Picking stuff out, my favorite.

Things have appeared like they are moving slowly on this house project, of course that depends on perception largely, but things are going to slowly build up speed as we go. In less than two weeks, we will have the framing crew standing up walls on this house, 3-4 weeks after that we will be putting siding and roofing on. It is going to be exiting!

My wife has begun the strenuous job of picking out all of the interior designs, exterior colors, windows, trim, counter tops, flooring interior paint, etc..... She is very gifted in this area and I am exited to see everything that she picks out. A lot of these things are really important to get picked out so that you have them when you need them. If you are using contractors to do the work, then you need to have your materials when you told the contractor that you would be ready. I am so glad that I dont have to worry about picking these things out, too many choices.

Cash21

Cheap Labor

Well, after the long memorial day weekend, we finally got preliminary excavation work completed. My excavation contractor will be off working on other projects until I am ready for him to back fill the foundation. My concrete crew should be showing up sometime today to set up the forms. I save a little money by having the footings dug out for him, so I rounded up some teenagers to come and dig them out for me. I had to dig some to, this is back breaking work.

Once the forms are set up for the foundation, I will do the underground plumbing and heating. I will have about 6 days to finish that, then the next Friday the foundation will get poured and I have the framing crew scheduled for June 11th. Everything is looking like it is going to come in on schedule.

Cash21

schedules were meant to be adjusted

Greetings,

If you ever buy these blank fill-in calenders, they don't have holidays and birthdays on them. You have to fill that stuff in yourself. We forgot about the memorial day weekend, and the gravel pits that we were using are closed till Tuesday so the project is on hold until then. That is O.K.

Today we got the updated drawing for the house and we are going to get them to the Concrete guy and the framers ASAP so that they are ready to go. Thankfully we are not going to have to install a pressurized mound system for a septic, we had an engineer design a system that would work for our 3' of sand that we have at the surface of our property.

The water well drillers will be out here this week. The best thing to do is to have the drillers get in contact with your excavation contractor to figure out the best place for the well. The wedge shape of our lot is going to make it difficult for the drilling truck to get into place to drill the well. The excavation contractor may have to put a temporary pad for the truck to get into place.

The plan for the week is to have the pad ready for the concrete guys by Thursday, and they should take about 1-2 days to form up the footers and than I will go in and do the under ground plumbing, and radiant heat tubing, that will take me maybe a week, then the concrete guys will pour the slab. After that is done curing, then they will come back and form up the poured walls in one day, pour it the next day, tear down the forms the day after that, then we will be ready to do some framing.


Cash21

Greetings,

The last couple of days we have been inching away at the excavation, we have had a few hang-ups concerning the septic and the elevation of the house. That is o.k., because the foundation is the most important part of the house, so I don't mind having a little slippage on the schedule. Tomorrow I have an engineer coming over to do a perk test, and to give a recommendation on the type of septic system to use. As long as we do not have to do a pressurized system than we should stay within our budget.

Today we started getting the fill delivered from Alaska Roadbuilders. They have a material that is called "regect sand" that is of no use to them on their larger road building, but it is great for foudations and driveways, and it is a little more affordable than pit-run.

One of the issues that comes up while the excavation crew is preparing the pad for a foundation is that they need a source of water to help with the compaction process. If you have neighbors that are approachable, ask them if you could hook a hose up to their house. This keeps the excavator from having to import water to the jobsite.

We are still waiting for the updated version of our house plans from our cad designer. We have to have those done so that we can turn the concrete guys loose next week. My biggest concern besides the septic issues right now is whether or not we are going to lose our framing crew if we have too many delays from not having the new drawings. We need to get our framing package ordered, trusses ordered, windows ordered etc...., and the finished drawings are needed for that.

Cash21

A little water in the hole.....

Greetings,

Today, the excavator operator dug a test hole for the septic to see what we would find for material. We were afraid that we would hit a shallow water table due to the swamp that is near by. What we found was about 3' of silty sand and about 3' of clay below that, we did not go any deeper. There was a little bit of water draining into the hole from inbetween the silty sand layer and the clay layer. It only amounted to about a 2 gallons of water over about 6hrs of time passing. I am no expert on dirt work at all so I am not sure if this is classified as a water table or not. I do know that the best case scenario would have been sand or gravel for the septic. What we did find is about what we were expecting but probably not the worst case scenario. Mark, the owner of the excavation company was not there today, and he is the expert on the matter so I will know a little more tomorrow. My limited understanding on septics says that you need 6' deep of good drainage for a conventional septic, so we may need to go with a mound system, which I believe can cost up to $15000-20000 dollars. Again I am just speculating, I will know more tomorrow.

We met with the architectural committee last night for the first time and they were much more gracious that we had expected. They approved with the continuation of the project, but they still want to vote on our exterior colors and shingles, the deck, and the shed.

Cash21

Battling the flu and an odd shaped lot

Greetings,

Well I spent most of yesterday battling the flu, but I did manage to get some things done. I went to Homer Electric Association to get our temporary power ordered. I was going to rent a meterloop from Big G electric, but it turned out that HEA had one that they would rent out for far less a month. I have will set up the temporary meter loop over the weekend, and a HEA techinician will come by on Monday to make sure it is ready for hook-up, then later in the week they will hook it up.

The excavator got started on the tree removal, but only on the main house area. We have to get the remaining tree removal O.K.'d by the architectural committee, we are going to try to abide by the covenances as best as we can. It is still a little early to be doing dirt work, but that is the price that you pay to get your project moving. It is going to be a mucky project to start things out. The frost is about 6" below surface, and is about 6" thick, and it is mostly slop above the frost line.

I slept until noon today, trying to shake the flu, finally I got up went to a voice recital of my daughter's, and after that I went to the property to stake out the approximate location of the house. We are having a difficult time placing the house on the lot because we are concerned about the placement of the septic. Ideally, the better ground is located at the front of the lot, but the two adjacent lots have wells that are with in the mandatory 100' radius of that location, so we are forced to putting the septic in the back of the lot. The problem with this is that the property slopes off considerably in the back and there is swamp not too far off, so we are concerned that we will hit a water table, which would cause the septic to be an additional $10000-$15000. So we are trying to keep the house as close to the front of the lot as we can, so that the septic will be on higher ground. We are considering modifying the house plans slightly to narrow the house so that we can wedge it closer to the front of the lot. We came up with a way to make the garage narrower yet deeper so we wont lose the sq. footage.

Right now we have our plans with a autocad designer to make the some other interior changes, so we are going to give him a call and have him make the changes to the garage.

The one thing that is the most important with projects like these is that there is always problems that you run into just about everyday. It is easy to get bent out of shape when these occur, but you have to stay focused on the end result. 99.9% of the time there is a solution to whatever problem that comes up, you just have to work your way through it.

Cash21