Greene View Springs

Busy view

2011-10-22T21:17:00.000-04:00

Today we started to put up the fascia boards, beginning on the west side. For this eave I connected two boards before putting them up because cutting them to meet at a rafter would have wasted a lot more wood. You can see where they come together. The caulk at the connection looks like a white scar with sutured stitches. It will be touched up when all the boards are in place.

I struggled with how Sandy and I could get the boards up and level them by ourselves. What worked was to clamp just one side of a joist hanger to some of the rafters with the other side hanging outside the rafter end. We then set the fascia board into the hanger and leveled it with shims. Screwing them in was easy then and didn't require a second person.

The 16-foot-long rafter visible to the right of the fascia is nailed to the top of the greenhouse wall and extends to the south side of the greenhouse over the foundation. The greenhouse wall will be built under it. In the mean time it is temporarily holding up a plastic covered, lattice like grid that can be seen to the left of the ladder.

Two doors are visible inside the greenhouse. The light one leads into the second bedroom; the other, to its right, into the living room.

The dark brown walls of the greenhouse are barn siding just as it came off the old barn. Of course Sandy cleaned every square inch of every board with a wire brush before I could use them.

The west end of the wall and the west side of the third bedroom still need siding panels installed.

A peek at the siding

2011-10-20T22:06:00.000-04:00

I had hoped to use the siding from the barn we took down in a past life, but there wasn't enough of it for the entire house, so we chose siding like we put on the apartment. It looks good and is easy to install with a little help.

We painted it before it was put up. This has saved a lot of time. A touch up covers the nails after it is up.

Whatcha doing?

Here's the first clerestory window with its siding and trim in place. The view is from the front of where the greenhouse will be.

Another climber

2011-10-20T21:17:00.000-04:00

Though not as helpful as Lucas, I spotted another local resident who apparently likes to climb. On my walk from the apartment to the house one morning, as I got to the rain garden Sandy created, I noticed something unusual at the top of a three-foot-tall lobelia and stopped to check it out. Here's what I found.

This little guy was about 10 inches long and wrapped three times around the very top of the plant. Each of the next two mornings it was still there, but was gone by the afternoon of the third day.

If anyone can identify it, please post a comment and I'll update this entry.

Finally catching up

2011-10-20T20:00:00.000-04:00

Once again there has been a big pause in posting activity, but the work has gone on. Here's a partial rundown of where we are on various parts of the project.

All three bedrooms' walls are finished - drywalled, taped, mudded, primed and finish painted. After the floors are stained the trim will be added.

The second bedroom's loft frame is in place and ready for its floor.

The hallway, living area, "office" and kitchen areas are also finished and ready for the kitchen cabinets and pantry. They, too, will have stained floors, and after that, the door and widow trim.

All electric wok is done except for wiring and hanging lights, most of which are now purchased.

Other than the plumbing and electrical stub-ins, the bathroom and half bath are yet to be finished. Floor tile, glass block, tub, sink and vanity have all been purchased and are awaiting installation after the tile is laid.

About 80% of the outside wall is now covered and painted - two coats.

Window and door trim has been cut, painted and installed for all windows where the siding is up.

The bead board for the eaves across the front has all been painted and is ready to go up when the lookout rafters are installed.

The greenhouse area has a very temporary roof on the north half of it and the old barn siding has been cut and installed on the inside of its north half.

Lots of work has been done on the hillside in front of the house, including about half of a stone stairway that climbs the hill to the house. A stone walkway has been started leading from the front door toward the parking area.

Sandy and my sister Judy (who came out from Delaware to help for more than two full weeks) have worked relentlessly to paint and help put up the siding among other things. Each spent at least a week in a row doing almost nothing except painting, either while hunched over 4 X 8 sheets of siding and bead board before it was installed or up and down a ladder painting drywall after it was up.

I'll post a bunch of pictures next that cover much of what is listed and some other topics.

Greene View Springs official best tree climber

2011-08-24T22:39:00.004-04:00

When the small tornado knocked the closest tulip poplar into the east wall of the house, I trimmed the top out of it and, with Brian's help and a come-along, we pulled it back up and braced it.

It seems to be growing well but I was never able to get the strap down from the top because the branches are too small for me to climb. Enter Lucas...

With a little encouragement, he climbed to the top and disconnected the strap and the protective wrapping. What a guy!

Summer activity

2011-08-24T21:03:00.005-04:00

Once again it's been a long time since the last post. Work continues at the pace of 8 hours a day more or less for me mostly, inside, plus a few hours or more most days for Sandy, mostly working outside, in the heat, moving soil to the front hillside and grading the entryway at the front door. The heat has been oppressive for weeks now, so one can only work at most 30 minutes at a time outside.

Inside the temperature had been up to 20 degrees lower inside (low 70's) but the humidity was above 80% all the time. It was so bad we began to find mold on drywall and doors, especially areas that weren't well ventilated. Our small dehumidifier was able to drop the humidity in one of the bedrooms at a time, but had no effect in the larger areas. We purchased a Kenmore unit that is rated at 70 pints a day and it brought the humidity in the entire building down to 50% (where we set it) within a few days. Though the indoor temperature in now in the high 70's, the humidity throughout is hovering at 50% and it feels great coming in from outside.

I don't find hanging drywall, taping, mudding and applying a primer coat as worth showing in a post. When the walls are all done I'll post a video walk-through.

In July we took two grandsons back east and visited my son in Maryland, my sister in Delaware and Sandy's uncle and aunt in Ohio. On the way home we brought my granddaughter from Maryland who stayed with us for a week. Then my other son visited from North Carolina with his two who live in Germany. They stayed a few days and I went back to Durham with them for a week. We all then went back to Maryland to take the Maryland granddaughter home. She is only seven and she was away from home for over two weeks. What a gal!

There was virtually no time for work the short week I was home in mid July. All that got done was getting two heavy wires pulled through the tube in the floor for the oven and stove top.

Oh yeh, and I got some help painting.

Audry paints the first wall, in the smaller bedroom

while Lucas and Kira work on another.

What happened to May?

2011-06-12T22:32:00.007-04:00

I just realized I haven't posted for over a month. A lot has happened so I'll just show some pictures taken at various times since April.

Damaged tree

We lost a bunch of trees in the tornado. The large one that hit the new house will be the most missed as it was right in the line of sight from any south-facing window. It had split in two at a vee about 30 feet high, spun 180 degrees and the south half fell north onto the house. The rest of the tree was doomed so it had to go. Here's the view soon after the damage and then after the tree was removed.

Bedroom progress

A lot of drywall has been put up. Here's a view of the master bedroom from the kitchen area.

And here is the same doorway from the inside.

The windows above the bedroom door allow light into the bedroom from the clerestory windows (which are visible in their lower left corners). The door visible through the closet is the pocket door of the bathroom. Drywall hasn't been hung yet on the wall between the closet and the bathroom and the wall on the inside of the bathroom door.

Pond planting

Sandy got a few water lilies for Mother's Day and enlisted Brandon and Matthew to help her place them in the larger pond below the house.

In the back left are a few water iris that were planted earlier from the same source.

Morning surprise

Completely unrelated to the new house, I found this luna moth on a window when I got up the other day.

Since it's not too hard to see during the daytime, it would be easy prey for birds, so I didn't disturb it until that evening. It had moved less than an inch all day.

After dark I coaxed it out the apartment window and it just glided to the ground outside. It hadn't moved for five minutes or so, so I went downstairs to see if it was alive. As I tried to pick it up, it took off and flew away.

I looked them up on the web to find out the adults only live about 8 days. They have no mouths and spend their entire adult lives trying to reproduce.

We heard the freight train...

2011-04-27T00:02:00.004-04:00

just like people say it sounds as a tornado goes by. It was followed by a loud crashing sound. I got Sandy up and we went to the first floor for safety. That was about midnight.

When the storm was mostly over I went outside in the rain to see how bad it had been. Up to that point I thought it was just a really nasty storm.

That's when I noticed a large metal locker at the end of the walk and a trashcan on top of a whiskey barrel planter. Both had been about 20 feet away under our carport. Obviously something was wrong with that picture.

I looked around the corner to find our carport crashed on top of the Buick. It had been lifted right out of the ground. The carport contents were strewn all over creation.

Part of the white tarp that was on top of it is in the top of a tree about 100 yards away looking like a giant ghost.

We called 911 to report the damage. About 1:30am a sheriff's deputy came by to be sure no one had been hurt.

He reported the tornado had moved two cars parked at a nearby house and damage had been done to the house across the county road from the new house. Also power lines are down on the road by the new house. We lost power at the apartment for about an hour.

There doesn't appear to be any damage to the apartment though it did suck open the bathroom window and then closed it again on the curtains which were then hanging out in the rain.

In the morning I took lots of pictures both at the apartment and then down at the new house. There was no damage there except the entire floor of the building was covered with muddy water at least an eighth of an inch deep. A door had blown open and apparently the wind had roared through the building.

Many trees were down, both on our property and across the county road. Two fell all the way onto the front of the house but incredibly did no damage. The very tops of the trees were leaning against our new windows without even a scratch on the frames.

Two of the panels on the rafter extensions were missing and one was damaged. I found one of the panels had just flipped over onto the roof, still connected by the flashing. The other was found behind the house about 70 yards from where it started.

Here's a link to the pictures.

Rock walls

2011-04-26T23:48:00.005-04:00

Now that the trencher, the last heavy vehicle that needs to get behind the house, is finished and gone, we can start getting the east-side hill they way we want it to stay. Sandy got a shot of me moving a large rock for the retaining wall. There are lots of rocks on the property much, much larger than this one.

The wall should look lots better when we get some plants started on it. The rocks on the right are steps to get onto the hill. The wall will be about eight feet longer.

More progress

2011-04-26T23:14:00.004-04:00

All of the interior doors are now in place. Here's a look at two of them through a framed wall in the second bedroom. The left one is in the third bedroom. They both lead to the half bath.

And I finally have electricity where it should be: at the breaker box in the utility room.

Here's the meter box awaiting it's hookup by the power company. They came the next day.

The nearly level area behind the house is a result of hours of work by Sandy after the power line was buried.

Before the contractor filled in the trench I was able to drop in another drainage line to take runoff down the hill to the east toward the driveway.

Letting in the light

2011-04-26T22:36:00.004-04:00

Above the master bedroom and the bathroom walls on the hallway we are installing windows so light from the clerestory windows can brighten them too. There's not a lot to see yet since the windows haven't been stained or painted, but here are two pictures.

The first is showing one window's wall being framed. It will go in the top part of the bedroom wall.

And here's a look at the bedroom walls from inside the bedroom. The two sliding doors on the right are to the left side of the closet. The pocket door looks into the hallway.

The bituthene stomp

2011-04-01T10:16:00.004-04:00

Over the last week the "roofing crew" has developed a new dance. Its purpose is rather mundane - tamping down seams between strips of the roof membrane to get a good seal, but its implementation can be entertaining.

We used a product called bituthene which comes in 66-foot rolls that are 36 inches wide. They require an overlap on the edges and ends as they are laid down in shingle fashion from bottom to top. Lines on the edges of the strips aided in alignment, but it took a number of strips before we found a placement method that produced the best results.

We learned that it was counter-productive to try to run a single length of the material all the way across the roof. Unless we started out precisely straight with the roof and with the previous strip, the slightest angle off caused the line to veer further as we went along. This would cause an insufficient overlap which had to be corrected with a short overlay, and this is not best since the shingle effect is lost where the overlay covers both strips. Consequently, we chose to limit each strip length to no more than about 12 feet.

We had to put the membrane down carefully to be sure we got the required overlap and to prevent creases from forming. This took a crew of three: one to hold the whole strip off the surface and let it down slowly and evenly, one to wrangle the paper backing and one to press the membrane down smoothly. Near the end of each strip the first two shared their duties as the remainder shortened.

On each side of the membrane roll there is a very narrow strip that is not covered and is very sticky, like the bottom surface. Once a strip was in place, and while the next was being cut to length, two people were free to stomp the seams. This was done using the backing paper that had been removed since one side of it does not stick to the membrane.

Weather was a factor. It rained a number of times before we were finished. Each threat of rain required us to recover the roof with our trusty billboard tarps. And after each rainfall we uncovered the roof again and found something else to work on until we were sure it was dry. Fortunately, the rainy weather also brought windy days so the drying off time was shortened. Overall it took about eight days to finish the job, though few of them were full ones.

Surprisingly, after all the miserable weather we've had the last month or so, I found myself hoping for cold weather to place the membrane since it was far less sticky when it was cold. Cloudy days were welcome.

The pictures below show the process, the "dance" and the roof covered with the membrane.

Still here

2011-03-29T19:30:00.004-04:00

I realized tonight there have been two primary reasons/excuses for not posting more regularly over the last four months or so.

First reason: I don't post much when there is nothing new to tell or no progress overall that I find to be newsworthy.

This reason covers much of the late fall and early winter. It took much longer than I had hoped to get the final drawings to the SIP manufacturer and, consequently, the panels weren't ready until after Christmas. This, combined with the weather-affected schedule of the installers, left us without a reliable roof until early in January. No roof in winter, no inside work, no news to post.

Second reason: When we can work, I have to choose between the work and documenting the work.

Some days, after the roof was put on, I worked until 8 PM, and sometimes later. By the end of one of those 10-hour-plus workdays, I just don't have the enthusiasm for sitting down to craft a meaningful entry.Also, when there is help for things that take more assistance than just Sandy can provide, we try to work long days because the extra help usually isn't here for too long at once. Neither situation leaves a lot of time for documenting what's being done.

Since the last post in early February, the windows and doors have been installed, 98% of the interior walls have been framed, lots of building materials have been purchased and moved in, and a dishwasher, kitchen sink, faucets, bath tub, second-bath sink, vanity and toilet have all been purchased and moved in. Finally, all the materials for the waterproofing layer of our living roof were purchased and picked up.

The plan was to keep the SIP roof covered until we had close to a week of dry weather to install the waterproofing. (Based on our weather lately, I began to fear that would be late July.)

But two weeks ago my sister Judy came from Delaware to help. She left for home today, but while she was here she worked long hours with me and we got more done than I could have in two months. The most significant accomplishment was to get all of the waterproof membrane installed, a three-person job.

I didn't take any pictures, but Sandy did and over the next few days I'll try to get them posted.

Holy Owl!

2011-02-06T21:16:00.004-05:00

We've had a few days of fairly decent weather (compared to the last two weeks anyway) so, with help from grandson Nick and from Brian, we've gotten most of the clerestory windows framed and covered with house wrap.

Saturday, after working in the house with power saws, pneumatic brad nailers and lots of hammering, Brian happened to look up to see which panels next needed to be tacked up and said to me, "What's that?"

It was this little screech owl.

Who, me?

He or she spent the rest of the day in the house, occasionally flying between beams until finally settling in the farthest northeast corner. We kept working as if the owl weren't there. Our only concession was not working where he was in the bedroom until Sunday.

At the end of our day, when the owl's was just beginning, it flew to the east clerestory window opening and sat on the roof for a few minutes. Next time I looked that way the owl was gone. Is that cool or what?!

This morning we got down to the house soon after 9 and there it was again, sitting on the same beam it started on yesterday. In addition there was a pile of feathers from something the owl ate under a beam closer to the window.

I couldn't tell what kind of bird it had been. The feathers were too long, too dark and too many to have been one of the smaller over-wintering birds.

Soon Brian was finishing up with the brad nailer in the bedroom area, so the owl flew into the closet. Brian kept working, at one point just five feet from the owl. After that area was finished and Brian had moved away, it flew again to the far back corner where it spent most of the rest of the day.

It left silently about 5 pm. Can't wait to see if it's back tomorrow. The openings are much smaller now than they were this morning. As I was nailing the easternmost window's frame I noticed on some of the interior bracing between wall studs "proof" that the owl has been in the building more than we knew.

Here's a look up through the greenhouse area at the clerestory window opening in the 2nd bedroom. The panels still need to be caulked and have house wrap applied. After that, and the same for the other three windows, and we will start installing windows and doors.

Today the temperature got enough above freezing to allow pushing the snow off the front roof which made closing in the window openings possible.

The weather forcast includes snow and some single-digit temperatures, so we may still be days away from finishing the windows. I can't work on the roof if it's covered with snow and I can't caulk the seams from the inside or if it's below freezing.

There are plenty of other projects inside, so things will keep moving, but it will sure be nice to have the windows and doors in so we can add a little heat on these cold days.

Up On the Roof

2011-01-25T20:01:00.011-05:00


         When this old world starts getting me down
         And people are just too much for me to face
           I climb way up to the top of the stairs
        And all my cares just drift right into space
            On the roof, it's peaceful as can be
          And there the world below can't bother me...

                                   "Up On The Roof"
                       (Gerry Goffin and Carole King)

Finally, we have a roof. It's seemed like an eternity, but our roof is in place after two more days of moving panels, prepping them and lifting them into place, Jerry Ellis' crew has slid all the panels into place and screwed them down to the rafters. It was quite a struggle so this post might take a while...

Actually, most of the struggle was with the weather. About three inches of snow fell on us last week so we postponed the second truckload of panels until Monday. We had covered the entire roof with long sheets of plastic that ran up and down the roof slopes.

Starting yesterday, I began removing all those snow-covered plastic sheets and, of course, the snow that was on them. By the end of the workday Monday, here's what it looked like.

The plastic had been removed from the two south-sloping roofs (not shown) and the easternmost section of the north roof. There were still many snow-covered square feet to go.

The south-facing roofs' SIPs were placed by the end of the day, but I'm getting ahead of the story line.

The previous post discussed the problem we had getting the loaded truck into the driveway. In preparation for the second load, last week we shoveled the driveway, and helped by two days of on again-off again rain, most of the snow was gone. Then the driveway was covered with tarps to protect it from the predicted snow. On Sunday Sandy and I shoveled and pushed the snow off the tarps and dragged the tarps themselves off the driveway. Once it was all cleared we dragged the tarps back on because yet another snowfall was predicted.

That snow came Sunday night but was fortunately just enough to cover the tarps but not hide them. On Monday morning I dragged the tarps off the driveway again and spent a half hour or so shoveling and scraping the county road at the end of the drive.

The crane arrived and was set up at the house and we waited for the second trailer-load of SIPs. By the time it arrived the installers were also in place and we all went down to the road to see if the truck could get in. Even as the driver stopped on the road above the driveway, the truck slide a few more feet downhill. He was not very optimistic that the truck could back the trailer into the drive. It wasn't a really large truck, but a larger one, pulling a trailer, could not make the required turn.

As the driver was about to pull down the hill past the driveway so he could back it in, it occurred to me there might be a possibility he could just pull it in straight, so the drive wheels would be on gravel when the trailer came off the road. I checked with the crane operator to see how far the truck would have to get and be sure there was enough room at the end of the drive to get there.

We concluded that it might work and that it had a better probability than backing in, so we went for it. After a few tries and more than a few back-ups for aligning the trucks wheels, the truck had pulled forward enough to be reached by the crane. Success!

Next began the process of lifting the panels from the trailer onto the "lawn" area. This took longer than we'd hoped because the panels come in bundles and the bundles are mostly too heavy for the crane we had so they had to be "broken" on the trailer and the panels moved one or two at a time.

When this second load was off the trailer we took three trailer trips back to the end of the driveway to bring the rest of last week's first load up to the house. On the first two trips panels were loaded by brute force. By the third trip the panels were too low to the ground and too heavy for four of us to lift by hand, so the crane had to be moved down the driveway to load the trailer and then moved back into place to unload it onto the piles of SIPs.

Finally, a half hour past noon or so, we were ready to start lifting panels. So we took a lunch break. ?!

Here you can see the stack of panels, one in the air and the crew on the roof awaiting it. This panel went on the top of the third bedroom.

The panel on top to the right is just sitting there waiting its turn.

The holes that can be seen in the sides of some of the panels on the pile are where the nozzle is inserted to pump in the insulation. Between each hole is a thin black line that shows where the segment dividers are. There is a small number at each hole that tells the machine operator how many seconds to leave the nozzle in for that particular segment. Pretty slick, eh?

The two south-side roofs were completed on Monday.

Today the large roof that slopes down to the north was completely installed. This shot shows the progress about half way across the building from east to west. The thin panels can be seen awaiting their turn to be covered. They look pretty uneven at this point, and they are, but they will be tacked up onto the bottom of the SIPs with small brads to get them smoothed up.

And here's what they look like from the inside. Notice that some parts of the ceiling are not covered with the thin panels. These are areas that will have "normal" ceilings - the bathrooms and the utility room.

This view shows the second bedroom above and the larger bathroom to the right. There will be a wall between them of course.

And finally, here's a view from an angle that hasn't been shown in any previous posting, looking through the trees to the east of the house. The panel in the air is the last one to be installed. A few minutes later the roof was all in place.

The crew took about an hour to finish screwing down the SIPs, nailing down tongue edges where panels fit into groves in adjacent ones, and filling holes with insulating foam. (At least one hole and sometimes two are drilled into each panel to hook them up to the lifting cable.)

Finally the ball is entirely in our court. Much is left to be done, but it can now all be done on our schedule. Doors and windows will be delivered on Thursday.

Not quite what we'd hoped for

2011-01-15T23:36:00.003-05:00

Friday was to be the big day - the day our SIP walls and roofs were to be installed. It started out fine: The crane arrived and the operator set it up right near the building; the trucker called to say he was loaded up with panels and on his way, and the installers arrived and unloaded their equipment. We all waited for the truck to arrive.

On Wednesday and Thursday Sandy and I had begun placing the paneling that will hide the bottoms of the roof SIPs. (Think of them as really thick wall paper.) We couldn't start earlier due to nearly two days of snow, much of it still covering our entry road. There were still a lot of panels to put up and we hoped we could get them done fast enough to keep ahead of the SIP installation.

Soon the truck and trailer arrived on the county road, went just past our drive and began to back uphill into the driveway. He was unable to get enough traction to get started into the driveway. Then he drove south to the end of the road and turned around, hoping that, by heading uphill, backing into the drive would be possible.

To make a long story short, after a few slippery tries back and forth, we ended up with the rig cross-ways on and completely blocking the county road and unable to move either way without slipping all the way into the ditches on BOTH sides of the road simultaneously!

Eventually a wrecker was called to pull the rig uphill and open the road. In the mean time, the crane was relocated to the end of the driveway, just off the road, and all the panels were picked up and moved onto the small parking area there. Then the panels that could both fit and be lifted manually were loaded onto the crane and driven to the house.

The last three wall panels were too large to move on the crane so they are still waiting near the road under a tarp with a half dozen of the roof panels until the driveway can be maneuvered by the truck and trailer. (Our plan is to break up the snow and ice, cover the driveway with tarps and hope the sun will melt it dry under the tarps.)

The rest of the day was spent mounting the wall panels that were moved up to the house. Here's a view of the crew installing the short wall behind the office space.

While the installers worked on the SIPs, and with the help of our grandson Nicholas, I continued placing and tacking the panels into place.

The only upside of the truck-on-the-slippery-driveway fiasco was that we were no longer under extreme time pressure to get all the under-the-SIPs panels in place. Obviously the truck did not go back for the second load so the roof would not be finished this week.

We finished the roof paneling installation Saturday and began covering the panels with plastic in expectation of the snow and rain predicted for next week. Our installers cannot come back until at least Thursday, and more snow is predicted for that day, too, so we don't know when the job will be done. Thursday is the soonest possible, and only if the driveway is not frozen and we can get a trailer in to the house.

With most of the exterior walls now in place, after getting all the plastic up tomorrow, and if there isn't enough wind to whip off the plastic, I'm hoping to get some interior work started.

Bye for now.

Bummer!

2011-01-06T16:39:00.002-05:00

For about a month, the installation of our SIP panels was scheduled for this Friday and Saturday, the 7th and 8th of January. Last week I called the installers to verify that we were still on for those dates and got a "Yes."

I then called the manufacturer to assure them the SIP panels would be picked up on the 7th, the truckers to verify we were still on their schedule, and the crane company to be sure we could unload and lift the panels into place. Everyone was on the same page.

My plan was to use this week to remove the tarps and put up the paneling that will show above the rafters and under the SIPs. (See post showing panelling.) The weather forcast was good - either clear, or well below freezing, so any precipitation would be snow, not rain.

Monday morning we got a call saying the installers could not be here this week and they had to put us off until the 14th and 15th!

What could we do? Nothing! Too late to schedule anyone else, if there even is anyone else nearby with the experience (and availability) to install the SIPs. I called the other three participants in the venture - manufacturer, trucker and crane operator - and verified that a week later would work for their schedules. Fortunately they all said it would.

So, instead of getting ready for the SIPs this week, I am using the week to remove the tarps and spread them on the ground so they might warm up a tad and be more supple when they are replaced over the SIPs next weekend. Next, after the projected snow showers today and tomorrow are over, I'll start lifting and fastening the panels and hope for the best (no rain, but not too far below freezing) for the rest of next week before the panels go up.

I'll post a picture when all the panelling is in place.

Cold but clear

2010-12-08T14:52:00.003-05:00

It was very cold last night, and a snow storm is predicted for this coming weekend, but this morning the frost on the grasses and trees was very pretty. I took this picture on the way to the mailbox.

We still haven't gotten a delivery date for our SIP's walls and roof. It's looking like an installation before Christmas is not going to happen. If not, it will be pushed back to the week after New Years Day.

Waiting on our SIPs

2010-11-30T19:21:00.004-05:00

Our order is in for production of our SIP panels for the remaining walls and roofs. The view below shows the east wall framing that will be inside the SIP wall. Drywall will be inside this framework. This will make the east wall of the kitchen a full 10 inches thick, though the space between SIPs and drywall will not likely be heavily insulated since the SIP provides R24 insulation on its own.

Under the wire

2010-11-30T18:28:00.004-05:00

I was reminded on Saturday that I hadn't yet made a single entry in the blog in November. We have been busy, and lots has been done, but it isn't always clear what others might find interesting.

A contractor for our electric utility has been trimming trees along the power lines. They hadn't been trimmed on our property for years before we bought it. It was needed badly and they did a thorough job. All in all they didn't hack up our trees too badly.

The upside for us was about six truckloads of wood chips dumped where we asked for them. Sandy took on the project of moving them to where they were needed.

The pile of chips on the right above is about a tenth the size it was when Sandy started. Much of the chips was spread on the hill in front of the house.

Much, much more was spread on the leach field, probably over one hundred cartloads.

And yesterday, before it turned cold and nasty like it is now, she organized a final assault on the open soil above the house with cart and buckets that took about three hours, but got the whole area covered.

In the first picture you can see the progress made on the south walls. They are all framed and mostly covered with house wrap. The next post will show the east end of the house.

Spooky night

2010-10-31T22:49:00.003-04:00

Well it's Halloween and I just got done working. I've been trying to get a wall done each day. Two to go, but together they have two doors and three windows which take longer to frame.

Here's what it looked like at the site about 9:15.

What a wind storm

2010-10-28T23:43:00.003-04:00

Much of the Midwest experienced a major storm Monday, and we were no exception. The entire new house had been covered with billboard tarps for weeks but they had hardly been necessary. We have had some record-setting low precipitation months this summer and the soil is as hard as a rock.

A few weeks ago we bought some chrysanthemums at the auction. When we tried to plant them the next day I was unable to make a hole in the soil near the road, even using a pick ax. Instead we built a very small pool for them, watered them well and will plant them after the soil softens up. They should look great at the entry, next year.

Here are two shots of the building with missing tarps. It was cold today, and will be until midday tomorrow, but after that I'll get the rest of the tarps replaced. As shown in the second pictures, I'm now nailing long boards to hold them down so I don't lose another day replacing them.

Sandy's sanding project

2010-10-28T23:11:00.003-04:00

After installing most of the old rafters from the 140-year-old barn, we decided they were just too grungy and Sandy took on the task of sanding them clean.

Here's an example of how they looked:

She worked on them for about a week, at least a few hours each weekday and some on the weekends. Our oscillating sander lost its pad, and though we tried to glue it back on, the connection only lasted an hour or so before it came off again.

She found a light belt sander and finished the job with it. It was worth the effort as you can see by this picture:

In other news, we've ordered our SIP roof and walls about ten days ago, and our windows about a week before that.

Why a green roof?

2010-09-30T23:47:00.002-04:00

As I was researching various aspects of our earthen roof-to-be, I came across "In Support of the Earth Roof", a brief article explaining the merits of what we are doing. I thought those following our progress might find it informative.

http://www.chelseagreen.com/content/in-support-of-the-earth-roof/

It's a team effort

2010-09-30T23:30:00.003-04:00

Though I have been doing the bulk of the work on the new place, Sandy has been doing more than a fair share altogether. She keeps the apartment together, feeds us, and then comes down to the site and works there, too!

One day she's moving earth up above the building ...

The next day she's sanding rafters that didn't get cleaned before they were put up ...

Where will she be found next?

The end (of the rafter project)

2010-09-30T22:58:00.002-04:00

It seems like forever since I started putting up rafters, but by the end of last week the task was complete. I didn't work on them every single day, but it seemed like it.

By the time I got to the last of the three rooms which will have a drywall ceiling and not be visible I was using shorter pieces of 2 X 6's, screwed onto longer pieces, and butted together on top of beams. I did not have enough to complete the west-side bedroom so I used 2 X 8's for that room. We have plenty of 2 X 8's left over and I hope to use some of them for a feature on the outside east wall.

All of the rafters are now covered with billboard tarps so they are a bit harder to see in the pictures below.

Don't worry, the posts in the picture above are not bent though they appear to be. It's a distortion due to the shorter distance from the camera to those two posts than to the others. The whole tree posts in the top picture do have slight bends in them.

The rafter project

2010-08-13T16:29:00.002-04:00

It took two full days, with the help and trailer of my friend Steve Bonney, to move the 140-year-old rafters from the barn we took down from their storage site to the new house. There are enough to cover all the common areas - living room, kitchen and hallway. The bedroom rafters will either be purchased lumber or come from the stacks that came from milling timbers a few years ago. Of course they are also at the storage site, too, so, either way, more work will be involved to get them here.

Our engineer calculated that the old rafters could be used but they would have to be spaced 12 inches apart. I put a half dozen or so onto the front roof beams. It looked terrible. One foot apart was just too close together. It was hard to see any ceiling at all at that spacing. (The rafters in other rooms will be covered with drywall and not be visible.)

After checking with the engineer, we determined I could place rafters together in pairs at two-foot intervals and still be safe. To make them stronger I am screwing them together every 12 inches or so. I think they look pretty good in pairs.

On top of the rafters and under the SIPs we have decided to use paneling that looks better than the OSB panels used to make the SIPs. The picture shows what they will look like.

Two panels are just sitting on the rafters for the moment. You can also see shims that were used to make all the old rafters the same height. These will be trimmed off later.

Dragging the rafters up, cutting their ends even, aligning them, screwing them together, shimming them to a common height and finally screwing them to the beams, is a very tedious and time-consuming procedure. The final steps are attaching the high ends to planks that run crosswise to hold them in place, and separating the low ends with short sections of lumber to strengthen them. Also, since we will not have an attic, these short pieces are part of the material that will insulate along the tops of the outer walls.

Oh, did I mention it's so darn hot I can only work from about 8 AM until about noon each day. Heat indexes for the last week have been over 100 degrees almost every day. It's been two weeks since we've had more than a trace of rain.

Filling behind the walls

2010-07-21T23:09:00.006-04:00

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

2010-07-21T21:37:00.005-04:00

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

2010-07-13T13:10:00.005-04:00

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

2010-07-13T12:57:00.003-04:00

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

Things have grown...

Mid-June storm

2010-07-13T11:09:00.008-04:00

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.

Let's add a tree

2010-06-09T20:22:00.004-04:00

More of our timbers have been added. The first two rows from the south are nearly complete.

Since I had to cut a number of trees from the site, I had hoped that a few could be used in the building. Below is a sassafras tree that was about where the master bedroom is. Most of its bark has been removed in this picture.

It is obviously not straight, so marking and cutting the notches to hold the beams was part science, part hopefulness. The top is nearest in the picture. The base on the top was temporary, to aid in marking for the cuts.

Erected and seen from this perspective the tree looks almost straight. Other perspectives show it has a few bends.

It will be in the center of the largest open area of the house. Another sassafras, also cut down from the site, will stand beside it to its north, also in the center of the large room.

Notice in the bottom picture that more timbers have arrived. These include the largest and longest beams. They will be used for the longest spans remaining to be erected, across the master bedroom.

First timbers are up

2010-06-08T23:03:00.005-04:00

After a few days of loading and unloading, measuring, cutting, lifting, rolling, loading and unloading again, the first timbers are on site and ready to be erected.

Here they sit, close to where they will go up.

One post up, thirty some to go.

The crew.

First top beam set.

It's amazing how tall it looks when it's upright!

Next, posts and beams

2010-06-08T22:47:00.006-04:00

With the floor ready to use, it's time to start moving timbers from the Raccoon Creek site.

The pile that was here...

is now here...

and on its way to be resized for the house.

Finally, a floor

2010-06-08T22:22:00.004-04:00

Before we could pour our floor we had to place all the drain lines, place the PEX water lines, bury the water and telephone lines, level the area with stone, cover it all with two-inch-thick polyurethane insulation, distribute the radiant heat water lines, and place the rebar.

Here's the result of all those steps awaiting the concrete pump and trucks. The extra thick piers are visible where the insulation doesn't show. We decided not to place radiant heat in the two small guest rooms. For those few times they will be used when the sun doesn't heat them, we will use a portable heater.

The pump has started pushing concrete to the farthest corner of the building.

Just the rest of the large room and the master bedroom to go. The pump shuts down between truckloads of concrete. The tube can be seen hanging to the left.

Ta da! Now we wait for it all to set, the crew will cut some slots in the morning, and the floor will be finished.

Graduation number 2

2010-06-08T21:58:00.005-04:00

Our week away from home is nearly finished, but not before we see grandson Nicholas Riddle graduate. He has been at Carolina Coastal University for four years and plans to go off to Illinois College of Optometry after the summer.

Here's Nick going over the hill.

Dad (Barry), Nick, and Grammy (Sandy).

Since Nick was all packed there wasn't much for us to do, so we said our goodbyes and started home.

350 miles, 5 days, hmm...

2010-06-08T20:47:00.007-04:00

We spent an extra day in Jacksonville with Andrew's family and left early the next morning heading for the Okefenokee Swamp. Our next "appointment" was a graduation at Carolina Coastal University in South Carolina.

We entered the Okefenokee via Georgia's Steven C Foster State Park. There we rented a canoe and paddled into the swamp. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

We took a tent with us on the trip but the weather was threatening so we wimped out and stayed at a nearby motel.

The next day we headed for Jekll Island, Georgia, in search of the The Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island. It's an interesting place. We visited the building where they rehabilitate turtles. That's where I found "Ed," an 18-pound, juvenile, female! green sea turtle who was floating abnormally when found last September near Jekyll Island. She is eating now and will likely be released soon.

Still a few days until graduation number two so we explored the rest of the island and headed north. We spent one more night in a motel and two nights camping.

The first camping night was on the ocean at Hunting Island State Park in South Carolina. We had a tent site no more than 100 feet from the beach and spent a few hours walking in the surf.

Our second camping night was on the Intercoastal Waterway at the US Forest Service's Buck Hall Campground. Our tent was fifty feet from a seawall on the waterway.

The next morning we stopped to pick some fresh strawberries (which survived about 30 minutes) and spent the better part of the day at Brookgreen Gardens near Myrtle Beach, leaving at the last minute to pick up Barry at Myrtle Beach Airport.

Salute! How we spent Mayday

2010-06-08T20:15:00.009-04:00

We took a long week off at the end of April to drive to Jacksonville, Florida. Under the live oak trees on the campus of Jacksonville University, my son Andrew got his BA degree, magna cum laude, on May 1st.

Not only that, he also was recognized as an ROTC officer candidate.

Got some added recognition from Andrea.

Was sworn in.

And got his lid from daughter Audrey.

What a day!

Outdoor effort at the apartment

2010-06-08T19:18:00.005-04:00

While the weather was cold Sandy took a weekly course that, after 35 hours of volunteer work, will make her a master gardener.

As the weather got better, she started putting her new knowledge to work. Vegetables were planted and mulched. Some were covered with a netting to discourage butterfly caterpillars from munching on them.

When that was done she set about digging up a sloped path that has proven very slippery from time to time. I moved some of our pavers back up to the apartment area to be used as stairs, and, with the help of some old lumber, started putting them together.

Watch for more pictures of the garden as it grows.

Spring arrived early

2010-06-05T10:24:00.006-04:00

We'd been waiting for spring and it arrived sooner than expected. A string of warmer than usual weather brought out flowers along the trail from the apartment to the new house.

Closer to a floor

2010-06-02T22:54:00.005-04:00

We've been working on all the things that go under the floor, small stones, the water line, the telephone line and the fiber optic conduit. Some of them were run through other conduit for protection since there was still to be a lot of weight and walking on them before the floor was poured.

More than a dozen piers of various sizes were formed to provide needed support for the posts that will hold up the roof. Some of them are shown in these two pictures. After digging and forming them we got a lot of rain. They appear here full of water. Though the floor is all rock in these pictures, underneath is heavy clay which drains very slowly.

The large rectangle in the second shot is a replacement for six or seven smaller piers that were so close together their forms would have overlapped. The area covers most of the master bedroom's closet.

The rooms-to-be, from top to bottom, left to right: small half-bath, laundry/utility room, "office" area, bathroom and master bedroom.

Getting some water

2010-06-02T22:13:00.009-04:00

It's a long story and I won't go through it all here, but I finally got the water line installed and saved about $350 compared to the best quote I had gotten. These pictures follow the line from near the water meter (top, east) back to the building (bottom, west). The second picture shows a side trench which leads to a hydrant (3rd picture) close to where we plan to create a new, larger vegetable garden.

Before the trench was filled we also dropped in a new telephone line and a flexible conduit through which Smithville Telephone will eventually push a fiber optic line. We will not have to dig another trench when their installation schedule gets them here in the next two years. (Our rural road is not way high up on their priority list.)

The tarp along the trench was a futile attempt to minimize the rain water getting into the trench.

All three lines came through tubes we placed in the concrete footing. They run from there, under the floor (that would soon be poured) and come up inside the future walls of the utility/laundry room.

Winter mini-vacation

2010-06-02T21:28:00.005-04:00

Cabin fever was setting in and there wasn't anything we could do at the house site, so I booked a few nights at McCormick's Creek State Park. When we loaded the car and started out the driveway we got about twenty feet before getting stuck in deep snow. I started to dig out but it was going very slowly when the neighbor across the road came home from work, started up his tractor and plowed us out. What a guy! He'd already spent the whole day at his job plowing parking lots.

There are miles of trails at McCormick's Creek and the roads in the park were in better shape than those outside. The arrived we decided to hike one of the trails and some of the nearly deserted roads.

We weren't the only ones using the plowed roads. Sandy encountered these two not far from the inn. As we walked along they stayed ahead of us until they headed into the woods. When we caught up, I saw this guy who'd been browsing for anything he could eat.

We ventured quite a way along a trail, down a long stairway and to the creek which was beautiful covered by snow and ice. The trail crossed the creek and it wasn't completely frozen so we just crept along the bank until we saw the falls through the ice cycles.

The stay was over before we knew it and we headed home to feed the cat.

A serious snowfall

2010-06-02T20:23:00.004-04:00

The second week of February brought a few days of serious snow. Here are a few pictures of what we saw from the windows.

This young dear was hungry enough to come up close to the barn.

With a foot of snow, our feathered friends lined up on the vegetable fences at the feeders waiting their turns.

Air traffic was piled up, too. As each bird got its share, the next one moved up the tree and onto the suit feeder.

3 months just fly by

2010-06-02T20:17:00.004-04:00

It's been nearly three months since the last entry. After the concrete walls were built, the weather turned cold and things slowed way down.

It's hard to write when there's nothing to show, and by the time there was something to show I was sort of out of the blogging habit.

Let's see if I can catch up over the next few days.

Enough for Santa Claus

2010-02-08T20:30:00.003-05:00

We had a snow fall last Friday night. It wasn't as much as those north of us got, and it paled in comparison with what the east coast got, but it was pretty and left the whole property covered.

Sometime Saturday afternoon I glanced out the bathroom window and noticed some movement on the hill west of the Greene View Springs property. Looking more carefully I realized it was a deer, and then another, and another. Soon there was a small herd of eight deer making their way down the neighbor's hill.

They approached the property line, barbed wire fence tentatively, just a few at first. Then one jumped the fence and the others followed quickly.

They proceeded south just below the hill on our side of the property were it was difficult to follow them. Then, without any warning, they all trotted toward our garden below the apartment. They were moving as a group, but not quickly.

I thought I'd have time to fetch a camera and get back to the window. I was wrong. By the time I had camera in hand the deer had already bolted into the woods.

All I could do was point and press. Here's what I got.

Amazing what a few warm days allow

2010-01-26T22:05:00.005-05:00

Last week, after a long stretch of very cold weather, we got about five days with no freezing temperatures. In fact, last Saturday it was over 50 degrees.

That made it a great day to install all of the drains and the distribution lines for the house. The picture below shows a view of the utility room with the half bath behind it.

In the front, on the right, are the hot and cold lines that will be attached to the water manifold like the manifold that was installed in the apartment.

The white pipes in the gravel are drains. The utility room's floor drain is in the foreground. The other rains are for the sink and washing machine in the utility room and, at the back left, the lavatory in the half bath.

Before we can pour the concrete floor there is a lot of work to do. The source water line will come in through the frost footing. Electricity will be run into the utility room and some of the electric circuit lines will run through the floor. Also there will be a pipe to exhaust the range top which will be on a island in the kitchen.

Once all of those are in we can add more gravel, put down the vapor barrier, lay 54 sheets of 2" polystyrene panels and place the radiant heat PEX lines.

I hope we can have all that done about the same time the weather allows us to get the concrete pump and concrete truks back onto the site. Right now it's just too muddy.

It's been cold

2010-01-19T20:28:00.004-05:00

We left home on Christmas day for a trip to Delaware, North Carolina and Florida visiting family. It's nice to go away while the days are shortest. By the time we got home, the growing length of the day was noticeably different than from when we left.

It was cold for most of the trip, and especially cold for the folks in Florida who are not used to freezing temperatures. On one day it was colder in Florida than here at home.

It was clear, though, as demonstrated by the picture below, that it wasn't warmer here very much.

These tracks on our largest pond were made by deer, dogs and one rabbit.

Mud becomes rock

2009-12-18T19:54:00.003-05:00

The last week hasn't been one to write home about. The earthen walls behind the new concrete walls continued to deteriorate. My task was to excavate around the form-a-drains and shovel in crushed stone along their outsides so no soil was in contact with them and crushed stone could be dumped on top of them. This would provide a clear path through the crushed stone through which water could drain keeping it off of the concrete walls.

By early this week I had dug along the wall footings and replaced soil with stone, a length of 116 feet, except for about 15 feet at the west end of the master bedroom wall where it meets the bathroom wall.

In that area the soil was so wet it just oozed from the wall toward the footing at about the consistency of cake mix. As fast as I could muck it out it replaced itself. Worse, there was no practical place to toss what I was able to pick up. It had to be carried in buckets all the way around to the east wall, or west to at least the laundry room wall. Dropping it against the earth wall near where it came from just caused it to fill in faster.

The space was barely large enough to walk through. No mechanical equipment could get to it because the wall sections are each too short to reach into with a backhoe or other large shovel.

I spent the better part of two days trying to deal with it. It was a nasty job and I'm glad it's finally over.

Freezing weather actually helped by slowing down the water flow and freezing the mud. Also, all day Wednesday, Sandy cleaned out the trenches on both sides of the lower frost footings while I lined them all with polystyrene.

Here's what the wall "canyons" looked like looking west after sunset Wednesday evening. Visible along the wall is a "clean" section of the polystyrene-covered footing. Just past that, beyond where the shovel is standing, is where the mud slurry begins. It's eerie, isn't it, seeing the tree roots hinging along the edge?

My contractor guru, Dick Stumpner, suggested we just abandon the form-a-drain and install another drain on top of the footing against the walls. This new drain is wrapped in a sleeve to exclude soil which might eventually filter through the stone and clog it.

This approach still required the footings to be cleared, but only down to the footing tops and only a bit wider than the new drain, 6 inches or so. More was better, but in a few areas, considering the muddy soil, the drain width was the best we could do.

Much of the wall length had already been cleared by Thursday morning when the excavating team arrived and we started unrolling drain pipe almost at once. Stone was delivered and they began to dump the crushed stone over the walls onto the pipe. We covered it a foot or two deep to hold it down as we progressed around the wall, digging out a bit of soil here and there to allow the pipe to lay flat on top of the footing.

By the end of Thursday we had all the drain pipe in, from both ends of the wall, to within about 20 feet of each other. Today we worked for about two hours to clear the last 20 feet.

We were able to get a backhoe above the northeast corner of the walls and use it to scrape out most of the north section behind the master bedroom wall. Then stone was dumped over that section so we'd have a place to pile muck from the problem area. Not too long after that the two drain sections were connected.

We spent the rest of the day dumping stone over various wall sections and spreading it into the corners that the backhoe bucket couldn't get close to. Here's what it looks like now.

Weather permitting, we'll pick it up again on Monday morning.

Clearing the footing drains

2009-12-07T20:59:00.002-05:00

About the time the concrete walls were finished some of the earthen wall behind them caved in. At some places the fallen material covered the new footings and the outside drain form with heavy clay. To be sure this does not inhibit water behind the wall from draining away, I have been shoveling a trench at least 8 inches wide next to the drains and down far enough to expose the slits in them that allow water in. Then I'm filling the trench with gravel to be sure there will be a path for water when the backfill is added or in case more caves in before the fill is added.

We had snow on the ground this morning so I did some things in the apartment all day. There's a good chance of rain in the morning and for the next few days, up to a half inch or more.

I hope to get the rest of the clay and mud off the drains despite that because it's forecast to be as cold as 12 degrees before the weekend. I might have to lay some of the polystyrene panels over top of the canyon if I have to dig while it's raining. The temperature is forecast to be in the low 40's, not bad for this time of year.

Malcolm Wells, Pioneer of Underground Housing, 1926-2009

2009-12-07T09:33:00.003-05:00

Sometime in the last ten years I learned about Malcolm Wells. Soon after I got ahold of one of his books. It is full of good sense and humor.

With no offense intended to friends and relatives, here's just a small fragment of his philosophy of building:

"We live in an era of glitzy buildings and trophy houses: big, ugly, show-off monsters that stand--or I should say stomp--on land stripped bare by the construction work and replanted with toxic green lawns. If the buildings could talk they would be speechless with embarrassment..."

Mr Wells died on November 27th at age 83. I wish I could have met him and I encourage you to visit his web site. You will not be disappointed. It is full of his ideas and sketches of various underground buildings. The web site was created and maintained by his fans since he never really seemed to grasp the internet.

After seeing the damage that our new house is doing to the hillside, I feel like a hypocrite when I recommend his works. I hope we can restore the landscape as closely as possible to what it was and end up with a home that allows nature to reclaim most of the surface it covers.

Maybe not too much work today

2009-12-07T09:07:00.003-05:00

This picture through the warm apartment window speaks for itself.

2 days old and already sinking

2009-12-07T00:00:00.006-05:00

Or maybe the camera is just tilted.

Now that the walls are done it's time to insulate them. I'm using 2 layers of 2-inch extruded polystyrene on the walls and one layer on the tops of the footings. Two layers will provide an R-20 insulating value.

You can see some of the insulation already placed in this picture.

The strange figure in the window below is working on clearing the form drains.

Could he be the Travelocity gnome?

Concrete - Video

2009-12-04T22:00:00.001-05:00

Enough of the still pictures. Here's a scan of the finished footings and walls.

When the concrete floor is poured it will be level with the top of the short wall in front. Most of that wall will be underground with the top just an inch or so above the patio level

Concrete - Day 4

2009-12-04T20:51:00.003-05:00

It was a short day. The crew came early, knocked out all the connectors, took down all the forms, lifted all the cages of forms back onto the truck, cleaned up and took off. I barely had time to take any pictures.

Here the outside forms have already been removed and lifted over the wall. The walkways at the top of the inside forms have been removed and some of the cages have already been reloaded to the truck.

They left two guys behind to spray the outside of all the walls and footings. One is handling the hose at the top of the wall while the visible one is spraying below. Some of the waterproofing is visible on the wall section to the right.

I took off to buy the first load of insulation panels which will go up two thick - 4 inches, giving us R-20 insulation on the outside of the concrete walls. They were gone by the time I got back.

Concrete - Day 3

2009-12-03T20:50:00.001-05:00

Our third day of the concrete work was much nicer than anyone had expected. It rained 7/10ths of an inch overnight which turned our polystyrene-lined frost footings into miniature canals. But, as the day went on, the temperature rose and, except for the mud mostly outside the building's footprint, it was a pleasant working environment.

The crew knocked out some of the polystyrene that protruded above the footing and dug a small trench at each end of the south wall.

The trench on the east side directed the muddy water into the low area between the dirt pile and the original slope of the hill. This ran down and into the drain I had laid last week under the path below. The drain worked great and the ponds were filling up.

You can see why I need to raise the height of the upper pond's overflow pipe. The water level could be much higher without jeopardizing the pond.

The crew set right to work setting forms on both sides of the rebar that had been placed and tied the day before. While they were doing that the rest of the wall sections' reenforcement was cut, bent and tied into the bars embedded in the footings.

The forms were going up quickly, though some corners on the outside had become tighter to work in than the day before. The chunk of soil and rock seen here is the largest to have broken off along the back wall, but there were lots of other smaller pieces and some parts of the walls were dripping with runoff from above.

The forms they used have a brick pattern. We will be covering most if not all of the interior wall, so the brick facade will be unseen when the house is finished, but it will look interesting in the mean time.

By this time the concrete pump arrived. What an enormous machine! By the time they got it into place and ready to go, there was hardly any driveway left. Huge ruts were created and a few more trees bit the dust.

By then the walls had been braced, a working ledge had been installed along the top ...

and the window block-outs were in place, so they were ready to start pumping.

The boom on the pump had four large segments. When it is deployed it looks somewhat like a gigantic grasshopper.

As the pump's outlet moved along the wall, John followed along with a long concrete vibrator that reached to near the bottom of the forms to encourage the concrete to fill all the nooks and corners of the forms.

The forms for the stem wall are shorter, of course, so they go together more quickly, and they require very little rebar compared with the 9-foot walls. Sitting on the footing is a section of plastic pipe that was embedded in the wall for the drain to the septic system. Tubes were also placed for incoming water, electricity and telephone. These were covered with duct tape to be knocked out when the forms come off.

Here's a view from the hillside above. Progress continues on the pumping, even as work is still going on on the frost footing wall around the greenhouse.

The crew was very efficient and little time was wasted. It seemed everyone was adept at every job so there was never any waiting for the "right" person to get something done. If anyone needed help, the next person along could be drafted for any task.

Concrete - Day 2

2009-12-02T14:03:00.003-05:00

The weather is turning nasty later today. It was cool at 8 am, but not as cold as yesterday started.

The crew arrived with an enormous truck loaded with heavy forms for the concrete walls. The truck is very long. Amazingly, they were able to back it in almost all the way. As it was being backed up the last 30 feet toward the east wall, the slope was too steep and one axle was literally lifted off the gravel, so it had to stop there.

It's huge outriggers, visible in the picture below, were deployed and the truck was leveled side to side.

The forms are stored in large cages each of which weigh about a ton. The truck has a large crane/boom on the back. It can lift the cages up to 70 feet high and about that far away from the truck. As it was unfurled it reminded me of a kid's transformer toy.

It was so dark the camera's flash went off making the machine look like it's all lit up as light reflected from the ladder sides.

As the operator began to unload cages of forms, the rain started slowly. The guys finished marking the footings in preparation for setting up the forms and, as that effort was being finished, decided to call it a day.

They left the truck in place so they can get a running start after the weather improves. The forecast highs and lows from today through Sunday are 43°/32°, 40°/23°, 34°/20°, 38°/22°, and 41°/27°. Rain and snow are both in the forecast, so it's up to the concrete crew to decide when to finish up.

What a difference a day makes

2009-12-01T23:06:00.006-05:00

The concrete crew, A & D Construction from south of Odon, Indiana, came at sunrise and left at moonrise and a beautiful full moon it was.

All of our footings were formed and poured in one long day. First, the above-grade forms/drains were placed. This part of the site was under about three inches of water because very thick chunks of hard clay had come out during excavation leaving more depth than desired. Crushed stone had to be placed on both sides of all the above-grade footings. The footing depth here was to be 10 inches so the forms were three inches above the established grade. This left one inch for a layer of extruded polystyrene.

As the forms were finished, extruded polystyrene sheets were placed on the bottom and both sides of the formed space and reinforcing bars (rebar) were placed and tied together on metal lifts called chairs.

By this time the first concrete truck had arrived and they started pouring concrete. I found this situation almost comical as they were pouring concrete on one end of a wall section even before the rebar was all placed and tied at the other end. This picture shows concrete oozing toward one of the guys as he was racing to get the bars tied to the chair.

Twisting wires around the bars is a time-consuming operation, but he was using a tool, visible in his left hand, that grabbed two or more bars and wrapped and twisted them together with wire from a spool inside the tool. Just in front of his knees, if you look carefully, you can see one of the chairs that keep the rebar elevated as it is covered with concrete. It looks like two small ladders in a triangle, like a few pup tent frames side by side.

Most of the back wall segments are complete in this picture. Five or six guys are working constantly as the concrete is placed, plus the truck driver.

Up to this point the concrete trucks were able to pull all the way into the future living area. This was possible because the last wall along the east of the future kitchen area was not dug until all the other walls were poured. Here the guys are cleaning up the bottom of the footing trench under that wall so the polystyrene will lie flat in the bottom.

The footings are at two levels. Those under walls which will be under ground more than a few feet are formed above ground. These are the ones that have been shown so far. This trench is deeper than the frost line. Footings at this level will have a short wall on them that will bring concrete up to the level of the floor slab.

In the background we have spread multiple billboard tarps that extend about 20 feet up the hill to where a small hill of soil diverts rainwater from farther uphill to the building's sides. Water falling on these tarps, if all goes well, will fall harmlessly behind the footings without mud, clay and rock calving off the walls.

This view shows the greenhouse area. It looks like an island. The below-grade footings do not need forms since the earth does a darn good job of stopping concrete. The "walls" are very wavy because the soil came out in big sticky globs. As long as there is a straight area wide enough for the short walls, the footing is adequate. We also lined the trenches with polystyrene. A laser level sits on its tripod inside the greenhouse area.

Looking from the southwest corner to the northeast corner, a distance of about 72 feet.

Looking west to east. The final concrete truck is coming into view to pour the final 60 feet of sub-grade footing.

Placing rocks

2009-11-24T18:03:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I recruited our neighbor and his tractor to move the big rocks that were pushed down the south bank of the new pond. One was actually too large to be dragged (without leaving an enormous trench in the wet area) and was left where it had fallen.

This picture shows them scattered across the wetland area. They were not too carefully placed in the hopes it will look more natural that way when the plants grow up around them. They also are not very flat, so it will still be a challenge to hop across them. The smaller ones were placed by hand. A few more will be added to be sure everyone can get across dry if they try.

Ruts we made can be seen on the right side of the rocks so I still need to use a hoe or shovel to fill in a few of them and to cut some small slots where the ruts are running across the flow of the stream so the water won't pool up anywhere. Let's see what it looks like in the spring.

And today, while I was spreading grass seed and covering it with straw, I found this little guy who didn't seem to care that I had disrupted the wetland by dragging rocks through it.

A better perspective?

2009-11-23T10:12:00.003-05:00

It's hard to find a perspective that shows where everything is in relation to the others. Here's a shot that Sandy took from the far side of the wetlands area.

The light green below the white-barked trees is the wetland through which the spring water drains, west (left) to east (right). It has a large colony of mint whose aroma is very strong when it is bruised by walking through it. Sometimes a breeze will carry the mint aroma toward the ponds.

One can see Brian and me inside the larger pond. The south side of the dam has a very large rock in the middle at its top. Just above that in the picture (though actually about 30 feet north) is the large rock on top of the smaller pond's overflow pipe.

Below the rock on the larger pond's dam, on the outside, we have pushed a half dozen or so large rocks to the bottom, out of sight. They are way too heavy to be moved by hand. I hope to get help from a neighbor and his tractor to drag them southward into the wetland so we will be able to rock hop through it without damaging plants or leaving a trail. As it is now we cannot easily cross it much of the year because of the running water.

The light blue spot is a small storage "building", and I use the term loosely. It is just straw bales piled on either side of two side-by-side pallets, covered with a few tarps. This gives us a very temporary dry place to store tools without having to cart them up and down between the barn and the house site every day.

To its left, above and to the left of where we are standing, is the huge pile of dirt and clay excavated from the house site. It has completely overtaken the hillside below the house.

Between and behind it and the temporary building the excavated earthen wall can be seen.

Remember, all construction photos are at http://picasaweb.google.com/ed.paynter/NewHomeConstruction#, even the unflattering ones.

Manual labor crew

2009-11-22T23:05:00.006-05:00

Today Brian came down from Indianapolis to help me work on the new ponds. This series of pictures requires more than usual explanation.

In the first, behind me, one can see the south side of the larger pond. If you click on either of the first two and look very carefully, you might be able to make out the thin yellow string along the top of the dam. Though it may not appear so, the string is level. Eventually the top of the dam will be leveled and parallel with but not all the way up to the string.

Notice the water that is still in the bottom of the pond. It might not be necessary to line these ponds since there is so much clay and it seems to be holding.

In the first two pictures we are working on a spillway of sorts that will allow rain water to flow into the bottom pond if it comes off the small hill to the left or off of the east end of the trail that passes above them.

The shiny soil under my feet is a finished stretch of the spillway. If the lower pond gets near to full this area will be under water.

Brian is touching a large rock somewhat smaller than a few we moved on the south side of the spillway. I am tromping on the outside of the upper dam which is also the north side of the lower pond. Next to the rock, though expertly hidden by the crew, a corrugated pipe has been buried to allow water that flows over or along the trail to enter without eroding the upper dam's lower wall.

The clay is not as mucky as it was just two days ago so it did not stick to the shovels much. With two of us working it was easy to raise the dam walls, one placing shovels full of clay while the other pushed and stomped it into place before it could roll down the embankment. Before, with one person working and the soil sticking to the shovel, placing it successfully on top of the dam was nearly impossible.

This last picture shows a wider view of the two ponds. From the top one can see the edge of the trail along the north side, a small trough filled with rocks to encourage drainage from above the trail to enter the upper pond, a line of larger rocks delineating the west side of the pond, the upper pond itself, the overflow pipe into the lower pond covered with a large rock that was placed by the backhoe, and the outline of the lower pond with the crew in it.

I have a pretty complete idea about how to finish off the ponds' walls, inlets and overflows. Early in the spring I'll seed the outside dam walls. After seeing these pictures, though, just one thing still puzzles me: Where the hell has all my hair gone!?

Draining the site

2009-11-21T22:12:00.002-05:00

Two posts ago I showed the puddles that have formed on the site after 7/10ths of an inch of rain. Some of that water has evaporated and some has sunk into the soil, but most is still sitting there. Today I scraped a small trench across the future bedroom, hallway and kitchen to get the water to flow out on its own.

The trench runs past the pile of dirt on the left and off down the hillside. It seems to be working. The water level is already falling.

The site is still very muddy, but not as bad as just after the rain.

Tracks

2009-11-21T21:54:00.001-05:00

Since the hillside has been partially removed and a huge pile of dirt and clay is covering a lot more of it, one or more of the paths that deer have probably used for years is no longer there. This has caused at least one of the deer, and a rather large one by the looks of the tracks, to adjust his daily route to below the large pile on the hill and onto the part of the trail below the house site that has been raised with some of the dirt from above.

Here are prints laid down over two days, one track each day. They lead off into and through the middle of the larger, lower new pond. There are also tracks in the mud at the house site. I hope the deer will still pass below the house frequently after we move in.

Puddles

2009-11-17T11:22:00.004-05:00

Work on the excavation was finished on Friday morning, mostly fine tuning a few spots on the walls and floor. It was a tiring week. Though I didn't operate any of the equipment, I was on the site from 8AM through at least 6PM every day.

Before the equipment was removed, a slight slope was graded at the front to deal with runoff from rain that falls before the footings are excavated. Footing excavation has been postponed until closer to the date the footings will be formed so we won't have a footing moat around the site.

I've been able to sleep late a few days in a row since then and don't feel nearly so tired as last week. I've been working on hand grading the two new ponds we built with the spoil from the excavation and burying some drain pipe into and out of the ponds.

We had a great run of good weather but that has come to an end. It began raining last night and we have a half inch so far. This has caused puddles to form on the house site.

The large puddle covers parts of the master bedroom, bathroom and hallway.

This is a view through the kitchen, living room and all the way to the guest bedrooms. It's very muddy but no pools are forming so far.

Seen to the extreme left is the edge of a huge mound of dirt. We hope most of it will be used to backfill behind the walls over the drains and stone that will be placed first. Frankly, I don't know what we'll do with any that is left over. We have already filled more area in front of the site than I had planned and I don't want to cover any more of the original surface.

Almost every inch of the site and everywhere the mostly clay soil has been moved and stockpiled is now sticky mud. As I walked across a section of the path below the house that has been raised with excavated soil, my boots picked up a few inches of mud. On the other side of the raised section where the path again is covered with wood chips, the mud picked up another half inch or so of chips. I was getting taller by the step.

The first pond below the path hasn't taken on any water yet. The larger pond below is beginning to fill with water. When the rain is over for a while, tomorrow or Thursday, I'll post some pictures of the ponds.

all day, and all through the night...

2009-11-12T20:43:00.007-05:00

The excavation continued today with a piece of rented equipment added to the backhoe and dozer. After many attempts to remove some very hard rock over the last few days with only very minor success, we rented a hydraulic rock breaker, basically a large jack hammer operated like a backhoe except it is on the end of a boom.

Here's how it works. Cover your ears.

Scintillating, eh?

Scott worked with this machine all day long and well after dark. First he drilled on the limestone. Then, while the rubble was being scraped away with the dozer or backhoe, he cleaned up another part of the excavated wall. Earlier in the day, the walls were marked with spray paint to show where they needed to be trimmed. The paint marks looked like cave drawings.

He switched between the wall and the limestone, back and forth, while someone else was cleaning up behind him.

This continued until about 7:30, almost two hours past sunset, since the rented machine needs to be returned tomorrow morning. About 6:15, it became clear that we would be there all night and still not remove all of the limestone.

I took a chance that my structural engineer might be in his office and called him to discuss the situation. Luckily, he was there.

I suggested that we could stop chipping away rock when we got it down to the level of the top of the footing to be poured. Then we could taper the footing when it came to the rock and continue it on the other side. He agreed that that would work if we connected the footings on either side of the rock with arched reinforcing bars embedded into each footing. These would be tied to a few bars drilled into the rock and the rebar in the wall when it is added. Additionally, the footing could be widened on the wall's outside. His only concern is that we take extra care to seal the connection between the rock and the concrete to prevent moisture seepage.

There are more pictures on my web album: http://picasaweb.google.com/ed.paynter/NewHomeConstruction#

Excavation - Day 3: Big rocks

2009-11-11T13:43:00.002-05:00

We're on the third day of excavation and the big rocks are slowly being chipped and scraped away. Here's a mid-day video. Caution, the volume is high.

Excavation - Day 2

2009-11-10T23:37:00.006-05:00

Contrary to the forecast, there was no rain at all last night nor today so a lot of progress was made on the home site.

We got the perimeter staked more accurately and then set all the stakes out another three feet. This leaves room for the concrete crew to work on the outside of the walls when they set up and remove their forms. Since the walls will be nine feet high above the footings, it can be pretty claustrophobic if there isn't enough room between the walls and the soil on the north side.

These two pictures show the same part of the project from two different angles. Sorry they are dark. They were taken just after sunset.

We have found a vein of heavy clay that can barely be broken with the dozer. When it is broken it comes up in sections, some as large as 15 to 20 square feet.

We have been saving the stones that were found near the surface for use in retaining walls near the front door. The large blocks we're getting out now are so numerous there aren't enough useful places to put them so they're being pushed downhill toward the dams.

Each of the stakes in the picture is offset from a corner of the building delineating one of the north-side rooms - from the right, the master bedroom, bathroom, computer/office area and laundry/utility room.

The hillside slopes to the southeast so even though the north side of each room in turn comes closer to the building's south side, the top of the back wall of each one isn't very much below the one to its east. This will help make the building less visible from up the hill toward the barn.

We are designing the ponds as we go since we had no practical way to gauge how much soil would need to be moved and be available for the pond. The plan is to have two ponds: a smaller one to allow dirt and debris to settle out, above a larger one that will be deep enough for wading. The soil is probably 90% clay so I may not have to install a liner in the ponds at all.

The soil near the front center of the building is soft. We are not quite down to the finished floor level so it may turn out OK. Going deeper to get to solid soil is not possible as that would also lower the rest of the building. Since the back wall is approaching the top of the nine foot wall already, lowering the entire floor would bring us below the soil level. And we can't lower the uphill soil level more than inches or we would have to shave the same depth all the way up the hill or install an expensive retaining wall across the entire north side.

It's getting late again. More tomorrow.

I feel the earth move under my feet...

2009-11-09T22:23:00.005-05:00

We have finally started excavating for the new home. We've had a string of nice days and it looks like at worst we'll have just a bit of rain tomorrow and then some more nice days. If all goes well we'll have the site excavated and leveled for footing forms, and the ponds done by the end of the week.

Here are a few pictures showing the first day's progress. I tried to upload a video but it failed. I'll keep trying but it's getting late.

No, we aren't building another driveway. What you see is the track along which earth from the excavation is being pushed downhill to build two connected ponds.

Tomorrow we'll place corner stakes that include the extra 3 feet all the way around that the concrete guys need to get their forms in and out.

Fall colors panorama

2009-11-05T19:07:00.003-05:00

This video was taken on October 24th, when the trees were showing their best colors. It was taken from the highest point on Greene View Springs and pans from north to south.

All of the low land to the east and south, most of it unseen over the hillside, is in the American Bottoms.

Keep your mouth shut

2009-11-04T23:54:00.005-05:00

For a week or so in late October and early November, the air near the apartment is filled with ladybugs. Well actually they are "multicolored Asian lady beetles," scientific name – Harmonia axyridis (Pallas). It seems they have virtually displaced our common ladybug, and these gals bite if you allow them to stay on you long enough.

Here's a picture of them on the outside wall, and then from the inside. They are often even more numerous. It is difficult to work near the barn when they are flying.

The foil and clothespin are used to keep the heat out of the barn on hot sunny days.

Here's just a brief idea of what it's like with them crawling around by the thousands looking for a place to hide for the winter.

Fall pictures

2009-11-04T23:48:00.004-05:00

These speak for themselves...

This year's baby

2009-11-04T23:39:00.002-05:00

Two years running the downy woodpeckers have raised a male baby, in this picture sitting in the persimmon tree by the window asking,"Where's the suet?"

Watch where you step

2009-11-04T23:23:00.004-05:00

Almost exactly a year ago I posted some pictures of crayfish holes. I thought they were pretty big. Last week I found the granddaddy of them all almost at the highest point on the property. Here's what it looked like. I didn't leave the quarter there long for fear it would come out and take it.

Harvest

2009-11-04T20:21:00.006-05:00

Though we did plant a vegetable garden this year, and some apple trees in the spring, we haven't done anything in the woods to increase wild food production - mast.

Wildlife biologists term variable seed crops as “mast” from "masticate." Hard mast includes seeds or nuts: acorns, beech nuts, maple seeds. Soft mast is fruit: wild strawberries, blueberries, grapes and apples.

Most of our mast comes in the form of shagbark hickory nuts, acorns, bitternut hickory nuts, walnuts, dogwood seeds, concord grapes and wild berries. We have not harvested any of these. Most are eaten only by wildlife.

We do harvest persimmons. They are noted in numerous earlier posts. Here's what we saw in October after the leaves had fall. Note the hundreds of ripe fruit still on the tree.

Another prolific crop, though one has to work harder to find it, is the hazelnut. Growing all over the Greene View Springs property as a shrub, our hazelnuts seem to fruit irregularly. By that I mean the same plant may have a heavy crop one year but not the next.

The hazelnut shrub - Corylus americana

The nuts grow in husked clusters of 2 or 3 up to about 10

This cluster had five nuts

This one, partially opened, had 3

These came from a single cluster

We probably have 4 dozen hazelnut shrubs on the site. Once one sees a few they are easy to spot from a distance.

Time flys ... Oops! make that "flies!"

2009-11-04T19:29:00.004-05:00

It has been more than two months since my last entry. Frankly, I've been discouraged with our progress and have had little to say or show for most of that time.

I have worked with an engineer in New York to verify that the posts and beams we want to use are strong enough to support the living roof and to define the concrete requirements for the house to be sure it will both support the posts and hold back the hillside to the north.

While that exchange was going on I have been gathering cost information for electricity, water, septic system, excavation and various items we will need in the new building.

Then, with the engineer's specifications in hand, it was time to get estimates for the concrete work. This proved to be more difficult than I ever expected.

The concrete specs are not typical in the eyes of all the contractors I've contacted. There are very large piers under some of the most loaded posts. The walls' thicknesses change from south to north, as do the depths and thicknesses of footings. Part of the north wall will have nearly 9 feet of hillside against it, and it is mostly clay soil, about as unstable as any soil could be. Insufficient strength in the wall or the post supports, or the posts and beams themselves for that matter, could allow us to be found some day under a pile of dirt from the hill or the roof.

I contacted five concrete contractors. All but one were given all the specs, plans and pictures. One never got that far as he was offered a large commercial project before we met. One called back to ask more questions, then never contacted us again. Two presented quotes that didn't pick up correct wall and footing lengths from the drawings. Almost all said they would rather use a different rebar configuration than the specs called for.

I encouraged all of them to visit the site so they wouldn't be surprised later by the access restrictions (and be tempted to cut some corners to make up for any extra effort the site required that they hadn't considered when bidding).

I was careful to tell everyone that we would be lining the footings with insulated panels before the concrete was poured. One said, "I won't pour concrete footings on top of insulation." I replied, "Then I guess we're done talking." As you might guess, he stayed to get the specs and submitted a bid.

Each of these exchanges seemed to take a week or so, even the guy who backed out didn't do so until I had waited about 10 days to meet with him.

Finally, after decided that we would deal with the floor and piers separately, I asked for new bids and got one that we can live with. We'll check out some of their projects before we start, but it looks like we've finally got our concrete work lined up.

Yesterday I called our excavator and got on his schedule for next week. The weather has been good and is forecast to be nice for about a week more at least, so we're planning to get this project started.

I have tried to keep busy while waiting for a good concrete bid. Next I'll post a few pictures taken since August.

Tadpole progress, snakes and eggs

2009-08-27T16:29:00.007-04:00

Lots of little critters seem to be growing up this time of year. This little one is just growing legs in preparation for hopping away, before the first frost I hope.

There are still numerous tadpoles in the water trough. Not as many as we had last year, but they all seem to be thriving. Very few of the individuals in last year's brood were growing when I began taking them to the large pond. This year's siblings are on their own, and will probably do better. (No snapping turtles in the trough.)

Here's one of the frogs who seem quite happy that we built the pond near the new driveway. Each time I walk past it I see at least one, and up to five, frogs jump out.

The water's somewhat murky, but it seems to be algae rather than mud or clay that has washed in.

And finally, here's our big find of the week. Though these babies are at Green View Springs now, we found them and took this picture elsewhere. Since we quit the project at Raccoon Springs, and for some time before then, we have had lots of things stored there outside that we had moved from our old home in Indianapolis. This week we drove up with the trailer to remove some of them.

Inside a pile of paving bricks were a few old bricks with cylindrical holes in them, and inside those holes were snake eggs! (about 15) and baby snakes (2 of 3 shown here)!! Since we were taking the bricks away, and they would be very vulnerable just dumped out on the ground, I put all of them in a plastic cup and replaced them in the bricks after they were re-stacked at the end of our new driveway.

The three babies slithered away immediately. The eggs didn't move that fast and are still there, hopefully preparing to hatch. A property can always use more snakes.

An inquiry sent to the "Herp Center" at Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne late this afternoon (after hours) got a quick reply from the Center's Director Bruce Kingsbury which identified the babies as ring-necked snakes (Diadophis punctatus).

August plant pictures

2009-08-19T23:16:00.003-04:00

There are so many plants blooming now at Greene View Springs that I could fill a dozen screens. Here are a few that just began blooming and one tree.

Just one of many goldenrod variations.

Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum)

Tick-Trefoil

Bald cyprus
One of two we were given at the county fairgrounds last spring. They were bare root and it took a long time for them to leaf out. Both were planted in the damp soil on the edge of the original pond.

One more water post

2009-08-18T20:55:00.005-04:00

You've probably seen enough videos of water running all over the place, but here's one more anyway. This is interesting because of how much water flows here after a rainfall. Usually one can just walk right through this stream and not even find mud.

All this water continues across the property and falls into the ditch as was seen in the last clip in the immediately previous blog entry, "What a rainstorm".

What a rainstorm

2009-08-16T12:48:00.005-04:00

We had a heavy rain storm the first week of August. Near the end of it, when it was just a drizzle, I took the camera into the woods to try to show where the water goes near the house site and elsewhere.

The this first video shows the large pond on the property just before the rain finally stopped.

(The narrative on this and the next few videos is clipped at the end. I took nine videos on this walk and didn't realize until I played them on the computer that my voice is clipped at the end of almost all of them. Apparently the audio track lags the video by a second or two. I'll stop talking sooner on future productions. Many of you will appreciate that, I'm sure.)

There are at least three places in the low parts of Green View Springs where a series of holes appears on the surface. Each hole can be up to two feet long as the water flows and about a foot across. In some places there are as many as eight of them in the series. All of them appear along the lowest part of a drainage and are from one to three feet deep. Until now I had not had a camera with me while water was running in them. This time I did and here's what they look like with the water flowing.

All of this water, and that from at least two other major drainages on the property, runs into the ditch along the county road. Combining that water with what comes down the roadside from the top of the road above Greene View Springs creates a formidable volume by the time it gets to the culvert under the road. It's going to take regular attention to stay ahead of the erosion.

(WARNING: Turn down your volume first. The water was so loud I thought I needed to talk louder.)

All the water from Greene View Springs flows farther into American Bottoms and finally into Mr Colling's cave.

Our hike to work

2009-08-03T21:31:00.003-04:00

Here's another of the trails we've built on the Greene View Springs property. This one is used nearly every day for access to the new house site. It runs from near the current gardens just below the barn down into the wooded area below. Along the way you can see some cardboard on the trail. It will eventually be covered with wood chips like can be seen at the start of this clip.

This trail is rather steep once it enters the woods. It almost levels out as it turns nearly due east towards the trail in the earlier post.

Soon the house site can be seen up to the left. Farther along are stacks of trees that have been removed and saved for later use next to the end of the driveway. The clip ends where the earlier clip begins as found in the second video reference in an earlier post.

I'm embedding this video rather than linking to it. Let me know if you like this method better than the links.

One thing the camera can't show is how much cooler it is in the woods.

Examining our house plans

2009-07-30T12:53:00.008-04:00

If you've been following us for long you know some months ago we were advised for a number of reasons to move our site about 100 feet uphill, so the original pictures of the site we staked do not show where we now are planning to build.

I don't want to post something else we will not use, but we are far enough along with our house plans to risk sharing them.

For those who just want a simple picture of the plans, here is a view from the front, southeast corner.This picture was produced with a program called SketchUp which is now a Google product. It is easy to use though it requires a short time to learn its many features.

For those readers who would like to understand the plans better you will want to use SketchUp so you can tilt and rotate the plans to see the house from various perspectives. Here is the link for the free SketchUp download http://sketchup.google.com/download/gsu.html.

Currently I am trying a free service called TeraDepot. To access the latest posted version of our plans, refer to the section in the left column near the top labeled "See our latest house plans". When you get to TeraDepot, select the "Free Download" option, enter the security code that will appear, and the file will download.

So, if you download and install SketchUp, and you download the latest version of the plans, you will be able to tilt and turn the 3D view around, hide parts of it to see other parts better (like hiding the outside walls, or the roof,) and even make changes to the plan for your own amusement.

The SketchUp "Tool" that will be most useful is called "Orbit." It appears in the tool bar at the top of the screen as two arrows sort of wrapped around each other, to the left of the "hand" icon. To turn parts of the plan off or on use the "Layers" feature found under the "Windows" pull-down menu.

I hope you take the time to try this out. SketchUp is a lot of fun, and once you install it you can use it for your own projects.

Send a note if you try and have problems along the way.

UPDATE: This post has been modified with new instructions for downloading the house plans. 9/8/09]

You lookin' at me?

2009-07-25T20:42:00.001-04:00

Let's take a short walk or two

2009-07-24T14:50:00.007-04:00

Here are my first tries at taking and uploading videos to YouTube. The first video is a short walk onto the property on the new driveway, from the recently repaved county road to the parking area and then up a short way to the house site. I need to learn to walk without bouncing the camera.

The second is one of many trails on the Greene View Springs property. This one runs from one of the parking areas on the driveway back to the start of the driveway. One of the growing piles of stripped trees can be seen along the way. Here's another:

I hope to use most of the trees we've had to remove. The larger ones might show up in the building's structure as posts or even beams. The others will make fences and wattles for gardening and excluding some of our critter friends. A few might even become parts of a carport planned for the end of the driveway.

Before, during and after

2009-07-21T18:17:00.007-04:00

Our driveway is finished and we're real happy with it. Here are views before it was started, after it was graded and after the stone was placed.

Some of the smaller trees have been removed.
You can see the area that had to be filled in the sunlight.

The grading is done and a small swale is visible on the right - the uphill side.

The finished driveway.
At the very bottom right one can see the edge of the pond
dug to protect the road from hillside runoff.

Sandy's new kitchen

2009-07-21T15:31:00.004-04:00

It doesn't look like much yet, but Sandy is standing approximately next to the future kitchen island. That's a rake in her hand, not a broom.

If you look carefully you can see the driveway that comes up to near the future front door, just to the left of her, and, behind her, another section of the driveway that ends at a parking area.

As soon as the last piece of earth-moving equipment (also visible through the trees behind Sandy) is gone I'll post pictures of the driveway.

The fields are alive

2009-07-21T14:32:00.003-04:00

Here are just a few of the flowers on the property these days:

Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

Missouri Ironweed (Vernonia missurica)

There are many ironweed varieties. "Missouri" was selected due to the large number of flowers on the flower head.

Common Marsh-Pink (Sabatia angularis)

Hoary Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum incanum)

UPDATE: My sister, the hortoculturist, found the name of this plant. The top few leaves on each stem appear to be spray painted white, same color as the flowers.

Baby nibbler

2009-07-21T14:05:00.002-04:00

Look closely. This little guy hasn't eaten much, yet, although he might be the one who loves the gazania flowers

Taken from the second floor of the barn apartment.

Apparently we are not alone

2009-07-21T13:53:00.004-04:00

I walked down to the house site last evening. Just off the path from the barn to the site I noticed something unusual. Who ever they are, they are very handy with wood.

Remember the frogs?

2009-07-14T22:47:00.005-04:00

In late May I wrote about tree frogs but had no evidence then that they were breeding nearby. Last week, while Kira was painting the water trough we noticed the frog eggs were back.

They're not easy to see, but there are many of them floating with some sunflower seeds and a few drowned bugs. We also noticed some large tadpoles in the water so there must have been other eggs laid some time ago.

Speaking of frogs, we've been camping out the last few nights near the large pond. The frogs have been very noisy with at least three types of frogs heard almost all night long.

Two weeks of grandkids - week one

2009-07-13T22:43:00.005-04:00

My grandkids who live in Germany visited last week. Kira is recently nine and Lucas will be seven in August. The week flew by quickly and we took them to meet their grandmother on Friday night.

While they were here they painted the side of the large trough. Sandy had primed it with a light blue background and here's Kira working on her design for the art work.

I took Lucas one day to the cave nearby. There was too much water in it for him to get down the hill, but he tried sliding down a fallen tree 'til he realized it was too steep.

I wish I had taken lots more pictures.

How we spent the Fourth

2009-07-13T22:18:00.004-04:00

On June 29th, after an early morning meeting in Indianapolis to discuss our passive solar plans, we left for my sister's new home in Milford, Delaware. After approximately 13 hours we pulled into her driveway. She has gotten much of her belongings unpacked and placed in the house, including all the furniture for one of the guest bedrooms which we soon put to use.

On Tuesday and Wednesday Sandy and I helped around the place, I installing curtains and shades, and a few plants we took with us from Greene View Springs and Sandy with more unpacking and organizing.

Thursday morning found us on the road again heading for my son's place in Durham, North Carolina. Also there were his two kids, our grandkids, on a summer visit from Germany.

The next day we all drove to northern South Carolina for a rendezvous with my other son and his family, nine of us altogether. The motel we chose was a compromise to reduce the drive time for son 2. We spent Friday afternoon and evening together, mostly in the motel's pool. On the Fourth we drove to Myrtle Beach for a day in the surf and an evening trying to find the best fire works in the area.

Here's the happy group, except for me and Sandy who was seated across from me, at dinner at the Golden Corral.

Finally, on the fifth, Sandy and I headed home with the grandkids. We got back before midnight and took little time to get to sleep.

The Energy Fair

2009-07-13T21:00:00.003-04:00

Leaving on Thursday, June 18, Sandy and I drove to the Midwest Renewable Energy Association's 20th annual Energy Fair. We left on Thursday because it's about a nine-hour trip and the first workshop started at 10 AM on Friday. Along the way, near Baraboo, Wisconsin, we stopped to visit the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, a Platinum LEED certified building with lots of great ideas we were interested in examining. We got there a full 2 minutes! before the 4:30 closing time, but the staff was generous and allowed us to poke around inside and outside until about 5 PM.

Michael Beczkiewicz, an active member of the Southern Indiana Renewable Energy Network (SIREN) made arrangements for many of us to camp together at the MREA-owned campground near the fair site. In all, about 20 Bloomington-area folks were at the event and about half camped with us.

Each of the three days there were six one-hour workshop slots. And during each time slot there were at least a dozen different workshops from which to choose on topics like passive solar design, solar water heating, wind power, efficient home building, transportation, local food, and many, many more.

Most useful to us were workshops on earth-sheltered homes, window insulation, timber framing, alternative building options and others.

In addition to the 200-plus workshops there were more than a hundred booths with books, products and services where we picked up information on many things we hope to implement in the new home.

Here's a picture of the crowd waiting for the gate to open on Friday morning and a long shot of some of the dozens of tents for workshops and vendors.

This was one of the best run events I have ever attended and well worth the long drive.

Updates coming

2009-07-13T20:34:00.002-04:00

Tonight I'm going to try to catch up on over a month of activities.

We have been to Wisconsin for a weekend energy fair and back to the east coast on a long trip to Delaware, North and South Carolina over the Fourth of July weekend. Our grandkids who now live in Germany visited us for nearly a week and the grandkids who live a lot closer are here for this week. Earth work for the driveway for our house was started today. All this and more in the next series of entries.

Storms

2009-06-16T21:27:00.003-04:00

It's been a rainy day so we spent time organizing our storage shelves in the barn. The rain reminded me I hadn't posted a picture taken last week looking southwest from a second story window. It speaks for itself.

In and out of business in 4 days!

2009-06-16T20:30:00.005-04:00

About a week ago we went into the moving business to help my sister move to her new home in Delaware. She had some household items stored in our barn, the bulk of her things in storage in Memphis (from where she moved), and a few new items to pick up in North Carolina. Four days later we unloaded the truck, retired from the moving business and came home on Amtrak.

Here Sandy and Judy hold back everything we had stuffed into storage last fall when she sold her home. Note there is only about one inch of space left at the front of the storage area. We had had to hold the box spring back and quickly shut the door when we had it all in.

This is the truck we stuffed it all into, a 26-ft rental from Penske.

And here's the route we took, more or less, nearly 1500 miles. You may need to click on the "minus" box on the map to see the whole route.

Now, back to our regular programming.

Open up!

2009-06-16T20:15:00.003-04:00

We now have at least three woodpecker families coming to our suet feeders. A few days ago I found a baby downy woodpecker hopping in the garden. It didn't seem right because of the way it was hopping and the minimum effort it seemed to be putting into announcing its location. It was easy to pick up and I put it into the thickest growth in the garden, a mix of flowers and vegetables, to provide it as much cover as possible.

Later that day the father and a baby downy appeared on one of the feeders and the dad proceeded to feed the baby, right there.

Our windows aren't really that dirty. The birds aren't real neat when they're picking at the suet.

There's only one channel!

2009-05-28T19:04:00.003-04:00

OK, this one's got nothing to do with Greene View Springs, but I just had to post it. One of our grandsons was fascinated with our front loading washing machine and sat down to watch it for almost 10 minutes.

The return of the tree frogs

2009-05-28T18:43:00.006-04:00

The frogs have been making a racket for the past week. Yesterday Sandy was working next to our large trough which I have lined with billboard tarp and this little frog showed up. We think he or she is checking it out for a place to deposit eggs as they did last year.

There are a four "pond" choices this year up here near the barn, though only two of them are "safe" right now - the pictured trough and the plastic pond above the driveway. One of the down spouts on the barn goes into a smaller trough, but it overflows heavily during a rainfall. The fourth is the larger pond I am digging but I can't work on it when it's wet, and it's been wet for the last three weeks! Until it is finished and lined, water seeps completely out of it in less time than a tadpole can mature.

Stand by for egg and tadpole pictures if I'm home to take them.

The garden so far

2009-05-25T22:37:00.003-04:00

I took a few shots of the raised garden we've been building. All of the sides have been made from used lumber scavenged from an old barn that was being torn down within two miles of us. The first picture is taken from below the archway we were given.

Just below the satellite dish you can see the large plastic "tote" in a metal cage I got at an auction for $30. I added about $6 worth of fittings and connected it to a garden hose. It holds over 350 gallons of rain water that drops in from the south side gutter. Now we get water on demand by just squeezing the hose's nozzle. The pressure is low, just whatever gravity provides, but one doesn't have to run to the outlet to turn it off when done with it.

Last week I found a source for more totes and bought two for only $10 each. They need to be cleaned out and I need to buy more fittings to make them useful. Then they will be "installed" on the north side of the barn as high on the hillside as possible so they will provide a lot more water pressure.

The pathway between the upper and lower beds is slanted to the east and to the south and dries off quickly after a rainfall. The upper beds themselves slant a bit to the south and a bit more to the east so water that comes off the gravel and large rocks above gets distributed without help from us.

The lower beds are a bit more level, though that was more by accident than by plan.

The second picture is the same hillside but from more toward the west end. In the middle, next to the archway, are two persimmon trees that fruited last year. Also in the center are two metal grates with peas climbing them. Our hummingbirds are back and we can't keep the two feeders filled. I'm trying to find a large jar that will screw into the feeder openings so we could put out two or three days' worth of sugar water.