Just me and Charlie in the cold yurt.

Melissa has gone off to play and work in the big city for a few days, and so it's just Charlie the giant German Shepard and me up here on the mountain. It's getting cold this week, and last night I had a road assoc. meeting, so I didn't start a fire. It was pretty cold here in the yurt when I got back. Charlie was saving heat and energy.

The Leaning Tree Obession.

So a while back I noticed this really long, dead redwood leaning on a madrone. I started thinking that it's probably not rotten, and might be good to use in the house construction. Throwing a rope over it to pull it down was not an option. The valley slopes down below it.




I took my chainsaw down to the base and cut off the stump. It didn't fall much further, but looked really great inside. Here's how big it is down by the base. That's my hardhat sitting on it.

I got my farm jack down there and started playing with the log, trying to get it to slide down and out of that tree.

Got the stump part to roll down and hold it up every time I jacked it up a few notches.

Then, bam! it came down hard, and didn't kill me. Now to figure out how to get it up out of the valley.

A little moist

We've had a bunch of rain and fog all week. It's actually slowing us down, as we can't mortar while it rains. Right now, it's just foggy, but they say there's more rain on the way. It's pretty, of course. If there wasn't so much to do, it'd be great.

This first picture is basically the view from the living room of the future house looking SW. That's the hot tub down there.

From the same spot, looking more SE. That leaning tree is the 'death madrone', the standing half of the tree that came down last year. I'll have to take it down sometime, as it will probably fall on someone's car or something.

Extra chips

Preparing for the coming rain, I redid some of our paths today. Before putting down redwood duff, I picked up the usable chips around the wood chopping area. Got two buckets worth. They're going over by the hot tub, for throwing in a little extra heat. I always feel good when I don't waste stuff.

Some final wall bits

I also managed to do two bags of mortar in the lovely sunshine of New Years Day. Here I'm putting on the highest (and last!) bit of the bermed wall. The stuff to the right of my hands got done today too, and they might have another layer, but that's not really on the 'house' wall, but the retaining wall that meets the bermed part of the house.

Getting stuff Done day.

We were going to go to Grandma's house today, but Melissa is down with a cold-like thing... so that let me get some stuff done around here. I cut down a standing dead Madrone (no branches, about 5 inch diameter, 20 feet tall) and part of anther big dead madrone that was lying on the ground. Hauled the pieces over to the wood pile(s) (about 80 steps, done numerous times)


stacked nicely...


and managed to fill up the 'close-to-the-door' bin before dark.

Diagram of ...progress?


Well, if nothing else, you can see that the grass is growing on our new slope, holding in the dirt during the rains.

This photo was taken from the south side of 'the meadow', looking north at the house site. The Green line circles the area that will be under the patio, which is in-fill from when we dug into the hillside above it.

The red arrow points to the foundation wall that you can just see poking above the grass (it's at least knee high in this photo)

The thin green arrows point to the outside (west and east) edges of the house, showing how wide it will be.

The blue tarp (which covers our not yet mixed mortar bags) is approximately over the second (middle) bedroom area.

How to relieve yourself on the mountain.

If you need to sit down, see below. Otherwise, you can choose:

Right on the Compost pile
near the blueberries
near any other bush or tree
ladies can use the above list if they feel capable, or in the composting toilet.

How to use the composting toilet:

sit down and go.
make sure everything is pointing into the bucket (there's a small gap under the seat)
instead of flushing, use the sawdust in the bin and cover enough so that the next user can't tell you've been there. Like a litterbox...

Lister in the Trailer

Got it in a trailer (of my neighbor's, who wants it back now, sheesh) and it's a pretty handy place to work on it... but of course I don't really know what I'm doing anyway. It's a good way to move it around though.

Proud of my garbage can.

Actually, my home-made garbage can isn't that big of a deal, but the fact that it's 50 gallons, and we've lived up here 17 months, (owned two years!) and only taken it to the dump to empty twice. I believe that's a bunch better than the average household. Now that I think about it though, that's 68 weeks of living, and (since it's pretty full right now) 150 gallons of trash... 2.2 gallons of trash every week. hmm.. I bet I can get it lower than that (without burning trash that shouldn't be). And, hey, this is a construction site as well... usually at a house building site, there's a whole dumpster, so I'm not doing that bad.

Looking for a solution...

So. I've got some options due to a lack of foresight on my part. As stated in the previous post, we're bringing up the floor -- the gravel under the floor -- from where it is in this photo, to above the rim of this bucket.
When we poured the bond beam, I put J bolts in for brackets to hold the door frame (for the back door). Now I realize that since the wall has to come up so much, the door 'threshold' will be at least 2 feet higher than the concrete the bucket is now sitting on... what to do?

I could build a door frame that's 10 feet tall, and have some sort of box under the door... a storage spot? something for the sub-floor heating system?

Or, I could just brick this part up and put in new J bolts at the normal floor line...

Anyone got ideas?