Update at Eagle View

For the last month or so, we have been doing what seems like a lot of waiting on the Eagle View Project.  In reality a number of things have been happening in the background that move the planning forward, but they don't really show up much in physical progress at the lot.  This post will touch on those things that have actually occurred.  As we mentioned in our last post about Eagle View, we entered into contract with an Idaho Falls builder for construction of a Shop Building or Pole Barn.  We did some planning at our kitchen table and provided those notes and sketches to the builder.  From those beta sketches, we drafted a contract together with the builder, and then the builder completed a set of professionally engineered drawing plans.

Below is our kitchen table sketches that will become our Shop.  Although the sketch reflects a 34' wide shop (add 3' of overhang at the eaves), the contract now reflects a 36' wide (add same eave overhang) by 50' long (add gable ends overhang) building, still maintaining the 16' inside ceiling height.  We plan to be able to park Penelope in there during the harsher weather seasons when we are at Eagle View.  We specified a 1-1/2" standing seam roof metal with field striations at 26 gauge and in the color of Weathered Copper.  The field striations are supposed to eliminate the oil canning effect that can occur with standing seam metal roofs.  The exterior walls will be covered with a 3' Delta Rib metal at 28 gauge in the color of Hickory Moss.  The building will also have a wainscoting in the same metal as the walls, but in the darker color of the roof.  The overhead doors are Raynor commercial insulated doors and are colored Desert Tan, which is a shade lighter than the exterior walls, hopefully providing a subtle and pleasant contrast.  There are three overhead doors planned; the two on the front view seen below at 12' wide by 14' high and a single overhead door on the back at 12' wide by 10' high.  The rear overhead door will be lined up with the front left door so that a pull through scenario is possible.  Currently no gable end vents are planned, rather the building roof will vent through a continuous roof ridge vent.

The left side of the shop will face the future house, and therefore we planned two personnel doors on this left side.  The eave and gable ends of the roof line will all have the same soffitted 18" overhang.  Three each 4' by 2' windows with clay colored trim will be hung high on each side wall.  A seventh 4'x2' window will be mounted on the rear wall.  These windows do not operate and are for the purpose of letting natural light into the shop area.  The right side view that we did not draw appears similar to this left view with the exception of the personnel doors.  The wainscot will appear on all four sides of the building.

We took a cut at engineering a wall section of the pole building shop for description purposes.  The construction technique used here in southeastern Idaho is a bit different from what we guessed.  The building will utilize wet set brackets to anchor the shop poles or 6"x6" columns to the foundation, which keeps the wood above grade and more protected from ground rot.  Rather than use 2"x6" bottom boards they will set 2"x6" pressure treated sill plates directly onto the concrete, fastened down by anchor bolts also set into the concrete slab.  Rather than use 2"x4" Girts, this builder uses 2"x6" Girts hung horizontally between the 6"x6" columns.  Side sheathing of 7/16" OSB will be mounted to the Poles and Girt edges.  That is wrapped with a air blocking house wrap.  The shop floor will be a 6" thick slab reinforced with steel and fiberglass.

Pictured below are the roof trusses which are engineered by the truss manufacturer.  They will be 2"x6" top & bottom chords with 2"x4" webs, all triple laminated. 

The roof will use 2"x8" Purlins hung vertically between the trusses.  1/2" CDX plywood will serve as roof sheathing with a 30# roof felt underlayment.  These professionally engineered drawings are much harder to read than our simplistic kitchen table drawings.  However there were a number of errors in the professional drawings; wrong roof metal specified no roof over hang, no wall sheathing or house wrap, missing 7th window on rear elevation - these were the main things that jumped out at us upon inspection of this engineered drawing.  We are just glad these things were detailed in writing within the contract.  Nothing is easy!

The above gives a fairly good overview of the shop element of the project.  The drawings and plans were submitted for permits last week.  We also contacted the well drilling company to move forward with the well on Eagle View; the permit for which was also submitted last week.  We expect the excavator to start preparing the building pad for the shop next week, and hopefully finish off the main driveway started a few weeks ago.  A septic system and second driveway will follow all that excavation work.

The last thing that occurred recently was our contact with Lower Valley Energy (LVE) for electric service to Eagle View.  We were going to wait until next year to pursue the electric, but decided that we wanted to obtain a meter box now so the shop builder could trim the metal siding nicely around the meter box.  We were previously informed that we would have to obtain the meter box from LVE.  That is why we engaged with LVE now rather than wait until next year.  What we found out is that our desired 400 Amp service will require CT Monitoring.  We had no idea what CT Monitoring was, now we do.  It turns out the CT stands for Current Transformer and this is the method descriptive of the monitoring approach for electric service over 320A here is southeast Idaho.  What this means to us, is that we have to mount a CT cabinet on the side of our shop then the LVE supplied electric meter mounts to that cabinet; in addition all service disconnects must be mounted on the outside of the building for fire first responder safety.  The big deal is that the CT cabinet along measures 3'x4'x1'.  That is one huge box!  That is not going to look lovely no matter what we do.  And so it goes...