Well hello!  It has been a good little while since I last wrote. We finally started doing a few things to our land now that the snow is gone so I figured I’d continue my record of the project in our newsletter form. 

Agenda today:

• Project Plan of Attack – Long Term
• Goals for Summer 22
• April 23 Work
• April 29 Work

Project Plan of Attack – Long Term

This has been an ever evolving game plan. I believe we are on revision 33, so this is subject to change 🙂 . But right now, the plan is that we want to build an “Accessory Dwelling Unit” as soon as we can! We want to live up there!!  The Accessory Dwelling Unit is a much smaller scale project and will be a separate structure from the dream home. If we can get that done, we can move up there quicker and will be onsite and ready to build the dream home. The one hitch, timing.  I have no idea when we will be able to get this done. We are not ready for this summer and work is currently planning on sending me to Dugway UT for 2 years starting this next December…  Sooooo I don’t have a good answer for when but we hope to get all of our ducks in a row so that as soon as we get a window we can pull the trigger.

Goals for Summer 22

There are some things we can get done this summer to get ready for the actual build. Here are the goals for Summer 22:

• Install another 120′ of culvert in the drainage ditch (done!)
• Get the well drilled
• Install a septic system which will also include
  • Preliminary Dream home excavation – to help identify the back yard
  • Some back yard prep – Leach field goes in the back yard
  • Some geothermal prep (plan on putting some tubing in the bottom of my leach field trenches)
• Make the driveway legit
• Preliminary Excavation for the Accessory Dwelling Unit
• Make an Epic Slip in Slide 🙂

I could write a ton about each bullet, but I will spare you all the details for now. If you are really curious hit me up, we all know how much I like to talk 😛

April 23:

After a long winter of struggling to keep the excavator running due to gelled up fuel lines, I finally got to go do some work on the land for the first time this year. The main goals were to get prepped for laying culverts and to work on my mushy corner on my driveway.  In order to put the culverts in I needed to get back down in the ditch.  I didn’t exactly leave a place to get down there cause we hadn’t planned on running more culverts. But by running more culverts I will have lots more places to put the dirt. We have a lot more dirt to move when it comes to excavating for the Aux Dwelling Unit and Dream home. Also, if we fill in that ditch we can get a couple epic sledding hills that will no longer result in major injury 🙂 

For cutting in the access road see pictures 1-6.  Unfortunately, the picture doesn’t show it well, but in picture 5, getting the excavator out of the ditch, was fairly terrifying for me. I’m sure the machine was fine, but it was a lot steeper than the picture shows and was past my comfort level. It was a solid adrenaline rush though 🙂

For my driveway, the first corner has always been super mushy.  Whenever it rains the whole driveway gets muddy due to the awesome clay

But that corner is especially nasty.  I decided to make it a little wider and slope the road to a drainage ditch (see pic 7, arrow points to drainage ditch) on the side that would keep the water from sitting on the driveway.  The road was still fairly wet (not passable with a 2wd car) that day. Two days later on Monday I was able to go back to meet a well driller.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that corner very dry even though the weather is not all that warm yet!  There was some standing water (see pic 7.5) in my ditch so maybe my idea will work!  

The best part about working that day, when I left the land, my excavator was still running 🙂

April 29 – Pictures 20-30

This probably looks like a repeat from last year! But I laid another 120′ of culverts. I was really lucky to even find some in this market, and surprise surprise, they had gone up 25% in cost from last year. Ouch!  Andrew and Sam decided to get up at 6a.m. with me and head out to get the culverts and take them to the land.

 The install operation went fairly smooth, but it was a LOT of work. What is not shown in the pictures is all the hand digging around the connection point that I had to do before dropping in another piece of culvert. It was fairly miserable! lol. Shoveling and pick-axing (not a real verb) wet clay is almost as bad as sanding drywall (it would be just as bad if it lasted 2 months like sanding drywall always does). I am very sore today.. I guess I’m getting old. But there was A LOT of getting up and down out of the excavator and in and out of the trench and moving the culverts around by hand. Last year I used straps to pick up the sections, but I realized I could roll them around by hand well enough with a little help from Karianne. 

In the middle of getting the culverts placed we had a load of gravel delivered for my soft corner of the driveway. When I met with the well driller last week, I said I would get some gravel down in that corner so that the drill rig and all the other heavy equipment could get around that corner. I may need another load though, not sure I got enough down.  That was a fairly exciting development though!

All in all it was another great day at the land and was a solid day of work. I left home at 6:30a.m. and rolled back in to my driveway around 9:30p.m.  Even though it kicked my butt, I loved every minute of it. Sort of silly, but getting work done like that is what really makes me tick!  And once again, the best part of working that day… when I left the land, the excavator was still working 🙂

Until next time, whenever that may be! (I don’t plan on being up there near as much this year, but I’ll drop a letter whenever I do)

Mark