Jackson Bradley

For this size cabin, if you are sure about the location, the concrete piers would work as suggested. If you are not sure about location and will have a tractor, you could build it on skids.

You can ask the internet what the frost depth is in your area and dig your piers in to that depth. If it were me, I would have the lower joist system at least 18" from the ground to the lowest part of the joist system.

You could use sonotubes and have them extend out of the ground to that elevation and set your floor system on top. No matter what you decide, I would make sure there is a transition from the piers to the floor system that can be accessed/unbolted/unfastened.

The reason I mention the transition and the 18" is because if there ever is an issue, you can get under the house, with a small bottle jack, and relevel the house.

If you decide to not leave the space under the floor system, you can use a hi-lift jack from the outside to accomplish the same thing. I have used both methods to relevel conventional houses.

Both methods are very easy to do. Knowing you can fix any potential issues that happen over time will give you some peace of mind. This way, you don't need to feel the need to come up with a "perfect" solution.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Meaning that the endless pursuit of flawlessness can often hold us up from taking action.

Ra Kenworth wrote:I try not to waste any shells at all, but I boil a lot of eggs and unless they are promptly dunked into cold water and peeled right away, the egg sticks then it needs to go in the compost.

I like to use the oldest eggs we have (from our chickens) for boiled eggs. They peel easier.

Also, I do not do an ice bath. I boil them and then put the in the fridge for 24-48 hours before I try to peel them. It works just as well as an ice bath if you can plan ahead. maybe the ones that you feel didn't get dunked fast enough, put in the fridge and try them a day or two later and see if that worked.

thomas rubino wrote:Hi Jackson;
The location does not matter at all.
The entire cabin, including all the many additions, is evenly toasty warm!
They absolutely were not with the old metal wood burner.
So far this year, we have burned less than a third of a full cord.
We constantly have windows cracked to let in fresh cold air.

Thank you for the info. That is great!

Thomas, how does this do in the corner location? I see that the old metal stove was there originally.

I have seen some in the middle of a large open area, like Glenn's https://permies.com/t/238503/Batch-Rocket-Build

Judith, we've found there are some factors other than wood chip depth that will determine if the grass will come up through the chips.

Wood chip make up/size, the amount of rain we get and if the grass is dormant.

If we apply a 8" layer of finer chips (less than 1" in length/diameter) over dormant grass in late fall or winter, with no cardboard underneath, there may be a little grass pop up here and there but nothing a little weeding can't manage. The amount of rain we get seems to also have an impact. The more rain, the more likely to have to do some weeding of grass that will pop through. That same 8" would not work, without cardboard, when the grass is growing unless it was tarped first to slow the growth of the grass.

If the chips are larger, 12" seems to work about the same as the 8" of finer chips over dormant grass.

6" seems to be adequate on bare soil.

Keeping chickens has made the biggest difference for us.

We keep them in a combined run/coop with rabbits and have ~12"-~16" of deep litter. We bag and add all of our grass clipping and fall leaves as well as any extra mulch to their area. I remove some of the material in late fall or early spring and age it. Then it gets spread over the regular garden beds and raised garden beds.

It took about a year for the magic to happen in the deep litter, it didn't look like much until then. I turn it with a garden fork regularly to speed the process up and keep from getting any hard pan areas. It is a somewhat labor intensive process at the times where I am harvesting the material or turning it. Otherwise, the chickens do everything.

A close second would be mulching every area we could, as we had the time. I think those 2 approaches work well together.

For context, we normally like to have 22-25 hens for eggs, and a rooster or two. We also hatch eggs and tractor those to butcher but the only contribution they make to the deep litter is what I move from the brooder into the coop/run after I move them to the tractors.

I have seen where some people will build a lightweight portable tractor and move it around their garden bed after the season is over. They put a couple of chickens in it during the day and move them back to the coop at night. I have not had time to try that yet.  

Carmen Roth wrote:How is this temporary? For a temporary location?

The fencing will come apart in a couple of minutes, the loose ends from where I cut it are just twisted back around the other end making the circle.

Stack the wood and then spread the dirt out. Or move the dirt to a new bed. Done.

You mentioned firewood.

I am experimenting with using 2x4 welded wire fencing, cut to 24" height. I have 1/2x1/2 mesh at the bottom due to the proliferation of moles here. You could omit that if you do not have issues with moles.

I lined the outside with ~20" oak splits and filled it in. I am on my second round of planting in it and it looks like I should get many seasons before the wood is broken down. It'll be easy to dismantle and rebuild.

150" length of fence yields QTY-2 48" circles at 24" high. The 1/2x1/2 mesh I had was 48" tall so I wanted to do 48" circles. I plan to do more over the winter and when I split rounds, I will keep this in mind and cut some into rectangles verses triangles to make filling them in easier, if that makes sense.

I had all of the materials on hand so the cost was only what I previously paid for the fence and mesh.

You could increase the size of the splits and fence to get to 36" or 48" height.

Christopher Weeks wrote:double down

That is a tough habit to break!