Hey all!  I had another good weekend out on the land. I was able to go up Thursday night with Benjamin (much to Andrew’s dismay who has school on Fridays now). Benjamin is a perfect companion as he keeps me company but also requires just about zero attention. The kid has a crazy imagination and seems to live in his own world when we go out to the land together. 

Anyhow……….  I was able to finish the pre excavation for the main house!

That is exciting as we can now get a much better feel for what the backyard is going to look like and more of what elevations are going to be. It’s always a little scary when you start tearing up the mountain… you can’t exactly go backwards and put the mountain back. I had to take out several trees.. and I REALLY hate doing that!  It almost hurts .. We love the trees so much .. but there are a lot in our way.  I tried to do the whole tree replant since the main patch I did last year all died. But this year I did smaller trees.. and we have water, and the hot season is over. So just maybe they will survive this year! 

Then, I made the first cut for the septic leach field. The field has to be down off the ridge, and unfortunately pictures don’t do it justice, but it was a tad scary getting the excavator down to the desired location.  

And once again, I had to take out a few more trees 😦 .  But I am actually really excited about that area. I think it’s going to be another really cool spot in our yard, a bench kind of down off the main yard that is surrounded by trees.  The first cut I did is 100′ long. 

We need 150′ of trench for our leach field, so I have another cut to make, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it this weekend. Mostly because the other 50′ is going to require taking out some really nice big trees and I had done enough tree killing this weekend. 

The excavator seems to be doing soo much better! Which is a relief. .But at the same time, I’m also just better at dealing with it :).  I lost a small hose this weekend, but it hardly even phased me. Luckily I caught it early and hardly lost any hydraulic oil. And to add to my “luck” I caught it at 3p.m. on Friday, which meant I had just enough time to get the hose off and run down to Erik’s House of Hose in Ogden and get a replacement before they closed at 4:30. By 5:30 I was already back up and running.  So, if you look at it just right, I had a great weekend with the excavator 🙂

On the project front – we got the results from our water sample for our well. We had some bacteria in it which I was told we can try to re chlorinate the well and it should go away. They said the bacteria isn’t native to the aquifer and that while drilling and disturbing the land it often gets bacteria in the well. But in addition to that, we have arsenic in our well. I’m no expert, but I have seen enough movies to know that arsenic is not good for humans. So our well has not been approved yet. I have to send in documentation for which arsenic filter we will be using for our well and then sign an affidavit saying we solemnly swear we will have an arsenic filter on our well before consumption. I have submitted the documentation for the filter I have selected, and should be getting the approval any day now. I’m telling you this because I cannot get a septic permit until the well is fully approved. Fingers crossed I can get all those ducks in a row and get a septic permit late this week or early next week. I can’t start digging the main trench and put in the leach field until then.  It will be so awesome if we can get that leach field in and done!

I know I have drug on a bit here but I wanted to mention I spent a few late nights putting more insulation in on the shed. Kind of a slow process unfortunately. I have about 3/5 of it done. And while doing it, I got to test out my batteries a bit. I ran my skill saw a LOT over the course of 3 hours one night (cutting all the rigid foam to fit between the studs) and then after all the cutting and going through the night with my camper fridge running as well as running the heater, I woke up to an 80% full battery. And since I only have half of my battery bank set up, I am happy to say I don’t think my power house will have any trouble providing the needed electricity for construction! 

More updates to come!

Thanks,

Mark