Our Home Building Project – Part 1

Quick Catch-up

We bought a 4.5 acre property in Duluth last year. You can read about the decision to buy in Duluth in this post. This year we are getting our home building project started!

We arrived this spring with the intention to get things going on the property as soon as possible. To be clear, we are not doing everything ourselves. Andrew is drafting the plans, and intends to do much of the building himself. However, the driveway, septic, and well are way above our do-it-yourself skill and tool set and we hired two contractors to complete that work this year. Andrew will be hiring for other aspects of the build, too.

Home Building Project Insurance

We are building the house ourselves and so we need to have a builders risk insurance policy. As it turns out, not all insurance agents or companies offer this. I’ve had difficulty with a couple local insurance agents getting back to me with actual information about what we need to provide to get a quote. Obviously, I will keep calling and asking questions!

Driveway

In Duluth, and maybe all of Minnesota, there are regulations about heavy equipment driving on dirt roads until the frost in the ground melts. For this reason, we were waiting until May 16th for the regulations to be lifted. Then our contractor can bring out his equipment; but he his behind on another job due to all the rain so we are still waiting.

Last year, we cut down hundreds of trees where the driveway, and septic mound will be installed. Warren, our contractor, told us that we should leave a couple feet of the trunk sticking out of the ground so that his equipment could easily pull the trees out and tow them away for us. The root removal makes the driveway less likely to get pitted later when the roots break down.

I’m so excited to see this process begin! This will allow us to move our RV onto the property and begin the next steps of the build.

Septic System

Our driveway contractor, Warren Peterson, will also be building our septic system. He brought a soil specialist out last year to look at the slope of the ground, and the quality of our soil. The permit was approved by the County yesterday!

This area of Minnesota has ledge rock which prevents good drainage. We only have about 8 inches of soil above the rock, so we will need a very large septic mound for the three bedroom, three bathroom house. It needs a lot more sand than a typical mound which means the project will cost more. But, we want the septic to be installed perfectly the first time.

The Well

We hired Rasmussen Well Drilling Inc, a local company, to drill our well. I contacted them last year to be sure we were on the list for this spring. We were warned by contractors and neighbors that there was a long wait last year to have work like this completed.

Linda, of Rasmussen, is very helpful! She filed for the permit on our behalf over the winter so they can begin soon after the driveway is complete.

Electricity

We also need to get electricity on the property. Even though we intend to use solar for most of our power needs, we won’t have that setup this year. We need electricity to run the pumps for the well and septic systems. We are not generating enough on the RV roof for all that plus our typical use!

Minnesota Power will not run the lines until after the driveway is installed. This is another project that we can’t scheduled quite yet.

Long Process Ahead

Our home building project will be a long process. Andrew and I (but mostly Andrew) are the general contractor, the architect, and the builder. I will be learning a ton along the way as Minnesota has different regulations than other places we have lived. I’ll keep posting more as we go!