4.28.2014

This morning, Jim got all the connections done to the controller for the pump temporarily staged out of the back of the truck. 

Then he spent the afternoon, doing some more foundation work.

Things are getting pretty close to final size now.  Jim tried to teach me the rule of figuring out 45 degree angles - 3/4/5 triangle.  Once my eyes glazed over, he did it and we kind of drew the lines for the foundation out to make sure it all fits in our spot with plenty of room to work in footers and around it. 

As he's scraping more from the sides were needed, he's also working on the grading at the back end to make it slope towards the woods.  We also have to have a spot for the propane tank in that area too.

4.26.2014

Because it's Camelot here and only rains at night, Jim debated about going to the land today.  But after all the crazy work he did yesterday, I really wanted him to give his leg a bit of a rest.  So he did schoolwork in the morning and then worked on the pump wiring this afternoon.

One of the big issues we have now is having our stuff spread all over the place.  Jim has always had a ton of tools and parts but always knew where they were and had things organized.  Now, things are spread over 2 storage units (plus things still in Ohio) and not easily accessible.  He spent a long time and took a couple of trips to the barn trying to find his crimper for electric wiring.  He hated it, but finally had to break down and buy another one to use to wire up the pump.

But the pump is now connected to the giant spool of wire that we've had in the apartment hallway forever.  He's just making sure all the connections are completely waterproof since it's going to be underwater for a very long time!  So after crimping all the connections, then it was 2 layers of heat shrink tubing, then rubber tape and then plastic tape - all this on each of the 3 wires inside that big insulated wire (the thick blue wire above).

 

4.25.2014

Today was pump prep day!  But before I got there after lunch to help, Jim cut down a tree that was too close to the carriage house footprint.  We had decided that this tree and 3 little ones had to go and Jim took the little ones down this week.  But he was going to wait until his knee was stronger to do the bigger one.  When I got there though, the tree was down.  I told him that I didn't think cutting down trees was on his knee rehab protocol.

This is the giant roll of plastic water pipe that will not only go into the well to bring water up but also to take water from the well to the temporary lawn hydrant and eventually into the carriage house.

The first thing we did was to mark off 180' of our safety rope, which is the depth where the pump will sit.  Then Jim unrolled the water pipe to cut off 180' of it.  As you can see, it was a bit unwieldy to roll out!

We put stakes along the way to tie the pipe to to hold it in place.  At the end, Jim carefully taped it up so avoid little creatures getting in and making a home in our pipes.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but 180' is a long way!  Especially when you think that all of that rope and pipe are going to be that far underground.  And then have to pump water all that way up.

Next, was to cut off a 20' piece of pipe.  This is the piece that will connect to the lawn hydrant.

Jim marked the area where the piping will go.  It has to be 4' underground - below the frost level so nothing freezes.

Then it was time for some excavating.  A 4' deep, semi-circle trench is a bit harder than what we had to do for the electric line - although much, much shorter thankfully!  Plus care is required because Jim had to dig right next to the well casing.  That has to be exposed all the way down to where we will cut into the casing to connect everything up - again, has to be below the frost line.

As I was watching Jim dig, I had to chuckle...the 1-800-No Sweat marking reads 1-800-No Swear on this side.  Which could be much more appropriate sometimes!

It wasn't long before Jim had it done.

 

Of course, it required a little hand crumbing, especially near the well casing.  Again, worried about Jim's knee during this process...he was in and out of this trench dozens of times before it was all said and done.

Next, hooking up the lawn hydrant - connecting the water pipe to this end. 

And then the really scary part - drilling a hole into the well casing.  Once we started this, there was no turning back - everything had to be sealed back up so that the well wasn't contaminated.  By this time, it was after 3:30 or so.  Rain was forecast for late evening.  But we pressed on.  The casing is obviously heavy steel - so it took what felt like a long time to drill through - and that was just me watching!

But finally....success!  We now have a hole in our casing!

Now we had to seal everything up.  Jim bought all stainless steel fittings and connections since this is all going to be underground for a very long time.  He got a "pitless" adaptor to connect the water pipe to the pump - so once it's all in, the pump can be attached and everything connected from the top.  So the first step was to attach the adapter to this long iron pipe - and fit it through the hole he just drilled.

And there it is!

Then it was attaching all the connecting hardware on the outside to seal everything up permanently.

Things had to be straightened up and insure that everything was in the proper place for all the connections to come.

Hooking up the water pipe to the well end.

Then it was filling it in!  First some sand just for protection of the pipe and fittings.

At the lawn hydrant end, it sat in the trench on that concrete block seen in earlier pictures.  There is a weep hole at the end of the hydrant so that it can be used in the winter...excess water will weep out that little hole underneath the frost line so that nothing freezes up.  But we had to cover that weep hole with rocks to give the water a good place to flow.  Luckily, finding rocks around the property is certainly not hard!  Jim brought the Bobcat over to the edge of the driveway where we trenched and I gathered a bucket of rocks that we used to fill up this area.

Then a light load of dirt that Jim shoveled in by hand over the top of the water pipe.

And then finished up backfilling and grading everything off.  Ta da!  All done!  Until the next step of installing the pump.  A great day's work!

4.24.2014

After a good report at Jim's one week follow-up with the knee doctor, he headed out to the land.

He spent time in the morning working on getting the lawn hydrant assembled and then did the finishing touches on the controls for the pump system that are attached in the back of the truck.  Having the controls in the truck will allow him to connect the pump to the controls and then to the lawn hydrant so that we can use the water.  Getting things ready to install the pump is on the agenda for tomorrow.

 

After lunch, Jim went back to working in the foundation.  Before he got started, he cut down 3 little trees that were kind of in the way.  There's one bigger one that he's decided needs to go too, but he'll wait on that until his knee is a little stronger.

The pictures below shows that he made a new "shelf" in the dirt just to make it safer.  He had done that in the fall but now he has excavated more dirt in that area so needed to do it again.

We took some more elevations this afternoon - still some more work to be done to flatten things out.  We did it very rough in the fall so now it's becoming more final.  In the picture below, he figured out that he needed to take a little more off the side so he loosens the dirt with the excavator and then uses the Bobcat to scoop and carry it away.  And the skies here continue to amaze us with how blue and clear they are most of the time.

Meanwhile, while Jim is working hard, there sometimes isn't anything for me to do at this stage.  So I've been taking little walks in the woods.  How gorgeous is this?  I'm not real good at knowing the woods yet...yesterday I thought I was taking a path that would take me near Jim and I ended up on the other end of the property! 

4.23.2014

Jim worked on schoolwork this morning because it was kind of a drizzly, chilly day.   Of course, every day is spent working on more plan details.  He may have found a contact for a company that does specialty concrete work.  It would be our preference to be able to do all the concrete work ourselves, but since the reality is that it's just Jim and I and his plans call for amazing amounts of concrete, we're going to need help. 

In the afternoon, we headed to Lowe's for some parts Jim needs for the well.  Back in the fall, Jim started work on connections in the back of the truck that Jim will use to operate the well with a generator.  So he has to finish work on that as well as get the pump all wired up.  Here he is in the apartment working on pump wiring!

 

Today was one week since Jim's knee surgery.  He's had an amazing recovery and gets more and more back to normal every day.  On Monday, he was allowed to take the giant Ace bandage off that went from toes to thigh - there are only 3 incisions and they look really good.  He goes back for a checkup tomorrow.  We are so thankful that it all went so well.

 

4.22.2014

Happy Earth Day!  It is very appropriate that Jim was moving a lot of dirt around on Earth Day!

The weather forecast called for showers in the afternoon so Jim got out early to try and get some work in before the raindrops.  However, the rain really held off and Jim got a good day of work in. 

Look how good everything looks! 

We also started the beginnings of the well work.  We have 500' of safety rope that we will eventually tie to the pump so that in case something goes wrong, we can bring the pump back up and won't lose it down in the well.  Jim tied a weight onto the end of that and lowered it into the well.  We hit water at 110' - which is actually 50' higher than it was when the well was dug.  That could be from positive pressure in the well and/or the winter's snowfall.  Jim continued lowering the weight and it hit the bottom at 244', which is exactly what the well driller had said.  So we have 134' of water to draw from right now which sounds great.

 

4.21.2014

Happy Belated Easter!  It's been an eventful time around here so I'm definitely behind on the blog these days!

 

Jim had his knee surgery on the 16th and everything went really well.  He has hardly felt much pain and hasn't even been on Advil for days.  He goes back to the doctor on Thursday to get the stitches out.  He's been taking it slow but after a couple of days of not doing much, he was getting a bit stir-crazy!  A nearby church has wide aisles and no kneelers so we were able to go to Holy Thursday Mass as well as the Easter Vigil.

 

On Easter Sunday, we went for a walk on the property.  It was a beautiful day and it was just nice to be there.  Afterwards, we went into Saratoga and watched the movie, Draft Day.  It was really good and so fun to see it all revolve around the Cleveland Browns!

 

Monday afternoon was beautiful - about 70 degrees - so Jim spent quite a bit of time at the property.  He got the trimmer going and attacked some of the briars on the edges of the property to expose more of the baby pine trees growing.  Especially when compared to what we dealt with on our property in Ohio, there is very little undergrowth or briars because it is so heavily wooded.  But there are a few on the fringes.

After spending a little time with the trimmer, look how good it looks.  Now all those little pine trees can really start growing!

After the trimming, Jim got out the surveying equipment again.  He wanted to just get a rough footprint down to see how much further he needs to dig.  Everything looks really good - besides cutting in the area for the staircase on the far wall, things are in really good shape.

Jim with the marking tool - ready to go!

Getting ready to shoot some elevations...

If you look really close at this picture, you can see some of our orange paint lines marking off the rough footprint of the carriage house.

4.14.2014

I'm still totally amazed at the soil here. After all the snow and a recent rainy night, temps were close to 80 degrees today and the ground was dry enough that Jim got the equipment down into the foundation.

One of the last things Jim did in the fall was put extra dirt on the areas where the footers will go just for extra weight and compacting purposes.  So today, he moved all that extra dirt out of the foundation area.

He was even able to use the excavator and expand the foundation area some more.  He has decided to add a frost wall most of the way around just for extra precaution so he needed a little more room in some areas.

 

Then he cleaned everything up.  So in one day's work, he got the foundation area cleaned up and in good shape!  Obviously still lots of work to be done.  We have to get down there and take some elevation measurements, but then it will be digging down for the footers.

 

Definitely a good day's work!  Jim said it was so fun working this time - the last time he was in the foundation digging, the ground was frozen and so was he!

 

4.13.2014

Definitely time for an update.  Although it's later than back in Ohio, spring finally feels like it's come to upstate New York.  It's still chilly at night and I still bundle up on our walks but we've had some really nice days and this weekend has been so pretty. 

I've posted some pictures previously of the big ice chunks breaking loose and coming down the Hudson River.  All of those ice chunks make for a high water level and lots of water crashing over the dam area near us.  The lady at the post office said that not too far upriver, it's still solid ice from bank to bank so there will definitely be more to come.

As the old saying goes...Man makes plans; God laughs.  Now that the spring weather seems to be settling in and Jim is so anxious to get things started...he has to have a procedure done on his knee.  He started having some pain with certain movements but didn't know of anything he did to injure it, so he blamed it on getting back to running a little too quickly this winter.  But the normal cure of resting it didn't seem to help.  And we've been walking 5 miles a day with really no issues so he didn't think anything too bad could be wrong.  I finally got him to an orthopedic doctor who did an MRI and found torn cartilage.  So this week he'll have it scoped and cleaned out.  The doctor said the recovery is pretty quick - he has to stay off it the first 24 hours but the doctor said he should be on the elliptical in a week and could run in 2 weeks.  So as much as the timing could have been better, it's good to get it taken care of and we're so happy that it's a relatively easy fix.  He's going to be very physical as soon as building really starts so he needs to be in tip top shape!  The doctor said that everything else looked great - no signs of arthritis, so that was great news. 

Plus we got some bad news from back home - Jim's uncle passed away suddenly on Thursday.  His aunt and uncle were extremely close with his family so this is a big blow.  Jerry had worked in the construction field operating the big machinery, so Jim always enjoyed sharing plans and picking his brain on all things machines.  Our thoughts and prayers are with Aunt Sandy.

Meanwhile, with the arrival of nice weather Jim has headed up to the lot the last few days.  He's gotten all that brush and huge piles of sticks and branches that we pulled out of the woods in the fall all chipped up.  He's moved some big trunks over to where we are piling them and just generally getting the site cleaned up.

We had rain overnight but you would have hardly known it today.  Back in Ohio, we had so much clay in the soil - here it's sand.  So things dry up pretty quickly.  Today was my first day to visit the lot and I was amazed.  To think that just a couple of weeks ago there was a foot of snow on the land and today we could walk around without even leaving a footprint!  Jim doesn't want to create big ruts in the land so he doesn't want to get too much machinery out but it won't be long.

We had planned to do a little more cleanup work today.  But as we just pulled into the driveway, our next door neighbors were out for a walk with their dogs.  We had met her last year but had never met him.  They are so nice and really make us feel good that we are going to have such wonderful neighbors.  They told us that they've been keeping an eye on things just to make sure no one was there who shouldn't be.  We had a great conversation and I'm sure it was the first of many!

4.3.2014

Well, even know the calendar says spring it's still not really looking like it around here!  Jim went up to the property yesterday and this is what he found.  Still lots of snow up there!  However, it's going away quickly - we've had a couple warmer days and a little rain too.  Won't be long!

On Thursday, we went down to Albany for a couple parts field trips.  Our first stop was to the Pella Distributor there.  It was nice because we were able to get a color sample of the windows we are interested in.  Eventually, we'll probably match the color of the carriage house to the window to get the look we want.  We really liked the color so it was good info.  Also good info was the difference between brown hardware and oil-rubbed bronze.  We had wanted oil-rubbed bronze but they are similar in appearance and the cost difference is about $60 per window!  So definitely brown is fine for the carriage house.  The other interesting thing was the screens.  They have a new, super-fine mesh half screen that is really incredible.  It's like not looking through a screen.  Again, though, we are talking the carriage house right now.  We may get them in certain key windows but the normal screen will be fine for the rest of the windows.  But it's all good information.  We have to go over all the quotes and compare apples to apples to make sure we get the best price.  We also have to figure out storage options possibly.  With Lowe's, where it appears the price is the best, they have a 15% sale going on but you have to order the windows now.  They may be able to keep them in the store for awhile but not as long as we'll need.  Just another thing to figure out.

Our next stop was to find some brick distributors.  We need monarch brick (bigger sized) on the foundation of the carriage house.  Seems far away but it can take 8 weeks to get in so it's definitely something that needs to be planned out.  We want a more solid dark gray that will eventually carry over to the house and coordinate with the brick fascia for the house.  We were used to having Belden Brick in Amish country where you can wander through their showroom and they make the bricks on site.  Not here.  Apparently there are no more brick companies around at all so everything has to be ordered.  We have a couple websites to investigate now - we brought a couple sample boards home and they can send us more.

On our walk later on, we noticed that ice from up river must have broken up and was floating along downstream through Corinth.  It was quite the sight!

Also loved this contrast....girls' softball team was practicing at the elementary school by us.  Half of the girls were in shorts with all the snow on the ground surrounding them!

But we did see our first little spring flowers...right in front of the Catholic church here in Corinth.