Minor mishap

This spring, Sid bought a hammock swing for me and hung it in our campsite downhill from the house. It has gotten a LOT of use as my favorite resting and relaxing spot. When Virginia brings the kids out, it's also Sami's favorite spot. Take note that it is hung from a tree, with a rope. 

The hanging of it is worthy of note. It's the only tree in close proximity that had any chance of being suitable for a swing. It took Sid many attempts to get the rope over the branch, which is about 20 feet up. The height gives it a lovely motion in use, and I can also feel the sway of the tree in the wind. 

However, swings on ropes on trees eventually wear through the rope. 

This was, without a doubt, the most sudden change of position I have ever experienced! One second I was enjoying my book, and next thing I knew I was on the ground! On the one hand, I was glad none of the workers on site witnessed my sudden fall from grace; on the other hand, it would have been nice to get a little attention out of the crash! Hard packed dirt is NOT a soft landing, and I lay still for a minute or so before moving. It took a moment to get oriented to what had happened and assess potential injury. 

A solid landing on one's tush results in a solid jolt all the way up the spine. By evening I was feeling it all the way up in my neck, and to a lesser degree in the middle of my back. Also a very tender seat. Before bed I took a moment to hang on the pull-up bar, thinking my own body weight might decompress my spine. I immediately felt multiple vertebrae pop as it stretched out. 

The following day I was scheduled to babysit the grandkids all day and evening. A little soreness and less tolerance for playing on the floor, but not too bad. I did call and make an appointment with the chiropractor for the the next day. And hung from the bar again, with more back-popping as a result. 

At the chiro, he adjusted my back, neck and hips. The neck definitely was out of whack and popped loudly when adjusted. By the time I got home it was feeling noticeably better. I told him I had been hanging from the bar and he said I probably saved myself from a week of back pain. Heat to be applied when possible for a few days and a follow-up next week. 

Sid got my swing re-hung while I was at Virginia's babysitting, and while I trust him, I'm not so sure I trust the rope! I had some trepidation while sitting in it today.  

Plumbing rough-in

 With the house back-filled, the next step was the rough-in of the plumbing. The plumbing company is a 3rd generation family business, with the 4th generation in training. Very nice young men. Obviously a family that believes in bringing the kids up right. 

The nice flat sand-covered-with-gravel bed of the house was dug up, stirred up and trenched to place the sewer pipes. All the wall positions were marked out on the sides of the foundations to provide the measurement reference points, and all the stacks, water "pipes"- actually hoses - laid out to the main connection point for each room needing water. 

A few days later, after the excavators came back to finish backfilling the workshop, the piping was covered with another layer of sand and all was tamped down nice and flat and smooth. 

Backfilling

These pictures from Sept 16th. 

Oh, no! There's a bobcat in my house!

With the forms removed, the trenches had to be backfilled and packed. Use was made of the piles of clay around the site, and loads of sand brought in and dumped into the interior. Three machines on the site for this day, and this was a rare sighting of all three in close proximity. They do a pretty complicated, well-choreographed dance around the site as they all do what needs doing without getting in each other's way. 

This tool is a mini-roller for packing the dirt into the trenches. The tractor drove in close to the house and the articulated arm is flexible enough to be positioned into the trenches and rolled back and forth. 

 Many loads of sand and gravel were brought in, but with the driveway still unstable, there was also a lot of scurrying around by the bobcat trying to keep up with smoothing out the ruts. At one point, the dump truck got too far over near the edge of the driveway and sunk into the softer dirt up to his axles. 

His load had to be dumped there to lighten him up, and the excavator came to the rescue. Must not be too uncommon of an event as the truck has a tow-strap handy, and a massive hitch point on the front bumper to attach it to. That's the biggest tow strap I've ever seen!

By the end of the day the house was backfilled and smoothed, but the shop was not. They also got a start on the final grading for the yard in general, and worked on distributing the extra clay out in the field where they've been staging equipment. 

Longest Month Ever!

 This picture is two days after the previous post, Aug, 18th. The footings for the house were poured, but not the shop. Rebar was installed to support and attach the foundation walls. 

The pumper truck was cool. The back end is loaded with wet cement, and it's pumped through the arm/hose to be put where its needed. The driver has a remote control attached to his belt and he walks around the site as the cement guys fill the forms, making adjustments to the flow and the arm position as needed. Not much different than filling buckets with a water hose. Sid said it sure beats using a wheelbarrow as he did years ago! 

Virginia brought the kids out, and I brought my mom, so they could all see the progress. Erin in particular thought the excavator is cool. Sid has corrected me several times that it is NOT a backhoe! Apparently it's only a backhoe when there is also a front loader. 

The shop did not have footers yet, so we put the kids in the trenches to run around. They had fun down there for much longer than I expected. The trenches brought to my mind the scene in "The Silver Chair" (Chronicles of Narnia) when they found the trenches in the hillside that later turned out to be letters carved into the ground. 

Not easy to get a good shot of a moving object. Sami's favorite activity of the day was spinning in my hammock chair. LOTS of spinning! I didn't get a picture of Erin's fun, but Sid taught him to use a thick stick to smash large clods of clay. What's better fun for a 3yo boy than smashing things with permission?

We don't know why our site went un-worked-on for several days, but before the crews came back, it rained. A lot. A whole summer of drought, but we dig the trenches and they get turned into wading pools. Know what? Water does not quickly drain out when the ground is solid, well-packed clay. 

On the bright side, the rain also got our water tanks half-full. Now, a couple more storms later, they are full to the brim.

One day while checking on the water level in the trenches, I came across this lady crossing my trail. Apparently she's an "oil beetle". So named because if you upset them they discharge an oil that will burn your skin. This particular one has a greatly extended abdomen full of eggs; she's about 1.5" long overall. They also come in green and purple, so I'd love to see those too! Definitely one of the prettiest bugs I've ever seen!

After weeks of waiting, the ground finally dried out enough to get trucks back onto our site. Last Thursday, Sept 9th, the shop footings finally got poured and the forms were set up for the house foundation walls. We found this part to be interesting. The forms are huge metal "boards", mostly in 3ft widths but also 1ft, 6in, and 2in, to ultimately get the needed distances. They are held together by large nail-like connectors that fit into 1" holes on the edges. Two walls made the inner and outer sides for each poured foundation wall, and the thickness of the foundation was kept consistent by thin slips of metal held by the connectors and between the individual "boards". They had notches in the middles to hold the re-bar inside the cement. Brackets attached around the outside hold boards that do dual duty as stability to keep the wall  straight, and provide a ledge for the workers to stand on as they fill the forms with cement. The places where the water pipes will pass into the house were held open by large pipes placed under the footings which the water hoses/pipes will easily pass through. 

As of Friday the 10th, the forms were set for the entire house and most of the shop. Today when I arrived at lunch time, this was the view from the campsite. 

The workers were finishing up pouring the walls of the shop, and they completed the house by the end of the workday. There were gaps left in the upper foot of the walls for the garage doors and service door. The long braces such as seen here at the upper center of the pic brace the walls into the proper, straight, position. 

This is a small example of heavy trucks vs. new driveway. This is AFTER repair work and additional gravel, and just from one visit by one truck. While we waited through the rainy days, the hilltop was a major mess, with deep ruts and puddles that wouldn't drain. Today, one of the excavator's crew was there with a skid-steer, keeping the driveway groomed and cleaning it all up at the end of the day. I asked him how all the movement and mixing of the clay and gravel would effect the finished driveway, and he assured me that in the long run it will make the driveway firmer. He also told me they would be doing the back-fill on Friday, most likely. Altogether, an entire month between the digging of the footings to the backfill, which was only about 6 days of actual work. 

 Looky, Looky!!!

Bright and early Monday morning, we had rumbling machinery on site. In two days, Mon. and Wed, they have accomplished: 

Leveling the hilltop so our floors will be flat. 

Repositioning both buildings. House came forward so the builder can get his forklift in behind, and the workshop moved forward due to the drop of the hill. This will save us some $$ on the amount of cement needed for the shop footings. Then both had to be tweaked to make sure we had space to drive between them. Moving the workshop forward required another clump of trees to be removed. There was about 4 trees in a tight cluster right in front of the shop porch. This is the root ball of all the various roots intertwined. I think it looks like an alien spaghetti monster. 

Digging trenches for the footings. Under the perimeter walls, garage/interior dividing walls, and all sides of porches. We were impressed with how straight and smooth the trenches are! The excavator sure has some skills! The clay down there is SOLID. I don't expect these buildings will shift or settle much. This is the south trench of the shop. The stair-steps go down the hill to keep the requisite depth into the hill.  

This also impressed us. That's the smooth top of a rock that was sheared off by the excavator. I'm thinking it must be a pretty big rock under there, or it would have pulled free instead of getting sheared smooth. It's level with the clay bottom of the trench.

Septic mound and tanks installed. They had this done by the time I arrived after lunch. I was disappointed because I wanted to watch them put the tanks in. It doesn't look like much from this side, but from the downhill side the mound looks HUGE. One more holding tank will go beside the workshop, but not until construction is done, so the builder can drive around the building without worrying about the tank.

Fresh gravel on the rest of the driveway, except the hilltop. It's a REALLY thick layer, and will need rain to help it pack down. Right now it feels like a car would get stuck, or at least leave some ruts. There will be cement trucks driving over it tomorrow, so I guess we'll find out!

In the process of all this, they have made good use of our farm field. They have added a temporary driveway access, piled dirt taken from the trenches, used it to hold the gravel destined for the septic mound, rearranged our tree piles a few times as needed, then finally condensed it all into one big pile for easy burning. 

It's silly, but I was greatly amused by this little guy. He was zooming around the site, moving dirt as needed for all the jobs getting done. He reminded me of the Doozers in Fraggle Rock. If you've never watched that show, you should! Jim Henson at his finest. 

 We have a start date!!!!!

We will be breaking ground on Aug 16th! Trusses are scheduled to arrive Sept 18th, then Troy says about 4mo till his job is done. We will be finishing the inside ourselves. Move-in day will be sometime after the Holidays. 

Water, Water, everywhere, but not a drop for the garden!

 Top news of the day- We have our building permit!! Our GC, Troy, says we'll get started in a couple weeks. Foundation, septic, and power are top of the list. We can't start framing until the trusses arrive, which currently are not expected until late Aug/early Sept. From that point Troy says about 4 mo to completion, so looking at taking possession somewhere around the Holidays. I was hoping to be in by Christmas, but that looks doubtful. 

Now for our current project. My garden will be across the ravine from the house, and a second well does not seem to be financially viable. It's not really a possibility to run hoses that far, so another plan is needed. A good friend got ahold of 2 IBC totes for us, which will work to feed a drip system, but we need to keep them filled. The plan is to use a pump to fill them from the creek while it's running in the spring, then keep them filled with rainwater capture. A very light snowfall total last winter meant a very brief period of a fully running creek and it was down to a trickle before we even got a pump. The difference in height between the creek and the hilltop where the tanks are has made finding an affordable pump capable of doing the job a difficult task. While I won't have a garden in until next year, we do have some fruit trees planted that need water this year, so we need to have this functional. A drought so far this summer has NOT helped, requiring more frequent watering.

Step 1, a delivery system. The tanks have a 2" port, and we thought it would be fairly simple to find step-down connectors to get us to garden hose size. Boy, were we wrong! Different size ranges are designed to serve different purposes, and not to work together. No single type would do the job, and the different types do not work together. Sid cobbled together a system using sump-pump hose and working down to a faucet to attach the garden hose. Unfortunately the sump hose is relatively fragile, and we already have several leaks. As a result, if I forget to close the valve on the tank, we loose water. A lot of water. Patching it has done nothing but slow those leaks down a bit. 

Step 2, fill the tanks. To get us started, a post on the local FB page in search of a company that will deliver water got us instead a neighbor willing to fill them for us. I was surprised at how quickly the first fill got used up. Between a drought requiring daily watering and a left-open valve, we were empty again in a couple weeks. We didn't want to take advantage of his kindness and did not contact him again, but after a month he contacted me to see if we needed more. Yes!

Step 3, a way to collect rainwater. We have discussed multiple options, and ultimately we want a garden shed with an oversized roof with gutters. Wood prices mean Sid is very hesitant to invest in a permanent structure yet. Plan of (my) desperation was a tarp slung from the trees above the tanks, with an outlet above the hole on the top of the tank. I used a couple rain gutter/downspout connectors to create a funnel that would hang down into the hole. I climbed a ladder (NOT a fan of ladders and heights!) to sling the top end of the tarp from the branches, and used a couple cane poles left from an earlier project to create anchor points for the low end above the tanks. Sid also climbed up to get it higher in the branches than I could reach. I put a large rock on top of the funnel to hopefully keep it in place if it got breezy. 

Then it got windy. A flapping tarp can generate a significant amount of throwing power! I found the rock about 6ft away the next day, and the make-shift funnel was also shaken loose. No rain yet, but obviously this isn't going to work in a storm! 

Brainstorming led to the idea of a giant funnel that is secured in place and will catch water even if the tarp is blowing around a little. Below is what I came up with. Think a "toilet bowl" like on an amusement park water slide. PVC pipe frame, which I made using supposedly "international standard size" measurements that I found online. Our tanks are smaller, so a bit of make-do was necessary when I put it in place. (What happened to "standard"?) The funnel portion is made from a single sheet of flexible plastic paneling that is intended to go on walls. A  half-sheet square, with a cut from one corner to the center, and a hole the same size as the one on top of the tank. I should have made the hole slightly smaller so it would not have to be aligned as precisely. The edges of the cut were pulled in to overlap and glued with Gorilla Glue. A few pair of drilled holes and zip ties reinforced the seam. The funnel was placed on top of the frame, more holes drilled and zip ties inserted to hold it in place, and the protruding corners were cut off. The stuff cuts with a pair of Fiskars scissors, so it's easy to do. Then the frame was positioned on top of the tank and anchored in place. It was intended to fit inside the tank frame and on top of the tank itself (per those "standard" measurements) but was too big in one direction. It would be more secure, and the funnel would go down inside the hole, if the PVC frame fit inside the tank frame. 

I checked it during a break in a (blessedly!) rainy day, and while everything appeared to function, and it stayed in place, the tarp had too much slack in it. The water had collected in a saggy spot outside the frame. Attempting to make it flow into the funnel put most of it over the side instead. I rigged up a support under the sag, made some adjustments to the tarp, and headed home. Went back out today, after more rain, and found the same situation but to a much less dramatic extent. But in the end, the water level in the tank was 1/4" higher! It WILL work! Sid arrived after work, and between us we pulled and adjusted the tarp to remove (hopefully) all the slack from the tarp. No more rain due for another week, so we'll have to wait for final results. At the very least we have a functional prototype to build on. Sid had an idea to consider one of those cheap car port kits to use the frame as a support for the tarp, so we will keep our eyes out for a good deal on one of those. 

Edited 2 days later: 

I found a car port kit on FB Market place for a good price and we picked it up this morning. It took both of us several hours to set it up and get the tarp hung properly to get a good flow from top to bottom, but I think we finally succeeded. Next tweak needed is to lower the front edge of the catch basin as that is the one spot that water got caught on the way down. 

Edit: July 28

Well, our improved collection system lasted only one storm. We hadn't been able to stretch the tarp smoothly enough to eliminate pooling and the weight of the collected water brought it down. Last weekend it got another makeover.

New tarp- a heavier-duty one.
New plan- Two drains, one into each tank instead of just one. A dividing pole to separate the tarp into two separate catchment areas. There is now NO where for water to pool and weight it down. 

The large funnel and frame got cut down into two smaller ones. The holes for drainage from the tarp were reinforced with duct tape for durability. Sid came up with a way to anchor the tarps to the tanks to mostly eliminate blowing and flapping in the wind, and to keep the holes lined up over the funnels. 

So far it has survived two "storms", which consisted mostly of wind. They sure didn't drop enough rain to add any measurable water to the tanks, but the tarp didn't blow apart. 

Bonus: Sid realized that for the winter we can just put the car port cover over the whole thing, which will keep snow from collecting and also provide a small amount of covered storage. 

Update Aug 8th.

Finally a rainy week to evaluate our system. We put a rain gauge nearby to track amounts. In the last few days we have recieved 1" total of rain, and got about 5" in the tanks. Going by surface area, 1" of rain should give us about 7" in each tank. Our first half-inch only gave us 1", the next half-inch gave us about 4". I don't know why the difference; my best guess is wind direction and the trees nearby affected it. In the pic below, the top edge of the pink tape was the water level last week, pre-rain.