What We've Done So Far....

The amount of things to take care of in this process seems staggering, and that's not even considering the actual building the house part.  Here's what we've done so far:

Sewage/Septic - There is no public sewage system where we are, so it had to be a septic system of some type.  I educated myself a little bit on the options and quickly saw that a mound system was going to be seriously expensive - perhaps $15-20K.  A conventional system would be a lot cheaper, and this was where we got our first break.  Instead of being mandated by the county on what type of system we had to have, we qualified for an exception based on the size of the proposed site (10 contiguous acres or more) and time of family ownership (has to pre-date January 1987 - my folks bought the place in 1950).  With this exception we don't have to do testing and can put in whatever type of system we want.  We'll put in something decent that will work for us but won't break the bank.


Roadway Access -Although we're building in a relatively remote location, we thought we'd take advantage of the roadway that was built some years ago to support the gas wells that are on the property.  By doing this we won't need to start from scratch to build a road 1/2 mile through the woods.  The road is decent now, but you still need the clearance of a 4WD vehicle to get back there.  We need to make the road passable for the access of construction vehicles as well as our own normal auto access.  To do this we'll need a lot of rock and some grading done.  This is where we'll probably catch our 2nd major break.  My neighbor Tom just happens to own an excavation company.  He stopped over for a consultation, and said we'd save a lot of money if we could locate a source of stone right here on our farm.  Well, he poked around a little with his backhoe and found enough rock in a location close to the road to take care of our needs - yippee!  No buying and hauling rock from somewhere else!  He also mentioned that since the roadwork will be done before house construction starts that we would have a convenient hole to dump all the excess dirt from the foundation excavation.  I love it when a plan comes together....


Water - we're on the public water system at the trailer where we are now, but it's probably another 1/2 mile to our homesite.  We're leaning strongly towards having a well dug instead.  Growing up here as a kid we had 2 wells for our farmhouse and numerous springs around, so I'm thinking we should be OK with water.  The sewage folks require that a septic system be 200 feet away from a well; my plan in my head is to place the well further up the hill behind our new home to get some distance and to have gravity working for us as well - the septic system would be downhill (slightly) from the house.  We have yet to get line up a well digger.  I wanna see one of those guys come out with the old school Divining Rod and find some water....

Other Utils - I've had preliminary contact with the Electric company (West Penn) & Cable company (Comcast), but have yet to talk to the gas folks (Peneco).  We have a surveyor working on subdividing the property for us.

The Home - Hey, I almost forgot - what kind of house are we putting up?  We started out with the idea of a modular home since they are built out of the weather and look pretty nice.  We'd looked at a number of models and saw something we liked.  It was a cool looking cedar exterior, which would look great in a rustic setting.  We about fell off our collective chairs when they told us the price was about twice the price of the same model with normal siding.
      We next fell in love with the idea of a Chalet style home, which we saw at the lot of another modular home dealer.  It would be great in our wooded setting even if we didn't spring for the cedar exterior look.  I drove by a Chalet style home in our area that had been there for awhile - it looked great from a distance, but as you got close it looked pretty weathered.  I understand that if you keep up on the maintenance that they will weather pretty well, but I know myself, and that's not gonna happen.
      A relative who is in the construction business thought that we could build a house for less than we could buy a modular home.  That got the wheels turning, and we actually started giving a traditional "stick built" home serious consideration.  A friend whom I asked for any thoughts on builders mentioned that their home was built by Wayne Homes.  I'd never heard of them before - I found out that they build homes on your lot and will do some degree of customizing.  Their prices are also surprisingly good.   They were unable to do anything with the Chalet idea we had however, which was probably a positive thing in the long run.  We started looking at their models and decided that we should look at a ranch style home.  Why?  a) We have plenty of room for the spread that a decent size ranch requires.  b) We're in our 50's and in good health, but you never know when steps may begin to present a future challenge.

OK - enough for now.  Next time  I'll talk about our specific choice of home and what we're considering as far as options and configuration - and whatever other developments come up....