Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnYHLbHOjSQ fnYHLbHOjSQ
They say an eco-friendly house can't be built in a 150 days for $150,000, and I say it can.
I'm Allen Smith, join me as I push the limits with time, budget and creativity with the
Garden Home Challenge, exclusively on eHow Home. For three or four weeks, we've been
trying to work on the utility lines, which are really important to doing the trim on
the inside of this job and getting this house completed on time. So what we have is our
drainage coming down the side of the house, because we will have problems out front. We
have a French drain, and then we also are gonna have a drain box up in the corner. This
will be a drain box that will be cut down, and that'll be the extra protection for the
water coming down to the front of the face, and that should take care of all that. Ricky
Morris is a our local guy that's doing all the trenching for us and laying the water
lines, getting the electrical lines in. And also what's wonderful about this, Ricky hooked
up the sewer to our septic system out here, so all that's done. That will speed us up
when our plumbers come out here, and they'll be really happy about that. And that'll keep
the cost down on the inside of the house. And our utility lines were really important
so that we could, like I said before -- now we can go on and trim out the inside of the
house. And trimming out the inside of the house involves the mini-splits, all the water,
the toilets, the showers, and then all the electrical: Lighting, you know, the outlets
-- everything that we're doing inside is all dependent on these lines and what Ricky's
just done. You know, these are basic services that anybody would have in the city that you
also have to have in the country. And these services are available out here on site, so
we want to take advantage of them, and we don't wanna have to, you know, have a special
generator, a propane generator out here that's gonna $3,000 to $4,000 to run this house.
Or we don't wanna dig another well house -- we wanna use what we have on the farm, and that's
what we're doing. So, simply said: What we're doing is bringing two utility lines into the
house -- one's water and one's electric. And that's what we need to finish
the house.