Filling behind the walls

We also finally got the earth backfilled behind the concrete walls. Although a lot of hand shoveling and raking is still needed, you can see how the north side of the building now looks. It will be very easy to get onto the roof, eh?


Around the two windows in the concrete walls I hope to build some retaining walls from the rocks we uncovered during excavation. They should make nice little rock gardens just outside the windows. Here's my first try at it.


Above the wall on the west side I've scraped some small swales to encourage run-off away from the building. After a series of rainy days, it all seems to be working and the wall is holding up.

Lucas digs our septic drain field

The week after the Fourth of July, one of my sons, Ed III, came for a few days with his kids who live in Germany. Lucky for me, because I needed help installing the septic system and it appears Lucas has some skills we didn't know about. After helping drag some trees out of the area, Lucas asked if he could get into the trench. Ta Da!


That was fun enough, but the next thing I knew he was driving the bull dozer with the help of Scott Schroyer of Hash Farms Excavating.


To the right in the picture below you can see how thick the young woods were where the drain field was installed. Literally hundreds of small trees were cut down. I hope to use most of them in various ways, as archways, railings, wattle fences, plant supports, etc.


Initially we had planned to install a system that needed only two 70-foot runs, just a few feet from each other. Before the job started we realized there was not enough room to put in the line with the extra space needed for a perimeter drain as required. It would have run too far south where the terrain drops off quickly, way past the dozer shown above.

A request to install instead three 50-foot runs was denied. No reason was given, so we fell back to a "traditional" drain field. It was less expensive, but as you'll see it ate up an enormous amount of space - about twice what would have been used otherwise. In all we would dig up five 50-foot fingers spaced 8 feet apart and ten more feet on the west and north for a curtain drain.


Further, as the project proceeded we realized the drop-off east of the third finger was also too severe. To deal with this issue the other two fingers were angled to the east, across the trail near the hydrant. This wiped out the last buffer area to the west of that trail. The resulting open space is huge, but the deed is done and the system is ready to use.

Finishing the timber installation

With the last of the load-bearing posts erected, we were ready to lift the final, and heaviest beams into place. The beam being lifted in the first picture is one of the two strongest in the house. It, and the one next to it, with a cross section of 8" x 12", will support 150 square feet of roof which, when loaded with the roof panels and soil, will be approximately 9750 pounds.


For the morning I rented a crane from a company that installs large signs. In a few hours all of the large beams were in place and being secured with temporary plates on their tops.

When all the beams were in place we were ready to erect the last three posts. These three were all placed under long beams which were already supported so they needed to be cut to the proper height. It made more sense to cut them after the beams were up. Trying to get three posts exactly the same height, to the fraction of an inch, so there would be no chance of the middle one acting as a fulcrum if it were a fraction too tall was not likely to be successful.

One of those posts was the second tree to be used in the building, a walnut which had grown nearly where we placed it. The three pictures below show it being picked up from near where I had stripped off its bark. In the next it is being cut to the length needed to slip under the long beam, and the third shows it being tapped into place and secured to the beam and the bottom plate.






Whole trees are stronger than milled ones with the same dimension (diameter of the tree vs shorter dimension of the cross section of the post). So, though the tree looks small under the beam, it is perfectly strong enough in its own right. Once weight is added, it will take some of the weight from the posts on either side.

Finally, all the posts and beams are in place!

The garden grows

About a month ago I posted some pictures of the newly planted garden.

Things have grown...

Mid-June storm

Though this has little to do with our progress on the house, I thought you might like to see a storm that came through in about 30 minutes, from the calm before to the calm after.

It started with the cloud shown below that ran the entire visible length of the western horizon. Both the white and the dark are clouds.


Here's a view from inside after the rain started.



And here's a look at our new trail-stream a few minutes after it was over.