Howell Cabin

Manos and Guinivere came to participate today. Guinivere and I spent a while squaring up string lines to serve as the outside guides for the sill boards.    I cut the sill boards to length. The next step is to drill holes to set them over the anchor bolts. We're not actually allowed to install those sill boards yet, because we have a foundation-only permit, and (remarkably) not a building permit yet. Meanwhile, Eliot and Manos glued together a bunch of plastic conduit that will carry power from the transformer to the shop and the temporary power pole at the house. I spliced the water pipe together and laid that into the trench, too.

Eliot and I were pretty tired today. We took down the diagonal bracing and returned it to Todd, our concrete guy who rented it to us. We waited out a rainstorm, and tidied up the worksite.

After a late night, we rose at 6:30 this morning. We picked up a few emergency backup supplies at the lumberyard, and got up to the site. We double-checked that everything was straight. Eliot vacuumed a few weeks' accumulated crud out of the bottom of the forms, and I sprayed things down with water to cool the rebar. I measured out placement for the anchor bolts, which we'll push in after the concrete is in place. We were just getting these last tasks wrapped up when Tye drove up in the pump truck. Eliot enjoyed the fact that the pump truck dealt with the tree in his way by just going over  it, by a large margin. Boy, that little 3" rubber hose was hard to handle once tons of concrete came blasting out of it! It really enjoyed shoving us around, and we made a fantastic mess. It's pretty wild directing 32 tons of concrete around with your hands. If Quadlock is big kid Lego, then concrete is big kid Play-Doh. The pump truck stopped about a half-yard short -- oh ...

Eliot and I came up Thursday to finish installing the diagonal braces. We got the walls straightened out. They're still very slightly out of square, but the Quadlock is way too stiff to correct that by pushing on the forms. It's a small variation; we should be able to fix it by tweaking the placement of the sill plates. Purple clover have popped out. Tomorrow's the big day! Concrete comes at 10am.

I zoomed up the hill to rent turnbuckles from Todd, the concrete builder who helped us with the footing pour. He gave me some sage advice ("don't season your concrete mix with sage"). I got a bunch of lumber cut and screwed to the Quadlock forms to prepare to install the braces, and had to head home once it got dark.

Everybody came up today. We tidied up a bunch of electrical loose ends from last weekend. I added the last exterior light box, and Eliot finished setting up the switch boxes. I installed watertight boxes for the door entry lights. Eliot made up the ground pigtails for the metal boxes. We got the service conductors installed in the temporary service box. And we made a little progress on the water meter and spigot.

This weekend we wired the service entrance for the panel, roughed in the electrical outlets, and ran all the branch circuits. We also got about 100' of conduit glued together for the trench this morning. That work got interrupted when our friendly neighborhood bear crunched through the forest and curled up for a nap about fifty feet from the cabin and maybe thirty from the trench. That's when we decided it would be a good idea to go back to electrical work inside the cabin...

Today we met with an electrician for advice, and then installed our temporary service pole and our meter and panel for the shop: We also pounded in the indoor receptacles, and covered the attic vents with critter resistant mesh. We also passed our foundation wall inspection. And we took a load of construction debris to the dump. Also I think we saw a bear. Update. It was probably this particular bear. Our neighbors snapped this photo the next day, writing "Hello all, we just had a young visitor-a yearling cinnamon black bear."

Today we installed the cast-in-place straps, top layer wire ties and metal tracks, and the last course of rebar. We improved some bracing we'd installed on Thursday, and installed vertical bracing in anticipation of the adjustable diagonal braces we'll use during the pour. Wildlife today included butterflies in new summer fashions, and this little mammal: One great thing about this project is that the drive always includes a gorgeous view. Today's began with a vivid pastel sun dog and proceeded through a sequence of glorious color patterns against a foreground fading red to green in atmospheric perspective. Camera couldn't do it justice but here's just one view.

We spent six hours today carefully shaving off a quarter inch here and there from the top layer of the foam, in an effort to make the wall top surface as level as humanly possible. We leveled the first layer, the third layer, and now the yup layer. I suspect it shouldn't be this difficult, but: beginners. We made small adjustments to dial the wall lengths in precisely, then secured the wall seams with strips of plywood. Then we made a jig to cut little pigeonholes for the straps that embed in the concrete to keep the house from blowing away. Along the way we discovered that the designer had made two errors in the placement of the corner straps. Thankfully he was home and able to correct the mistakes over the phone. So basically a long day to remove about two ounces of styrofoam. Hopefully on Saturday we'll be able to complete the stem wall form.

Everybody got up to the property today and helped out.  Christina and Guinivere put some sealing stain on my sweet ride: Saw this cool feather; hawk? Eliot did a great job helping Siobhan build the forms.