Your situation is similar to ours. I suggest you contact all the local permitting and utility offices as early as possible.

Depending on the utility's policies and practices, a 1/4 mile power run could be quite expensive, or it could be quite reasonable. You need to know that ahead of time for budgeting purposes, if nothing else. You also need to know lead times.

The permitting agencies will have their own rules. A sit down with whomever issues building permits and whomever inspects the work can be very illuminating. The same thing for the folks who issue septic permits. You want to find out what their requirements are.

If you are putting in a new driveway, that may require a permit, so ask about that.

Find out about well permitting, and get a list of approved well drillers. Virtually every state regulates them. Talk to your neighbors about who drilled their wells. Try to get a feel for who is a good driller and who isn't. Contact a couple of drillers to get a feel for prices and how deep they typically go in that area.

If you are not familiar with living with one, do some research on wells on the Internet. There are particular sizing requirements for submersible pumps and pressure tanks. It can be rather complicated, and too small a tank can lead to early pump failure. You want to make sure you have a large enough tank. You also want to make sure you have some place accessible for it in the residence. Don't let anyone talk you into installing it in a crawl space. Out of sight, out of mind is not a good thing for your water system.

Find out if the well water will need to be treated in any way. If you are lucky, you will need nothing but a sediment filter. If you are unlucky, you may have to install a more complicated system. Depending on what is in the water, you may have to provide some significant space for the conditioning equipment.

Talk to the telephone and cable company, if applicable. Find out what it might cost to get service in to your house that is a 1/4 mile off of the road.

If you plan of having satellite anything, plan for the southern sky exposure that will be needed.

Ask around about contractors for the various work that you will need to hire out. Don't be shy about talking to the county or city permitting people, especially the inspectors. These are the people who really know who does the good work and who doesn't.

Good luck.

And the county officials and inspectors are on your side. They want to make sure your home is safe and built properly.

The septic and well are two big budget busters depending on the geology and soil conditions. Have a Perc test done for the septic (your county officials can give you info on that) and follow up with well drillers as suggested above.

If your site doesn't Perc properly, it could get very expensive to install a septic system.

free advice from an owner builder who just built 400 miles from the last house in the mountians. dont try to build too much out of the ordinary. as a builder you have to be careful not to build a white elephant. you might have to sell it sometime and it will be hard enough to do without adding another level of difficulty.
i suggest you use sips to accomplish your energy saving goals. they are easy for an owner builder to erect and they are not something that will scare away future buyers.
as far as how much it will cost who knows but plan on going over budget by 25% and you should be close.
i would not live in a camper or anything like that. rent a nice place nearby and take some of the stress off.

All of the above is very good advice. Do NOT start to build until you have as many details taken care of in advance as is possible. Follow the advice given, and Frog_hopper's order of precedence is a good beginning.

You will very likely find SB-construction will complicate the process of getting permits. I strongly suggest having a building engineer go over the houseplans *before* you attempt to submit them to the local authorities. Do not let unknowing folks deter you from SB, but do be careful that the finished building looks "socially acceptable"! Too many people build SB and finish the building in very amateurish ways -- which does a lot to hurt SB's acceptance. SB has been so deeply tested that it hasn't been wacky-hippy for the past couple decades, but it isn't common in the USA, especially on the Atlantic coast. You will find somewhat easier acceptance if you can hand the building commission a copy of at least the basic fire and engineering tests that have already been done on SB.

And, yes, for O/B, SIP construction is simple, and a viable alternate to SB.

Budget actually has *3* busters which can only be guessed at in advance: the well, the septic, and the house's foundation. In all cases, the best you can get is a guesstimate, and you won't know the actual cost until the work is done. Sorry, but that's the way it is. Be prepared to pay out about three times the 'estimate' for each item; you may have money left over afterwards, but that's better than not being able to pay the bills!

The rest of the budget should be fully detailed and priced before the foundation is done. Do NOT tweak the design after the contract is signed; tweaks [last minutes changes] cost a LOT of money and time. Before the contract you need to make lists, either in spreadsheet or on hardcopy, of EVERY item needed. That means specifying manufacturer, model#, size and color. List (usually to the right of each specification) the present price; then in the next column add 20% to that price (that's for COLA, taxes, and unexpected S/H or installation charges). Also note how much advance time may be needed to order -- it doesn't do you any good to have then kitchen ready for cabinets if you have to wait 3 months for them to be made. When your houseplan is finalized and costed, consider that total is an estimate and then add 20%. You will be very lucky if your final bill falls within that figure.

Find a reputable builder who is willing to be a consultant paid on an hourly basis. He won't cost much and his knowledge and experience could save you $1000's.

O/B is time-consuming and exhausting. If at all possible, take nine months off from regular life to devote to O/B-ing. That means you should have cash saved to cover living expenses for at least that nine months. If you plan to work at an outside job and build in your free time, keep in mind that "free time" must also include sleeping [construction is exhausting], eating, grocery shopping and meal prep, and quite often materials locating-purchasing-and-shipping. Even assuming your outside job is quite local, your real "free" time won't be more than a couple hours a day. It can take a long time to build a house two hours at a time. (I've read that even a very small, very basic house takes between 10,000 and 20,000 professional man-hours to complete.)

You don't say how much experience you have in any of the building trades. It doesn't take long to learn how to hammer a nail, but it can take a very long time to learn which nail should hammered where, and when. Never ever guess at how to do anything structural. If you don't already know how, prepare to pay a knowledgeable someone to teach you. That's much cheaper than doing it the wrong way and having to do it over.

A house is a very permanent object. Don't begrudge the preparation time before the build. Every hour you put in before the first clod of dirt is moved will usually save you about 2 hours during the actual construction. The end result should be worthy of your efforts.

Everyone has had very good ideas so far, I would like to add, since you mentioned a loan, make sure your finances are in order, check your credit reports and clean up any issues now, since this can sometimes take a little while.

I made an excel spreadsheet of expenses using the NHAB average cost to build breakdown of expenses, it was a good start, you might want to check it out.

Make sure you take good notes when speaking with permit and utility offices and keep those organized!

Go to the library-there are a lot of good books on building out there, many have good budgeting and timeline ideas.

Finally-please post pics when you do get started, we wanted to build a straw bale home, but our design did not allow for that.

Good luck!

Thanks for all the advice!
We have done some of these things and still need to do others. We talked to the power company and it will be at least 11,000 to install electricity, the phone company rep I talked to, I don't think she knew what she was talking about because she said $40.
We are lucky in that there is already a SB house in the closest town and Oregon has SB building codes which the WA officials seem content to use (so far at least).
We don't have a lot of experience with building however we will have the help of people who do. We also plan on studying up and attending a course on strawbale building. We have done tiling, wood and vinyl floor installation, drywalling, electrical and before we build we will also have installed cabinets and new countertops in our current house. So we are hoping it won't be too tricky.
It is really all the before you build stuff that really worries me. I am waiting for either the septic, the well, or something else to be really tricky.

The $40 phone installation charge may be accurate. In a lot of states, that charge is a tariffed service, and it is a flat rate. A call to your state utilities commission might help clarify it for you.

What part of Washington?

You've done some very good prep! It looks like you've pretty much covered the basics, so don't forget to get in some plumbing and some roofing experience!

There are a couple of on-line sites that might be of interest (all have been posted previously):

http://www.constructionnotebook.com/ipin2/CSIDivisions.asp#Division1

http://imageevent.com/okoboji_images/deloreshouse

http://smartbuilding360.com/

and my favorite
http://www.beforethearchitect.com/

And go to Taunton and look at the pdf on the Vermont House -- especially how they did the solar radiant heat

For $11,000 just to "bring" in power, I would look into going total solar-- off the grid.

Where to live really depends on your budget and your attitude. Many people have built houses while living in a camper, barn, mobile home, etc. But if you don't do well with all that 'togetherness', you might want to rent, if you can afford it. For us, DW is going to stay behind and keep earning a salary, while I go build the house. I'm going to buy a used RV, since they are very cheap right now. I'll load it up with everything it will carry, esp. all my tools. It will be just that much less to move later on. Once the house is done, the RV will be sold- hopefully for not much less than I bought it for. My wife and I don't like being apart, but it is the only way we can afford our build. I'm budgeting one full year to getting it done. No job- just housebuilding! We haven't determined yet just how much of the actual building I will do myself- a lot depends on how much money we have to work with. If I win the lottery, I'm just gonna write checks LOL! Everyone else had good advice- make sure all your ducks are in a row as far as permitting, inspection, etc. It's an unfortunate fact of life these days that you can't just go build your own house the way you want- you have to play by the rules.

frog_hopper - Near Husum/White Salmon, Washington. It would be nice if $40 was accurate.
msm859 - we are considering alternate power sources but they won't likely cost less so $11,000 is a good number to be working with. There is also the down side that we are in a canyon in a climate that has very cloudy winters. Hydro is a possibility also though. But whatever it costs it isn't too bad because the land itself is free.
flgargoyle - we definitely want to live on site or it will take even longer to build an renting would put us a half hour drive away and doesn't get much cheaper than 600 a month. We are considering either an RV or trailer or a small guest house or living space in a workshop. The RV has the advantage that it is quick to get up but we would get less space for our money which would be dicey with 2 kids (about 5 and 2 years old).

DH will be working while we build at least part of the time but I will be able to work on it while he is at work, at least on anything that doesn't require big manly muscles. The in laws live close enough to provide baby sitters.

Hopefully next summer/spring we can get the site evaluated for water, septic and other permitting and get some trees cut down to provide us with lumber. Sadly this summer is out because we are having a baby in July and DH doesn't have vacation from his new job until September.

Is there any reason why we can't do a lot of the prep/approval work a year or two early?

i know you dont want to hear it but after reading you last post i have to say this. you are biting off more than you can chew. it sounds like both time and money are in short supply. i am an owner builder and i must say building a house especially the type of house you are planning is a full time job for at least a year.

i am also concerned with your choices. homes are large investments. sb might be an interesting concept but i cant understand the mentality of a person who would spend 1-2 years of their life and a lot of money building a house that they probably couldnt sell if they needed to. there is no need to go this route to save energy.

Very nice area. I am familiar with parts of it.

I hope you have thoroughly investigated logging your property for the lumber to build with. It will be quite an undertaking, and the lumber will have to a dry a long time before it can be used. That puts it at risk of theft, if someone isn't on the property on a regular basis.

We just moved into the house we built. We found that the well,septic and electrical were a big part of our budget. It cost us $7000 to bring power to the house but like you, it was significatly less than going off the grid. I still wonder if we made the right choice but we can pay our mortgage so that's positive.

I will say that building this house took DH almost the full year and he worked full time at it. I think timeliness is a factor with straw bale building and you should check into that. We considered it but our wet climate and the fact that we were never going to get it up and protected in a short time weighed against it.

We did feel quite strongly about green building practices and in the decided to build a mostly conventional structure and focus on livig efficiently instead of green building materials. We designed a passive solar house with super insulation that keeps itself every warm. We went with a 30X30 house with central stair well that seems to circulate air and heat in the home and ake it so we do't need to be using electricity to get heat to the outter reaches of the home. The house is small and all boxed together. We're considering wind power b/c of where we live and prepared for it but if we decide to do it it will be later down the line.

Anyway, just some things to thinnk about. If you know what you want, just do it. Lots of people disliked our house plans b/c they weren't usual. We don't have a master suite, master bath, formal entry, seperate dining room etc. But we knew it would be a good plan for us and we've been living in it for 2.5 months and it lives even better than we imagined!

Oh, I like your plan, our old house was very siilar and this house too, but I see a few things that ddn't work well for us. I left you a message on flickr.

If you are going to use your own lumber, make sure it doesn't have to be grade stamped. I was originally wanting timber frame for part of our house, and there's plenty of suitable timber on our property, but I found out that SC requires grade stamped lumber for any structural components. It seemed like the cost of having it inspected and grade stamped offset any potential savings. We are going to have some of our red oak milled up for flooring, though. Now, in SC I could build a barn out of native lumber, but I couldn't legally live in it, even temporarily. I could probably get away with it, but what would I do if some nosy neighbor decided to rat me out? Maybe I'm being paranoid about the rules and regulations thing, but the truth is, if you try to cheat and get caught, it will really disrupt your plans. FWIW, I don't think I could live in an RV with 2 small children!

I am 2 weeks away from completing, for the bank anyway, what has been an 18-month build. I am acting as full-time O/B and parent of a middle schooler while my wife continues to work out of state.

My biggest mistake was in thinking I could do much of the work after the shell was constructed. I quickly found I could do the work itself but was nowhere near experienced enough to design my electrical and plumbing layout. Doing the work yourself also makes the process linear, vice parallel, as only one task is completed at a time. And time is what it will take. The bank and family separation eventually forced me to hire a builder to complete most of the remaining work while I focused on tasks such as shower tiling, finish electrical, and finish plumbing.

I am somewhat with vhehn regarding your family situation. Acting as O/B at the same time as raising two toddlers and a newborn significantly rasies the stress factor. My wife is able to fly up for the weekends but the combination of the unexpected costs (particularly out of control property taxes) and the separation have strained our marriage. We could not have survived this if DD was younger and more dependent.

There is much you can do as advance prep work. The most important will be septic perc testing in the area you plan to build. Poor/Failed perc tests may require you to resite your house. Once you have a good perc test you can confirm the house site, determine the path for electrical and cable/telephone, dig the trench or trenches (keeping electric at least 2 feet from cable/tel) and lay conduit (with pull-strings) for future installation. You don't have to be precise with the trench location at the house end until you have a firm foundation plan and the POCO and TELCO can tell you where they want their ends located. The TELCO will usually give you the wire (1000 ft reels) if you want to pull the wire yourself. I pulled approx 300 ft and Verizon charged me a connection fee of $35. I told the scheduler the wire was already in place but was told there was no charge based on connection distance. You may even want to pull the electrical service cable if you know your service amperage and have an electrician to advise you.

Clearing your site is another task that, if done correctly, will save time throughout your build. I have 3-1/2 acres but much of it was unsuitable for clearing and gave me a relatively small footprint for material storage. I built a kit log home and had to take delivery of all logs, framing, siding, and trim material within a couple of months. I ended up paying for a heavy forklift for 3 months as we were constantly moving material around.

No matter what you do be aware that, unless you have built from scratch before, there is a lot you won't know no matter how much you research. I call it "You Don't Know What You Don't Know" because you can't ask a question if you don't know you should. If possible, find a builder who is willing to serve as a consultant. His/Her experience will almost certainly save you time and money.

GOOD LUCK!

First thanks every one for their advice it is very helpful to hear the naysayers as well as the yay sayers. If I can't come up with a solution to the problem you present, then I have a problem.
vhehn- time will be somewhat short but as long as we get a loan money shouldn't be too short. I do know it will take us a long time to build and we are prepared for that and OK with it.
A lot of people express concerns with SB I am OK with that too. Please don't feel like I am dismissing your comments out of hand. Some of them I have heard many times before and some of them I am keeping in mind as I go along.
We are working on deciding how we will deal with the long build time. The whole financing situation is something we are just starting to address and well aware that financing for a SB house is difficult to get. So if we can't get it, then we can't and we will decide on a different building envelope.

frog - I personally have not investigated logging however we are building next door to the ILs who are timber farmers with 60 years of experience and a mill. The lumber would be stored where they can keep an eye on it so I am not too worried.
It is a lovely area and property prices or sky high so 20 acres for the cost of power/water/septic is a steal.

ajpl - thanks for you thoughts, I sent you an message via flickr. We are doing a timber frame rather than structural SB so there will be a roof up before the bales ever arrive on site so there isn't the usual worries about getting them up super quick and finished off before it rains.
You posted your house plan on another thread I started and I really liked them except that there wasn't a bedroom on the ground floor for when we get old :). Otherwise it was just what we were looking for.

flgargoyle - I will look into the grading of lumber requirements. We plan on being careful about permitting and such as well. The ILs weren't and haven't had a problem but we don't want to take the risk. We do have concerns about living in an RV with two small children. Our first choice would be a habitable workshop but we are not sure what the zoning permitting situation would be for that.

Terry_t - We will only have two kids when we are building, one that is 2-3 and another that is 5-6. But two small children isn't really much better than 3, we are banking on babysitting help from the ILs.
Thanks for your suggestions on advance prep work we have been wondering what we can do before we get the ball really rolling. Luckily our site is flat and pretty clear for a large area.
A log home is actually something we would consider if a SB became impossible. FIL has already built two log houses so we have some one with experience handy to help.
We are aware of the YDKWYDK principle and have plans to get consultants when possible. We have one recommendation already from some one who has already built a TF SB house in the area. We also have close family members with various construction experience (electric installation, plumbing, framing, roofing, finish carpentry). We are also working on making the most of the years leading up the build, learning all we can.

This will all take a lot more planning and thought so if you think of hurdles please post them so I can figure out how to jump over them :).

Chelsea,
You sound like you have a good head on your shoulders and are doing your homework. We are your neighbors to the south, just started building in Oregon City. We did some research on using our own logs for lumber and we found that in Oregon you do have to get a grade stamp but you can hire someone to come out and grade your lumber if you mill it yourself or the mill can get someone to grade stamp it for you. If you are milling the logs into large timbers then they don't usually look for a grade stamp. We found lumber prices to be so low that it was not cost effective to use our own logs for dimensional lumber or even timbers.
Something to consider if you are looking at longer term temporary housing situation is a used single wide mobile home. It gives you more space and amenities than an RV and you can put it on a temporary foundation of blocks and have it hauled away when you are done. HTH

Just wanted to mention something in case you weren't aware of it (although if your in-laws are in the timber business, they almost certainly would be). Washington State gives real estate tax breaks to encourage forest/timber growth. If you plan to keep most of your land in timber, it's worth looking into. We needed at least 20 acres to qualify for a Forestry Management Plan (converted to a Timber Management Plan after we built, with one acre taken out of the plan for the house). The 20-acre thing was key for our Forestry Management Plan - - 19.99 acres wouldn't qualify.

Our neighbors did owner/build. They built a 2400 sf very beautiful (but unusual) home. Took them 5 years. They had just retired, so worked on it pretty much full time. They'd never built before, but hired a builder from time-to-time as a consultant/helper. They had a few surprises along the way, but worked through all of them. They lived in a 5th wheeler on their property, which mostly worked out fine.

It sounds like your in-laws will be a great asset through this. It's good you're going into it with your eyes open, since it will be much more complex, costly, and time-consuming that you can imagine (true for all of us!).

Good luck!

home_nw - I am pretty sure the forestry management plan is why we will be getting atleast 20 acres. I think if they split off less than 20 it would negatively affect their taxes, I also think it might be zoned such that a parcel smaller than 20 can't have a house on it.

I think the adage "failing to plan is planning to fail definitely applies to OB."
I'm actually glad our lot took an extra six months to perc as it gave me that much more time to tweak the spec and budget. We will end up nearly right on the money at closing time and lot of it has to do with ACTUAL BIDS on materials and labor before we began. We started our whole process @

http://www.home-cost.com/

It took days to define data for a mock spec to input into that website but it gave us a detailed 30 page report on materials and labor based on our zip-code. This is a completely unsolicited plug......there were things that resi-cost spit out that I had never accounted for in the beginning stages of the project and their report became the basis of our budget spreadsheet.

After downloading all the data I went from sitework to closets and landscaping and contacted trades in the area to have the work bid. Even though some of their jobs were 6-8 months out 90% of them were more than happy to bid the work knowing they'd need it down the line. I sent plans to lumber yards and did our own take offs for things like hardwoods, tile and drywall. By the end of it I had hundreds of rows in excel that included hypo costs [from home-cost], real costs [from subs and vendors], contact info, backup subs.....the works. I felt so much more confident about the project because there was not one area where I found myself flying by the seat of my pants.

We're trimming out this coming month and I can honestly say that while we've had a few bumps in the road here and there it's been pretty smooth sailing in what I would consider a fairly complex build.

Plan and Execute. Two words to live by.

regarding temporary housing issue, one thing you could consider doing is setting up a single wide mobile home at the front corner of the property (or as far away from the build as possible) and live there. Once you are done with it, you could leave it and rent it out to help make your mortgage payments. Our temporary house is 10' in front of our build which is REALLY handy, but it will have to be moved when we are done.

I am shocked at how much you will have to pay to get power. Our power company doesn't charge anything to run the lines, unless you want underground electric. So we have conventional above ground lines to within 300' of the new house, then we will go underground the rest of the way ($500 for the underground part).

Right now we are leaning towards building what will be our workshop and throwing in a bathroom/kitchen appliances and live in that while we build. It will take a bit longer than a mobile home but we will end up with a structure that we would want anyway when we are done. We will most likely be years in building this so something fairly comfortable would be nice. Also a work shop would go up quickly and easily (small, I think a total of 4 walls outside and 2 in).

I am shocked at how much you will have to pay to get power. Our power company doesn't charge anything to run the lines, unless you want underground electric. So we have conventional above ground lines to within 300' of the new house, then we will go underground the rest of the way ($500 for the underground part).

Every power provider has different rules, unless the government enforces a statewide standard. We were given an informal estimate of $10K for a quarter mile run, based upon the last similar new installation they had to do. The price does not include clearing the right of way. That will be left up to us.

Right now we are leaning towards building what will be our workshop and throwing in a bathroom/kitchen appliances and live in that while we build. It will take a bit longer than a mobile home but we will end up with a structure that we would want anyway when we are done.

I think that is a very good idea. Not all jurisdictions will let you do that, if they, ahem, know about it. You can easily justify a big utility sink, toilet, and shower in a workshop, though. A 220 outlet or two would be for a "welder" or an "air compressor." A cheap used stove can show up after the inspector is done. Counter space can be a sheet of plywood on a couple of good saw horses.

There's always a way.

Ours is an informal estimate for a quarter mile also. (basically x per foot plus base charges) I am afraid it will go up in the next couple years if copper keeps rising.
I think we might be able to get away with having the kitchen if we get rid of it when we build the house. We also might just getting permitted as a house but build it like a workshop... I will have to talk to the permitting people.

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Check out www.arsenichometest.com

Here is a link that might be useful: Arsenic Wood Home Test Kits