Lessons learned and good advice

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Cascadian

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I thought I would start a thread about new property or improvement nuggets of wisdom and painful lessons.

About 6 years ago we started with our unimproved 14 acres. I guess the first thing worth mentioning is distance equals money. I used to wonder why people who had huge properties build their home right next to the highway. Well now I know, it is because utilities cost more by the foot.

My lesson is if it is a pain in the butt or expensive do it right and do it once. We ran power about 5 years ago ourselves from the meter to the well. It is 250ft. We chose direct bury cable for about $800. Instead of going thru a conduit. More work and about $1200. Well we just ended up redoing it at todays prices. A little over $2000. So now I have spent $2800 on something I could have had for $1200. Lesson learned. I don't usually take such short cuts but I decided to save a little money since we still had to build a home.
 
Some good advice on country property. Go big whenever you can. Our property has an allowance for a second home. So we have always sized everything assuming we would someday have a second residence. This advice was given during septic installation, our first project. We found that is was cheaper to up size during the initial install rather than add on later. It is also easier, only one permit etc. We followed this logic for power also. We had a 400 amp service put in rather than a more standard 200 amp service. I think we got a bigger well pump also assuming irrigation or second home. Yes it is a little more expensive but cheaper than doing anything twice. I have found I only regret going big on the day I write the check.
 
Some good advice on country property. Go big whenever you can. Our property has an allowance for a second home. So we have always sized everything assuming we would someday have a second residence. This advice was given during septic installation, our first project. We found that is was cheaper to up size during the initial install rather than add on later. It is also easier, only one permit etc. We followed this logic for power also. We had a 400 amp service put in rather than a more standard 200 amp service. I think we got a bigger well pump also assuming irrigation or second home. Yes it is a little more expensive but cheaper than doing anything twice. I have found I only regret going big on the day I write the check.
That's all good advice. I've learned similar lessons watching my brother go through a 25 year process of gutting a 1900 farmhouse, room by room, and re-doing it into a very nice modern home. All the electrical lines and new water lines were re-done with the best parts available, and with higher capacity. He was a carpenter by trade before he started, and the only work he hired out was the concrete. He did all of it while working full time along with his wife who is is a teacher. I personally have no talent for such work. It doesn't interest me, I don't enjoy it, and I'm not good at it. But I do know enough to not skimp. I've seen the results of that on the farm. Dad always tried to save money wherever he could, and it didn't always go well...
 
My advice, from my own mistakes...

If your building as you go.....build your storage/shop/barn building FIRST, even if you end up living in a RV or tent your first couple years.

If you build the living space first, you will still need storage, and workspace and end up struggling for years to get any work done with no, or just imporvised workspace. You will end up with all you stuff inside your living space, making it cramped, messy, and hard to live in.


Well we just ended up redoing it at todays prices

Why did you have to re-do it?
 
One of the legs of the 220 went bad, shorted to ground I assume. I dug up some likely areas but didn't find anything. It was buried 24 inches deep. I suspect running it over with the tractor half a dozen times in the same area did it in. I needed about 20 yards of gravel for our pad.
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We also have very wet soil due to the 50 inches of rain. In the desert it probably would have been fine.
 
One of the legs of the 220 went bad, shorted to ground I assume. I dug up some likely areas but didn't find anything. It was buried 24 inches deep. I suspect running it over with the tractor half a dozen times in the same area did it in. I needed about 20 yards of gravel for our pad. View attachment 74006We also have very wet soil due to the 50 inches of rain. In the desert it probably would have been fine.
Probably if you didn't have that much rain, would have been ok. You had it in pvc? Looks like it from the picture. Did you actually find an issue?
 
Some good advice on country property. Go big whenever you can.
That advice held true or us. When we built our barn, we were going to go with a lean-to on each side of the barn. The person giving us a quote on the barn said "just build the barn to those dimensions and forget the lean-to". We gave that a lot of thought and figured he was probably right. The extra cost (at that point) wasn't really that much, so we made the barn much bigger than we were going to. People would ask, "what are you going to store in there?" We'd say, "whatever we want". We thought maybe we messed up at first b/c it was huge, but we use every inch of that barn today! It was money well spent! We spend a lot of time in there and it gives us a lot of joy.

If property ever goes up for sale that borders ours, we'd do everything possible to buy it. I've even sent letters to neighboring property owners to contact us if they are ever interested in selling. You can never have too much property.

Sorry about your issues Cas. Hopefully it will last a good long time now. It seems nothing related to building or remoldeling these days is cheap.:(
 
I buried a cable for my Conex, it was 36" trench, BUT it was my first time using a backhoe so it was more like 50". My son laughed at my trench skills & said well you will not cut it plowing! I learned to cut a trench with a flat bottom, that week.
 
Bury electrical cable BELOW frost level. Otherwise you risk the thaw freeze cycle pushing a sharp rock though the cable’s insulation.

In an ideal world.....in a mild climate....some places that could get EXTREMELY expensive.

I go the other way. Just deep enough that the lawnmower won't hit it so if I ever have a problem, it's easy to fix.

This actually applies to all my utilities. No pipes in the walls, almost all my electrical is in conduit and surface mounted. Same with the pipes, I run them on the inside of the walls, I don't put anything anywhere that I can't get to it easily.
 
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