House Plans

I've finally saved the houseplan as a file that can be posted, so here it is! Story and a half, 2 bedroom, 2 bath, 1100 Sq/Ft.
Click on the image to see a larger view.

More backfilling and Bea rides a dozer.

The backfilling continues! We've no longer got a house in a hole...but a house on a hill!

Progress!

We've been very busy down at the Forest Glen house, so I've not been updating this blog. We've been up a few times to visit our floor, and most recently picked a whopping 4 quarts of blueberries! They've gotten big and plump and now the cloudberries, nagoon berries, lingon berries, crowberries and lowbush raspberries are beginning to appear in the meadow as well.
Dennis, the dirt mover, is backfilling and laying down the blueboard insulation around the perimeter of the house. There is some disagreement as to whether this is a wasted effort, only insulating the ground below the blueboard and not affecting the foundation walls, but it is required in order to qualify as a "five star plus" energy rated home.
We also received extremely exciting news today! We've been issued all the appropriate waivers by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) to go ahead with our plan to install a Biocycle and a well. We were really pushing the envelope with regards to the size of the drainfield, the distance from the designated wetlands on our property as well as the distance of a well from the Biocycle, but it's been approved and we are extremely lucky. We weren't even expecting an answer for another month and a half, but since we've gotten the go-ahead, Denis can keep his equipment on the property and start digging the hole for the Biocycle next week. Since we aren't on city water and sewer, the only other option would have been to have a holding tank for waste water that would have required pumping several times a month as well as a holding tank for potable water that would have had to been delivered several times a month. It would have been an expensive and wasteful mess. The Biocycle system is an extremely neat operation, our own little mini waste-treatment facility. Read more about it here... http://www.biocyclejowagroup.com.au/biocycle/index.html
As for a well, we're hoping that the initial expense will be worth it. It's definitely a gamble, since you're charged by the foot to drill and there is no sure way to know how far we'll have to go to get decent water. Keep your fingers crossed and repeat "pure, delicious spring water at 40 feet".

Blueberries!!

We swung by the house this evening and saw that the blueberries have started to appear! I'm so incredibly thrilled that we get to build our own house, but the fact that there are wild blueberries on the land is almost too fantastic to be true!

One more before bed...

Seriously, how cute is that?

Painting the deck

Since we'll be off this job for a few weeks while we weather in the Forest Glen house, we decided to paint the deck with some old left over paint to help protect the OSB from swelling in the rain. We had a nice patchwork of colors, but ended up painting over with a second coat of boring beige.

We have a floor!

It took a while this morning to finish up little odds and ends like nailing in the rest of the BCI blocking and cutting a few more crush blocks, but once we started laying down the OSB decking we just flew! The advantage of building a small house I guess! We also applied the Bituthene to the exterior of the foundation. It's a super sticky tar-like-substance backing a thick waterproof membrane. This is what will seal the whole foundation from moisture. It's a pain to handle, but makes everything look so nice and uniform. We'll be moving down to the other job for a bit. My dad is under contract with a woman to build a house on one of the two remaining lots my parents have on Forest Glen. We finished the foundation and framed up the walls a few weeks ago and have been waiting for the dirt guy to backfill and lay down the gravel pad so that we can pour the slab for the attached garage. Of course he wasn't able to move down there until he was done with our site and he was delayed for a bit because of all the rain we had. It's difficult to split time between two houses because I just want to keep going on our own house, but it's also exciting to finish something on the other house and feel that much more confident and excited to tackle it again. We'll probably stay down on Forest Glen until we have the trusses set and roof on. Matt's back on Wednesday night, so we'll be a three person crew again and able to move that much faster.

BCI's are up!

We earned our wages today....phew! It was hot out and everything seemed 20 lbs. heavier. We finished sheathing the perimeter, nailed in the remaining studs and cut, set and nailed down the floor joists. It's so exciting to walk around the crawl space (although at 5 ft. to the bottom of the BCIs it's practically a basement!) and think about all that storage space! We hauled up a sheet of OSB flooring so that we could stand on it and admire the view. It seems so high up in the air, but once it's backfilled four feet up, it will sit nicely in the woods and be level with the road, as it should. Dad had to leave a little early to set up to play with his band tonight and while I was nailing in the crush blocks a neighbor passed by to warn me of a little black bear that was making the rounds in the woods behind our house. I'm sure she was staying far away from my noisy nail gun, not to mention the radio and the generator running loudly. I did think of her as I was applying "black death" (an incredibly messy tar calking) to the seams of the sheathing and noticed that the wild blueberry bushes just off our soon-to-be-dining-nook are thriving. We'll have to act quickly once they're ripe to beat out the bear as well as the many neighborhood kids who are certainly aware of their presence.