Thanks for all the building advice. That is a super nice shop, very impressive. I was going to post a long response but it kept getting deleted, just count me impressed.
I had showed my friend your shop, we were literally talking shop, and he’s a plumber so he was zooming in to see your tankless water heater. I would really like radiant heat if/when I do a custom build. I wasn’t actually thinking about floors for it, more like wall units to complement the forced air. I haven’t done enough research on it but I’m a fan of radiator heating since my European days.
For lumber, unless you know someone at a still operating sawmill willing to sell direct (sometimes they will even with a small order) then your best bets are either:
1. Get a portable sawmill, learn to use it, find someone with saw worthy doug, do it on the spot, pay for kiln time or if you have the dry space and time to wait do it yourself. You can get a lot of board feet from a single days work. 2. Find someone with a portable sawmill, no shortage of those guys in the PNW and plenty of lists of them. It’s going to be way cheaper than retail, especially if you’re looking for more dimensions than just 2x4s.
If someone asked me whether to get a machining center or a portable sawmill, if the goal is making money, I’d say the sawmill by far. No one has asked me that yet. When I was a kid my project one summer was rebuilding the fence, 150 yards of fencing ranging from 4 ft tall to 15ft. Felled and milled most of it myself, fancy sawmill with a log lift helped - but if a dumb kid like me could do it so can anyone. There is so much good timber on private property in the PNW, it’s almost offensive to see the retail prices.
Thanks for all the building advice. That is a super nice shop, very impressive. I was going to post a long response but it kept getting deleted, just count me impressed.
I had showed my friend your shop, we were literally talking shop, and he’s a plumber so he was zooming in to see your tankless water heater. I would really like radiant heat if/when I do a custom build. I wasn’t actually thinking about floors for it, more like wall units to complement the forced air. I haven’t done enough research on it but I’m a fan of radiator heating since my European days.
For lumber, unless you know someone at a still operating sawmill willing to sell direct (sometimes they will even with a small order) then your best bets are either:
1. Get a portable sawmill, learn to use it, find someone with saw worthy doug, do it on the spot, pay for kiln time or if you have the dry space and time to wait do it yourself. You can get a lot of board feet from a single days work. 2. Find someone with a portable sawmill, no shortage of those guys in the PNW and plenty of lists of them. It’s going to be way cheaper than retail, especially if you’re looking for more dimensions than just 2x4s.
If someone asked me whether to get a machining center or a portable sawmill, if the goal is making money, I’d say the sawmill by far. No one has asked me that yet. When I was a kid my project one summer was rebuilding the fence, 150 yards of fencing ranging from 4 ft tall to 15ft. Felled and milled most of it myself, fancy sawmill with a log lift helped - but if a dumb kid like me could do it so can anyone. There is so much good timber on private property in the PNW, it’s almost offensive to see the retail prices.
Transpo broseff. That's the dirty secret of the timber industry. Margins are thin (commodity thin) and timber is big and heavy and it is dangerous, laborious and somewhat capital intensive work to get it out the woods and to market.
The 100 mile radius is the rule of thumb. And, you still have to get it out of the woods.
Miele. 15 years running strong. Service techs came out twice when my wife put the wrong rinser in. Never a service charge. Never.
Instead they thanked us for buying a Miele. Fucking Rocks.
That's a level above. That shits costs $$, but your take is consistent with anybody I know who has any of their stuff.
Next canister vac will be a Miele. But the Kenmore/Panasonic it will replace is a tough little bastard that works as good as new and shows no signs of quitting yet.
Vacuum HAWT Talk!
We've had a Miele canister vac for ~20 years. It's a $1k model. Had to have the cord retractor replaced after 15 years. Other than that pretty solid. Too solid (heavy and cumbersome) in fact for the wife who insisted on a Dyson Animal which she loves. Cordless and lightweight. Due to dwag hair, we have to vacuum urryday.
Don't get me going on quality tools or appliances, or I'll rip through my pants. There's no substitute for HQ tools.
Miele. 15 years running strong. Service techs came out twice when my wife put the wrong rinser in. Never a service charge. Never.
Instead they thanked us for buying a Miele. Fucking Rocks.
That's a level above. That shits costs $$, but your take is consistent with anybody I know who has any of their stuff.
Next canister vac will be a Miele. But the Kenmore/Panasonic it will replace is a tough little bastard that works as good as new and shows no signs of quitting yet.
Vacuum HAWT Talk!
We've had a Miele canister vac for ~20 years. It's a $1k model. Had to have the cord retractor replaced after 15 years. Other than that pretty solid. Too solid (heavy and cumbersome) in fact for the wife who insisted on a Dyson Animal which she loves. Cordless and lightweight. Due to dwag hair, we have to vacuum urryday.
Don't get me going on quality tools or appliances, or I'll rip through my pants. There's no substitute for HQ tools.
Thanks for all the building advice. That is a super nice shop, very impressive. I was going to post a long response but it kept getting deleted, just count me impressed.
I had showed my friend your shop, we were literally talking shop, and he’s a plumber so he was zooming in to see your tankless water heater. I would really like radiant heat if/when I do a custom build. I wasn’t actually thinking about floors for it, more like wall units to complement the forced air. I haven’t done enough research on it but I’m a fan of radiator heating since my European days.
For lumber, unless you know someone at a still operating sawmill willing to sell direct (sometimes they will even with a small order) then your best bets are either:
1. Get a portable sawmill, learn to use it, find someone with saw worthy doug, do it on the spot, pay for kiln time or if you have the dry space and time to wait do it yourself. You can get a lot of board feet from a single days work. 2. Find someone with a portable sawmill, no shortage of those guys in the PNW and plenty of lists of them. It’s going to be way cheaper than retail, especially if you’re looking for more dimensions than just 2x4s.
If someone asked me whether to get a machining center or a portable sawmill, if the goal is making money, I’d say the sawmill by far. No one has asked me that yet. When I was a kid my project one summer was rebuilding the fence, 150 yards of fencing ranging from 4 ft tall to 15ft. Felled and milled most of it myself, fancy sawmill with a log lift helped - but if a dumb kid like me could do it so can anyone. There is so much good timber on private property in the PNW, it’s almost offensive to see the retail prices.
Transpo broseff. That's the dirty secret of the timber industry. Margins are thin (commodity thin) and timber is big and heavy and it is dangerous, laborious and somewhat capital intensive work to get it out the woods and to market.
The 100 mile radius is the rule of thumb. And, you still have to get it out of the woods.
I worked in the commodity industry in Switzerland. Lumber and gold mining were my desk. I wasn’t trading, I was logistical support. I’ve got to go to some depressing places for that noble cause, like “this was a GULAG previously” or the “donated canned condensed milk makes up most of the calorie intake for these people and you need two armed bodyguards” type of depressing.
Anyway, there is no 100 mile rule. I have no idea where that comes from. Lumber is traded worldwide and the US imports 20% of the world supply of saw wood. Not just the obvious hardwood, but softwood (heh) as well. Transport of commodity products is cheaper than most people think, it’s about the labor and that isn’t the biggest cost to the consumer either. Coal from Kazakhstan is cheaper in West Virginia than the stuff mined 10 miles away.
It’s a fairly efficient process. They’ll go in and log some trails, then once they have space they bring in the machinery and knock down the trees. Hardwood is different, quantity isn’t the only goal since grade will have a massive impact on your bottom line. But the places where hardwood (I’m obviously not talking about oak) comes from have cheap labor. Even those dudes are fairly efficient, I’ve seen it firsthand.
I’m rambling. TLDR the price of lumber is set by supply and demand and tariffs more so than by production and transport costs.
Thanks for all the building advice. That is a super nice shop, very impressive. I was going to post a long response but it kept getting deleted, just count me impressed.
I had showed my friend your shop, we were literally talking shop, and he’s a plumber so he was zooming in to see your tankless water heater. I would really like radiant heat if/when I do a custom build. I wasn’t actually thinking about floors for it, more like wall units to complement the forced air. I haven’t done enough research on it but I’m a fan of radiator heating since my European days.
For lumber, unless you know someone at a still operating sawmill willing to sell direct (sometimes they will even with a small order) then your best bets are either:
1. Get a portable sawmill, learn to use it, find someone with saw worthy doug, do it on the spot, pay for kiln time or if you have the dry space and time to wait do it yourself. You can get a lot of board feet from a single days work. 2. Find someone with a portable sawmill, no shortage of those guys in the PNW and plenty of lists of them. It’s going to be way cheaper than retail, especially if you’re looking for more dimensions than just 2x4s.
If someone asked me whether to get a machining center or a portable sawmill, if the goal is making money, I’d say the sawmill by far. No one has asked me that yet. When I was a kid my project one summer was rebuilding the fence, 150 yards of fencing ranging from 4 ft tall to 15ft. Felled and milled most of it myself, fancy sawmill with a log lift helped - but if a dumb kid like me could do it so can anyone. There is so much good timber on private property in the PNW, it’s almost offensive to see the retail prices.
Good friend is getting a Woodmiser sometime in the next month or two.
Thanks for all the building advice. That is a super nice shop, very impressive. I was going to post a long response but it kept getting deleted, just count me impressed.
I had showed my friend your shop, we were literally talking shop, and he’s a plumber so he was zooming in to see your tankless water heater. I would really like radiant heat if/when I do a custom build. I wasn’t actually thinking about floors for it, more like wall units to complement the forced air. I haven’t done enough research on it but I’m a fan of radiator heating since my European days...
A.) That Tweet had my laughing hard, and I'm showing it to everybody. Like me, a lot of my friends and coworkers were stupid enough to get caught up in remodels at a time of record lumber prices, so it's paid off many times over. My beard told me of one she saw on Facebook or something that showed a truck with two sheets of OSB in the back, and the caption was something like, "Oh. TWO sheets, huh? Look who's flaunting his wealth!..."
B.) Radiant heat. My original plan was ductless mini splits because they're insanely efficient. I also didn't feel like running a gas line to the shop from the house, so I wanted to stick with one power source (electric) for everything in the building. A two-headed Fujitsu mini split system would have cost about $4K to buy from a wholesaler, then I'd have to pay a tech to make the final connections (not legal for somebody like me to charge the system with refrigerant), which would cost a few hundred. At sort of the last minute, I was convinced on another forum to go with radiant floor heat. Advantage of mini split is super low energy consumption and air conditioning (to an extent) in the summer. Advantage to in-floor radiant was... everything else. Twelve foot ceilings aren't ideal for a wall-mounted forced air system, in-floor radiant is cheap as hell to install, totally DIY, doesn't move air around (good for dust, etc.), is great at melting snow and then evaporating the ensuing puddles. And it's super comfortable.
I bought a thousand feet of 1/2" PEX off Amazon for like $200. I bought a pretty efficient circulation pump for $150 or so. Manifold was probably $300 in parts, the most expensive part being the flowmeters (to balance the loops). Boiler was $1000 for a 9 kW modulating boiler that's proven to be overkill for 1100+ square feet (still cycles when temps outside are in the teens). Simple, cheap two-wire thermostat works juuuust fine. Electricity bills went up an average of about $70 per month after turning it on, and some component of that is vehicle charging. I'll take that all day long. Perhaps the biggest individual cost of the system is the 2" XPS foam that has to go underneath the slab, at something like $35 per sheet (at the time). If you heat in any other way, you only need slab perimeter insulation down to the footings. If you heat with the slab, you have to have underslab as well. All told, it was less than $3K to install the whole system, it added a few hours of my time to install prior to slab pour and a day to build the panel after, per-month costs aren't bad, and comfort is amazing. The whole system fits on a small panel in the utility closet, as you saw, so it takes up next to no space. No wall penetrations to possibly leak is a huge benefit as well.
If you're going to do radiant and have a concrete slab, I'm not sure why you wouldn't just heat the slab. Having your heat source spread throughout the entire floor is totally the way to go--not to mention probably cost neutral to having multiple radiators throughout the house (PEX is super cheap, but underslab foam isn't). If I were going to heat with radiators placed throughout the house, I'd just skip radiant altogether and go with the much more efficient mini splits and get air conditioning in the summer for free after the lower monthly energy bills pay for the higher up front installed cost.
I'm not as happy with the water heating for the bathroom sink. Because it's the only point of heated water in the shop (I now regret not building in a shower), I just went with an 11 kW electric POU water heater. It's tiny and was very inexpensive, but it doesn't keep up at all with the faucet turned all the way on. There are bigger electric POU water heaters, but the breakers and wire that you have to pull starts go get really cumbersome and expensive. I didn't want to put a 120 amp breaker in my 200 amp panel just to heat the water in the sink... Gas is still king when it comes to water heating unless you have 320 amp service to your house (which I do, but I split it between the two buildings).
Thanks for all the building advice. That is a super nice shop, very impressive. I was going to post a long response but it kept getting deleted, just count me impressed.
I had showed my friend your shop, we were literally talking shop, and he’s a plumber so he was zooming in to see your tankless water heater. I would really like radiant heat if/when I do a custom build. I wasn’t actually thinking about floors for it, more like wall units to complement the forced air. I haven’t done enough research on it but I’m a fan of radiator heating since my European days.
For lumber, unless you know someone at a still operating sawmill willing to sell direct (sometimes they will even with a small order) then your best bets are either:
1. Get a portable sawmill, learn to use it, find someone with saw worthy doug, do it on the spot, pay for kiln time or if you have the dry space and time to wait do it yourself. You can get a lot of board feet from a single days work. 2. Find someone with a portable sawmill, no shortage of those guys in the PNW and plenty of lists of them. It’s going to be way cheaper than retail, especially if you’re looking for more dimensions than just 2x4s.
If someone asked me whether to get a machining center or a portable sawmill, if the goal is making money, I’d say the sawmill by far. No one has asked me that yet. When I was a kid my project one summer was rebuilding the fence, 150 yards of fencing ranging from 4 ft tall to 15ft. Felled and milled most of it myself, fancy sawmill with a log lift helped - but if a dumb kid like me could do it so can anyone. There is so much good timber on private property in the PNW, it’s almost offensive to see the retail prices.
Transpo broseff. That's the dirty secret of the timber industry. Margins are thin (commodity thin) and timber is big and heavy and it is dangerous, laborious and somewhat capital intensive work to get it out the woods and to market.
The 100 mile radius is the rule of thumb. And, you still have to get it out of the woods.
I worked in the commodity industry in Switzerland. Lumber and gold mining were my desk. I wasn’t trading, I was logistical support. I’ve got to go to some depressing places for that noble cause, like “this was a GULAG previously” or the “donated canned condensed milk makes up most of the calorie intake for these people and you need two armed bodyguards” type of depressing.
Anyway, there is no 100 mile rule. I have no idea where that comes from. Lumber is traded worldwide and the US imports 20% of the world supply of saw wood. Not just the obvious hardwood, but softwood (heh) as well. Transport of commodity products is cheaper than most people think, it’s about the labor and that isn’t the biggest cost to the consumer either. Coal from Kazakhstan is cheaper in West Virginia than the stuff mined 10 miles away.
It’s a fairly efficient process. They’ll go in and log some trails, then once they have space they bring in the machinery and knock down the trees. Hardwood is different, quantity isn’t the only goal since grade will have a massive impact on your bottom line. But the places where hardwood (I’m obviously not talking about oak) comes from have cheap labor. Even those dudes are fairly efficient, I’ve seen it firsthand.
I’m rambling. TLDR the price of lumber is set by supply and demand and tariffs more so than by production and transport costs.
Thanks for all the building advice. That is a super nice shop, very impressive. I was going to post a long response but it kept getting deleted, just count me impressed.
I had showed my friend your shop, we were literally talking shop, and he’s a plumber so he was zooming in to see your tankless water heater. I would really like radiant heat if/when I do a custom build. I wasn’t actually thinking about floors for it, more like wall units to complement the forced air. I haven’t done enough research on it but I’m a fan of radiator heating since my European days.
For lumber, unless you know someone at a still operating sawmill willing to sell direct (sometimes they will even with a small order) then your best bets are either:
1. Get a portable sawmill, learn to use it, find someone with saw worthy doug, do it on the spot, pay for kiln time or if you have the dry space and time to wait do it yourself. You can get a lot of board feet from a single days work. 2. Find someone with a portable sawmill, no shortage of those guys in the PNW and plenty of lists of them. It’s going to be way cheaper than retail, especially if you’re looking for more dimensions than just 2x4s.
If someone asked me whether to get a machining center or a portable sawmill, if the goal is making money, I’d say the sawmill by far. No one has asked me that yet. When I was a kid my project one summer was rebuilding the fence, 150 yards of fencing ranging from 4 ft tall to 15ft. Felled and milled most of it myself, fancy sawmill with a log lift helped - but if a dumb kid like me could do it so can anyone. There is so much good timber on private property in the PNW, it’s almost offensive to see the retail prices.
Transpo broseff. That's the dirty secret of the timber industry. Margins are thin (commodity thin) and timber is big and heavy and it is dangerous, laborious and somewhat capital intensive work to get it out the woods and to market.
The 100 mile radius is the rule of thumb. And, you still have to get it out of the woods.
I worked in the commodity industry in Switzerland. Lumber and gold mining were my desk. I wasn’t trading, I was logistical support. I’ve got to go to some depressing places for that noble cause, like “this was a GULAG previously” or the “donated canned condensed milk makes up most of the calorie intake for these people and you need two armed bodyguards” type of depressing.
Anyway, there is no 100 mile rule. I have no idea where that comes from. Lumber is traded worldwide and the US imports 20% of the world supply of saw wood. Not just the obvious hardwood, but softwood (heh) as well. Transport of commodity products is cheaper than most people think, it’s about the labor and that isn’t the biggest cost to the consumer either. Coal from Kazakhstan is cheaper in West Virginia than the stuff mined 10 miles away.
It’s a fairly efficient process. They’ll go in and log some trails, then once they have space they bring in the machinery and knock down the trees. Hardwood is different, quantity isn’t the only goal since grade will have a massive impact on your bottom line. But the places where hardwood (I’m obviously not talking about oak) comes from have cheap labor. Even those dudes are fairly efficient, I’ve seen it firsthand.
I’m rambling. TLDR the price of lumber is set by supply and demand and tariffs more so than by production and transport costs.
I'm here for the hard wood hawt talk.
Seriously. I feel like a ball less bitch after reading this one.
Thanks for all the building advice. That is a super nice shop, very impressive. I was going to post a long response but it kept getting deleted, just count me impressed.
I had showed my friend your shop, we were literally talking shop, and he’s a plumber so he was zooming in to see your tankless water heater. I would really like radiant heat if/when I do a custom build. I wasn’t actually thinking about floors for it, more like wall units to complement the forced air. I haven’t done enough research on it but I’m a fan of radiator heating since my European days.
For lumber, unless you know someone at a still operating sawmill willing to sell direct (sometimes they will even with a small order) then your best bets are either:
1. Get a portable sawmill, learn to use it, find someone with saw worthy doug, do it on the spot, pay for kiln time or if you have the dry space and time to wait do it yourself. You can get a lot of board feet from a single days work. 2. Find someone with a portable sawmill, no shortage of those guys in the PNW and plenty of lists of them. It’s going to be way cheaper than retail, especially if you’re looking for more dimensions than just 2x4s.
If someone asked me whether to get a machining center or a portable sawmill, if the goal is making money, I’d say the sawmill by far. No one has asked me that yet. When I was a kid my project one summer was rebuilding the fence, 150 yards of fencing ranging from 4 ft tall to 15ft. Felled and milled most of it myself, fancy sawmill with a log lift helped - but if a dumb kid like me could do it so can anyone. There is so much good timber on private property in the PNW, it’s almost offensive to see the retail prices.
Transpo broseff. That's the dirty secret of the timber industry. Margins are thin (commodity thin) and timber is big and heavy and it is dangerous, laborious and somewhat capital intensive work to get it out the woods and to market.
The 100 mile radius is the rule of thumb. And, you still have to get it out of the woods.
I worked in the commodity industry in Switzerland. Lumber and gold mining were my desk. I wasn’t trading, I was logistical support. I’ve got to go to some depressing places for that noble cause, like “this was a GULAG previously” or the “donated canned condensed milk makes up most of the calorie intake for these people and you need two armed bodyguards” type of depressing.
Anyway, there is no 100 mile rule. I have no idea where that comes from. Lumber is traded worldwide and the US imports 20% of the world supply of saw wood. Not just the obvious hardwood, but softwood (heh) as well. Transport of commodity products is cheaper than most people think, it’s about the labor and that isn’t the biggest cost to the consumer either. Coal from Kazakhstan is cheaper in West Virginia than the stuff mined 10 miles away.
It’s a fairly efficient process. They’ll go in and log some trails, then once they have space they bring in the machinery and knock down the trees. Hardwood is different, quantity isn’t the only goal since grade will have a massive impact on your bottom line. But the places where hardwood (I’m obviously not talking about oak) comes from have cheap labor. Even those dudes are fairly efficient, I’ve seen it firsthand.
I’m rambling. TLDR the price of lumber is set by supply and demand and tariffs more so than by production and transport costs.
I'm here for the hard wood hawt talk.
Seriously. I feel like a ball less bitch after reading this one.
Next trip to the hardware store, get an Estwing hammer of at least 24 oz, and toss that fucking Stanley your wife bought at Fred Meyer. Your ball-return will start with developing an appreciation for HQ tools, then executing upon it.
Do that, and you'll have all your juevos securely in place inside of 90 days.
For 1.75 million a ready to build with the pool in at the Woolsey Fire sight. Power, sewer, and water in. Looks like someone ran out of money
I was in LA last week, staying in Santa Monica. Went up to Malibu and was surprised at the lower than expected cost of land as soon as you can’t drive a golf ball into the ocean. I have no doubt it’s a bitch to try to build, but I didn’t expect it to be cheaper than a comparable lot in the Portland area.
It’s honestly shocking to see PNW prices catching up to SoCal so quickly.
I remember having sticker shock 5-6 years ago when seeing what houses went for in the neighborhoods my friends grew up in, Yorba Linda or San Clemente. I looked last week and my first thought was “yup, that’s what a house like that costs.” My friend lives in the Temecula/Murrieta area, which she lovingly refers to as the armpit, and seeing housing costs there made me envious. $550k for a newish build 3,000 sq ft on a nice corner lot? Throw in another $50k and you get an extra bedroom and a pool? Might be worth the skin cancer.
For 1.75 million a ready to build with the pool in at the Woolsey Fire sight. Power, sewer, and water in. Looks like someone ran out of money
I was in LA last week, staying in Santa Monica. Went up to Malibu and was surprised at the lower than expected cost of land as soon as you can’t drive a golf ball into the ocean. I have no doubt it’s a bitch to try to build, but I didn’t expect it to be cheaper than a comparable lot in the Portland area.
It’s honestly shocking to see PNW prices catching up to SoCal so quickly.
I remember having sticker shock 5-6 years ago when seeing what houses went for in the neighborhoods my friends grew up in, Yorba Linda or San Clemente. I looked last week and my first thought was “yup, that’s what a house like that costs.” My friend lives in the Temecula/Murrieta area, which she lovingly refers to as the armpit, and seeing housing costs there made me envious. $550k for a newish build 3,000 sq ft on a nice corner lot? Throw in another $50k and you get an extra bedroom and a pool? Might be worth the skin cancer.
Thanks for all the building advice. That is a super nice shop, very impressive. I was going to post a long response but it kept getting deleted, just count me impressed.
I had showed my friend your shop, we were literally talking shop, and he’s a plumber so he was zooming in to see your tankless water heater. I would really like radiant heat if/when I do a custom build. I wasn’t actually thinking about floors for it, more like wall units to complement the forced air. I haven’t done enough research on it but I’m a fan of radiator heating since my European days.
For lumber, unless you know someone at a still operating sawmill willing to sell direct (sometimes they will even with a small order) then your best bets are either:
1. Get a portable sawmill, learn to use it, find someone with saw worthy doug, do it on the spot, pay for kiln time or if you have the dry space and time to wait do it yourself. You can get a lot of board feet from a single days work. 2. Find someone with a portable sawmill, no shortage of those guys in the PNW and plenty of lists of them. It’s going to be way cheaper than retail, especially if you’re looking for more dimensions than just 2x4s.
If someone asked me whether to get a machining center or a portable sawmill, if the goal is making money, I’d say the sawmill by far. No one has asked me that yet. When I was a kid my project one summer was rebuilding the fence, 150 yards of fencing ranging from 4 ft tall to 15ft. Felled and milled most of it myself, fancy sawmill with a log lift helped - but if a dumb kid like me could do it so can anyone. There is so much good timber on private property in the PNW, it’s almost offensive to see the retail prices.
Transpo broseff. That's the dirty secret of the timber industry. Margins are thin (commodity thin) and timber is big and heavy and it is dangerous, laborious and somewhat capital intensive work to get it out the woods and to market.
The 100 mile radius is the rule of thumb. And, you still have to get it out of the woods.
I worked in the commodity industry in Switzerland. Lumber and gold mining were my desk. I wasn’t trading, I was logistical support. I’ve got to go to some depressing places for that noble cause, like “this was a GULAG previously” or the “donated canned condensed milk makes up most of the calorie intake for these people and you need two armed bodyguards” type of depressing.
Anyway, there is no 100 mile rule. I have no idea where that comes from. Lumber is traded worldwide and the US imports 20% of the world supply of saw wood. Not just the obvious hardwood, but softwood (heh) as well. Transport of commodity products is cheaper than most people think, it’s about the labor and that isn’t the biggest cost to the consumer either. Coal from Kazakhstan is cheaper in West Virginia than the stuff mined 10 miles away.
It’s a fairly efficient process. They’ll go in and log some trails, then once they have space they bring in the machinery and knock down the trees. Hardwood is different, quantity isn’t the only goal since grade will have a massive impact on your bottom line. But the places where hardwood (I’m obviously not talking about oak) comes from have cheap labor. Even those dudes are fairly efficient, I’ve seen it firsthand.
I’m rambling. TLDR the price of lumber is set by supply and demand and tariffs more so than by production and transport costs.
I'm here for the hard wood hawt talk.
Seriously. I feel like a ball less bitch after reading this one.
Next trip to the hardware store, get an Estwing hammer of at least 24 oz, and toss that fucking Stanley your wife bought at Fred Meyer. Your ball-return will start with developing an appreciation for HQ tools, then executing upon it.
Do that, and you'll have all your juevos securely in place inside of 90 days.
Same thing but opposite direction. Because repeated motorcycle crashes have rendered my wrists worthless arthritic limp noodles, I can only hammer so many nails before it hurts too much, then I have to rest. Bought a 14 oz. titanium Stiletto. Can hammer four times as many now before my wrists are worthless.
Comments
Thanks for all the building advice. That is a super nice shop, very impressive. I was going to post a long response but it kept getting deleted, just count me impressed.
I had showed my friend your shop, we were literally talking shop, and he’s a plumber so he was zooming in to see your tankless water heater. I would really like radiant heat if/when I do a custom build. I wasn’t actually thinking about floors for it, more like wall units to complement the forced air. I haven’t done enough research on it but I’m a fan of radiator heating since my European days.
For lumber, unless you know someone at a still operating sawmill willing to sell direct (sometimes they will even with a small order) then your best bets are either:
1. Get a portable sawmill, learn to use it, find someone with saw worthy doug, do it on the spot, pay for kiln time or if you have the dry space and time to wait do it yourself. You can get a lot of board feet from a single days work.
2. Find someone with a portable sawmill, no shortage of those guys in the PNW and plenty of lists of them. It’s going to be way cheaper than retail, especially if you’re looking for more dimensions than just 2x4s.
If someone asked me whether to get a machining center or a portable sawmill, if the goal is making money, I’d say the sawmill by far. No one has asked me that yet. When I was a kid my project one summer was rebuilding the fence, 150 yards of fencing ranging from 4 ft tall to 15ft. Felled and milled most of it myself, fancy sawmill with a log lift helped - but if a dumb kid like me could do it so can anyone. There is so much good timber on private property in the PNW, it’s almost offensive to see the retail prices.
The 100 mile radius is the rule of thumb. And, you still have to get it out of the woods.
Anyway, there is no 100 mile rule. I have no idea where that comes from. Lumber is traded worldwide and the US imports 20% of the world supply of saw wood. Not just the obvious hardwood, but softwood (heh) as well. Transport of commodity products is cheaper than most people think, it’s about the labor and that isn’t the biggest cost to the consumer either. Coal from Kazakhstan is cheaper in West Virginia than the stuff mined 10 miles away.
It’s a fairly efficient process. They’ll go in and log some trails, then once they have space they bring in the machinery and knock down the trees. Hardwood is different, quantity isn’t the only goal since grade will have a massive impact on your bottom line. But the places where hardwood (I’m obviously not talking about oak) comes from have cheap labor. Even those dudes are fairly efficient, I’ve seen it firsthand.
I’m rambling. TLDR the price of lumber is set by supply and demand and tariffs more so than by production and transport costs.
Wood.
B.) Radiant heat. My original plan was ductless mini splits because they're insanely efficient. I also didn't feel like running a gas line to the shop from the house, so I wanted to stick with one power source (electric) for everything in the building. A two-headed Fujitsu mini split system would have cost about $4K to buy from a wholesaler, then I'd have to pay a tech to make the final connections (not legal for somebody like me to charge the system with refrigerant), which would cost a few hundred. At sort of the last minute, I was convinced on another forum to go with radiant floor heat. Advantage of mini split is super low energy consumption and air conditioning (to an extent) in the summer. Advantage to in-floor radiant was... everything else. Twelve foot ceilings aren't ideal for a wall-mounted forced air system, in-floor radiant is cheap as hell to install, totally DIY, doesn't move air around (good for dust, etc.), is great at melting snow and then evaporating the ensuing puddles. And it's super comfortable.
I bought a thousand feet of 1/2" PEX off Amazon for like $200. I bought a pretty efficient circulation pump for $150 or so. Manifold was probably $300 in parts, the most expensive part being the flowmeters (to balance the loops). Boiler was $1000 for a 9 kW modulating boiler that's proven to be overkill for 1100+ square feet (still cycles when temps outside are in the teens). Simple, cheap two-wire thermostat works juuuust fine. Electricity bills went up an average of about $70 per month after turning it on, and some component of that is vehicle charging. I'll take that all day long. Perhaps the biggest individual cost of the system is the 2" XPS foam that has to go underneath the slab, at something like $35 per sheet (at the time). If you heat in any other way, you only need slab perimeter insulation down to the footings. If you heat with the slab, you have to have underslab as well. All told, it was less than $3K to install the whole system, it added a few hours of my time to install prior to slab pour and a day to build the panel after, per-month costs aren't bad, and comfort is amazing. The whole system fits on a small panel in the utility closet, as you saw, so it takes up next to no space. No wall penetrations to possibly leak is a huge benefit as well.
If you're going to do radiant and have a concrete slab, I'm not sure why you wouldn't just heat the slab. Having your heat source spread throughout the entire floor is totally the way to go--not to mention probably cost neutral to having multiple radiators throughout the house (PEX is super cheap, but underslab foam isn't). If I were going to heat with radiators placed throughout the house, I'd just skip radiant altogether and go with the much more efficient mini splits and get air conditioning in the summer for free after the lower monthly energy bills pay for the higher up front installed cost.
I'm not as happy with the water heating for the bathroom sink. Because it's the only point of heated water in the shop (I now regret not building in a shower), I just went with an 11 kW electric POU water heater. It's tiny and was very inexpensive, but it doesn't keep up at all with the faucet turned all the way on. There are bigger electric POU water heaters, but the breakers and wire that you have to pull starts go get really cumbersome and expensive. I didn't want to put a 120 amp breaker in my 200 amp panel just to heat the water in the sink... Gas is still king when it comes to water heating unless you have 320 amp service to your house (which I do, but I split it between the two buildings).
Do that, and you'll have all your juevos securely in place inside of 90 days.
It’s honestly shocking to see PNW prices catching up to SoCal so quickly.
I remember having sticker shock 5-6 years ago when seeing what houses went for in the neighborhoods my friends grew up in, Yorba Linda or San Clemente. I looked last week and my first thought was “yup, that’s what a house like that costs.” My friend lives in the Temecula/Murrieta area, which she lovingly refers to as the armpit, and seeing housing costs there made me envious. $550k for a newish build 3,000 sq ft on a nice corner lot? Throw in another $50k and you get an extra bedroom and a pool? Might be worth the skin cancer.
WWJAD?
You can't get to Malibu and the hills are worse
Woolsey was a big fire that burned from the valley to the sea. Expedited permits and approval to get it rebuilt
That 1.75 gets you a pool. You need 5 more to build the house
On the beach in Malibu as seen on TV starts with a 20 in front