Pre-Fab House Update After 9 Months | Foundation, Settlement & Lessons Learned Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:45 Hey everyone, welcome back to the channel. If you haven't seen our first video on unfolding this, go check it out. Nine months later, here we are. We're going to go through a review, some things to consider if you want to get one of these houses, touch on some comments from the last video, and just kind of go over, you know, what >> [music] >> it's nine months later.

01:06 How has it been? Do we would we buy this again? Do we like it? Do we hate it? Yeah, just a little update on where we're at [music] and Okay, we'll tell you, we love it. We love this thing. It's sick. The biggest update [music] and most important update is that we've got baby Wesley added to our family. And Henry is a big brother now. What What do you think, Henry?

01:30 Great. Yeah, that's great. Alrighty, let's get into it. So, let's go over the comments. We got two comments the most, and the first comment that people are probably already starting to leave, and that's why did we just put it right on the dirt. The second one was, "Hey, you had 60 days. What were you doing and why weren't you prepared? You knew you were going to get the delivery."

01:55 So, let's let's cover both of those things. >> in the video that the reason that the house went straight onto the dirt was because we didn't give ourselves enough time to prepare. Regardless of how much time we had, we would have not done the concrete slab, which makes everybody just start just freaking out. And for good reason, cuz it should houses should go on a slab.

02:17 But, this is very temporary. This is only going to be here for a couple years, and there's future plans for this location to put a shop. This location is special because it is in between the septic tank and the house. So, we're working on building a house, and this is temporary. If we had put it on a concrete foundation, it would have raised red flags with our county, making it seem like it was a permanent structure, and we had tax assessors out here working with Kurt to basically come to the conclusion together that

02:49 this is in fact a temporary mobile structure. So, the second comment we got a lot of was in regards to the time frame. We were originally told that production and shipping would take about 90 to 100 days, and that we would receive roughly a two-week notice before delivery. So, based on that 90-day time frame, we spent the first chunk of that time finishing our food truck and getting it into operation by a deadline that we had already established.

03:16 The food truck is helping fund our barndominium build. And we planned to use the remaining month or more to prepare the house pad. When it left the manufacturer's warehouse, communication almost essentially dropped off. We were never provided tracking information, and it was maybe 48 hours before it got to the port that we learned for the first time of its location.

03:41 From there, we didn't know how long it would be at the port, how long it would take to unload it, to get it on the truck and drive it over here. This was all brand new for us. So, even though we were planning on having like a month of time roughly after finishing the food truck, it still would have only taken me one to two days to prepare the pad. The real pressure wasn't getting the pad ready, it was more or less working on getting the telehandler on site so that we would be able to properly unload the tiny house out

04:14 of the shipping container. You know, it is worth noting that there's companies here in the United States that you can buy these from, and they handle all that stuff for you. They handle the communication, the shipping, all that stuff, but it's a price you're going to pay. And so, the risk that we took for spending less money to get a larger container home is that we had to deal with those things, the unknowns.

04:37 Okay, here we go. Going to drop the bomb. We have a business pouring flat concrete. So, >> [laughter] >> that's going to drive people crazy. We care about foundations, and we don't recommend putting your house directly on the dirt. We're not recommending that to anybody. If we were to do a foundation, I would not use piers. I would pour a slab and just have a crawl space directly under the bathroom section.

05:03 And that part is elevated up above the ground, so none of that none of the plumbing sits on the ground already. It's already there, and with the heat of the house and the ground temps, it we haven't had any problems with anything freezing. And all the utilities and everything come out the side. So, how has it been after nine months? Have we had problems?

05:25 Has it settled? Did we have rain, any problems like that? And it's really dry here. We're in the high desert, and we haven't had any problems. And I actually the side that I put the most fill, that side was like an inch high, and I made it an inch high when we were first doing it. I was like, "Well, it's a little high, but it'll probably settle." I'll we'll put in a clip of me shooting grade.

05:53 It didn't even settle. That side is still a little bit high, and it's fine for me putting it on dirt for two years. It's got the cement board under it. Who knows? I could be totally wrong, but everything when you're trying to build a your own house and you're running a concrete business, we have two food trucks, like we have so much going on in our life all the time.

06:16 And to make steps forward, you have you're constantly assessing risk and where those lines are. And I think that so many people are programmed to just have this, you know, "Hey, I I know that it should be this way." But, you know, not everybody's situation is the same, and there's gray area all over. For me, putting this on the dirt for two years, that's totally okay.

06:46 Okay, so now that we've addressed some of the more common comments that we got, we wanted to move on and kind of provide you guys with a list of things that we feel like would be important to consider if you are heavily thinking about buying one of these for yourself. So, the first thing, and probably the most important, is whether or not you can get one of these permitted in your area.

07:07 That's something you're going to have to check with with your jurisdiction on whether that's going to be allowed or not. >> If it doesn't pass as a full-time livable dwelling, there may be exceptions. It could be an office, storage space, or some type of an accessory building if it doesn't meet the local code requirements for a permanent dwelling. Yep.

07:33 Wherever you're at, if if they don't have a problem with it as long as you meet certain requirements, then you have to look at the broad picture of how much is this actually going to cost you. All in, if you were to pay for your own electrical and plumbing, rent a machine for your grading, sub out the concrete, put a roof over it, >> interior finishes, your plumbing finishes, your electrical finishes, um the cabs, the cabinets, the trim, the unloading process, you're probably going to be somewhere around $10,000, and

08:05 that's with you doing it. If you aren't going to do it and you're going to sub everything out, you're probably going to be pushing 20. So, that's something to consider if you're really thinking, you know, "Hey, I can get one of these for under 30 grand." Consider that. Don't underestimate that cost. So, it doesn't come with directions, either. So, you're going to have to just know how to figure it out and look at what the trim is and figure out where that trim goes and understand just a real basic understanding, which

08:37 we would throw the directions away, anyways. Like, we never ever read directions. Under any circumstances would we ever look at the instructions or directions. Right. So, another thing to consider is if you're going to be living somewhere that's in the winter getting below 20° F, then one thing I would think about is not going with one of these. The insulation in it, you know, it's 3 in of insulation.

09:05 It's it's decent, but, you know, with the the thermal bridges that this thing has everywhere, and you know, the the R-value in general, it's not that great for a cold climate. So, I just would just look at something else if it gets very cold where you're at. And if you're in a really hot environment, the AC we haven't had an issue with at all. Yeah, the air conditioning works great in the summer at like >> It It holds the temp.

09:32 over 100 consistently and the 24K Mr. Cool mini split did great. And then another thing to think about that we inquired was buying the container, the Conex box that it comes in. Mhm. We asked, "Hey, you know, how much is that? Can we just get that? Does it come with it? What What's the deal?" Well, he's like, "You can totally have that, but it's 3,500 bucks.

09:59 If you needed one, then you could save on that cost of renting a telehandler, which would work really well, especially if lifting up a container or lifting the house up with a telehandler is intimidating to you or seems scary. You could just pay for the container, get that brought to another business in the area that deals with shipping containers. They usually have a big forklift that can lift it off of the semi-trailer, set it onto another trailer that can deliver it to your property where they can tilt that trailer

10:29 and slide the box off onto the ground. Then you only need to have a a piece of equipment that can pull it out, even a truck or something. Then you could just slide the house out right onto the ground. You don't have to deal with it being up in the air. But that was $3,500 extra and we didn't really need it. So, you know, it was And the one it came in was pink.

10:49 Yeah, and you don't know what you're getting, you know. Another comment that we got quite a bit of, which doesn't really matter that much, but everybody was like, why didn't the truck just back in? Why didn't the truck back in? And I had him pull forward so that we didn't have to spin the entire container around. Once we pulled it out, we just chained up to it and drove it forward because it's possible we can spin it, you know, but it would have it would have been a lot harder.

11:15 So, I I wanted him to pull in that way. I told him. So, don't don't get after the truck driver for not backing in. >> Yeah, and uh I made a joke about it not being windy. Yeah. That didn't That didn't land, I guess. >> so windy. >> It was so windy that day. I thought it was We're like trying to deal with [laughter] this house up in the air and we're like in real life, if you were out here, it's like it was moving the house around and it was kind of scary.

11:42 And there's just the two of us >> And you're like you're trying >> and my dad. So, I guess three of us were working together. >> like, it's a nice calm day. And there was all these comments that was like, I can't believe she thinks that that's what a calm day looks like. That's what I get for trying to be funny. I won't try that anymore. >> Yeah, we suck at jokes, but whatever, >> [laughter] >> you know.

12:02 Some land, some don't. Oops. Some go right on the dirt, some don't. Nice. Okay, so let's talk plumbing. So, the plumbing that came in this has held up great so far. We haven't had any leaks or any major problems in the structural side of the plumbing, but the design side of the plumbing, there's definitely There's two There's two major issues. So, one, there's no P-traps anywhere and there's no venting.

12:31 If you're hooked up to a city sewer or a septic system, you need to have P-traps and venting to stop the sewer gases from coming into your home. As far as the rest of the plumbing, as you know, have we had any leaks or anything like that, the plumbing's been fine. It's been good. And it's a 60 PSI pressure that is It's a continuous 60 PSI, which is standard.

12:56 There's no problem. Another thing was the toilet. And the toilet rough-in was like 16 inches off the wall and standard is 12 inches off the wall for here in the US. We noticed a like a little bit of leaking coming out from behind the toilet. And so, the toilet actually is made with both holes. It has a the 16-in that it was plumbed into and it also had a 12-in but the cap that they put on the 12-in hole to cover that up was leaking water.

13:26 And so, you know, this is during install, so I'm glad that this was caught early on. But you know, if you're going to order one of these houses, definitely tell the manufacturer to to go with the 12-in rough-in cuz when we put the new toilet in, it's now 4 inches off the wall and it's fine, but you know, it makes more sense to screw your toilet up against the wall.

13:54 So, another thing that was pretty crucial is this container has a quite a few thermal bridges and where all of the metal and trim that you see pretty much anything inside that's black, that's a thermal bridge. So, a lot of the tops of the walls and the bottom of the walls is a C-channel with a thermal bridge that creates condensation. And the windows, not so much, but especially on the door.

14:19 The door has quite a bit of thermal bridge happening, which causes that condensation. So, the solution to that is to take this insulation, you know, sticky tape that's only like 1/8 inch thick. You put that on there and that stops the condensation. >> Well, my biggest complaint so far with tiny home, which is still pretty minor, is the amount of spiders that have found their way inside.

14:44 I thought we sealed the house up pretty good by spray foaming the edges and then I ran silicone down the those main seams where it hinges, but I did not cover up each hinge where the hinge is, there's this a little gap. We'll show that. And that's where they were getting in. On the corners, it's open there. They can crawl through the tubes of the house and get in at any one of those points.

15:12 Definitely take your time to seal it up good and and spray foam or tape those hinge points. All right, so let's talk about the roof. So, the roof on the house um was leaking in that first video and that was from where the straps went around when when we unloaded it, it ripped a little bit of the seam tape. I patched those up and as soon as I patched them up, there was no leaks.

15:39 It's been just fine. It's made it, you know, all the way through winter without any leaks. I would definitely don't think that this roof would last more than 5 years without needing some attention. So, if you were to be getting one of these to live in long-term or more of a permanent situation, definitely, you know, you're going to already have it on a foundation if that's your plan.

16:02 And I would highly recommend building a roof over the top of it. Okay, let's talk about heating and cooling this thing. And how is the insulation? How does it hold heat? And how does it stand up to the wind? So, the first source that we put in here is a mini-split. And it's a 24K Mr. Cool, super easy to install. That has been great. So, that's heating and cooling.

16:30 Second heat source is a diesel heater and one 8K diesel heater heats this whole thing just fine. So, the biggest thing is just to make sure that if you, you know, coming through the wall, if you need to heat different spaces that you think about if you want to duct over to another room or not. You know, being on solar, you can't run the mini-split like nonstop because that takes a lot of power in the winter when you're having cloudy back-to-back cloudy days.

16:59 So, that's where the diesel heater comes in clutch. The walls are made up of a 2 and 1/2 inch foam panel with an additional 1/2 inch panel that's part of that siding. It's like a siding 1/2 inch closed cell, like the same type of foam that you would have in your your coolers. Okay, so the windows, they look great and they function great, but you we still get some condensation on the edge of the windows and that's just due to the fact that there's, you know, the way that they're built, there isn't It's a thermal bridge

17:31 between the outside and the inside. So, that is a slight ding on the windows and the doors, but they function great and they've been good quality as far as the structure and, you know, the durability of them. So, all the cabinets and the countertop that came with the unit, they're 32 inches to the finished countertop height, which standard is 36. So, they definitely are like they feel like they're down on the ground, but you know, they're good quality as far as, you know, the hardware.

18:04 They're soft close and it's a like a concrete fake stone on top that's actually like really cleanable, really nice. So, let's talk about how this thing does in the wind. This This thing does good. You don't have to worry about it when you're inside. You don't have to worry about, you know, is this wall going to come down on me or not? It's You can hear the wind a little bit inside, but it's usually It's not that bad.

18:33 And I think a good reason for that is that when we spray foam the entire thing, it really helps glue it together. But yeah, there's bolts in it, too. The bolts keep everything, you know, sealed up tight. So, let's go in and see if you can hear the wind noise at all. Okay, so 9 months later, would we buy this again knowing what we know now? Yes. Yeah, definitely.

19:14 Definitely. >> I'd say after 9 months our with our biggest complaints being spiders getting in and some condensation around the windows and doors is pretty darn minimal. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> It's overall, it's been a real There's been functional unit. >> Zero issues with water getting in and with the ground, like setting it directly on the ground.

19:37 That It has not been a problem. All right, thank you so [music] much for watching. We hope we answered some of your questions and uh stick around for our off-grid build. Yeah, check out some of our other videos. We've got videos Um, far through [music] the whole process of building our house and we've got a lot of good content coming up. We're really really grateful [music] to be sharing this with you and um you know, you guys are helping us learn a lot along the way and if we can help anybody else out there learn

20:04 something, [music] that's our goal. So, thanks for hanging out. See you.