Katie lends a hand

Martin Luther King day today was sunny and warm (57 degrees), and found us at the home site working.
Lest anyone think James is the only one working on the house, here are pictures of Katie and Becky patching divets in the foundation with Krikrete. Katie is shown below, doing the same patch work. We think she will be the youngest construction worker this project will see!

In this photo is James filling in geothermal trench #1 with
his Boy Toy (he says his resume can now include "heavy equipment operator"). Next on the list is digging geothermal trench #2, which will coincidentally lay 3 feet under the trench for bringing in power and cable (the geothermal lines lay 5 and 6 feet under, for the outgoing and incoming lines, and the power conduit only needs to be 3 feet down, given the mild winters and shallow frost line). Note the blue sky in the background, so rare in January around here.

While James filled in the trench, Becky and Katie used kwikrete to fill in divets in the foundation. (The cross braces that held the foundation forms in place had plastic cones at each end which get removed after the forms come down, leaving a ~1-2 inch cone-shaped indent in the foundation wall, which has to get patched to prevent leaks tracking along the metal brace left inside).

This last picture shows what we were patching, I took it in Nov while they were building the forms, showing the metal cross-pieces bridging the forms; the plastic cone that is eventually removed is the grey triangle on the right, and the 2" spoke of metal has a head that holds the brackets for the forms, and is removed when the wall is poured. You can also see the rebar inside the wall; the bars are 12" apart, which is closer than usual, because of the high wind we can expect on top of the mountain here. (As the foundation guy said, there is no way this house will blow off the mountain in a storm!)

We also added a layer of rock on a soft spot on our road this week; until it gets compacted down the only vehicles that can make it up are 4WD or AWD (thank goodness for the Jeeps and Subarus that we drive). We think there is a spring under the road where it goes past our downhill neighbor that is undermining the road at the same spot their septic line goes under the road. Also on the list this week is to redo the last few feet of the road: currently the last 30 feet are at a 16 degree incline, which has proved daunting (and impassable for delivery trucks).