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....................................Sumner's Home Page.......
.............................My Ex-Wyoming House
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I build this house in Wyoming when I was very broke (still am) in two parts. The smaller part (slab exterior walls) about 800 square feet was built for less than $4000.00 and that included the septic system. To keep the cost this low I built the entire house, elect., plumbing, septic, etc.. My only cost for outside help was $35 to have a guy dig the leach field and the hole for the septic tank. I also had a well drilled for about $1000. About 10 years later I added an addition (native sawn lumber for the exterior walls) for about $10,000 that almost doubled the size and gave us a green house.
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The house was made of native lumber, slabs for the exterior (free) and was of pole construction with a 1 1/2 inch concrete slab floor that floated on piers above the ground. The ground was dug up loose where the floor would be and then I dug holes through the loose dirt back to the solid dirt underneath on a 30 inch grid pattern. The concrete was mixed in with pea gravel and poured. Later the loose dirt settled and the floor remained where it was on the piers (holes I dug) resulting in an air space under the floor. The floor was back about 1 1/2 inches from the perimeter walls of the house. In the middle of the floor was a lowered section for the wood/coal burning stove. Cold air would drop off the walls and return to the stove under the floor (for this reason it is called a no-draft floor). The floor was insulated somewhat from the ground with this air space and wasn't cold to your feet.
I hauled in all the sand and gravel and mixed all the concrete for the house in a 1/2 bag mixer. The house was insulated with about 5 tons ($50) of wood shavings and saw dust from a local stud mill. The walls had 10 inches of wood shavings in them and the ceiling had 16 inches. No electrical wires ran through the saw dust, but were in a base board I routed out on the back side for the wire. I heated the house with a stove I built that burnt either coal or wood for about $75 a winter and that is in Wyoming with 20 and 30 degree below days.
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The original part of the house had only one square corner and all the ends here hexagonal. The addition was built into a south facing hill (all excavation was done by me and by hand with just a shovel and wheelbarrow) and featured a green house and a dark room. This provided a lot of winter heat and we had fresh salads when it was below zero outside. If I remember right I moved about 45 tons of dirt by hand. Stupid, but cheap.All the materials for the house were hauled in with 1FATGMC. Of course it looked different then.
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The house was on 20 acres about 13 miles out of Sheridan, Wyoming with a view of the Big Horn Mountains. Over the years I had pigs, chickens horses, donkeys and milked a Jersey Cow (Easter) for 8 years.I wish I still had the house, but further south like where I am now in Utah. Hope you enjoyed the tour.
