panderson03's blog

pic of cabin ICF

pics of garage logs

got three of the 4 sill logs on the garage this labor day weekend. ALMOST got the 4th up, but the weather got nasty and we had to quite. but we're ready to place it NEXT weekend:) still trying to arrange for a day to do the final pour of the cabin walk out basement walls. between weather and schedules its been tough to arrange. hope to resume (if weather cooperates) stacking logs next weekend and see how high we can get before heading back home again.

poured cement for garage and cabin footings this morning. pump truck (135 foot!!!) arrived at 0630 and cement trucks started coming at 0700. got a total of 21 cubic feet so 3  7-foot trucks. we were placing rebar by 0900 and called it a day at 1000!! what a great day! ICF arrives Friday and ICF stacking begins Saturday:)

Our excavator finished his work on the cabin and garage footings June 30th (YEAH!). so last weekend we worked on footings. The footings for both the garage and the cabin are 10 inches deep and 24 inches wide. The cabin will have a walk out basement so has a step footing, making it a bit more complicated so we tackled that one first. took us 2 days to get it level and square but we got there! Saturday morning Jack and DJ came up to help with the garage footings. it was a scorching hot day and SO humid, we weren't able to get too much done. Jack and DJ helped us cover all the footings with tarps, as we were due for rain that night. after the rain, things were MUCH too muddy to work safely for a few days so worked on other things Sunday and took Monday off:)

got the ICF for both the garage and cabin ordered. 4 courses for the garage and 7 courses for the cabin. ~$6,300. quite a deal!

we plan on finishing the footing this weekend, pour footing cement on the following Monday and start stacking ICF the weekend of the 17th.

well, for the time being anyway we are completely off grid at the build site.

in preparation for excavation, we had the electric company shut off the power. this weekend we put up 4 120 watt solar panels, attached them to a pure sine wave inverter and a long row of 12 volt batteries so now we have power to the trailer and the well pump (well.....the well pump wasn't THAT easy. it needs 240, so DH added some other complicated device to the mix..... but everything's working very well!!). great to finally NOT be paying the electric company (even if we draw no power, as long as we are connected to the grid we get charged a base charge of 15 dollars and it sky rockets from there. the price up there is 3x what we pay here in the cities its quite nasty!). Next time we go up we'll put up a water tower that we can use for most of our water needs. even though we have power to the well pump, it seems to draw power pretty regularly during the day so we will put a 55gallon drum on a tall tower, fill it with the pump every evening and use that water all day... powering up the well every evening to re-fill the 'water tower'. this plan should work pretty slick till it comes time to use the power washer, at which point we'll just leave the well on and minimize power use at the trailer.

since my last post about a month ago, we've finished clearing the site and hired an excavator who will break ground on June 14th if the weather cooperates!

too, we've been strugging with outrageously high cement estimates so decided we can do the work ourselves. the only problem is that we have NO IDEA what the heck we're doing! So we looked for and found a seasoned mason who is willing to act as our cement work consultant. for a very resonable fee, he will educate us on the finer points of footings/frost wall/ICF walls as well as inspecting our forms before each cement pour and being on site during each pour. an answer to our prayers!

we hope to be stacking logs by mid July

the first 64 logs are ALMOST finished being peeled. The students from the High School aare coming back this weekend to HOPEFULLY finish up. I'm glad we're not paying them by the hour. amazing that some of the student ACTUALLY ENJOY peeling! amazing!! 

are getting another 20 logs (including our 23 inch-in-diameter RP) Saturday morning so are working on moving the peeled logs out of the receiving area and closer to the building site. there they will get power washed to remove what cambium is still there and they'll then get borated (with home brew).

sounds like Jack (MRJACK) and his wife DJ will be joining us again this weekend. should get a lot done!

last weekend (April 23-34) some students from the local high school came to our building site to peel our logs. they got less thank half of them done and are up there again for another 8 hour day of peeling today and if they are not finished by the end of the day, they say they will be returning again tomorrow to finally finish them off. it will be nice to finally have this bunch of logs peeled.

the peelers are leaving a small bit of cambium on the logs so we've purchased a pressure washer to remove the last of the cambium.

ALMOST done with the clearing so excavation can begin. will be very glad to move on to that phase!

Last weekend Jack (MRJACK) and his wife DJ came to our property to get some experience peeling logs. and it turns out they did not need any practice; they are GREAT log peelers! they also helped out with site clearing, which we'll continue doing this coming weekend and hopefully actually FINISH clearing. have only 5 trees left and a huge pile of brush to burn and then excavation can begin hopefully the weekend of April 24th.

tomorrow will get our site permit which will feel great!

onward and forward:)

we received 3 truck-loads of logs this weekend. 64 logs in all. most 40 footers; 5 were 50 footers.

most were 15-16 inches in diameter at the butt end; small ends averaged 8-9 inches.

are negotiating with a local youth group to get them peeled in a few weeks. our 15 year old son is eager to get into the action, willing to peel for $5 per log. Sounds like a bargain to me!!