The color of fall is begining to appear along our driveway.

The driveway ends at what is starting to appear as a house.

There is a bit of an optical illusion at the corner so kindly

ignore that, but the large space is for the picture window

which is flanked by two doublehungs in the dinning room.

Then there is the space for the 8' tall french entry doors,

then the other 8' french entry door is flanked by two

doublehung windows, and then the far window is the library.

The kitchen counter runs along the wall on the left, across

the way where the pallet is sitting will be a double frige

which faces the kitchen counter, and a walk in fireplace

facing towards the right front which is the dining room.

Things are coming along very nicely.

Here is a blueprint, we are building it very close

to this, minus the garage, we will add it later.

Along the top are a bedroom on the left and the

library on the right, a very long screened in porch

along the right side over looking the river valley.

The master suite has a large walk in closet with

laundry facilities, then the master bath with

elongated tub and wall mounted toilet.

The kitchen and dining room along the lower end of

the house and everything in between is the

great/livingroom.

A walk way on the lower left joins the kitchen to

the garage with a court yard between.

End of the week update.

Walls are going up, D'Artagnon is standing in his ...room to be...


Gravel truck getting stuck in the drive while dumping the
rock base. The driver was told to go home, beings this
was the second time he got stuck to his axels, and needed
drug out by the skidsteer.


But hey ... we FINALLY got our DRIVEWAY IN !!!

Now off to the Homestead Festival in Princeton.

Days: Three, Four, Five

Day Three:

One layer of three walls were set in their places, glued
together and to the footing, holes for the re-bar were drilled
as they went. I was running to the store twice this day for
the adhesives to glue the blocks, bought two stores Menards
and Lowes out of the stuff. Also I picked up two of the three
pallets of Roofing shingles.

Day Four:

The rest of the first row of blocks were layed, drilled, and
all the re-bar epoxyed into place. I went shopping again, for
more adhesives, picked up the last pallet of shingles, and
picked up 300' of three inch field tile and a sock to put it in,
to place around the footing.

Day Five:

The second row of blocks were layed by noon,
the "D-man" had a job, that was to shake the cans of
adhesive, and attatch the tube to them and hand them
to the guys.

The cement truck came and poured 6.25 cubic feet of cement
with super-plastisizer added to help the cement fill all the
voids in the horizontal channels.

There were no blowouts, it was a trick to get the cement
into the rebared holes while walking in a 6"wide trench.
But when all was said and done, it all worked out just fine.

A coating of wall sealant was applied to the blocks exterior,
and the 3" tile was layed all around the perimeter.

Now we wait until Tuesday to see anything else done,
we will however clean up the work site.



Have a Happy Labor-Day Weekend.

Day one and day two - Footings, and Electricity

We are progressing far faster than I ever imagined.

We got the footings dug on Monday 8-31-09 as well as
the lower courses of TechBlock delivered to the site

D'Artagnon is inspecting the trenches.

Can't seem to keep the kid out of the trenches,
not that I was trying.



Day 2! We started pouring the footings.

Ah the footings getting poured, and the power company
in the background getting our electrical service buried.

The second cement truck arriving, You can barely see the
transformer and the temp-pole going in as well.

TechBlock wall system arrives!

Here is truck number one of our wall units, truck number two is
just as full, 48 pallets in each truck. Promptly at 10am
they arrived we had an hour to empty each truck, and it
took every minute and a few more.



The ever so handy skid steer/forklift. And a view of truck
number two rolling in which is why D'Artagnon is smiling
so much.



This is what a TechBlock looks like in person, D'Artagnon
is demonstrating where the rebar for the concrete channels
are.

There is OSB attatched to the foam core with
5000 psi adhesion. They stack just like concrete blocks,
only these fit together abit like Lego's.



Filling our contractors shop to the brim with way more space
taken than we thought they would take.


**************************************************
Other Activities On And Around The Seven Acre Wood


Our dog Riley, lounging on the cool sand.





This is our newest toy. Very handy.



Kevin doing some of the finishing arial work on the greenhouse.

Jessi and Chris, removing a few trees for the power poles.

Ah the morning commute in the fog, got to sit and wait
for the train of turkeys to move on.


On of the toys I got to use, and got stuck needing a
tow-truck to alleviate it's drastic tilt, sorry no photo of my
oops, and no I will not rent it again to stage a photo-op.

Here I am putting in the waterline from the springbox to the
house site, it moves forward a foot every minute and a half.


Another toy, a mini-excavator,
and yes I was using it well into the night.


This is our well!! WooHoo!! Finally!! Now we wait for the
power company to trench in their line.


Here is the pipeline and the well wire going in. In my
nice clean trench, the other trench done by the mini-
excavator isn't so neat and tidy. But I was hitting very
large rocks with the chain-trencher, what can you do.

So it took me three different trenchers and four days to
trench in the waterline, because we are sitting on several
feet of glacial-till and river rocks, some as large as a
football which is not good for chain-trenchers, hense the
use of the mini-excavator, I used it through the worst of
the large rocks. I am still fitting the waterline, and various
powerlines that we are trenching in together, so half of it is
still not buried. But the springbox is in and the pump is in
the water.

@%*&! AAARGH!!

There is a 6 Week wait til we get the Tech-Block!

Ah your killin' me smalls.

D'Artagnon was out riding his ATV, he just hopped on and
asked to ride, we bought it for his birthday, it only took 3
months to get comfortable with it enough to ride it himself.

Here is our new gas powered golfcart, well, ok, used, it will
come in handy going from the sheds, to the greenhouse
and out the lane to get the mail, and down to the river
campsite.




Our nearest neighbors, besides the Deer, are the Pheasants,


there are actually about 8 chicks in all.





Rain Rain Go Away.....




Camping in the rain, here I am emptying a pool of water
from the roof.



So much rain... Phil widened the driveway abit more.


So now we are waiting on the bank, and... THE RAIN TO STOP ! !