Ground Broken! First Week of Construction

Well, we FINALLY broke ground!  Our contractor, excavator and Brent had a meeting and that got the ball rolling. 

Day 1:  The excavator leveled the site.

Day 2:  Then our contractor and his helper came out and laid out the footings (this is where the footings are dug in - inside the chalk lines).  In our area, we only have to be 12" deep.

Day 3:  Our contractor using a mini-excavator to dig the footings.  By renting this and doing it himself, he saved us at least a week of waiting.  We appreciate that!

Here you can see where they finished for the day.  All footings dug and some of the forms laid in.

Day 4:  At the end of day 4, and the end of the first week of work (nothing happened on Friday, Day 5), all of the external footing forms are in and they have added most of the insulation.

We are so happy that we are finally seeing real progress!  As for us, today we spent the day chipping brush piles with the county's huge chipper we rented.  Shout out to our friends Mark and Tonya who used their big truck to tow the massive chipper to the building site.  Our poor little Ranger can barely move it on the flat here.

Pressurized Water & Other Updates

Brent spent yesterday and some of this morning installing a pressure tank and jet pump for our water.  We sized it to be right for the house, but needed it in place now.  We've just had gravity feed for our water.  We will eventually wrap the pipes better and build a little insulated "shed" around the tank and pump.  Fortunately, it does not get that cold for long here, so freezing shouldn't be a problem.

The reason we needed this in place now is that for construction, we needed to provide power and pressurized water.  Now we have both.

There was a bit of an issue when Brent had it all put together and the pump wasn't working.  Fortunately, he was able to figure out the issue without having to tear anything apart too much.  Turns out the impeller on the pump was stuck.  He just opened the motor up, turned it with his hand, put it all back together, primed it and it was good to go!  He put an outdoor rated switch on it so we can turn it on/off separate from the power going to the yurt.  He created a nice spigot off of the pressure tank and we put a "y" on it so we can have a hose down to the yurt and another hose for construction needs.

The other updates are that Brent met with our contractor and the excavator last week to discuss what area needed to be leveled for the house.  Ground has not been broken yet, but that should happen early next week.

Outdoor Shower

I don't think I had posted pictures of our outdoor shower.  Originally, we just had the pallet and rubber mats with the garden sprayer shower.  But, I wanted a bit of privacy and a wind screen.