Finally Bought Some Land

[xjoex]

Those people are 10,000x braver than I am with that snake.

-Joe

[ides1056]

Ask your arborist about red rot in pines. Keep them away from the house. We have a cabin that was hit twice. I repaired it the first time.

[j44ke]

Some photos after 1/2 of the clearing done.

House site



White pine



Black cherry



More black cherry



Black cherry, ash, big-tooth aspen, white pine



The black cherry is all going to my friend the cabinetmaker. The aspen has one of the bacterial infections that aspen get. The ash tree also has some bacterial issue. The arborists said that the ash he's seen that are actually affected by emerald ash borer is pretty small and very localized. Most of the dead ash trees have this bacterial infection. The white pine is all solid, clear, small growth rings and straight. Someone's got to be able to turn these pines into board or beams, right?

[ides1056]

You likely have a local with a portable band sawmill, such as a Wood-Miser, who'd come and saw it for you. The butt logs will be decent, but field-grown pine isn't usually much to write home about. Maybe a local timber framer might want it, but it has to be straight, no spiral, etc.

[j44ke]

Slowly but surely we are getting closer. Stopped by for review of the clearing on Saturday evening, and the site looks very different. The edge of the trees around the side is pushed back fairly far now, though once we walked out the footprint of the house and the septic field, it really isn't that spacious a clearing. Just enough to protect the house and clear the septic. On the left in the above photo is the walk-up from the parking area that will be where the cars will park. The place where the car is now is just a construction road to allow the big machines onto the site. That will be scraped back and replanted with one or two larger hardwoods from a nearby tree farm. Possibly oaks but we're a ways off from having to decide that! The garage will be further down the drive so even when we are around, we can keep the car out of the way of deliveries or visitors. Things like the propane tank and generator will go in the woods on the far left. That way the propane delivery can reach the tank easily. The septic is most of the right side of the lot. There are the tanks and then the leach field. The architects have worked with a few seed companies who do purpose-made mixes for septic fields (and strip mines and highway medians and etc.,) so once that is in, we'll spread seed for plants that are partial shade tolerant, relatively unappetizing to deer and perennial without having to worry too much about roots invading the septic. I think however sapling patrol will be required.

Rain and lightning have been the biggest factors in the delay of starting the foundation. This week looks pretty good though. Hopefully we'll turn the corner and begin first or second week of September. We'll see.

[j44ke]

We are slowly getting rid of the logs cut down off the site. This is the pile remaining. Logs in the foreground are aspen. No one seems to want those. I think a buddy of mine and I will use his splitter to turn all that into firewood for stacking. The ones in the back are white pine. Some are big. I am thinking now that these may become the benches around the property. A lot of benches though. Maybe a dirt track velodrome? Or outdoor-only firewood, though pine burns awfully smoky.



We've been running into quite a few of these. They are stacked in seams in the ground like record albums. They look remarkably similar to the shale-type ledges that break apart when the excavator goes in, but these are granite and would make nice bullet-proof car shielding. Hard. They used a pneumatic hammer head on the end of the excavator's digging arm to bust through some of this that ran across the trench for the electrical connection, but the foundation is potentially going to have a different approach. First, they are going to excavate the footprint of the house down to four feet without removing any of the hard rock ledges. Then they are going to evaluate the rock with the engineer and decide whether the granite is stable enough to integrate into the foundation structure. If it is, they'll drill holes and cement rebar into the holes and then build forms so the pour firmly locks the rock into the structure. If the granite isn't stable enough or doesn't meet the engineer's requirements, then it will be John Henry time again. Or dynamite. Or perhaps, if we are really lucky, the rock will come out in massive flats like this, and we'll have all the stairs we need for landscaping!

[Mabouya]

Here's one way to do it:

[72gmc]

< wakes up, hits head on rock >

[j44ke]

< wakes up, hits head on rock >

The rock is retractable. That's what the button in the middle of its face is for. ;-)

Our rocks would have to come up through the floor, so I would trip on them instead of braining myself.

Here's a house that I've always liked. Basically a concrete lean-to enclosed by glass and leaning on a big huge rock.

[davids]

Rocks... Heh.

Our house is at the base of a granite (actually mostly Roxbury Puddingstone) ledge, and the stone continues under our foundation and down the street.

Well, mostly under our foundation. There's a large protuberance through the basement concrete floor, giving us a consistent source of 100% natural and organic dirt down there. It seems the crew got tired of hammering the stuff out and just poured the floor around the rock... Except that at the opposite end of the basement they also left large areas of dirt/gravel uncovered (but edged!) when the floor was poured. We built a platform over that part and keep our luggage and fine china there. Houseguests sleep rock-free!

[ides1056]

We did two courses of blasting for my wife's riding arena, and one for the foundation of our house. Using a hoe-ram is kind of a waste of money. I also pinned the foundation of the barn to ledge, and the riding arena as well. They haven't budged, and the rock here isn't nearly as tough as granite.

Big-tooth aspen makes the very worst firewood. Burns greasy and smoky with low btu's. It will rot into soil within three years- why it's called a pioneer tree. Trust me on this. Burn something else. There's likely plenty of dead or dying ash around, which is easy to split and will burn all but green.

White pine boards will last as siding, but it won't if its horizontal. I know you have plenty of local locust. Use that. Or those big-ass rocks, they will warm in the sun and warm your backsides.

[72gmc]

This seems to me to be the way to deal with a lot of rock, if you’re not going to design it into your house.

My daughters always enjoy the cheesy title sequence to this show.

[ides1056]

that should have read, "burns smokey"

hate it when I can't spell

[j44ke]

Excavator did an exploratory excavation, roughly the size and shape of the foundation, to assess where the rock is and how hard it is. The simple answer is: everywhere and very hard. We intended to excavate to 4 feet. I think we might have gotten to that depth in the lower left middle of the photo where the mud is (hard to tell/see.) The rest of it is pretty near the surface. The rock on average slopes down hill from the back of the house to the front. We'll see what the engineer says and then what the GC and architects come up with. Obviously we aren't going to have a basement!

Thanks for the rock exploding video. I am forwarding that to our architects!

In the photo, all the white marks are where the scoop on the digger hit rock. There are a lot of white marks.

[Tom]

The couple that bought my parents farm from the estate are growing vegetables but to make it viable they put in five 'cabins' for staying at. Cabins in quotes because they are very posh, they did it right. Anyway, on topic is that they needed to blast ledge and their contractor sent up a little quad coptor drone with a GoPro. It's a cool video, I must dig it up.

[72gmc]

#bjellandsbu hashtag on Instagram • Photos and Videos A Norwegian take on cabin life.

[j44ke]

#bjellandsbu hashtag on Instagram • Photos and Videos A Norwegian take on cabin life.

Norwegians are cool. I approve of their cabin life. The Hotel Juvet is a model for landscaping our property. Goodness knows we'll have enough rocks.

[davids]

Good luck Jorn. You know what they say about building your house on the rock...

That Hotel Juvet landscape is beautiful - kind of an exaggeration of what we're aiming for, for most of our little urban corner.

Any plans for a lawn? We were kind of surprised to learn we wanted some mow-able grass. You've got to have spot for horseshoes, bocce and cornhole!

20180815_174820.jpg

[j44ke]

Septic field will be a meadow. That's to the north of the house. This company sells high percentage germination seed mixes in amounts of 1000 sq ft or more, and the mix is designed to grow in the sand and gravel of the septic field without adding topsoil. Once established it should reseed itself and has a nice mix of pollinator plants and seed head plants for birds.

We have a second clearing that we are going to build a platform with a screened in area and a fire pit. It will be linked to the house by a relatively short path through the woods. Originally it was the second house site with the property was two separate parcels. One of these days, we might put a swimming pool in there. Seems kind of ridiculous though.

[summilux]

That pine could be lumbered into some nice flooring or siding.