Rants from the Hollow

One of the disadvantages of having the final grading work done so late in the year is that grass is unlikely to root before Spring. During her previous visit, Elizabeth cleaned Moore’s out of their remaining 2011 grass seed, spreading 150 pounds worth around our sprawling cabin site.

To maximize the survival and sprouting likelihood, and to reduce the potential for winter erosion, Elizabeth spread 20 bales of straw around the cabin site and along the side of the driveway.  On some of the steeper mud slopes, we unrolled excelsior mats, which Elizabeth attached to the ground with biodegradable pins.

The driveway gravel has never been extended beyond the nearest corner of the cabin, so we stopped in at Holmes Redimix and scheduled Dianne to bring us yet another truck load of 1&2 crushed limestone to spread across the back of the cabin, and what little turning area could be excavated into the hillside.  Dianne ended up spreading about half the load at the top of the drive, leaving several tons in a pile for me to spread with the Kubota tractor.

Ranging from baseball to softball size, the 1&2 limestone is nearly impossible to move with a shovel, and a huge challenge with such a small tractor.  I spent a couple hours last Thursday and Friday nibbling away at the last of a pile that was left in the meadow in July, spreading it over some of the subsiding areas in the drive where a new culvert was installed last month.  The new pile was easier to spread because it hadn’t packed down yet.

On the theory that ground would be frozen during the next 3 months, I took the opportunity to polish up some of the earth moving.  The back fill around both the cabin and barn has already started to visibly subside, so I used the blade to scrape up more clay and pile it around the foundations.

 The driveway drainage seemed on track towards creating a new stream through the side door of the barn, so Sheldon put in another culvert, with a drainage basin and grate located in front of the side door of the barn above. After 4 weeks of continued wet whether and pickup truck traffic, a ridge of clay appeared between the drive and the drain.  I used the tractor to scrape off the top of the clay, filling in a deepening puddle between the driveway and what I hope will soon be the cement floor of the barn.  I also dressed up a couple other drainage problems along the drive, and hope that it will last until spring.  Dianne should have arrived some time this week with a load of smaller limestone, either #4 or #57, to spread across the length of our gravel sinkhole.

[If you want to see all the entries for the cabin building project, they start here. The next Building the Cabin entry is Christmas Cabin.]

The original Fortune Family cabin was located in the valley at the center of the Hollow, within 75 feet of one of several springs on the property.  Apparently, they had once had a small spring house. When we first bought the property, Dad went at the springwith pick and shovel, in an attempt to ‘capture’ it so that it could used as a source of drinking water (I’m thinking an article in the 1st or 2nd Foxfire book might have provided some inspiration).  My memory is that it took about 2 hours of manual digging to help Dad reach a decision to hire an excavator.

Gene Mullett arrived from Killbuck with a backhoe, a dump truck load of river gravel, a cement box meant to be used as a septic tank, and some 6″ PVC pipe.  He dug a hole for the 3′ square cement box, which would function as a settling tank, he made a 10-15′ long trench behind it, putting in some gravel, and then setting a PVC drainage pipe, with holes drilled in it, into a tee fitting that led into the back of the tank, and then he put a PVC spout on it.  That spring was our sole source of water for a number of years.  After building the pond, and then moving our little trailer up next to it, my folks had a well drilled, and a hand pump installed. That lasted about a week, and we’ve had electricity ever since.   The spring probably lasted 20 years before it escaped.

Along with installing the septic system, back-filling the house and barn, re-contouring the building sites, and upgrading the driveway, Sheldon the Excavator recaptured the spring last week.  For sentimental and aesthetic reasons alone, its nice to have a spring again.  Although its not the least bit convenient to the cabin,  it is a source of drinking water that is not dependent upon electricity or pumps.  Trickle or gusher, it flows year round, with sweet, cool, and clear water.   And there’s always single malt.

[If you want to see all the entries for the cabin building project, they start here. The next Building the Cabin entry is Chimney.]

A foggy wet Wednesday dawned with Diane dumping 15 tons of limestone in what later turned out to be the only possible place to turn around my parent’s motor home.

A rainy evening and night resulted in two inches of soupy clay on top of the driveway between the meadow, the barn, and the cabin. Before he was ready for Diane to spread any stone on the drive, Sheldon scraped off the worst of the muck.

Sheldon started with a foundation of clay and shale, using tons of the heavy rock that he’d dug out of the building site.

On top of that went 65 tons of the fist-sized limestone that Diane brought in her first load. Additional work included a pair of drainage pipes leading out of both foundation sites, and a large plastic culvert under the platinum-plated driveway.

After backfilling the poured cement foundation, a great deal of cosmetic sculpting remains to be done with the tons of dirt currently surrounding the cabin. Although we’re not at all sure what form that should take, based on practical, economic, and aesthetic considerations, it was becoming increasingly clear that a clump of trees that had been left next to the cabin were just not in a convenient spot. Sam had arrived for an inspection, and the 3 of us discussed the relative desirability of leaving those 4 trees in place or taking them out. Both Sam and Sheldon agreed that not only were there visual considerations, but it also seemed to be the optimum location for the septic tank. We all agreed that the trees needed to come down. Sam, who had arrived in something more along the lines of a New Order business suit than a tree-cutting outfit, explained that he had another appointment he had to get to, and he and his driver took off. Sheldon explained that he was not really a professional timber cutter. I handed him our Stihl chainsaw and wished him luck, feeling slightly guilty about sending a human poison-ivy magnet into that particular clump of trees. Inside of an hour, Amos used the dozer to haul 2 pair of 60′ trees into our meadow, joining the existing 8 trees that somehow had been overlooked when site prep and tree disposal had been taken care of.

Sheldon filled in that spot with about a 20′ high wall of dirt, clay and shale. At least he’s got a nice place to put the septic tank when he and Amos come back after the cabin is farther along. He also put a lot of effort into the slope behind the house, cutting a wide swale to drain water away from the back of the cabin, along with an area where a car can turn around at the back of the cabin.

The drive was topped off by inviting Diane back to spread 75 tons of a much finer crushed limestone. The result was about 3x what I expected we’d be spending on gravel. Wednesday was a long and muggy day of detail work to ensure that cabin and car function properly in rain or shine. By the end of the day, we had something like a rural superhighway across our little piece of woodlands.

The last two days have been pretty quiet. On Thursday, I spent about 40 minutes with the chainsaw, trimming branches off the trees that Amos dragged into the meadow, and I used the Kubota’s loader to sort of roll them down the hill to a brush pile. That lopped about 10′ off of 200′ of branches. Then Dad and I decided to take the chainsaw to Moore’s store for some encouragement. All I’ve done today is drive up and down over 150 tons of gravel, so it was well-compacted before the rain, which arrived around dinner time today. Tomorrow, the foundation crew arrives at 0600.

[The first entry for Building the Cabin was July 18, 2011.  The next entry is Pouring.]

I have a new found appreciation for the earth’s skin, after watching Sheldon and his assistant dig two foundations today, seeing what they uncovered, and observing how they used it.

Originally planned as a pole barn, the location for the barn turned out to have a much steeper slope than anyone realized, with the result that the only practical way to build something that would be practical to park a car or tractor in would be to excavate it like a basement, with a solid cement wall on the back, and sides. This also had the effect of doubling the estimated cost of the outbuilding, so we compromised on the budget ceiling by reducing the size by 50%.

The speed and accuracy of the dig was greatly facilitated with a laser level, sitting on a tripod. Sheldon’s assistant held a long adjustable pole, graduated in inches, with a sensor clamped to the top, which peeped whenever it detected the laser. This enabled a precise relative depth measurement, ensuring that the floor and footers were all at the correct depth, and level.

After finishing the garage excavation, including laying some drainage pipes under the drive, the digging duo carefully pegged out the corners of the cabin, and began excavating through what turned out to be about 10 feet of dirt along the back. The garage site had a surprising amount of fine brown topsoil, but there was a much thinner layer at the steeper house site. On both sites, the topsoil was sitting on top of a heavy layer of light brown clay. Under the clay was a layer of shale that crumbled into 2-6 inch thick flat pieces, under the impact of the excavator’s shovel.

The excavation team expressed a great deal of satisfaction with the shale, pronouncing it not only an excellent underpinning to the foundation, and also the perfect material to lay before spreading gravel on the drive. I pointed out that it was a deep layer of that stuff underneath the dam, deeper than could be reached with 1970s excavators, that caused the pond to leak. Cool and dripping with water, it also suggested to me the reason why this property has so many springs.

I picked up a flat chunk of the shale from the cabin and hosed it off. It turned out to be bluish greenish, very different in color and texture from the coarse sandstone boulders on the facing hillside (none of which appeared during excavation). While it probably isn’t sturdy enough to bear a lot of weight, it seemed like a great material for building a small wall or something, so I hand selected some pieces that I felt I’d like to build with some day, filling up 4 Kubota loaders full. OK, so it would be a small wall, or maybe stepping stones.

Its impossible to fully appreciate Sheldon’s hydraulic artistry from still shots. He very carefully positioned his shovel along his fluorescent pink lines, often preparing a spot ahead of time by digging down on one side, or piling up some dirt to raise one of his tracks, ensuring an appropriately level and steady surface. He often used the shovel as a sort of crutch, pushing up the machine and holding it steady while rotating the tracks underneath it, or to gain some extra traction when crawling up a steep and slippery slope. He carefully separated the different forms of dirt and shale for different purposes. The floor of the cabin is completely flat, surrounded by deeper channels for the footers, with completely straight cuts around the outside, with a chamfer of several feet around the lip.

Starting at 7am in a drizzle, the excavator’s worked until an unscheduled and heavy shower arrived at about 6pm. There’s a bit more digging to do tomorrow, but I think the building crew can start building their forms so that they can pour a basement and a barn this week. Looks like it’ll be beastly hot and humid, but at least it isn’t supposed to rain for the next couple days.

[The first entry for Building the Cabin was July 18, 2011.  The next entry is Drainage & Driveway.]