Building a Barn Part One

We were going to build a bar for two horses. It needed two stalls, a tack room, a place to store feed (hay, pellets, etc.), and a covered area out of the sun. The covered area is an Arizona requirement. The finished barn was 36' x 24'.

This is Dan the next door neighbor on his tractor. Dan used to have his own landscape business. During one of the housing busts of the boom / bust building cycle he was doing work for several builders who went bankrupt on him. He got caught by the IRS for late payment of employee taxes. Rather than let him work through it they stepped in and sold off all of his equipment. Dan now works for a company that builds swimming pools. They use his landscape license and he runs their crews.

The idea is to make a large flat spot. There are no flat spots on our five acres. We start on a place right below the garage. We had to cut about 5 feet in the high corner and fill about 8 feet in the low corner. I had 9 truck loads of fill brought in for the down side. Dan did all of the tractor work.

Here I am on the tracker. My assignment was to drive back and forth on the fill area and pack it down. Back and Forth, Back & Forth, maybe I found my calling.

We decided to get a county permit to keep everything legal. It cost me $481 and several trips to the county permit building. There were many different things that were needed.

1. Set backs drawing ( I did)

2. Cut and Fill drawing (I did)

3. Native plants ( Area of grading was small and there were no protected plants) this got OK based on the above drawings

4. Septic tank placement in relation to building (again used drawings above)

5. Review of plans building plans (Plans must be drawn by engineer licenced in AZ). The drawings were provided by the company building the barn.

6. Inspection of foundation forms prior to concrete

7. Final Inspection

Another neighbor Sergio is a supervisor for KGE a large Construction Company. He and one of his foremen did the concrete work on Saturdays and the day after Thanksgiving. He looked at the plans and said "Piece of Cake", He wanted $1000 plus material cost. I said "OK". I gave him $500 for materials. It turned out to be harder than he thought because of the ground. I loaned him my jackhammer and when it was over I I gave him and extra $200.

You will note the fence on the right. I had the fence built after we started working on the site prep. It runs along the front of this picture then over to Dan & Marsha's (the house with the pickup) then down to the left to another neighbors fence. We had to cut the fence during construction and once the barn was up I put in new end posts and re-stretched the wire. Amazing the things I was learning.

This story is to be continued.