Finally catching up

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.

Under the wire

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.

It's a team effort

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?

Lucas digs our septic drain field

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


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


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


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

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


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

Getting some water

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.

Placing rocks

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?

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

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!?

Let's take a short walk or two

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

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

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 garden so far

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.

Three more pictures

Here are few miscellaneous pictures from yesterday's walkabout.



The first is a crayfish mound. This is what they build when it rains a lot, apparently to keep the water from running down their holes. This one is about 6 inches tall.





This is just one multiflora rose bush. It is about 9 feet across. Nothing grows under it. You can see why we are trying to get rid of them.







Another invasive I've been cutting out is autumn olive. I cut this one last summer. You can see the stumps at the top of the picture. In the foreground is what used to be a very large pile of trunks and branches from it. All but the thickest branches were consumed in the accidental fire a month ago. This is another benefit of the fire that I wasn't expecting.

Well that didn't take long

It's been two hours since the previous picture and it rained for about an hour during that time. Here's the hole now.


It looks as though there will be enough water running this way to make a pretty decent pond. It has already overflowed the original level on the downhill side. When the water goes down I'll work on it some more.

Notice how much clay is in the soil there. It may take a few days for the water to seep into the ground.

The slope of the hill can be seen on the far side of the pond compared with the level water. It's not steep, but a lot of area drains through this spot from the highway on down. By expanding the pond and the diverting swales a very large amount of water can be captured here. This can help a lot with watering the fruit trees since our emerging orchard is at least fifty yards from any other water source.

Holes

Over the last week a lot of holes were made. The easiest two were for two bluebird boxes. These are attached to 1/2" electric conduit pipe. The pipe was pounded into the ground with about 6' sticking out. The boxes are mounted as high as possible on these without being too high to open and clean out. This should keep squirrels, raccoons and snakes out of them. Both are oriented so they can be seen from the apartment windows. One can be seen in the first picture below.

On Friday night we went to the weekly auction at Dinkys. I picked up five more apple trees to go with the three from the FFA auction the previous week end. Each of the eight trees is a different variety. Let's hope they each have at least one tree to pollinate them.


We have piled dead rose bush trimmings and cut off grape vines around most of the trees. Soon they will all have their own deer-deterrent brush piles. These will be maintained until the trees are tall enough, and have enough leafing branches, that a few deer munchings won't be a catastrophe.

While I was moving soil from the large pile the county left me to the apple trees I noticed that there was a very large wet area below the driveway. Water was actually seeping from the ground, and it's been more than 2 days since it has rained.

Well if there's that much water running down the hill, thinks I, why not try to catch some of it above the apple trees? So I started digging a depression. I'm not calling it a pond yet, because I may quit digging at any time. It's not much to look at so far, but you can get the idea.


The berm will hold the water and I'll extend it east and west forming a swale that will direct water toward the hole. Maybe our neighborhood tree frogs will find it a better place to lay eggs than they chose last year. If it gets enough water, and I won't know until after a nice rainfall, I may line it with a piece of billboard tarp so it will hold water longer.

At last, visible progress

After months of investigation, discussion, drawings, more discussion, and a few decisions, we finally had some action.

A few weeks ago the county highway department began cleaning out the ditch along the county road. Then we had a string of snow falls and some really cold weather that halted the progress. Monday, while I was outside, a county dump truck stopped on the state road and backed down the driveway. It was one of the guys coming to say they would like to install our culverts the next day. The ditch was ready on our side of the road.

"Great. Go ahead," I said.

So yesterday the county installed two 18" double-walled plastic culverts. One is at the bottom of the hill where almost all of the surface water drains through as it leaves the property. We had already decided that we would not use the existing opening in the fence there for our primary access because of all the water that is often there. It's too wet and slippery for a few days after it's rained, and it would sometimes be impassible in frozen winter weather, especially with the added problem of having to climb the hill almost immediately after entering the property.

The second culvert was placed about halfway up the hill where we can come onto the property at almost the exact same altitude that we plan to place the parking area. Though the driveway will meander to get there, it will not run up- nor downhill more than a foot or so all the way across to the parking spot.

The county crew was great. They cut down some of the trees that we would have had to cut ourselves and dragged them down the road and onto the property where I can cut them for various uses. The culverts were covered with a gravel-dirt mix and limestone blocks were stacked to protect the ends from erosion. The flow down the ditch along the road can be very strong sometimes.

Here are a few pictures of the installation.


Covering the lower culvert


Removing trees at the driveway


Covering the driveway culvert


Placing limestone end wall

Survey Day

A week ago, four days before the big snow storm, we had a surveyor and his helper come to the property to survey the hoped-for building site and the area surrounding it. The final product will be a contour map of Greene View Springs with more detail in the area we walked. The rest of the property will also be shown using data from aerial photos.

The most important tool of a surveyor is called a "total station," named as such because it incorporates both a distance meter for measuring distances and a "theodolite" for measuring angles. Here Andy has set up his station on the hill north of the pond looking back toward our hoped for home site.

 

It sends a beam of infrared light toward a prism, shown here supported by an extendable pole held by the surveyor, Eric. The light reflects off the prism directly back to the total station, and, by measuring the time it takes to return, the station calculates the distance, direction and vertical angle between the two.

 

The information from the total station is recorded in a data collector for later downloading into a computer in the office.

Eric also directed me as we tried to get "shots" at representative spots on the property. I'm not running in the first picture; I'm tripping over one of our %&#$! grape vines! The second picture shows the prism a little better. The last picture shows just a few of the many large trees we marked so they would be shot and shown on the topographic map, our final product.

   

And while we were having fun thrashing through the woods, Sandy was working so hard she didn't need her jacket, cutting rose bushes I had cut off earlier in the week into small pieces so they can be more easily removed when the weather allows.



Behind that mass of brush is the mouth of our small spring. If the house will fit close enough we'll be able to see the spring from the house's west side.

5 days to go

We have been working on getting outside tasks finished before it gets too cold to work outside. It has frozen two or three nights so far but we're mostly ready for the cold. Days are warming up a bit for the immediate future, so it should all get done.

All of our indoor plants are back inside from their summer vacation and one large pot with a pepper and a few large tomato plants is now upstairs in the living area. We had one of the ripe tomatoes with lunch.

I am a few hours away from finally getting a small roof over the sliding barn door. It took me a long time to decide how to do this. The solution I'm trying looks like it will work. The problem has been how to support a 16-foot span only from the ends. If it works I'll take a picture. If not, pretend you didn't read this.

Also, just before the trip to Albuquerque, we got all but one corner of the barn and all the windows trimmed with white boards. It looks pretty good but there is still the corner at the sliding door to finish. When the small roof is done, that corner will be the last to do on the building outside for this season.

And we've been doing what we can to change America's direction with the current election. My precinct has been "targeted" for extra support by the Obama campaign. I'll be doing what I can to get every last voter to the polls on Tuesday.

Finally, we had a visitor on Tuesday who didn't stay long. These two pictures were taken through a window which caused the auto focus to miscalculate the distance, so the focus isn't great, but it was nice to see him in any case.