Simple Mortgage Free Cabin Build Pt 1: Foundation Pads - YouTube

all right this is going to be the first video  of the mortgage free simple cabin build series  

you're going to get to see me build this  20 by 32 cabin that my girlfriend and i are  

going to be living in this is my third cabin  build will be my fourth if you include the  

tiny house that my girlfriend and i  are living in while we're building this  

but um this is pretty well researched you know  trying to keep price down as much as possible  

keep it as simple as possible because of the price  of lumber now you know it's just outrageous so  

but i built a log cabin in remote alaska north of  fairbanks and then i moved home built a log cabin  

in remote northeast minnesota by the boundary  waters and uh that's where a lot of my videos  

you know you see me there and then now we're  building this one here so and this one's pretty  

close to my log cabin so going forward for those  of you uh new um you're gonna see you know we'll  

be having our life here with our homestead you  know gardens some animals and stuff like that  

and then of course i'll be at the log cabin a  lot during the winter so um anyways i'm gonna try  

to go into as much detail as possible on how we  build this not saying this is how to build a cabin  

this is how i'm going to do it i'm not a master  carpenter by any means i'm not even a carpenter  

but like i said i've built a few now  so um and this method here is like i  

said pretty well researched on keeping the  cost down because i think we all like that  

so uh stay tuned if you want to follow along  watch this build i'll do it in a series that  

way it's easy to follow kind of step by step and  uh for those of you that are going to be building  

a cabin in the future or just like watching i  mean feel free to use any of this information  

if you want to but of course you know once we  get this thing built uh future videos are going  

to be me and my girlfriend living here and uh  you know just kind of real reality no no drama  

you know there's enough of that won't be using  sierra as click bait uh to get you to click on my  

videos here so uh just kind of real reality  you know like i said just no drama added and  

just kind of how it is so um if you guys want  to follow along you're going to get to see the  

you know the cabin build of course like i said  and kind of get to watch us create our dream  

from scratch here on raw land so stay tuned  if that interests you and i appreciate you

watching

well sierra and i got our foundation pad so  we we're at the point where we're hauling  

we're hauling material over to the build site we  have 15 of these concrete pads they're about 80  

pounds apiece and i know in my previous video  i mentioned i was going to do sauna tubes we  

decided to go with this method instead i think  it's going to be a lot better for our application  

here and it's a proven method that works well in  our area so that's what we're going with but like  

i said there's 15 of these and i'll get into how  this foundation is going to be built pretty soon  

here all right sierra and i got our four corners  marked out you can see we got a stake in all four  

corners some lines going here we're uh right on  and square so i can start laying out our pads  

and these pads are gonna hold up the three  beams so we'll have one on this outside wall one  

down the middle and one on this outside wall and  there's gonna be a pad every eight feet supporting  

these this beam or each of these beams and they're  gonna be uh three wide two by eights so they'll  

be spliced together each seam will be resting  on cinder blocks which will be on these pads so  

that is how the beams are going to be laid out  and then we'll build our floor on top of that  

so i got some of this all-purpose  gravel at home depot and  

we have some class 5 on the property already  and so we're going to have a good solid 4  

to 5 inch thick base of class 5 packed  really well and then this on top of that  

about four or five inches of this as well  and then our pads will sit on top of that

all right we got our these green x's indicate  where each of these pads are going to be going  

so right now we're just going to  move some material get it get a pad  

next to each x and a couple  bags of uh that good gravel  

and um that way everything's prepped  and ready and we can just start flying

all right so you can see here we're starting to  dig these in it's probably really hard to tell but  

um we have pretty hard clay where we're at but  we've dug down a little bit and right here we  

have about four or five inches of class five  and then this will go on top of that class five  

and the pad will sit on top of that so it'll  be a good base and your base work is really  

important you know i worked with asphalt all last  summer and uh if your base isn't right i mean your  

product's gonna fail you know you have a soft base  that's when tar cracks you know same as concrete  

so your base works really important to get  it perfectly level and packed really well

well it's getting dark pretty fast here so  i think sierra and i are going to call it  

for the day but this is just for demonstration  purposes so you can see these pads will be sitting  

on um that gravel we still have another big to  add on this one but um we have the gravel base  

all done on this side the class 5 base that  we still got to add this other gravel and  

all that and then we started getting some  of these dug in here but we ended up running  

to home depot tonight earlier in the night to get  15 more of these bags of all-purpose gravel so  

tomorrow we should be able to get these all  in i would think if everything goes smooth  

i don't know if you guys can see this tree  here this is the only one that is in our way  

right now and it's not going to be in our  way for a while we'll be able to get all  

the pads in and everything because this  one down the middle here goes next to it  

so uh we'll be able to get this all done  and get our beams built and everything and  

get them on our pads and then at that point  we'll be able to transplant this one here  

i really want to save that one because that's  one of the bigger ones we have to transplant it  

looks like it's going to be a really nice  tree so i do not want to waste that one

all right well we're starting day two  here we only worked on this for probably  

a couple hours yesterday because we  were hauling materials all day but  

um i started on the the middle beam here getting  these pads uh situated this side over here is done  

um it's got class five and all those um i still  gotta add the bags of gravel here though but um  

i think i got eight more to dig out like this and  then i'll add class five and then we'll add this  

all-purpose gravel and start  leveling these out with each other

sierra just had to run into town because last  night you know we keep our food out here because  

it's a little cooler of course so we could hear  something underneath the cabin on wheels here um  

all night you know i would bang on the walls and  scare it away and it would come right back about  

five minutes later i don't know it's probably  a skunk or a fox or something but um i kept  

looking out the windows and stuff you know with  my flashlight trying to figure out what it was  

but never saw it and then um and i did i wasn't  going to go inside because you know if you open  

the door just a crack skeeter's a wizard at  getting getting outside so and if it was a  

skunk like i said you know i don't want them  getting sprayed so um anyways i thought it was  

pretty funny but we got robbed stole our buns for  our brats and i think sierra had some cantaloupe  

and a couple other things but yeah those are all  gone i've walked around tried to find them and  

can't find them so whatever it was took them  but i guess that's living in the woods you  

know the uh the animals steal your stuff not  people but anyways i thought that was kind of

funny

so pad one's level and now we've  gotta level them all with each other  

so i'm gonna start in one corner  here i'm gonna level off all these  

so they're all the same height and  all level and then um i'll work my way  

shooting out the sides here and there's gonna be a  lot of adjusting and you know triple measuring you  

know so um it's a tedious game but um i don't know  once this part's done it gets a lot more fun but  

this part's like i said by far the most important  here's how i'm getting these pads leveled here um  

i got an eight foot board it's exactly eight  feet and it's a really really straight board  

so um it makes a good straight  edge and i get the pad level here

now if we come up a little  bit on that one edge the hair  

it's like i said it's just a tedious thing it's  pretty good this way and then now i know these are

level to each other

i got to drop this one here down just a little  bit because this has to be exact and if you're off  

just a little bit even like you know  millimeters from here to there but then  

you keep doing it this way then you're  going to be way off by the time you get  

to the last pad so you got to make sure  all these are 100 level before you go on  

and um like i said it's not the funnest  thing in the world but it's important

and as you can see i got a lot  of them to do so if i can get  

this accomplished today i would  consider that a pretty good win

but i'd say these two of these first two  here probably took me 30 minutes honestly  

but i'm kind of starting to get a  system down now so it should go faster

so you can see those two bags  give me a pretty thick base here

and i just kind of get it roughly level with the  

level here it's kind of  using it as a edge you know

so you can see i just use this eight foot board  here cut it exactly eight feet to make sure i'm  

in the center of each pad and i just eyeball it  um it doesn't need to be a hundred percent exact  

but it's got to be pretty darn close because  i'll have cinder blocks on top of these now  

and when i build these beams they're  going to be two by eight spliced together  

and each one of my seams i want  them to land on one of these pads so

that way that splice is landing on a pad

all right guys there's the completed cabin  footprint right there all these pads are level and  

square to each other um some of them might be just  a little bit turned you know here and there but  

um we'll adjust those when we put the beams on  but the center to center they're all perfect  

so this part went well it's my least favorite  part and we can get on to some more fun stuff

now i want to point out this because i almost made  a big mistake here well not a big mistake i would  

have realized it later later on and then it just  would have been a lot harder to correct uh when i  

you know measured the way i laid this out was 20  foot from the center of this pad to the center of  

that pad and um the reason that wouldn't really  work very well is because you know my beams three  

boards wide so um i would have had about this  much of my beam sticking out past my rim joist  

and there wouldn't have been very much uh my  floor joists wouldn't be resting on very much  

of the beam so i had to account for the width of  the beam you know and move these in a little bit  

so now my beams lay right on the middle of these  pads and then the rim joists will come up flush to  

the outside edge of that uh my beam so otherwise  the rim joist would have been sitting like  

in on the beam like like center on the  beam and then i would have this much of  

my beam sticking out which would look  dumb and wouldn't have been as good so

okay so i have this set up here for  demonstration purposes uh this is day three  

we've started hauling these blocks i can only haul  30 at a time in my little ford escape but we need  

60 so i got to run back and get one more load  here but i wanted to set this up just to show  

you what it'll look like so we have these blocks  that'll be sitting on all of our pads and um  

the advantage of doing it this way rather than  having a continuous poured piece of cement  

uh for a footing is if we ever have to make  adjustments uh this makes it really easy  

you know if we have to jack up the cabin and  adjust something it's going to be a piece of  

cake because it's all individual pieces rather  than having to wrestle a big heavy continuous  

piece of concrete so i think this is the route to  go and then like i said there'll be green treated  

lumber on top of this um in between our beams and  the concrete because you don't want your beams  

sitting on concrete because of moisture issues so  this is what they'll look like when they're done

and i have to add that i would not recommend this  type of pad foundation for a real large building  

you know this is a smaller building it's just a  few hundred square feet so um it'll work just fine  

for that but if you start getting into larger  buildings then i would probably go a different  

route than this it's supposed to rain like an  inch later on today um i probably got about four  

or five hours before that starts and i think it's  going to rain the next couple days so i probably  

won't do the beams but i'll probably start those  saturday i'm thinking so and those won't take too  

long that should be a day to get those kind of in  place and just kind of triple check and everything  

and then then we can start getting the material  and get our floor built so next to video after  

this one will be those beams and maybe starting  on the rim joists and floor joists and all that

so i've started laying these  blocks on top of the pads

like so and as you can see we're perfectly level  

so this part of this of the process is  turning out good so far but this gives  

you an idea of how my beams will be sitting  on here you know the full length of course

but yeah so far so good well it started raining  pretty good so me and skeeter had to come take  

shelter in the shed but uh you guys pretty  much get the gist of it how those uh pads work  

and um and all that so like i said it'll be  a piece of green treated wood on top of those  

and then the beans and i should have that  video for you guys next week so things have  

finally started uh but thanks for watching and  we'll see you guys next week on the next video