Here’s where it all
begins…..with a dream and a piece of land.
Home site in May. We
should have been underway by the middle of May but the site was so wet because
of endless rain that the driveway couldn’t be put in until mid-June.
Here’s the
site from the southwest. You can see the
big tarp we put up to store materials in the center. By the time Mark pulled our pickup out with
his tractor we were too worn out to stake it down and it was too late to get
stakes in town.
The next
morning a storm blew through and the tent was a rather interesting piece of
sculpture.
Finally on June 11 we’d had a
string of several dry days in a row and Wade Kappen’s
crew started pushing topsoil off the driveway and house site and hauling in
sand. We decided to build above current
grade using a frost free shallow foundation because of the high water
table. You can see the black roll of geotextile fabric being unrolled in the driveway before the
sand is dumped on it. Geotextile was
placed under the entire drive, parking area, and house site.
Here’s the
driveway from the road with the house site in the background. To get above the water table and get gravity
drainage into the septic field Wade brought in enough sand to get us about 30
inches above existing grade.
Hamish the
Border Collie surveys his new sandbox and future home
on the third day after the excavator started.
Just when
we thought things might dry out we got two days heavy rain. Enough to send water over
the road.
The water
rose almost into the tent as it rained for hours on Saturday morning. By afternoon the rain had stopped and we went
out with the camera to record the high water mark. It will be a good pond site.
Our first
visitor, Nancy, brought a little sunshine with her. Finally it was dry and we could get to work.