Down in the Dumps

Finally, today there was a dump truck on the lot.

And there was another (this one looks a little worse for the wear).

In fact there were 3 dump trucks, as promised, lined up and waiting to be loaded with dirt.

But there seems to be a problem.

The dump truck is much, much too small for the trac hoe.

What has happened?

I think I know:

Like the hard red clay

Baking in the Georgia sun,

 I have -at last- cracked.

A little haiku for you as I wait to see if we will actually be able to bring real dump trucks out to the site tomorrow and dig a real basement.

Totally Floored

Today I was totally floored.

Not only did builder Gary find someone who wants our excess dirt,

(insert Halleluja Chorus)

but Drew also sent me pictures as he began to cut our logs into flooring.

Here are our logs. Remember the Wicked Witch green sealer on the ends?  The orange machine in the upper left is Drew's portable saw mill.

Here's another view with the logs in the background, the saw mill, boards for flooring and then scrap.

That's all just from the first log!

In addition to all the flooring, the first log also yielded a bit of hardware.  Drew assumed it was a screw eye for a hammock, but I told him that it could have been a tie up for the horses 40 years or so ago.  Anyone want to venture a guess whether it was horses or a hammock?

Drew also sent examples of rift sawing (above) and quarter sawing (below).

See the swirls (or figure as wood snobs call it) in the quarter sawn boards?

We will have a mix of rift sawn and quarter sawn to make maximum use of the logs.

By the end of the day, Drew had  made all these flooring blanks.

I tell you, he just can't help himself.  Here he goes again with the math.  First on the trees themselves and now on the boards.

I guess that means that the stack represents 527 sq feet of flooring.

So, with flooring piling up and dump trucks lined up, it's time to dig a basement!

Many thanks and a big photo credit to Drew Leviton for today's pictures.

Entrenched and Waiting

We're not waiting for an ambush.

We're waiting for someone who needs dirt.

Our cut and fill calculations indicated that we would have just enough excess dirt to "waste" around the bottoms of the retaining walls.  It seems that we will have about 10 times that, so we must find a home for it.

It's kind of like match making, but dirtier.

We're talking about all of this dirt all the way back to the ribbons.

We must keep it all contained within the "boundaries of construction," so piling it off to the side is not really an option. 

There is simply no room.

Got dirt?

Want about 35 dump truck loads?