Excavation

This post should have come up a couple days ago, but here it is!

So, the excavation is nearly done, all that remains is to widen the ramp that the house will travel up the hill. Tommy and Mike Lequire are meticulous in their excavation. As you can see in this slideshow, the hill has undergone some serious changes.



After the septic and drain fields passed inspection, Tommy began work on digging the basement. His biggest fear was that he would hit significant amounts of rock and would have to hammer them out with a hydraulic hammer. As I type this I can hear him hammering away on some rocks, but fortunately, there was nowhere near the amount of rock that he had expected.

Since I repositioned the house to angle and face down the driveway that comes up the hill, the dirt wall at the back corner is much higher than I had originally anticipated. That is where Tommy ran into the most rock, but it is all dug out now and ready for the house to be pulled in. The ground is nearly level now and the once the house is set over its final location, I can form up for the footers above the ground.

The biggest concern about digging the footers out was that due to time constraints, we might not be able to get the concrete poured prior to the rain that is expected tomorrow. I had no desire to scoop buckets of mud out of the footers if it decided to rain on us.

Listening to: Iron and Wine "The Boy with a Coin" found at fingertipsmusic.com

Taking a second to brag about my brother

As most of you know, my brother, Samuel, is studying watercolor at UT. I try to brag about him every chance I get because his paintings are absolutely amazing. Samuel has always been a much better artist than I, but he has become an accomplished painter in the past couple years.

One thing of note is that Samuel won a major prize in the juried art competition in the spring at UT for this owl.

In fact, the visiting artist in the spring wanted to buy this painting for his private collection. Samuel was unsure if he wanted to sell the painting, so he decided to keep it.

Last week, Samuel went to a lecture by a visiting artist and afterward struck up a conversation with her. She asked to come by his studio the next day and see his work. It turns out the that the she and the visiting artist from the spring are friends from New York and she wanted to buy the owl for him. While in Samuel's studio she saw this blue heron and wanted it for her personal collection.

Samuel sold her both of the paintings and is looking forward to visiting their studios in NYC to gain some additional insight into watercolor.

I hope to get some of Samuels available pieces posted for sale on the internet soon, so stay tuned.

Listening to: Cass McCombs - "That's That" found on fingertipsmusic.com

Baby Steps

Well, the house is finally about ready to be jacked up. I hope to get some more pictures posted in the next few days, but since I have been really busy that has been put on the back burner.

The big news is that, if all goes well, the drain fields and septic tank will pass inspection tomorrow. After that, digging should begin on the footers. I am still torn about what to use for the foundation, blocks, concrete, ICFs, etc. There are so many choices and so many pros and cons. I will probably wind up going with blocks for ease of use and quickness, but it is hard to decide. First things first, though. The footers will hopefully be poured next week, and then the house can be moved.

The house is actually "off" the foundation right now, although it is not completely up in the air. One thing the movers have run into is that the house has settled a lot around the edges over the past 117 years. The chimneys have done a good job of holding up the middle of the house, but there is a nearly six inch crown across the front of the house, and I don't know how much along the length. What this means is that I will have to make the foundation curved rather than square, something that will be interesting to work out.

They will probably get the house up in the air later this week, and hopefully can move it over the footer next week. I will be sure to post pictures once it is up in the air - chimneys and all!

What I am listening to right now:
Band of Horses, Cease to Begin
The National, Boxer

Things keep moving...

So I've been in Minneapolis since Wednesday, and more has gotten done since I've been here than has been done since things started. That may be a slight exaggeration, but here's a brief synopsis of the week.

Tommy Lequire of Lequire Excavating came out and cleared the site of all the trees on Monday and Tuesday. It was amazing to see how everything changed once all the undergrowth was gone. Once I saw how different it looked, I realized that the initial position I had envisioned for the house was not what I would want at all. Now I'm going to turn the house so it faces the final approach up the drive, that way I can have a garage under the master bedroom and a nice parking area at the top of the drive as well.

So I left Wednesday morning to come to MN, and as soon as I got here I got a call from Jeremiah telling me that Tommy was ready to put the septic tank in. Wow! Talk about getting things done. So Tommy has gotten most of the work on drain fields and septic tank done so far, and, to my knowledge has not had any problem with rocks, one of his biggest concerns on the side of that hill.

The movers have come and brought the steel to put under the house, but I have yet to see it so I don't have too much to say, except that I can't wait to get back to town tomorrow and see everything that's been done.

I'll soon have some more to blog about the house move and my trip, but for now I am off to the last formal function of my trip up here. One of the coolest things about my trip so far would have to be my conversations with a colleague from Washington (the state) whose dad moves houses. Talking with her was wonderfully encouraging as I sit here not able to see what is happening with my house.

til next time.

BBK

"More about the lumber" or "The mother of all oaks"

So Jeremiah has worked with a lot of lumber getting ready to build his house. He has spend a lot of time cutting down trees, dragging them out of the woods, preserving them until they are sawed into lumber and then storing the lumber so it dries without any problems.

To tell the tale of the lumber, I will tell the tale of one tree from start to where we are now (not quite the finish yet). Up the hill from where I will be moving my house there are a lot of big trees, and as they die we harvest them for lumber. One such tree that died last year was a big red oak. Now, I have seen bigger trees before, so I won't say it was the biggest red oak that I have ever seen, but it was definitely a big tree.

Jeremiah started by felling a hickory that was probably going to be in the way when the oak came down, and then started to work on the oak. After about 30 minutes (at least) of cutting wedges out of the tree it started to move. Now the tree was over 40 inches in diameter, and the chain saw bar is only 20 inches long, so it requires a lot of cutting to get through the center of a tree this size. If care is not taken to make sure the center is properly cut, a lot of wood can be lost or even worse the tree can do very unpredictable things as it falls.

As Jeremiah cut and cut, I watched the limbs of the tree to make sure that the vibrations of his cutting didn't bring any down (even a 10 pound limb falling from 40 feet up can be dangerous, not to mention a 1000 pound branch). Eventually the tree started to lean and the cutting stopped - for a minute. The tree creaked and then settled to a new position, so it was back to cutting. After a couple such pauses, the tree slowly leaned past its breaking point and the last few fibers holding to the trunk slowly gave way. An uncut hickory in the way turned to splinters as the oak plowed through it, and even some of the smaller limbs at the top of the oak tore into a massive poplar. As the trunk crashed in to the ground the earth shook with a magnitude that rivals the frequent blasts at the nearby limestone quarry. Leaves and branches fell off of trees all around as each living tree gave up its offering to the long dead, but now fallen elder of the forest.



At its base, the tree was 38 inches across, and its trunk was straight for 28 feet, finally branching out at a diameter 30 inches. We decided that a 16 foot section from the trunk would be best, based on a slight curve at this point in the tree. After much additional sawing, this piece was finally cut. Now to get it off the hill.

Originally the plan was to hook the tree to the back of the tractor and drag it down the hill. The hardest part, though, would be that we had to go back up part of the hill to get to a safe way down the hill. To give you an idea of how steep this hill is, we have yet to be able to drive a vehicle forwards up the hill due the grade. Every trip up the hill has to be made in reverse as about halfway up the hill the front wheels of any of our equipment have come off the ground.

Even dragging the tree up the first part of the hill which was not too steep of a grade proved to be too much for the tractor to handle, forwards, in reverse, using the bucket; nothing worked! Jeremiah eventually came back up the hill another way and pushed the tree part of the way down the hill via another route. Its roll down the hill was unfortunately halted by a large tree (a hickory, I think) which refused to yield, even in the face of a log that probably weighed over 6 tons. (Note to self, this is a good reminder of what happens when a car hits a tree; normally the tree refuses to yield.)

Fortunately, with the log in this position, Jeremiah was able to endcoat the logs, the next step along the way. We paint the end of the logs with aluminum paint so that they do not dry unevenly. Normally the moisture escapes from the end of a log much faster than from the outside of a log where the tree's natural "skin" keeps most of the moisture in. This uneven drying of the log results in major cracking and destressing of the log, which in turn reduces the yield of the lumber. Once the log was lying against a tree, both ends were accessible and the log was endcoated.

A few weeks later, we had rented a track loader and we decided to see how it would handle the hill and if it could move some of the timbers off the hill. Not surprisingly it had no major difficulty getting up the hill (in reverse of course), but it struggled with the mother log nonetheless. After using chains and cables, pushing and pulling, Jeremiah and the loader were finally able to get the log unstuck, and with a lot of work, were able to get it down the hill.

When Mark Hinds brought his saw mill out, Jeremiah and I asked him if he could work with a log that big. The maximum width board his sawmill can handle is 24 inches, so it would require taking slabs off the outside of the log until it was finally down to a manageable size. Although I was not present for the sawing of the log, Jeremiah and Mr. Hinds were able to get the log onto the sawmill with the help of the big farm tractor. Unfortunately the weight of the log pushed the supports for the sawmill into the ground, so it had to be reset to level.

After a long day of work, Mr. Hinds and Jeremiah finally had the log cut into lumber, resulting in some of the most beautiful wide plank red oak that I have ever seen. Jeremiah and I took the lumber, trimmed the ends and recoated them, and then stacked and stickered them so that they would dry evenly. When it comes time for Jeremiah to use the lumber in building his house, there will be many more steps involved, but for now the boards are sitting and drying.

Permits and lumber

Not too much progress to report on the house, physically speaking, at least. The biggest progress on the house was that I got my drain field and septic permit. Valarie at the Tennessee Department of Groundwater protection is absolutely amazing! She, by some miracle, was able to inspect my site the day I turned in the application, so I can go pick up the permit today! Thank you, Valarie, and I hope I spelled your name right!

I hope to get the rest of the necessary permits today, that way the excavation can start this week hopefully. I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures of that, since the hill will look a little different when they are done. One big change will happen since they will have to cut a path wide enough for the house to come up the hill.

The big story of the week was the lumber, though! Jeremiah and I had cut down a bunch of dead trees and gotten all the logs together. (I'll do another post on that in a couple days - we had some big logs!) We had Mark Hinds from East Tennessee Sawmill Company come out and cut them up. This is back breaking work for anyone who has never done this before. I don't have time for a whole synopsis right now, but I'll tell more about this in a later post.

'Til next time.

BBK

A bit more history

Now that the painting is done (hopefully, we'll see how it looks in the morning), I'd like to go into the history of the house a little bit. This information is as told to me by Mr. H. C. Greenway. I hope to sit down and record him talking about the house soon since my memory isn't always the best.

The house was built by Mr. Greenway's paternal grandfather in 1890. As he puts it, it was made of the finest materials available. Apparently, the Carter family had one built in 1889 by the same carpenters and then another one around the corner was built in 1891 by some of the same workers. The Carter house burned down many years ago (note to self, research this) but the other one was purchased and renovated in the 1980's and is a beautiful house.

The Greenway family had corn farms in this area, well before the rock quarry ever became the dominant industry. Back in those days, there was a marble quarry up over the hill, but they hadn't started quarrying limestone.

When the house was built it had poplar siding and poplar roofing. The roofing was replaced after soot in the chimney caught fire and nearly caught the roof on fire. The Carter house had burned down the prior year under similar circumstances. Mr. Greenway's father started replacing the roof the next day and it has had a metal roof since. The poplar siding is still there under the vinyl siding, and from what I have seen appears to be in pretty good shape.

The side porch was originally open air and the laundry room was not there. The bathroom off the side porch was actually a pantry that had to be accessed by going out onto the porch. There was a cistern just off the porch that held the rainwater, and when it was dry they had to go down to a nearby cave to get water. They also kept their milk and other perishables in the cave. Under the master bedroom there was a root cellar where they kept apples, potatoes and carrots year round.

Mr. Greenway described how, when he was a boy (1920-30's), they were just starting to quarry limestone using wheelbarrows and sledgehammers, a Works Progress Administration program. There was a railroad that ran through the area, but this quarry wasn't big enough to need that. They used the railroad to haul cattle, marble and, for a period of time, acid-wood as well. What, you may ask, is acid-wood? At that time, the most dominant tree in the area was the American Chestnut. The blight had hit, and they were all dying off. Loggers would cut any affected trees down, chop them up, load them on wagons, and haul them to the railroad so they could be shipped to mills to have the tanic acid extracted to tan leather!