Laying Block

This past weekend we laid up our block. We went with one row of block 8 inches high.
The outside 4 inch block is a decorative piece, then 2 inches of insulation, then a 6 inch regular cinder block on the inside. Like usual we had lots of help. We really couldn't have done it without them.






Here we are snapping the chalk lines and mixing the cement. You'll notice in other photos that we do have a cement mixer. We just don't have an actual outlet yet. So for now we will use our wheelbarrow.







The outside corners were the first to be put down. Then came the striking.















Everybody was helping out it was great!
























Day two: we laid the inside blocks, insulation, and drilled rebar into the slab. The rebar will also stick up into the walls a couple of inches to tie it all together.






























Last block!


















We just had to set some cordwood on it.


























The walls are so close now I can hardly wait. So much work has been put into the building already. Laying up the cordwood walls will be so rewarding. This weekend we will have 5 days off!! Most people will be out celebrating the 4th of July but not us. Our plan is to start with the actual cordwood walls this weekend!!!!!! Woo Hoo

Power and the slab

It's official we have power!!


Now we just need to hook up an outlet on the meter so we can use it.
Work has been keeping us really busy but we are still finding time to work on the house.
We finished up our prep work and......
































Then we poured our slab with a lot of help. We couldn't have done it without these guys!









































Just after we made some finishing touches to the slab, a tree snapped. It was coming right for the slab. The winds were 30 mph! What timing huh. Luckily it got hung up on another tree and we had some time to pull it out of the way of the uncured slab.




















Soon to come, THE WALLS!!!

We built this shed

We built a shed. It's turn key ready for our stuff to move in! The shed was a great way to get some experience in building something. We even did the roof the same way we will do the roof on the cordwood house. A lot of valuable lessons were learned.


































It sure feels good to have a completed project checked off the list. We are planning on covering the shed with a board and batten siding when we get the chance. (so sometime in the next couple of years)


Work has been keeping us busy for the last month and the building projects are keeping us even busier. A lot has happened. We received both are septic and building permits!! Yeah!! Also we should have power to the building site any day. The most exciting project was getting our dirt work done. You can see in the photo that the woods really greened up. It's a nice change.


When the dirt work guy was as the land Cory compacted a sand pad with rented power compactor. The soil on our land is full of boulders the first couple of feet down and then after that it is mostly sand and clay. So we had him dig a hole 6' deep to get us started for our sand point well. He dug the hole where the witcher found a vein.
















Next we dug the footings. Our footings will be 8" thick to support the load of the heavy cordwood walls and the rest of the slab will be 3" thick.
Now that we are back to work, we can only work on the weekends. Rain or shine, bugs and all.














Our window and door frames were milled out for us by a local sawmill. Here is one of many sawmills this place has. The quality and the price is unbeatable. The frames are milled out of local white spruce. They also had free clean cedar sawdust for us. The sawdust will be used in the mortar mix. More on that later.Next... Our concrete slab!

Peeling is History

Well we did it. We are done peeling, cutting, and stacking our wood!!!! It feels sooo good. Our pile of stacked cordwood is 172' feet long x 5' high x 1' deep. Those numbers equal 6.7 cords of wood. We calculated that we would need about 6 cords, so we are sitting comfortable now.
Above and below is all the cedar stacked up. Doesn't it look great.






This spring has been one of the driest on record. There has been extremely high fire danger in the area and we even had a fire close to the land. But we are not complaining of the warm and
dry weather for working and drying our wood. We finished the wood processing, got our piles stacked and covered, and then the rain came. We sure are lucky. A local guy in town had this tin for covering our piles and it works great.


Since all the wood was cut and stacked and it was raining, we took a couple of days off from the land. Cory found these on his days off. I think we will incorporate them into the house somehow.








Next in line is to start our dirt work for the concrete slab and get our right away cleared for power. We have also been working on an 8x12 stick framed shed but more on that later.

This and That

We have been so busy peeling, cutting, and stacking wood, I have neglected to update the blog. So here's whats up. Since my last post a lot has happened. We picked up two more trailer loads from the log home builder. He has been an incredible resource for us. He has even hooked us up with more loggers that have hundreds of cords of dry cedar lying around!! This load of cedar on the left was a bit tough to peel. It probably took us about 6-8 hours. Which really isn't too bad except when you compare it to other loads from the guy that only took 1 or 2 hours. Here is video of me peeling the easy stuff. I love cedar that is 4 to 5 years dry.


These two extra loads put our cut and stacked pile at 140' long x 5' tall x 12" deep. Those numbers equal 5.4 cords. We think we will need about 6 cords plus a little extra to play it safe. So we called up a logger that was suggested and it turned out he had a lot of cedar lying around. This cedar is a dream come true for a
cordwood builder.

Another suggested place had the pieces we would be looking for next. In the corners of the house we will be using 4x4's stacked instead of posts. The 4x4 will be 18" and 24" in length. We will need about 80 of each, equaling 160 4x4s. This is a lot to mill with our little alaskan mill. We were planning on getting a hold of sound cedar or pine and milling it up ourselves, despite the high numbers. But, it just so happened that right next door to this logger, with the hundreds of cords of cedar, there was 4x4's already milled and dried for cheaper than we could do it ourselves!! We have been so lucky. Thanks to the log home builder for setting all this up for us, we really couldn't have had all this fall into place without him.

Here we are cutting the cedar to length. It can get really dusty, hence the face mask.



We also took a few days off to do some fishing and camping before the season closed.






























When we got back from our trip we had a local man come out to the land to witch for water. He showed up with this willow and walked around with it until it turned down. Bam water. Well we hope so because he found a vein 10' from our back door!!! Yeah and he says it's most likely only 30' down. He came well recommend and has found many other wells in the area. Looks like we will be trying for a sand point shallow well. Having a spigot right out our back door would really increase the quality of life. I am really keeping my fingers crossed on this one. By the way, behind the willow is our firewood, not cordwood material.

Lets see what else happened... The power company met us out on the land to discuss bringing in power. There is a pole about 150' away. They want to bring it in underground for the same price as overhead. So we will be going underground. We will be getting an easement from the neighbors and clearing the 20' wide pathway in the next couple of weeks My goal is to get power by the end of May.

We also are waiting on our building/outhouse permit. Tick tock tick tock. Hopefully that will come sooner than later. Then as soon as the road restrictions come off we can get heavy equipment onto the land for dirt work. "As soon as" is a frequently used phase by Cory and I ;)

Wood wood and more wood!

We're putting the trailer to use already. Yesterday we picked up a load of wood from a log home builder located a few hours from us. He wanted to clean up his log yard and get rid of this stuff and well we really needed it. What a deal. Definitely worth the drive and such a nice guy. He even loaded it for us. That's always a bonus over loading it by hand. All the wood is bone dry and the bark is falling off! Peeling the bark off these logs is almost addicting. I can tell you I won't be getting any blisters from peeling this load.



We'll be going back for a another load soon. You just can't have too much.