Can you LEGALLY Build with SAWMILL Lumber?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hello all my youtube friends welcome to red tool house in the winter wonderland that we are at the time of this recording most of the country is nestled in a nice layer of snow and ice so for those of you partaking in that you have my sympathies those of you in florida you know where you can stick it you may hear the sound of our generator in the background we're going on day five with no power but uh no big deal we will survive so in today's video i want to talk about a contentious topic that i kind of dug up accidentally in the video i did a couple weeks ago y'all just blowed me up as we'd say up elk river with a lot of comments about sawmill lumber so the question in today's video is can you legally build your structure your house with sawmill lumber and the answer to that is yes and no how's that for waffling so let's get into it well i think the easiest way to address this topic is let's just start with an example houses up here on our 100 acres and let's say i decided i convinced my wife to sell the house in the front part of the property go to the very back of the property and build a nice cabin with lumber off the property with the sawmill and that becomes our new secluded living after the boys have moved out very tempting no so could we do that legally and build the entire house with lumber i mealed off the property so first let's talk about why is there even an issue of legality when it comes to building something yourself with lumber and material you've acquired yourself well it comes back to our illustrious government and you really need to start with building codes at the national level down to the state level the county level and even municipality level if you live in such one so you have to look at those codes because they want to save you from yourself correct most of those building codes if not all of them are going to talk about inspected or stamped structural wood and how it's a requirement that you you use that when building a structure so i can't preface enough everything else i'm going to talk about in this video i have to preface start there states counties and municipalities are all going to have different interpretations different enforcements all of that so start there do not take what i'm giving you and say oh i don't have to worry about any of those laws but let's get into the nitty-gritty here so to make sure we're all on the same page let's address what i'm talking about when i say inspected or stamped wood i have here in front of me on my mill this lovely new 2x6 that i acquired at home depot it actually costs more than my first semester of college tuition but if we zoom in real quick we can see there is indeed a stamp that was not as legible but you can see this stamp has a marking of the company that inspected it has the mill that it came from its grade and some other information there so that is required to be on any structural lumber that you use to build and i'm using vague terms there because again there's variation depending on your state county blah blah blah so because that's been inspected that is now safe to use in building a structure because it has met certain specifications certain standards certain moisture content uh there's just all these assumptions that are now made about this board because it passed inspection that it can do what it was made to do and that's be a part of holding up a wall or whatever you're using it for so the one thing you'll find in most building codes again check your own is the word structural that structural wood has to have an inspection stamp on it so with that being said if you look at structural structural is load bearing you know stuff that actually holds up portions of the house the walls the trusses the roofs the rafters whatever you're doing there but there's so much in the house that isn't structural that you have some options so think about your sheathing your flooring your sub flooring your siding your trim work uh finish flooring any of that getting that finished carpentry does not have to be inspected and can obviously come from your mill so if you looked at it from that example so well what if i just built using my example building a cabin what if i just went out and bought all the sticks to build the structural skeleton of my cabin and then melt everything else sure absolutely that would be great and you could really save a lot of money there out of pocket money now your time and and expenses with the mill would be factored in but you could really save a lot of out-of-pocket money and build a cabin exactly the way you wanted to with your own specifications and still comply with inspection laws now code language also uses the term dwelling and some you'll see will have exemptions for ag structures or they'll specify residency so it's one of those things to say well am i building an actual residency or am i just building a building for example my barn here in west virginia that barn would classify as an agricultural structure and would not need to be inspected you know my pig farrowing barn my [Music] boar corral on the back my brooder coupe here that you see over my shoulder all of those things are ag buildings and there would be no compliance issues at all with that so it may beg the question well what if you built a really nice bar i mean a really nice barn and you just happened to sleep in it at night because you wanted to keep track of your animal well that's between you and the code inspector i'm not recommending that one way or the other but there could be some some ways to try to navigate that so in doing the research for this video the twenty thousand dollar question that i ran into or the twenty thousand dollar issue is enforcement there's the code that's on the books and then there's the code that's actually enforced by the inspector at the county level or municipality level again in my state of west virginia that all rides on the county level we're in a very rural county i have no municipality that i have to answer to and really the county government is extremely extremely small they like the permit dollars but they don't like the permit labor that goes into enforcing that so when i built a house 20 years ago permit fees were paid but i never saw an inspector and the entire time i built that house took me two years to build it because i was doing it all myself and never had an inspector show up in fact i brought inspectors in just to make sure i was doing stuff right because the county wasn't going to show up ever crazy stuff i know so you could say to heck with it i'm throwing the building codes out the window i'm building whatever i want to because this is american dag on it and this is how we do things you have that option but just know there could be consequences so in all my research here's the part that i found the most exciting and intriguing what about taking my own wood here and having it inspected so it could get stamped and be used for anything and be totally compliant with code that is an option there are companies that will do that they will come inspect the wood now before you say well sure if you've got a million dollars laying around or you're flush with cash any dummy could do that but let me talk to you about that the visuals would be much more compelling if they weren't covered in snow well i want to i want to give a shout out to timber products in georgia i had a great conversation with them the other day and doing research for this video and i ended up talking with katie weaver first and foremost about this idea of what would it cost and what's the implications of having their company inspect a stack of lumber for me so i could use it in and be completely compliant with building codes i had such a good conversation with katie that she later put me on the line with the vice president of the company david who spent more time than i would think a vice president should talking with me but you could tell he loves what he does and we we had a great conversation really neat talking to him so i've got some great stuff i hope you guys are sticking around for this because i got some great stuff to go over and i have my notes here to help so 20 years ago i built this building the building that's got the siding on it not the pole barn structure that's a 24 by 32 concrete pad uh single floor plan our open floor plan structure that kelly and i lived in for two years when we first bought the property now i'm pretty certain it's been 20 years so bear with me on that but i'm pretty certain i spent 26 000 total out of pocket to get that thing under roof and live in it i believe my lumber costs were between 10 to 12 000 out of that 26. so what if i told you in recreating that project i could have all the lumber that i've milled to be able to rebuild this building inspected for less than 10 percent the cost of the sticks to buy in the first place that example starts to make that very intriguing and very affordable now temper products is one of several companies across the united states that offers that service so i'm not going to give quote their specific numbers because it's going to be different where you are depending on which inspection area makes the most sense in fact david was so helpful he gave me a reference to a website that is the alsc.org i think that's american lumber standard something somethingwithac.org that you guys can check out i'll put a link below but it actually shows all the different companies that do inspection and these are even guys that are inspecting for like home depot yellows those type of things the huge mills and they'll even show you pictures of their stamps so when you go to the box store and you buy a 2x4 you're like i recognize that stamp it's the same one on the website so he wanted to point that out and give a shout out to his to his fellow inspectors that there's multiple options across the country that make more sense depending on your geographic location so the way this works as far as cost goes most of these companies use an hourly rate so they charge an hourly rate for the inspection time and travel time so for the inspector to get to your location to do the inspection now david informed me that they've got inspectors all over the country so depending on where you are geographically and where the inspector is that may be a considerable expense or it may not you could have an inspector in your backyard and not know it so the inspection process basically consists of a grading a visual inspection to grade the lumber and then a moisture analysis and it was really neat david told me that a good inspector can can grade and inspect the board as fast as he can flip it and he's actually testing moisture then too because a trained inspector's hand knows okay that's most likely more than 19 that's most likely less than 19 so it's neat to think okay hourly rate wise if you've got this guy set up or he can just keep flipping flipping boards over then it's not going to take nearly as long as you might think so along that same lines dave shared a great story about being prepared if indeed you're going to pull the trigger on this since you're being charged by the hour the more you can be front loaded and be prepared at the front the more you're going to save so he gave example of spectre shows up at a guy's place and he's like oh yeah i got to get the tractor fired up so we can get the wood out but the battery's dead so yeah this guy's paying this hourly rate for the inspector stand around and watching mark on his tractor so if you if you want to do this use your use common sense and be ready dave suggests a you have your equipment warmed up and ready to go if you're going to use equipment b have your wood already sorted because they are going to inspect it based upon width so if you've got your stack of two by fours you got your stack of two by sixes two by eight two by tens have that already sorted also avoid setups like these where you've got your wood stacked with your your rick boards or your sticker boards and the inspector has to work through all those sticker boards and flip and do those type of things that can slow him down david suggested have your wood stacked clean no stickers in it and sorted by size and and be ready to have the guy flip it somewhere so if you've got it on the forks of a of your tractor and he can flip that off onto a trailer or from a trailer off into the ground or whatever the case would be one spot on the ground to the other and plan on being there to assist the more you can help this guy access this wood the less it's going to cost you in the long run so you can be as lacky you can be you can be handling wood and get it ready for him as he's going through inspecting to save money so you may be asking is this inspection just as good as what you get from the box stores yes because it's the same guys so these companies these handful of companies across the country that are doing this are the same ones the same inspectors that are at these large mills doing that type of inspection so it may not be the exact same guy but it's the exact same process the exact same training the exact same expertise so your wood once it's inspected is just as good as the lows would or the home depot would probably going to be better if you melt it yourself so what they do dave told me what they do when it's time to actually sign off on the wood so you've got your stack of wood that's been your grade two or higher so it's good stuff that you can build with they do a hammer brand so literally bang bang bang going around with a hammer putting that mark that inspection stamp on that wood so that wood is visually marked or they also have a crayon mark that they can do as well so not only do you get the board stamped or marked but you also get a full report that sticks with the wood and that's important for this idea that david threw out that just blew my mind so dave suggested an idea that i thought was absolutely brilliant dare i say evil genius level except i really don't condone the actions of evil geniuses but he suggested okay let's say you've got a project that requires 5 000 board feet of structural lumber well if you've got the resources why not mill 7 500 or 10 000 board feet of lumber pay to have the inspector come in get your ducks in a row so you're ready to maximize your or minimize your time to maximize your savings build your project and then sell the other board feed of lumber that you had inspected for a premium because now it's as good if not better than box store would and will comply with any inspection request when he told me that i was like okay mind blown here because many of us have a lot of resources at our disposal we have a lot of standing timber and a project may require x but we can easily create x times two if just given enough time so if i was trying to determine whether or not the inspection costs were really going to save me money on a 5 000 board foot project in our example but then realized wow if i could turn around and sell another 5 000 board feet at a premium then maybe i don't not only pay for my inspection costs but i really eat into a lot of the out of pocket expenses or maybe even put some cash back in my pocket for this project that's incredible and the reason why this works is the inspection report stays with the wood it doesn't stay with me the miller or the guy that created the wood so when five thousand board feet leave my property if they've been inspected hey copy the report goes with it so that's how that would pass inspection and still comply so when you think about the fact that it's grade and moisture content of 19 then you don't even need a kiln in that situation you just need time so if you can air dry your lumber i can get 19 here pretty quickly in west virginia especially if i have it in the barn or have it under cover so i don't even have to have the huge expense of a kiln it's just the expense of obviously having the inspection done but if i really wanted to take that on it could become very viable very quick so to answer the big question can you build legally with sawmill lumber the answer is yes you have to comply with your building codes and most likely have to have an inspection but an inspection can be much more cost effective than you think and you may actually be able to turn it into some additional revenue well i hope you guys found this useful what i'd like you to do is comment below if this is something you've run into before or you had no idea or your mind's blown like mine is and just share let's get some additional comments going and maybe we'll even do a third follow-up video based on how you guys respond to this all right i hope everybody stays safe and stays warm again you people in florida you know what you're dealing with just just talk to me back in july in august when it's 900 degrees all right take care everybody you

Channel: Red Tool House - Homestead

Views: 364,447

Rating: 4.9374819 out of 5

Keywords: red tool house homestead, red tool house, homesteading, homestead, Appalachian homestead, farmstead, small farming

Id: UWgG5pmhdik

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021