I suspect you will still need your drain in approximately the same location, but if you lay the drain and then wish to lay concrete there, you will be hooped. The issue is that the same amount of water will come from the woods as now, but it may flow differently after your walls are done, and it may somehow evade your drains or, Marcinde's point being well taken, cause problems with your septic. I would not count on plant absorption of water to accomplish much - partly because it isn't constant, and even if it were it certainly can't surge with water flow. And if your walls do not shift water flow but rather do hold it back, my concern would be that your whole wall and plant assembly would come tumbling down the hill and land on your patio with the weight of retained water. It is absolutely not impossible for lay people to learn what they need to know to manage a project like this, but the risk arises if you do not take the time to adequately learn it and do something wrong. The risks are anything from doing a lot of work and STILL getting water in the basement, or getting an overwhelmed septic field, or the aforementioned landslide scenario. Coupled with your slope toward the fence on the other side, you definitely have some grading issues to deal with - I think I would recommend you level the area near the fence with a retaining wall to create a walkable, mowable, plantable area there - and I suspect you would indeed, as Marcinde suggests, be well advised to consult with a landscape or engineering professional who can advise you on the whole scope of the situation and make a grading plan for the whole lot. Then you could either rent or hire the earthmoving machinery to create your new contours, and build your walls from there. Mind you, with basement water, sometimes the fix is amazingly small, and if it's just to solve that you may not need to terrace at all. We have, for instance, for years had an annual wet-basement-vacuuming event, but were never quite clear on how the water was getting in though we thought it had something to do with the porch foundation. One summer I was mortaring some bricks outside, and I had a little mortar left over, so on a whim I formed a small ledge to direct water away from the door leading into the porch foundation. About a half cup of mortar, the ledge less than an inch high and a foot long - and voila, no more water in basement. The moral is, analyze your problem first, and THEN design your solution, not the other way around. And don't be embarrassed to hire help for the analyzing, though sometimes, all you need to do is go outside when it's raining hard and be observant. KarinL

1) You can brace or block the joists per standard construction, but what might be easier is to strap the bottom edges of the joists. Typical strapping is done with a 1x3, but a lot of times I'll simply use a 2x4. Run a 2x4 across the bottoms of the joists, perpendicular to the joists. Add a dab of PL adhesive and use a couple of screws at each fastening point. You have specific needs here, so spacing the 2x4s as you need will work very well. What it does is if a single joist wants to deflect downward, the strapping transfers that load to the adjacent joists as well. So it's good as a floor stiffener. For a washer/dryer set up, it also dampens the entire floor platform in terms of the possibility of the spin cycle causing the floor to reverberate. The strapping serves the same purpose as cross-bracing or solid blocking between the joists. It's code-approved, though code only requires it for 2x12 joists, with the strapping being made of 1x3, and the strapping spaced every 8'. The strapping is more effective long-term than bracing or blocking, due to fitment, installation, and shrinkage issues. 2) Do the whole floor. There are only restrictions on maximum spacing (every 8'). So if you make it every 2', or 3', or 4', no worries. Strapping is also easier because you're not wrestling with any of the utilities that take up space between the joists. 3) Your joists span 8-1/2'. For simplicity, why not do run three pieces of strapping? One at 1/4 span, one at half-span, the other at 3/4 span. Just a little over 2' spacing. 4) 3/4" ply over the diagonal boards is plenty. It does not have to be exterior grade. 5) Your floor sandwich can be made up of: -Tile -Ditra -Floor heat wires encased in SLC (no wires under the washer/dryer area through, see comments later) -Plywood underlayment covered with SLC primer -Diagonal plank subfloor -joists I usually advocate a small platform under the washer/dryer stack. It's more for damping than load spreading. I've done sandwiches of plywood/cement_board/plywood, or plywood/MLV/plywood. MLV is mass-loaded vinyl. Screw through the top layer of ply, through the middle material, and into the bottom layer of plywood to secure it together. Or just use construction adhesive. I drill a hole through the middle of the platform sandwich to accommodate the flood pan's drain line. I usually put a square of rug pad on the floor. The inexpensive, maybe 1/8" thick, rubbery mesh or open weave type of rug pad. It acts as a bit of a damper, but also holds the platform in place. I then set the platform on the rug pad. Then put the flood pan over the platform with the drain plumbed through the hole in the platform. Then set the washer in place and the dryer on top of that. I recommend you tile the entire floor, but again, no heating wires under the location of the washer. You'll be putting the sandwich platform on top of the tile in that area, and the insulative value of that platform can shorten the life span of the heating element. Pricklypear, the Ditra-XL is simply thicker than regular Ditra. It really wasn't designed for a specific tile size. It's sole purpose is to allow the thickness of "Ditra plus tile" to match up with the thickness of a typical hardwood floor.

howiroll I think the younger the better, for a number of reasons. I am 47 and just finished a custom build in the mountains of VA. My dream. I grew up on the streets of Jersey - loud trucks and stenches that will singe your nostrils. I vacationed as a kid in upper NY state - loved to fish & camp. And I really enjoy nature. Going through a custom build is stressing and takes a lot of your time and energy. I did a lot of work on my home (not the original plan) to save our bacon when we started running over budget. Dear Wife poured in many many hours on the interior design and selections - it takes a ton of time. My hero is Jack LaLane - so I know what seniors can do. But I think if I were even 10 years older, I would have been unable to do a lot of the projects I took on myself. I suggest you follow the method that George Washington used when he built Mt. Vernon (my favorite house on the planet). He started with a main structure that was small - then added over the years. If you do that - you can finish the main structure and get in for as low a cost as possible - but have thought through the enitre long term plan roughing in for the expansions. As a youngster you might not have a large budget - I don't know your financial situation. And land prices keep escalating, so it's hard to keep up. If you can find the nice piece of land and get a structure on it to live in, then you have a great base and can add over time. Here are my answers to your questions. 1) From your experiences, if you were going to build a house what are the "must haves" or things you would without a doubt do? - energy efficient building is a must. - first floor master (love it!) - screened in and covered decks integrated into the house design. Our pergola with witch hat ceiling and wood burning fireplace is by far my favorite room in the house. - a great kitchen that the wife loves. - covered porch (we call it the dog room) with pebbled floor so that doggies can take care of business when it rains or snows. This is my second favorite room in the house - because the dogs love it and I don't have to shovel a path for them. 2) More importantly what was a waste of money? - we did not watse any money - we were very careful on what we put into the house. But we sure got charged more than we needed to on a few items (like excavation). Make sure you know your subs and make sure your aren't getting ripped by getting multiple bids. 3) My wife and I, along with both our families, are pretty handy. Given that how much would you have done when building a house and what is not worth the time/money savings to do yourself? I did a lot of the electrical, A/V , voice/data, security and I am glad I did. If I had the time, I would have done all of the electrical myslef because I did not like how the sub worked and what they charged (but this is just me - and I love doing this type of work). The master electrician was great - but his workers weren't. 4) Anything unique that you'd do/install if you were building a house? I planned out ahead of time what our backup approach would be for winter power outages and summer power outages. I did install a small standby generator to make sure the absolute essentials have backup power. When you live in the sticks, you need to think about being stranded for a few days and just make sure you have a plan. 5) Were any of you ever the general contractor for your house build? Nope. But the wife and I spend a ton of time going over the work the subs were doing. The builder should have paid us a management fee - we found a lot of things that needed to be addressed. 6) What are some money saving tips? Use the internet to check & verify pricies. When you do - make sure you are comparing apples to apples. Any commodities can ususally be found on-line cheaper - but you need to think about returns. Sometimes it might be worth paying a little more if service/returns could be an issue. Use the GW forums to check pricing too. 7) Since we will hopefully be living at this place for the rest of our life, energy saving ideas will definitely benefit us in the long run. Which ones do you suggest? Prices? Which ones are a waste? Tax breaks on using green materials? The tax breaks for energy efficient building are a joke (but that doesn't mean you should build an EE house). Look on the Renewable Energy Forum and search on "Energy Efficient Building". Loads of good info on that forum. 8) How many square feet? (We plan on having 2 kids and don't need a mansion) Just plan on the kids growing up and needing more space. This one is so subjective. One thing for sure - make your garages and storage space are bigger than what they normally show on internet house plans. I have two 2 car garages and love em. The main garage is 25 x 25. The other one (where all of my toys are) has an extra 3 feet or so in width so I can have a work shop in there (I have 2 workshops - another idea I love. One inside in the basement and one outside in the Man Toy Garage). 9) Since it is in the country and it is not uncommon to lose power for a few hours to a few days, anyone have pictures or ideas on a generator shed/hook up and how they disconnected from the grid? Look on the Electrical Forum - tons of posts on this. I decided that it was too costly to backup my entire house. I just did not want to have a 30 kilowatt generator (I have electric heat pumps - lot's of amperage needed to start compressors). So - I layed out that backup plan. Decided that in a winter outage, I would use fireplaces as the backup heat. I upgraded the fireplaces to direct vent inserts (2 gas, one wood burning) that are rated as heaters. I supply back power to the conrols (low voltage) and fireplace blower fans. I also backed up water, hot water, 2 refrig's, SATV, Sat Internet, and some lights. Much smaller genny - but all the comforts we need to ride out a 2 or 3 day outage. When you do the electrical in your home, plan for the gennny. Have the electrician put in a sub-panel and run all backup circuits from there. Make sure sub panel is on the side of house nearest weher genny will be and try to keep the LP gas tank near there too - this minimizes trenching and there are limits on the length of gas line runs. Use propane as you cooking source and then run genny off that tank. You can run for days without ever needing to fill a tank. 10) I plan on building a shop on the property eventually as well. Any considerations I need to make when building the house that will later effect the building of a shop? Electrical, plumbing etc? Get the biggest electrical service you can. I have a 600 amp main service run (3 x 200 amp service panels) - and that cost me nothing extra to get that to the house. Power company ran the line 700 feet from the main road, they just needed a bigger wire gauage to carry 600 amps. With that kind of power you can add on just about whatever you need for the shop later. 11) Any good way to calculate the costs? My wife and I have found some plans on eplans and houseplans.com. We were really just looking at the styles and layouts to find what we want. Should buy something like that or how do we move forward once we have an idea of what we want? It is hard to ball park costs. So many variables. Do a search on "How to Estimate Building Costs" on this forum - tons of posts on that subject. I do suggest looking on line for floor plans you like (and plan to look and look and look). You can always change the exterior of a house plan to get the look you want - focus on floorplan. If you find something you like, you can typically buy review copies for a smaller fee before you make the purchase of the copiable plans. Make little cut outs of your furniture to the same scale as the plans and lay them onto the review copy of the plans - just to get a better idea of the space and how things fit (or don't). It is very hard to visualize how a room will look from a 2D piece of paper drawn to a small scale. Last suggestion. Don't forget about including in the budget all of the toys you will need to maintain that property. Since Jan - I have purchased: a 4x4 SUV, utility trailer, snow blower, garden tractor with 50 inch mower plus attachments, heavy duty chainsaw ..... If you don't plan on this, then you will be forced to outsource it. It is great having land - but there are a lot of extra chores and you need the right type of toys to handle them. The first time I tried to cut a tree that fell on my property with a 14 inch chainsaw - the tree laughed at me. Watch out for the larger scale on house chores - when you go from a small lot in the burbs to acreage in the sticks, it is a very different world. Have fun!

"So what do you think about me putting a thin coat of drywall mud up in the vanity area so the tile will grab?" - I think that is a really bad idea. I found this old post searching what info was online (Houzz/Garden Web) in relation to "Scratch Coats". There is so many versions of a scratch coat it is hard to tell what one is right or wrong for each job your tackling. Installing tile over drywall mud (finish, all purpose or joint) is a bad idea. Installing tile over drywall that has not been covered with drywall mud is often OK as long as the area is not in the shower or around the tub. Installing tile over painted drywall is done all the time but the strength of this assembly relies totally on how well the paint was applied and what type of paint there was. Your question (top of page) was answered well I think by the fellow coming to look at the job. Adding a 1/4" of cement board would make for a much stronger wall than skimming out an old wall with fresh drywall mud. I put a few pictures together showing a simple scratch coat and hopefully this will help you understand what a cement board (CBU) sheet look like scratch coated. The CBU is Wonderboard lite. The thin-set Laticrete 253 Gold. The waterproofing membrane on the left wall (Laticrete Hydro Ban Sheet Membrane) and the inside of the niche was done wit Ardex 8+9. I realize the post is years old but it is the first hit on a google search....