a half-measure, or u could remove a section of the copper pipe, and transition directly from the brass knuckle that you see on either end of both of these 2 fittings pictured here:
The wall-thickness will, in my experience, always be substantial enough, even decades later, to allow for the transition. Also the outer diameter of those knuckles is greater than the pipe, so the Fernco will not noticeably pinch and become conical as you can visibly see in the 1st pic gregogoat provides.
Last option, commit to removing the copper entirely(take it to a salvage yard later for some coin) and transition to the future piping by removing what is received by that cast-iron hub: namely a bit of pipe, lead and oakum.
I’d cut the copper at a point immediately above the cast-iron, then shove a rag down the drain, so that when you chisel all the lead and oakum out, you’re not sending all that debris down the drain.
Lastly, a rubber ‘donut’ gasket can be purchased in whatever diameter that hub is (prolly 4"), and you’re good to go. Fold it into the hub, encourage it in with a 3 pound mini sledge, then apply ‘duck-butter’ to it and file the end of the 4" PVC pipe that it is to receive, so that you facilitate ease of counterpart merger errr
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Dunno, maybe Rivaldo can school us. ime most of the opinions about which is better are based on super dubious reasons. My main one for hating ABS is the cuts aren’t as clean.