Breaking ground and digging out the basement.

At this point we are excited to begin the digging process. We are hoping it will add dimension to the location of the house, we have had a tough time visualizing the true location with just the wooden stakes.

With in a mater of a few hours the land began to take shape and we could finally see where our house was going to sit. Next up are the footings for the basement walls and slab.

This is where everything begins to come to life. We can see the location and it looks as if the several hours of moving stakes around the month prior paid off.

Locating the house on the lot

We started off today trying to locate just where we wanted to have our deck in relation to the creek found at the bottom of the hill. We knew we wanted to be able to hear the water in the creek and have the deck located as far into the trees as possible, without limiting the ability to drive around the rear of the home for the lower workshop area.

This particular house plan adds some difficulty because of its odd shape and curved deck. We felt most of our time would be spent in the rear portion of the home (deck, living room, keeping room, exc.) so we wanted the deck to be perfectly located and the rest of the house would work out in the end.

To start we set aside roughly four hours and set out to the home site with our measuring wheel, vinyl tape, plans and wooden stakes. After about four tries we felt we had a good feeling for where we wanted the home to sit on the lot. As with any project there were compromises on the homes location, but in the end we felt that we could move forward with the surveyors & begin with the excavation of the basement.

The final driveway (Part 4)

Today we take a ride down the driveway from the home site to the main road. I'm guessing door to door salesmen will not be a problem.  Next up is staking out the house's location on the hillside to take advantage of the views and sounds coming from the creek located below.

Cleaning up the driveway (Driveway Part 3)

Today we set out to try to minimize the amount of brush that had gathered along the path from the hundreds of branches that were cut off the trees along the path. I again contacted my neighbor about a wood chipper rental, and set off to clean up the mess from the prior week. I soon ran into a bit of trouble with the tractor sliding a bit sideways down the hill but we quickly got it under control by removing the wood chipper and pulling it back with my truck.

Soon the wood chipper began to suffer the same fate as the excavator the week prior and failed to chip anything larger then a twig. Soon after the trouble started we called it a weekend and retired to the comfort of the AC back home.

At this point I began to look around for a local logging company, I was interested in someone that may want the tree's on the home site in trade for the labor involved in removing them. I ended up meeting two local guys from the same town that we were building in that could help me with that portion of the project.  Soon we had some heavy equipment removing all of the tree's that were roped off at the home site and future side yard. Most of the wood was being sold off to a pulp mill, and I wasn't doing a thing but enjoying the progress at this point. 

After most of the tree's at the top of the hill were removed we could turn our attention to smoothing out the driveway. This is the part my daughter enjoyed becasue of the large equipment involved.

Clearing the path home (Driveway part 2)

I started this portion of the project on my extended July 4th weekend with a rented mini excavator and a inexpensive Poulan chainsaw. A neighbor of mine works for a local equipment rental company, and ended up helping me out on the cost of the rental in trade for fixing his HVAC system a few weeks prior.

My family decided to set off on a mini vacation and left me to my "path" for the next few days. It made for a mission style approach to the driveway, because the sooner i was done, the sooner I could enjoy my bachelor-ism. After walking the planed path a few times I began the 1100 linear foot journey with the excavator. This by far has been the best tool I have ever used in my life. I have a few hours of experience with a smaller unit at work, and after a few moments of adjusting the hydro valve setup for a more intuitive control sequence I was off.  I chose to begin by pushing over all of the larger trees and up rooting them with the excavator. Once I had them down I would remove the branches with the chainsaw and shove them to the side. Tree after tree they were dropping, and I was making good progress.

Soon the equipment began to fail, first my iPhone decided it was more suited for a life in a cushy office setting not a 96 degree day in NC.

 

Soon after the iPhone gave up, the roller on the end of the bar on the chainsaw decided to fail, this left me no choice but to go on a trip for some lunch and a new bar for the saw. Roughly an hour or so later I was back at it moving along swiftly.  

By roughly 4pm the same day the bucket on the excavator decided to fail. I found my self on a holiday weekend looking for a service tech that could weld up a rather crappy prior repair. Never the less the day was shot and the ticks had began to dig in, so I retreated to the house for a cold tea, and a pair of tweezers.

The next day was much of the same, it started off by meeting a repair tech from the rental company, he welded the excavators bucket back together and I was quickly on my way.  Soon I was faced with a rubber track derailment in the woods. This brought back the repair tech, and several hours later we both agreed that the unit had not seen service in quite some time, at this point I began to feel my "good deal" on my rental was in fact a crappy one as I was loosing a great deal of "bachelor" time in the woods getting lime disease in favor of enjoying the cold AC waiting for me back home. 

Next came the un-planed purchase of a Stihl chainsaw..... Yes yet another failure. At this point the mood I was in didn't help the fate of my old Poulan, but i can tell you a Stihl is the only saw to own if you intend to do this amount of work in the woods. The power is amazing!

By about 2pm on the third day I was at the top of the hill overlooking the home site. I still had two rather large trees that I couldn't safely deal with alone, but I could at least drive my Tahoe to the top of the hill and turn around.

Finding the perfect path (Driveway part 1)

Prior to purchasing the land for our new home we had to make sure we could create a cost effective  driveway without impacting any of the small streams that are found on the property.

We spent a great deal of time looking for that "perfect spot" for the home site and settled on an area on the higher side of the property that looks down over a small stream. This would also enable us to build a walkout basement home, something we both felt would be beneficial.

The next day or so was spent walking several paths through the woods trying to avoid impacting any of the large hardwood trees. I wanted a nice curvy driveway with a park like view, but it also had to be "vehicle friendly" for driving my truck and car trailer through the woods.

I found the easiest way was to walk several proposed tracks with my iPhone, this helped keep me within the property lines & gave me a good idea of the length, and cost of the driveway. I used a free app called Easy Trails LT,  it can also export a file into Google Earth for easier viewing.