Dirt Is Flying!

Back again, after a lengthy hiatus of almost 8 months! We encountered a few unexpected obstacles, none of which were related to Wayne Homes. In fact, they've been wonderful in hanging in there with us through our delays. They honored the price from the agreement we signed almost a year ago, although the price of the home went up during that time.

A Silver Lining

Even though it was hard to deal with the delays when we were so eager to start building, the delay benefitted us in one obvious way so far. Due to the wait, our original offer from our lender expired and we needed to apply for a construction loan again. In doing so we hit the absolute low point in the downward swing of interest rates and got a lower rate than we originally would have received!

The Road

Once we received our final go-ahead from the lender we hit the ground running. My contractor for the building of the drive to the house started right away. His first task was to transform the gas well road on the property into a half-mile driveway to the homesite. As promised, he was able to use the existing rock on our property to build a really nice road, straightening out some curves and raising the level in some low areas. Over 55 loads of material were put into the road - my head is swimming over how much money this would have cost to buy that material and truck it in from elsewhere. Below is an example of how much the road was built up in the lower spots and how nice and compacted it turned out...




It was also amazing to watch the heavy equipment tackle some trees that needed to be moved. Sharon was particularly interested in getting to see that done. We now have a bunch of trees pushed to the side, so I put out a call for anybody needing firewood to come help themselves. Here I am with a really big tree that needed to be moved to make way for our driveway entrance from the Township road....




Lot Prep

The excavator was also contracted to do the site prep for our house. This means getting rid of all of the stumps from the trees we cut down and then grading the lot down to the level settled upon from our lot inspection. I knew that there was a slight grade to the lot, but had no idea how much material it would take to be moved to get the lot down to the correct level. Here's a shot of the lot graded down. There's a lot of dirt piled around the site, and the excavation for the foundation has yet to begin.


It's nice to have an experienced excavator who also happens to be my neighbor and can come up with great ideas. All of the stumps from the building site were deposited in the rather large hole created by the rock that was dug out for the road. You can see the hole below, partly dug, with my neighbors above "supervising" the work...




Underground Power Line

We're also running underground electric to our house to avoid dealing with trees falling on power lines. It's a little under 1000 feet to get power to the house. A bunch of small trees had to be cleared out to make a path from the access point at my neighbor's place, paralleling our road for much of the distance. The ditch and conduit will be installed tomorrow. The picture below is taken from the road with the building lot behind me, looking toward the right of way with my neighbor's property barely visible through the trees.




What's Next

It was truly amazing to watch how much was accomplished in about 3 days. It brought home to me again that you need the proper tools to accomplish something. Our next move will be crossing our fingers and trying to prod the power company into installing temporary power so that we can start the actual home construction. That is potentially the element that will slow down our project some. I also need to schedule the other contractors for the water well and gas line, meet with our Wayne Homes Field Manager next week, and take care of a ton of other details. And by the way, due to my job I'll be home for a total of 5 days in August - whew!

Til next time.....