Our Story

Chapter 1 — How We Got Here

Sometimes the biggest changes in your life don't begin with a carefully laid plan.

Sometimes they begin with a decision that sounds a little crazy.

In our case, it started with selling almost everything we owned, leaving behind a beautiful home we'd spent six years remodeling, moving more than 800 miles away, and starting over again in our 60s.

We didn't have a contractor.

We didn't have a crew.

We didn't have a house waiting for us when we arrived.

What we did have was a piece of land, a lot of determination, and a pretty strong belief that if somebody else could figure out how to do something, maybe we could figure it out too.

And that's exactly what we set out to do.

Our adventure actually began back in the spring of 2022, when we sold our home in the mountains of North Carolina.

That house had taken us six years to remodel.

We'd put an enormous amount of time, money and ourselves into it. It had become a beautiful home, and under ordinary circumstances, we probably would have stayed there for many more years.

But the world had changed.

COVID had changed the way we looked at things.

The cost of living was changing.

Our expectations for retirement were changing.

And we began thinking seriously about what we wanted the rest of our lives to look like.

We weren't interested in simply retiring and sitting around waiting for life to happen.

We wanted to build something.

We wanted more control over our surroundings and more control over the costs of living in our retirement years.

We wanted land.

We wanted privacy.

We wanted fewer restrictions on what we could do with our own property.

And we wanted to be closer to Val's relatives across the Canadian border.

So we made a decision.

We were going to start over.

And then, almost immediately, we discovered that we'd created a rather significant problem for ourselves.

We had sold our house.

And we had almost no time to find another one.

The sales contract required us to be out quickly so the new owners could move in, while the people selling their rental property were also under pressure to leave.

That gave us roughly **three weeks** to find our next home.

We didn't have time to casually shop for property.

We had to find somewhere we could actually see ourselves living.

So we started searching.

We looked across several areas of the country, but eventually began focusing on upstate New York.

We wanted acreage.

We wanted privacy.

We wanted relatively few restrictions.

We wanted to be close enough to civilization that we could get whatever supplies and services we needed, but far enough away that we could have some breathing room.

And we wanted to be within reasonable distance of Val's family.

We found several properties that looked promising and made the trip north to meet with an agent.

We looked at property after property.

Some were interesting.

Some were definitely not.

And then, on the **last property we looked at on the last day of our trip**, we found it.

Thirty acres.

Hardwood forest.

Some hemlock, spruce and pine.

A quarter-mile meandering driveway leading back to a cleared homesite.

And something we hadn't expected to find.

An existing foundation.

It was an ICF foundation sitting on a poured concrete pad, with a septic system already installed.

The previous owner had already done a remarkable amount of work.

There were culverts.

Cleared areas.

A French drain.

Buried conduit.

And a foundation that was already sitting there waiting for somebody to build on it.

It wasn't perfect.

It wasn't finished.

But we could see what it could become.

And more importantly...

**we could see ourselves there.**

We bought the property.

And that was when the real adventure began.

---

Chapter 2 — Three Months of Waiting

Buying the property didn't mean we could immediately start building.

We still had to close.

And for the next several months, we lived with that strange mixture of excitement and anxiety that comes with having your entire future riding on a transaction that hasn't happened yet.

Until the closing actually took place, we were constantly worried that something—**anything**—could go wrong.

We'd already sold our home.

We'd already made plans to move.

We'd already committed ourselves to this new life.

But until we had that deed in our hands, none of it felt completely real.

So we spent those months learning.

We learned about our property.

We learned about the northern climate we were moving into.

We spent countless hours researching construction methods, insulation systems, energy efficiency and ways to reduce thermal bridging.

We were going to be building in a climate very different from the one we'd left behind.

And because we planned to live off-grid, energy efficiency wasn't just about saving money.

It was going to affect everything.

Every watt we didn't have to generate was a watt we could use somewhere else.

Every bit of heat we could keep inside the house meant less wood we'd have to burn.

Every material we could save money on meant more money available for something else.

And then there was COVID.

The supply chain problems were very real.

Materials were difficult to find.

Prices were climbing.

And even when you could find what you needed, there was no guarantee it would actually be available when you needed it.

That became one of the reasons we started looking at local Amish sawmills.

They could provide rough-cut dimensional lumber.

It would be green—freshly cut and still wet.

But they could provide it.

And, perhaps more importantly, they could provide it **when we needed it**.

At the time, our attitude was pretty simple:

Green lumber could dry.

**No lumber couldn't.**

We were also watching our construction budget very carefully.

We had just spent another **$50,000** on the property itself.

Every dollar remaining in our bank account suddenly seemed much more important than it had when we'd first started planning all of this.

So we started looking everywhere for savings.

And that's when another unexpected part of our building strategy began to develop.

We discovered that social-media marketplaces could be gold mines.

Used windows.

Doors.

A large Jacuzzi tub.

A brand-new rounded-corner shower stall.

A nearly new propane stove.

A brand-new, highly efficient wood stove that was still sitting on its shipping pallet because the original buyer had changed her mind.

And an absolutely incredible deal on insulated triple-wall stove pipe.

We eventually bought enough stove pipe for our entire project for approximately what one new three-foot section would have cost.

There were deals everywhere.

And some of those deals would eventually influence the design of our house.

We weren't simply building a house and then buying everything that went inside it.

We were finding things we could afford...

and then figuring out how to incorporate them.

It was becoming a different way of building.

And we were learning that flexibility could save us a tremendous amount of money.

---

Chapter 3 — Learning to Live in an RV

While we waited for the closing, we also had to learn how to live in a completely different way.

We had bought a used RV and a good used pickup truck.

We packed what we were keeping into the RV and prepared to head north.

The RV was going to be our home until we could build the real one.

That meant learning how to manage something as basic as **water**.

At first, we were hauling water in jugs and buckets.

That gets old very quickly.

Eventually, we found a local farmer who sold us two large water totes for $200.

They'd apparently been around $400 each new.

Another bargain.

We could fill one tote in the pickup, bring it back to the property, transfer the water into the second tote beside the RV, and then use a small 120-volt pump to move it into the RV.

It was a game changer.

Suddenly we had a much more practical way of keeping ourselves supplied.

And we were learning something important.

The life we were building wasn't going to happen all at once.

It was going to come together one small improvement at a time.

Chapter 4 — The First Pieces of Our New Home

Even before we had the walls, we had started acquiring parts of the house.

One of our first big purchases was a collection of used windows.

We'd found several very good windows for an amazing price.

Some were large matching windows that would eventually go into the living room and dining area.

Others were smaller windows intended for the loft.

One had unfortunately been damaged when somebody had tried to clean it with a pressure washer and broken the seal between the panes.

That one would eventually need some attention.

But even with that problem, we knew we'd gotten an incredible deal.

We were buying windows **before we even had walls to put them in**.

And that was going to become a recurring theme.

We were building our house around opportunities as much as we were building it around plans.

Around the same time, we made another important purchase.

Our first solar generator.

This was our first real experience with solar power.

We bought a Bluetti battery/inverter system and solar panels.

At the time, it seemed almost miraculous.

We could put the panels out in the sun, charge the battery, plug the RV into it and actually run things without firing up the big generator.

We were learning firsthand just how capable solar power could be.

It was also our first glimpse of something that would eventually become a major part of our lives.

We weren't just going to live *near* the power grid.

We were going to make our own power.

---

Chapter 5 — Getting a Head Start

Before the property officially became ours, the previous owner gave us permission to get a little work done.

That gave us an opportunity to start preparing.

We began cleaning up the property.

Trees that were dead or dangerous had to come down.

There was an old maple near the future house that had already suffered significant damage and was becoming a safety hazard.

We cut down scrub trees.

We cleaned up fallen branches.

We started organizing the site.

And we built a storage shed.

That little shed became enormously important.

The RV was already packed to the point where it was difficult to move around inside.

Getting tools and construction materials out of the RV gave us a little breathing room.

We even used some of the rough lumber our Amish supplier couldn't use for structural construction.

He'd simply asked if we could use it.

Of course we could.

We built the shed using materials that otherwise might have been discarded.

And once again, we were finding ways to turn something inexpensive—or even free—into something useful.

The shed also became the beginning of our future solar infrastructure.

We were already thinking ahead.

We didn't know exactly how everything would eventually come together.

But we were starting to see the shape of it.

Then, finally...

**closing day arrived.**

---

Chapter 6 — It Was Finally Ours

For approximately three months, we'd been walking on eggshells.

We'd worried about everything that could possibly jeopardize the sale.

And then suddenly, we were sitting at the closing table.

We handed over a check.

And somebody handed us a **deed**.

It was ours.

Our property.

Thirty acres.

And now we could finally do what we'd come here to do.

**Build.**

The relief was enormous.

We could celebrate.

And we'd already been preparing.

Our first load of Amish rough-cut lumber had arrived.

The previous owner had completed roughly half of the subfloor on the foundation.

And what he'd built impressed me.

He'd originally planned to build a log-cabin-style camp house on the foundation, so he'd designed the floor to handle a substantial amount of weight.

There were heavy floor joists.

Large 8-by-8-inch supporting beams down the center.

Doubled joists.

And one-inch-by-ten-inch rough-cut subflooring.

He'd even had the logs for the cabin he planned to build sitting on that floor for more than two years.

And the floor hadn't sagged.

It hadn't deformed.

It hadn't moved.

That told me something.

**Don't mess with success.**

I decided to copy his construction method for the remaining half of our subfloor.

We'd also made a serious trip to the local building supply superstore.

And I have to admit, I lucked out marrying Val.

She loves shopping for power tools even more than I do.

We bought a compound miter saw.

A table saw.

A battery-powered circular saw.

A nail gun.

Ladders.

And all sorts of other equipment we thought we'd need.

We were wrong about that last part.

We would eventually discover that there is no such thing as *all the tools you'll need* when you're building your own house.

We already had a portable solar generator and a large dual-fuel generator to power the RV and our tools.

So the day after the contracts were signed, we were cutting and nailing.

Our first goal was simple.

**Finish the floor.**

---

Chapter 7 — Green Lumber

We measured everything carefully so our new construction would finish flush with the existing floor.

Then we started cutting and assembling the joists and supporting beams.

It took us about three days.

And we took our time because we knew that if we got the floor wrong, everything built on top of it would be wrong.

Level.

Straight.

Square.

Everything started there.

Eventually, we had a real floor.

But we learned something about green lumber that nobody had bothered to tell us.

We knew the wood would shrink somewhat as it dried.

We could plan for that.

What we hadn't anticipated was what happened when we tried to use a nail gun on it.

The nails simply didn't hold the way we expected.

The adhesive on the nails depends on heat generated during installation to help bond them into the wood.

With wet lumber, that wasn't happening properly.

The first time we put tension on one of those joints, the pieces practically fell apart.

So we adapted.

We used a lot more nails.

And a lot of screws.

It wasn't the most elegant solution, but it worked.

And we learned another lesson.

If you can give green lumber time to dry before building with it, that's probably a very good idea.

Unfortunately...

**we didn't have time.**

---

Chapter 8 — Raising the Walls

Once the floor was complete, we moved on to the part where the house finally began to look like a house.

The walls.

We'd researched framing extensively.

One of the things we'd learned was that framing exterior walls at 24 inches on center rather than the more conventional 16 inches could save us a significant amount of material.

That meant less lumber.

Less cost.

And fewer opportunities for thermal bridging.

We were planning on using closed-cell spray foam insulation, which would add significant structural strength once cured.

So we decided to build our exterior walls using 2-by-6-inch Amish rough-cut lumber at 24 inches on center.

And this wasn't the 1¾-by-5½-inch lumber you get at a typical lumberyard.

This was actual **2-by-6 material**.

Big, heavy, rough-cut lumber.

And then we had to raise it.

Sixteen-foot sections of wall.

Just the two of us.

We'd get one up...

and sometimes it would come right back down around us.

It took a lot of struggling.

A lot of repositioning.

A lot of wondering whether we'd bitten off more than we could chew.

But eventually, we got them all standing.

We tied everything together with our top plates.

And suddenly we could stand back and see the outline of our house.

We'd moved from a concrete foundation...

to something that actually looked like a home.

---

Chapter 9 — Wrapping the House

With the exterior walls standing and tied together, we began working on the envelope.

Our research had led us toward a construction method designed to maximize insulation and minimize thermal bridging.

We started by wrapping the outside of the walls with **¾-inch foil-faced PolyISO insulation**.

We screwed the sheets into place using plastic washers and then sealed the seams and screw penetrations with foil tape.

The inside of those walls became **bright white**.

But we weren't finished.

Over the PolyISO, we installed ZIP sheathing.

Then we sealed and taped that as well.

The result was two layers of moisture and air control around the exterior of the house.

That was important to us.

Our primary source of heat was going to be a wood stove.

We needed the house to retain the heat we put into it.

We weren't interested in building something that would simply allow our expensive heat to escape through every seam, stud and penetration.

Everything we'd been researching came back to the same thing:

Build the envelope properly.

Insulate it properly.

Control the air.

Control the moisture.

And eliminate thermal bridges wherever possible.

It was taking more thought up front.

But we believed it would pay us back for as long as we lived there.

---

Chapter 10 — The Trusses That Wouldn't Come

There was only one problem.

We'd ordered engineered floor trusses for the loft.

They were designed to span the entire **24-foot width** of the house without requiring interior load-bearing walls.

That gave us enormous flexibility inside.

No interior load-bearing walls meant we could design the rooms however we wanted.

The trusses also gave us approximately **14 inches of vertical space** between the floor and ceiling.

That space would eventually become extremely useful for routing plumbing, electrical and other mechanical systems.

And because the trusses could be installed at 24 inches on center, they would line up directly with our wall studs.

We could tie the whole structure together from the ICF foundation, through the walls, into the loft and eventually up to the roof.

It was a very strong design.

There was only one problem.

**The trusses didn't arrive.**

We'd been told three weeks.

Three weeks came and went.

Then four.

Then we were approaching five weeks.

I called repeatedly.

And every time, I got a different answer.

Eventually I finally got the truth.

The order had initially been lost.

Then Lowe's had called on our behalf and managed to get a copy of the order into the system.

But now there was another problem.

The lumber used to manufacture the trusses was in short supply.

The next trainload was reportedly stuck somewhere this side of Chicago.

And there was nothing we could do.

We were stuck.

So rather than sit around doing nothing, we moved inside.

We laid out our interior walls.

And something wonderful happened.

For the first time, we could actually **walk through our house**.

We could stand in what would become the living room.

We could walk into the kitchen.

We could see how large the bedrooms would feel.

We could decide whether something was too cramped or just right.

We could begin imagining furniture.

We could begin imagining ourselves actually living there.

We could start to **dream**.

And it felt good.

---

Chapter 11 — Finally!

Eventually, those trusses arrived.

Twenty-five enormous engineered trusses.

And getting them onto the walls was another story.

We managed to get one end of each truss up a ladder and onto the wall.

Then we'd lift the opposite end and get it over the other wall.

And then do it again.

And again.

Twenty-five times.

By the end of the day, we'd had enough.

But we'd done it.

The trusses were up.

And they were secured to the walls.

Now we needed a floor over them.

Because summer was ending.

And suddenly...

**the weather was changing.**

After a long, relatively dry summer, we began getting regular downpours.

We desperately needed to get the subfloor installed so we'd have a roof over the first floor.

Fortunately, we weren't entirely on our own.

Some of Val's family came down and offered to help.

With their help, we managed to get all of the subflooring installed in a single day.

That felt amazing.

We then bought a huge tarp and covered the loft floor with it, creating a temporary waterproof barrier while we continued working below.

For the first time, we had something approaching shelter.

---

Chapter 12 — Windows, Insulation and a Stove

The windows we'd purchased months earlier were finally ready for their new home.

Because we'd had them before we'd framed the walls, we had accurate measurements for the rough openings.

That made installation relatively easy.

We cleaned them up.

Slid them into place.

Shimmed them.

Secured them.

And suddenly the house had windows.

We had a roof over our heads.

We had walls.

We had windows.

Now we needed to prepare for winter.

The first floor was ready for insulation.

We'd asked our local building inspector who he would recommend for spray foam, and he pointed us toward a company he trusted.

Closed-cell spray foam wasn't cheap.

But we'd decided it was worth the cost.

It provided excellent insulation.

It controlled air infiltration.

It resisted moisture.

And it added structural strength to the walls.

Remember those 24-inch-on-center walls?

We were about to get some of that strength back.

And then we got another lucky break.

Our Amish lumber was actually **2 inches by 6 inches**.

The insulation crew filled the wall cavities by sight, bringing the foam to approximately half an inch from the front of the studs.

They didn't initially realize they were filling a larger cavity than they normally encountered.

When they realized their mistake, they told us not to worry about it.

They'd made the mistake.

We got the extra insulation.

Nearly another inch of it.

Another little break in our favor.

The house was getting tighter.

Warmer.

More substantial.

And more like a home every day.

---

Chapter 13 — The Stove

We'd always planned to heat the house primarily with wood.

And we'd managed to find an incredible deal on a nearly new, highly efficient wood stove.

It was still sitting on the shipping pallet when we bought it.

But once the first floor was enclosed, we discovered that our original plan for its location wasn't going to work.

We'd wanted to put it in a corner.

Unfortunately, the stove required more clearance than the corner would allow.

Moving a window and a door wasn't an option.

So we changed plans.

We decided to place the stove centrally on the front wall between our two large windows.

And as it turned out, that was probably a better location anyway.

The stove would distribute heat much more effectively from the center of the house.

But it needed a proper hearth and heat protection behind it.

So Val went to work.

We found an attractive stone-pattern tile that looked great and didn't cost a fortune.

Val became the tile setter.

We bought a tile saw and the tools we needed.

She built the tiled hearth and the tiled wall behind the stove.

And when we finally set that beautiful new stove into place, it looked like it had always belonged there.

Meanwhile, Val was also tiling our master bathroom.

We'd found a large Jacuzzi tub for a fraction of its original cost, and we wanted that floor finished so we could install it.

There was a lot happening.

Fast.

Because winter was coming.

---

Chapter 14 — Building the Infrastructure

We'd bought a washing machine and electric dryer during a Memorial Day appliance sale.

The store was offering 0% interest for twelve months.

We took the deal.

Why not use somebody else's money when they're willing to let you?

We'd also acquired our propane kitchen stove.

And all of those things needed something.

Water.

Drainage.

Electricity.

Gas.

Infrastructure isn't very exciting to watch, but it is what makes a house a house.

I decided to keep the kitchen, bathroom and laundry areas together so I could minimize the amount of plumbing required.

That saved materials.

It also simplified the installation.

For our water lines, I chose PEX-A.

It was well suited to cold climates, maintained full-size flow through its connections and was relatively easy to install.

A cutter and an expansion tool were essentially all I needed.

I ran the water lines.

Then the drain lines.

Fortunately, there was already a sewer connection in the crawl space.

I could run a main drain line to that point and branch everything else off of it.

And then came the one that made me nervous.

**Gas.**

I'd never installed a gas line before.

I spent a few days worrying about it.

Eventually, though, I discovered that the basic process wasn't dramatically different from other piping work.

I just hated working with black iron.

That oily coating gets everywhere.

But I laid out the system.

We only had two propane appliances planned at the time:

The kitchen stove.

And our new on-demand propane water heater.

The water heater was particularly appealing to me.

Rather than maintaining a tank full of hot water all day, we'd heat water only when we needed it.

For an off-grid home, those little decisions mattered.

Everything mattered.

Every watt.

Every gallon.

Every dollar.

We weren't willing to give up the lifestyle we wanted simply because we were building off-grid.

We were trying to find ways to make the off-grid lifestyle **better**.

And we were about to find out whether my gas installation was actually going to work.

---

Chapter 15 — The Well

There was still one rather important piece missing from our plans for an independent life in the woods.

**Water.**

A few weeks earlier, we'd found a reputable well drilling company and made arrangements to have them drill our well at the first opportunity.

They already had several wells ahead of us, so we'd been told it might take a while.

That was fine.

By this point, we'd become pretty good at waiting.

We'd waited for the property closing.

We'd waited for lumber.

We'd waited for our engineered floor trusses.

We'd waited for just about everything that could possibly be delayed.

So we waited for the well.

Eventually, though, I decided to call and see where we stood.

That's when I got the bad news.

Their drilling rig was in the shop for repairs.

It would be at least another few weeks.

There wasn't really anything we could do about it, so once again, we put it out of our minds and kept working.

And waited.

And waited.

Until finally, about six weeks after we'd originally arranged for the drilling, the phone rang.

They'd be there the following week.

That was a pretty exciting phone call.

For all the things we'd already accomplished, having our own well was different.

This wasn't another piece of the house.

This was one of the final pieces of the **life** we'd come here to build.

We wanted to be independent.

We wanted our own power.

We wanted our own home.

And now we were finally going to have our own water.

When those huge drilling trucks came rumbling up our quarter-mile driveway that Saturday morning, we knew we were getting close.

The crew spent much of the first half of the day getting everything positioned and set up.

Then they started drilling.

And drilling.

And drilling.

They eventually worked their way down through approximately **140 feet of Adirondack bedrock**.

They encountered a few minor water-bearing seams along the way, but nothing that appeared capable of producing enough water for our needs.

Finally, at around 140 feet, they hit something that looked promising.

The water was clear.

The formation appeared to be a good open seam.

But there was a problem.

The test showed a flow rate of only about **1½ gallons per minute**.

That wasn't going to work for us.

I like my long, hot showers.

And we'd already been planning a house with a washing machine, bathtub, on-demand water heater and everything else that comes along with having a normal home.

A gallon and a half a minute wasn't going to provide much independence.

And we'd already spent more than **$6,500** getting that far down into the ground.

That number got our attention.

We'd come to New York with a finite amount of money, and we'd been watching that money disappear ever since we'd bought the property.

Every unexpected expense mattered.

Every decision had to be weighed against what we'd have left when we finally got the house finished.

And now we were looking at the possibility of spending considerably more on a well that might not even produce enough water for us.

The drilling operator wasn't ready to give up on the well, though.

He thought the seam they'd found was probably a good one.

The water was clear.

The formation appeared to be open.

His suspicion was that it simply wasn't flowing properly because the seam was plugged or restricted.

That left us with two choices.

Keep drilling and hope they found another water-bearing seam.

Or try to open up the one we'd already found.

They offered to **frack the well**.

The cost was a flat $2,000, whether it worked or not.

And if it failed, we could still continue drilling.

It wasn't exactly an inexpensive gamble.

But considering how much we'd already invested, it seemed like the better choice.

So we decided to take the chance.

It was around lunchtime, so the crew headed home to eat and bring back their fracking equipment.

When they returned, I initially thought some kind of military tank was coming up our driveway.

It turned out to be their enormous tracked fracking machine.

They also brought along a water truck carrying approximately **1,500 gallons of water**.

The operator explained what was going to happen.

They'd pump the water into the well under extremely high pressure.

The pressure gauge should climb to somewhere around **700 to 1,000 pounds per square inch**.

Then, hopefully...

**Boom.**

The pressure would suddenly release as the formation opened up.

It sounded pretty impressive.

So we watched.

They started pumping.

The pressure gauge climbed...

Except it didn't.

It stayed at essentially **zero**.

They kept pumping.

And pumping.

And eventually, they'd put all 1,500 gallons of water into that well.

The pressure gauge still hadn't moved.

I asked the crew what that meant.

And that's when everybody started smiling.

Apparently, the fact that the pressure wasn't building was actually **good news**.

Their conclusion was that we'd probably opened the seam almost immediately.

The water was simply disappearing into the formation instead of building pressure in the well.

When they finally pulled the fracking hose out, we got our answer.

Water practically **exploded out of the top of the well**.

It continued pouring out for roughly another hour before things finally began to settle down.

The initial surge was the water they'd pumped into the well during the fracking operation.

But then came something even better.

Our water.

Fresh water coming out of the Adirondack bedrock.

The well initially tested at nearly **20 gallons per minute**.

Once everything settled down to its natural level, we were still getting approximately **15 gallons per minute**.

We'd gone from wondering whether we'd have enough water for a shower to having more water than we were ever likely to use.

That was one of those moments when you realize just how quickly a situation can change.

A few hours earlier, we were wondering whether we'd have to drill another hundred feet into the ground.

Now we had a well producing fifteen gallons a minute.

**We had water.**

Of course, getting that water into the house was another expense.

The well was capped, and the following week the crew returned to install the pump, run the water line to the house, and install our pressure tank.

By the time everything was completed, our total investment in the well and pump installation had come to **nearly $15,000**.

And I'll be honest—we sweated that number for quite a while.

Fifteen thousand dollars was a *lot* of money for us at that point in the build.

We'd already spent an additional $50,000 buying the property, and we'd been trying to stretch every remaining dollar as far as we possibly could.

Now another fifteen thousand dollars had disappeared into the ground.

But there are some things you simply can't compromise on when you're building a home.

**Water is one of them.**

And looking back, it was worth every penny.

We had gone from wondering whether we'd have enough water to run a household to having a well producing roughly **15 gallons per minute**.

The water line was buried approximately **six feet underground**, well below the frost line.

Fortunately, the previous owner had already installed conduit through the foundation pad into the crawl space, so we were able to take advantage of that as well.

That meant our water line would enter the house through the protected crawl space rather than being exposed to the winter temperatures outside.

And that turned out to be important.

Very important.

Because we weren't building this house in a mild climate.

We were building it in northern New York.

We've since experienced temperatures around **-30°F** outside.

Yet even during those bitterly cold periods, our insulated crawl space has remained remarkably consistent—generally around **47 to 51°F**.

So the water coming into our house has never had to fight those outside temperatures directly.

And that was exactly what we'd been trying to accomplish from the beginning.

Every decision was about building something that would work **with** the environment instead of constantly fighting against it.

We'd come here looking for a place where we could build a more independent life.

Now we had our own land.

Our own house was taking shape.

We were generating our own electricity.

And now, finally...

**we had our own water.**

The pieces were starting to come together.

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Chapter 16 — Now We Had Gas

With the well finally producing more water than we were ever likely to need, we'd solved one major problem.

Now we needed a way to **heat that water**.

I'd already decided that propane made the most sense for some of our appliances.

We'd purchased a high-efficiency on-demand propane water heater, and we'd also found that almost-new propane kitchen stove for a fraction of what a new one would have cost us.

There was just one small problem.

I'd never installed a gas system before.

I'd spent a lot of time researching it, though.

And eventually I had our propane lines installed, complete with the required debris traps, proper fittings, shutoffs and gas-line identification stickers.

When I finally stood back and looked at it, I had to admit...

**I was pretty impressed with myself.**

But being impressed with yourself isn't the same thing as knowing you've done something safely.

And there was still a little doubt lingering in the backs of our minds.

Gas isn't something you want to *think* you've installed correctly.

You want to **know**.

So before we ever connected an appliance or allowed propane anywhere near the system, I capped all of the lines and built a simple pressure-testing setup.

I made a pressure gauge that also incorporated a fill valve, allowing me to pressurize the entire system and then monitor it for leaks.

I brought the system up to approximately **38 PSI**, following the testing recommendations we'd been given.

Then came the first test.

I sprayed the connections with leak-detection solution and watched for bubbles.

Nothing.

Everything looked good.

But that wasn't enough.

A leak might not show itself immediately, so we left the system pressurized and waited.

Twenty-four hours.

That was a long twenty-four hours.

When I checked the gauge the following day, it was still sitting right where we'd left it.

**38 PSI.**

No pressure loss.

No leaks.

Now I was feeling considerably better.

The next step was connecting the appliances.

The on-demand propane water heater had already been sitting there for several weeks, waiting patiently for its turn.

I took it out, mounted it in its new home, and connected it to the gas line.

Then I ran the connection to the propane stove.

Once again, I made absolutely certain that everything was shut off and performed another pressure test—this time at the lower operating pressure appropriate for the appliances.

Again...

**Pass.**

Now we just needed some propane.

When the propane company arrived, they didn't simply pull up, fill a tank and leave.

They inspected the installation.

They checked that everything met the applicable state requirements, performed their own pressure test, and went over the system before they were willing to put it into service.

Everything checked out.

They installed our new **120-gallon propane tank**, connected it to the house, and finally opened the valve.

**Now we were cooking!**

Literally.

And we had hot water.

That might sound like a small thing.

After everything we'd already accomplished, it certainly wasn't the biggest milestone we'd reached.

But there was something incredibly satisfying about turning on a faucet and getting hot water from a system we'd designed and installed ourselves.

It was another little piece of normal life appearing in the middle of what had started out as a construction site in the woods.

Of course, I wasn't about to stop worrying about gas just because everything had passed inspection.

Eventually, I installed a gas detector at both appliance locations.

If either detector sensed even a small amount of propane, it would sound an alarm.

And as it turned out, that wasn't just something I'd installed to make myself feel better.

One day, I accidentally bumped the oven knob and turned the gas on.

A few minutes later...

**BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!**

That alarm scared the daylights out of us.

For a moment, I thought we'd discovered an actual gas leak.

Then I figured out what had happened.

I'd turned the oven knob on without realizing it.

Once the adrenaline wore off, I had to laugh.

But it also proved something important.

All that worrying about gas safety hadn't been wasted effort.

The system worked.

The testing worked.

The detectors worked.

And we'd made the right choices.

We were learning how to build and operate a house we'd never built before, in a climate we'd never lived in before, using systems we'd never installed before.

And every time we learned something new, we became a little more confident that maybe...

**we really could do this.**

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