Framing Gets Started

The framers got started at mid-day and got the side wall built. Cheryl is happily posing in the window frame of her future studio. Click on pictures for a larger view. You can see the neighbor's house (still under construction) next door.

Since there wasn't much else worthy of pictures today, I'm throwing in another foliage picture of the neighborhood.

Basement Slab Poured Today

The drizzle and rain let up today, so the builder poured the basement slab this morning. You can see the fall colors have started to peak in our neighborhood just as the leaves are starting to come down. Click on the photos for a larger view.
The square void in the floor is the pit for the elevator.

The rain has kept the graders from making any progress on the back-filling, so their equipment has been sitting idle since last week.

A good shot of our fall view.

Some more foliage shots of the neighborhood. This photo looks directly at our peak. Our house site is actually a little to the left of the house you see up near the ridgeline, but there is a fold in the mountain that hides our site from this view.

A shot of Reems Creek Road, headed toward our neighborhood.

Backfilling the Walls... and fall foliage

The grading crew is back, this time to backfill the voids behind the rear foundation wall and the uphill retaining wall.

The dozer is moving dirt from the edge of the lot (where it was stored when it was removed during excavation) up to the track-hoe, which then is scooping it up and over the retaining wall.

They are about half done with the retaining wall, then will start on the foundation wall.

Since there isn't much else going on while we wait to have the slab poured, here are some fall foliage pictures from the mountains near our house. The leaves haven't changed much yet at our elevation, but above 4000 ft. (where we took these pictures) the colors are starting to peak. Click on the pictures for a larger view.

Granite Slab Selection

Today we went to a granite warehouse in S.Carolina to pick out the granite slabs we will use for our countertops.
We decided we wanted the granite countertops to look like the various types of granite we have on our house site, many tons of which we excavated to create the pad for the house. Pictured above are two samples we took with us to the warehouse. We wanted a slab that had both the rust colored and black/gray/white mix we see so much of on our lot. We also took a kitchen cabinet front sample (which the rocks are sitting on) to make sure the cabinet color would go well with the granite colors.

We finally settled on the slab pictured above. Actually, we will need 2 or 3 of these size slabs. The granite comes from Brazil. The picture was taken under florescent light and doesn't really do justice to the natural beauty of the granite. If you click on the photo, you'll get a blown up view that better shows the graining in the slab.

Prepping Basement for Concrete Slab

This week has been spent getting the basement ready for pouring the concrete slab.

The bottom layers (which can no longer be seen) include several inches of gravel and the under-floor sewer plumbing. You can see the white PVC sewer drain feeders sticking up vertically out of the floor. These layers were then covered with a vapor barrier, several inches of styrofoam, a gridwork of rebar, and finally the hot water tubing loops for the underfloor radiant heating.

In this shot, you get a better view of all the underfloor water tubes feeding up into the utility room. To the left of the photo is the area blocked off for the elevator pit.

Well Completed and Foundation Waterproofed

click photos for larger views


Lots of activity today as we had the foundation sealers on-site (left side of photo) in addition to the well drillers (on the right) who continued looking for a better flow of water.

A fair amount of water had seeped into the well overnight and the drillers estimated the flow to be about 1 gallon/minute. They decided to continue drilling (having stopped last night at 580 ft) in hopes of finding more water deeper down. The slurry coming up out of the well is the pulverized granite we are drilling through, mixed with the little bit of water they encounter, making a concrete-like muck.

After hitting 740 ft with out finding much additional water, the crew had reached the limit of this rig. In reality, the odds of hitting water below 600 ft are pretty slim anyway. In this picture, the crew has already pulled all 740 ft of drill stem back out of the well and are seen pulling the drill bit section out of the hole. The only thing left to do at this point is pour grout around the well casing to seal out any ground water that is less than 21 ft deep and to cap the well.

At this point their work is done and the drilling rig is heading down the driveway. Another crew will come in a few days and install a pump at the bottom of the well.

This picture shows the capped well and the official plate that says the well is 740 ft deep and produces a flow of 1 gallon/minute. We would liked to have gotten a better flow, but 1 gallon/min is still 1440 gallons/day. This is more than enough for the average home that uses several hundred gallons of water a day.

While the well was being completed, the foundation sealers also moved on with their work. The first step consisted of spraying a smelly, tar-like goo on the foundation wall.

Then sheets of a spongy, fiberglass-like material were cut to size and stuck to the black goo. After installing a drain section at the bottom of the wall (not seen in this picture), they were done for the day too.

Oct 2 - Well Drilling Starts

click photos for larger view

Our well drillers showed up this morning and wasted no time in getting set up with drilling starting around 9am. By quitting time this afternoon, they had managed to drill down 580 ft, but only a little water so far. They will check in the morning and see how much water has flowed into the hole overnight and will probably continue drilling. Drilling for water in the mountains is always unpredictable, but we hope this hole pans out as we don't have many options for alternate well sites since you need land flat enough for the drilling rig to set up. The drill operator says he can go down about 750 ft with this rig. Our neighbors wells range from 350 ft to about 750 ft and we don't want to set any new records.

This photo shows the crew winching up another 20 foot length of drill stem to add to shaft.

The wheels are off the ground as hydraulic jacks are used to level and stabilize the drill.

Oct 1 - Pumping Concrete

click on photos for a larger view.

The re-bar was inserted into the block walls and inspected last Friday, so today the concrete pumping crew showed up to fill the voids with concrete.

They tried pulling the pump trailer up the driveway, but gave up on that and decided to pump from the street up to the house site.

Here the crew is shown filling the rear retaining wall. Tomorrow the well digging crew is supposed to start.