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A few weeks ago we surveyed, on foot, the general area of the Greene View Springs property where we hope to build our home. The remainder was also surveyed by using the surveyor's GPS equipment and downloading data at two of the four corners of the property.
The final product, since it includes more than 16 acres, was scaled at 1" = 100'. That's useful for overall site planning, but we had to blow it up quite a bit for our house-siting purpose. Here's a part of the plan at a larger scale, though I realize the scale is a relative thing when displayed on your computer screen.
This view represents about 1/6th of the total area of Greene View Springs. The large irregular polygon that surrounds the core of the plan shows the area surveyed by actual "shots" on the ground. The remainder is data from satellite surveys of the whole area. This level of information is available for the entire country.
The odd pentagon near the top represents a very large collection of large rocks that encircle an area that could be an interesting feature when we have time to exploit it. There are many rocks on the hillside. We're hoping they will be an asset and not a problem when we start to excavate.
The numbers on the numbered tree symbols each represent a size and species of tree. The two "14's", for example, are 12" popular trees; the "9" is a 30" poplar. We shot about 25 of the larger trees to help us orient the plan when we're walking around the site.
Through the middle is a "flow-line" that begins at the spring and flows to the southeast. We hope to place the house so that the spring can been seen from the west end of the building. We also hope to have a deck on the south and west sides that will overlook the stream below the spring, along the flow-line.
Though we have not determined the exact site for the house, we know where we would like it to be. Imagine a building, 60' long, more or less, running west to east from just east of the tree symbol numbered "6" and between the trees numbered "6" (above) and "14" (below).
It would be placed into the hillside with the south side just above the existing level (approx. 693') and the north side barely extending above grade in some places. The roof will start near grade at the north and rise as it runs south to allow winter sun to enter at the top of the south interior rooms.
The building may be deeper north to south in some places. If so, the deeper sections will likely protrude north into the hillside more than the rest, rather than extend to the south which would block all but midday sunlight to other south-side rooms and areas.
The view to the south from the site takes in the large hillside that is shown in the winter panorama in the blog header.
The two trees along the fence row at the county road show where we would like to bring a driveway onto the site. Cutting to the road at this point, where the grade is just a few feet above the roadway, will avoid building the driveway uphill from the wettest spot on the whole property. This will avoid a climb of about 20 feet which could become a problem in bad weather.
None of these plans are final, of course, because we haven't done any core sampling to see what's under the house site and the driveway route.
