Puddles

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...

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

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

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...

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

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

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

These speak for themselves...

This year's baby

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

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

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!"

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

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

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

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".