Earl's heavy equipment had been sitting in our field since May and he was making noise about moving it, so the priority had to be getting the rest of the heavy dirt work done. The main issue was the bank on the west side was too close to the house ...
the building code says you need at least 10 feet sloping away from the house. To do that we had to have somewhere to put that dirt --- and the only place was the "front yard" (in foreground below) where we had conveniently thrown all the wood scraps back in April:
"Waste not, want not" was what we were raised with, so each little scrap that could be used for firewood was stacked, strapped and then the whole lot was cut into firewood length with one pass of the chainsaw...
(which had to be frequently resharpened!) and stacked into custom pallet-based containers that can be moved with Clifton's forklift:
On July 4th the ground dried out enough for Earl to come back and break up that hillside.
Illustrating why you want to hire professionals:
my record would indicate a good chance of taking out a piece of the house if I were that close! The big trackhoe loosened the dirt and then I used my little Kubota tractor to move it to the front yard.
Of course as soon as you get the final grading all set around the house you start digging it up. The ditch below is for the buried electrical service.
Now I've got my tractor with a ditch on one side and a drop off on the other. I'm still pondering exactly how I'm going to get out of there without filling the ditch up again so I can drive over it.
The other high-pressure task was to get water into the house so that the plumbers could come to do the fixture install. The plan was to gravity-feed overflow from our current tank to the barn where I would install a pump that would push it to the big tank up the hill. Did I mention gravity feed? Last summer George and I had "surveyed" a level route between the tank and the barn, and so I got the backhoe up there and dug the middle of route with just a slight drop.
After a few hours of that, I looked at it from the tank side of things and it was obvious that this fine earthworks was too high on the hillside. Bummer. Design change: rather than pure gravity feed which requires that the pipe continuously slope downhill (because if it goes up at any point you get an airlock that stops most or all of the water from flowing), I went with the idea of a V shape - go down the hill steeply to a low point then go back up to the barn. This is much easier to lay out than a very gradual decline. The lower white pipe below takes the overflow from the tank and sends it into the black pipe...
which then crosses the creek. Note the vertical pipe with the screen on it in the center of the photo - that's an air vent that lets the water get from the tank to this point which is at the same level as the barn. On the other side of the creek the black flex pipe converts back to white PVC...
which winds down the hill...
before reaching the bottom of the V. Yes, this will all have to be buried before the arrival of freezing weather.
From there its all uphill into the barn
and into a collector tank for the pump.
The pump when active pushes 80 PSI to get the water up the hill to the big tank
On of the more creative aspects of the job: working out a system of relays and sensors that will start the pump when the tank is full then stop it when it is almost empty. They don't seem to sell this type of controller ready-made.
Once the water started getting to the big tank, the priority became finishing the tank-to-house connection. After learning the hard way (with the help of the 700 gallons of water that I had managed to pump up the hill) that there are two kinds of 2" PVC fittings (DWV and Pressure - I used the former but under pressure those just blow out), I replaced all the connectors and got the whole thing dug and into the house, and even installed a yard hydrant (shovel handle below is pointing to blue faucet). Seventy PSI at the house should be real nice.
Then we called in the tradesmen to do the fixture installs. The guys from Blue Sky Plumbing were out - new guys again - they seem to have a lot of turnover
Downstairs lav and shower with minor problem #1 - the tub spout doesn't have a switch to make the water go to the showerhead:
West bath walk-in shower:
and other fixtures:
East bath tub:
and other fixtures:
Al and Paul are from Appalachian Contractors, the electricians.
Here are some shots of the light fixtures and other electrical stuff (and my favorite door)
East bedroom - reading lamp in corner has minor problem #2 - no switch.
Gurdjieff describes a law of nature which can be loosely formulated "progress is made by taking two steps forward and one back." Our law-conformable major problem this month came to light when Al and I were looking at the kitchen stove to find out where the electric cord came out of it; even though it's a gas range, it has a 110V outlet for oven light etc. Al opened the panel on the back and said "there are three wires here - looks like a 220v connection". It turns out we had acquired a "dual fuel" range which uses gas for cooktop and electric for oven; nice stuff but we didn't have any wiring in place for it. It's called a "change order" and it means $. The solution was to retrofit a circuit for it; first cut the wall above the breaker box to get a wire into the attic:
Then across the attic to the corner where the trim was removed and a slot routed into the underlying wood. Drilling the hole from outside into the attic space was done twice - the first time accidentally punctured the roof :(
Then across the front under the bottom piece of siding, through a new hole
and into the kitchen where it threads under the cabinets to the range location.
Next up for me is finishing the trench for the electrical service, then starting on the trench for the sewer hook-up to the septic tank. The granite counter top folks are supposed to be here tomorrow or Friday - stay tuned to see how that comes out!
Today's nature shot: the bees seem to like the summer apples ripe. There are thousands of them out there.
