Month: May 2022

Just before Memorial Day, we have started construction.

Finally, the header boards are erected, and main beams are checked for being vertical and nailed in place.

Friday afternoon came and AT and his son Cooper and I traveled about an hour and a half south to the Shirley Mountains, at the Prior Flats campground.

We drove to the mountains and I took some pictures.

Lots of things coming up next week. I should be closing on Tuesday Morning, which should free up construction funding. We will be putting down first floor decking, which will let us lay out actual floorplan rather than the nominal one in the plans. Will rent the backhoe for a month to move the septic tank and do initial landscape work. Etc, etc, etc.

When we left Friday, the weather app on the iPhone showed clear weather for the next week. We had occasional rain showers up in the Shirley’s but it wasn’t noticeable except for Sunday morning. As we were driving back Monday morning it rained off and on all the way back, with the rain becoming a steady downpour as we got into town. By the looks of it Casper received 2-3 inches over the past couple of days.

When I got back, the cat had survived nicely (I had left him 3 cans of food, as well as the timed feeder). In fact, the below picture shows the leftover dry cat food.

Given the heavy overcast limiting Solar Power, I went out back to switch power back to Rocky Mountain Power I discovered a minor disaster./

Note the damage to the 2×12’s from the beefy lag screws. We had moved the support platform out from the C-Can to avoid damage to the outlet pictured above, and I think that removed some of the strength.

More of Septic Tank installation.

We got a jib truck to lift the septic tank and lower it into the hole.

First step is to hoist the tank up and clear of the trailer.

The next step is to back up to the already excavated hole.

The tank is now lowered into the hole.

This happened on Saturday May 21. Now, if you look carefully it seems to be slightly raised on the right-hand end. It turns out that the plumber stopped by on Sunday. They set up the transit level and it turns out that the offset is 5 inches which is too much.

Also, the tank needs to be moved to the right about 3-6 feet, to allow 22.5-degree angles to turn the corner from the entry from the house into the tank. The bottom line is that we will need to rent a backhoe to re-dig the hole to enlarge it to the right and move it to the right.

As the title says, Two steps forward, one step back.

Well, the foundation is done, and you can get a better feel for the layout now.

This is from the same position as some of the other views. The hillside is cut away much further than before.

Across the back of the house (L-R) is the back bedroom, the kitchen and the master bedroom, all overlooking the lake/pond.

This is the view from the front door, looking through the Living Room and Kitchen out over the lake. The backhoe is parked in the garage.

Finally, the last view is a panorama, with the sun getting ready to set behind the barn and trailer.

I’m not sure how much you can blow this up. Below is the same picture at a much higher density

I’ll post the time-lapse photos to the Dropbox account later.

UPDATE – It looks like the program trims both large and small photos when uploaded.

Once the footings were poured and dried for a day it came time to put the rebar in and to frame the foundation walls. The below series shows the sequence of construction on 5 April 2020.

In other good news, I have been off the wired grid for about 36 hours. Now the weather has been optimum, clear and mostly cloudless during the day, but I discovered the secret is to shut down the trailer breaker after sunset to go on the trailer batteries. After the sun comes back up, about 8:30-9:00AM, I can power the trailer back up and use PV cells to recharge the main batteries and trailer battery. I may need another 48V main battery to get through prolonged cloudy weather/winter gloom, but things are looking hopeful.

I finally got my potatoes planted. I have tried a variety of planting methods to see how they will fare.

The first method is using 5-gallon buckets. I had tried something similar using large pots on my deck in Portland and have reviewed numerous You Tube videos like HERE or HERE. Below is the process I used.

The first step is to drill holes in the bucket to ensure drainage. If the potatoes sit in prolonged damp they will rot.

Since I have a large amount of straw available (bales and bales by the house) I put some in the bottom of the bucket to enhance the drainage. For those of us of a certain age, holes in the bucket and straw bring to mind a song.

I put some potting soil, manure, and sandy soil in the buckets and and put the seed potato chunks in and filled in more soil. In addition to the buckets, I also planted some of the pieces in traditional rows so I could get a good comparison with bucket grown potatoes.

On a completely unrelated topic they are pouring the footings for the walls today, Note, that these are 4 feet below the grade level to ensure they are below the frost line. I have labelled the pictures below so you can relate the pictures of footings to the floor plan. Note that there are some changes to the floor plan; the garage is rotated 90 degrees to make access easier, and we’ve simplified the roof-line on the bedroom end.

We have broken ground on my new house! The date of first dirt moved is 28 April 2022.

As you can see, to put the house where I wanted it, we have to dig out a piece of one hill. Also since the footings need to be about 4 feet down to be below the frostline, they will be moving a lot of dirt.

Expecting concrete footings to be poured next week.