Marching On through the Storms
Ouch! Since the last weekend in October, the weather has beaten us up pretty good. Snow storms, ice storms, rain storms, freezing temps, warm temps, etc... On a daily basis at this point we are needing to employ our best winter weather management techniques. Take a large 2 wheel drive box truck filled with windows, insulation, sheetrock or whatever have you, add one part solid icy driveway, add one part unpredictability, add one part lots of trucks, vans, cars attempting to access the sites, park, manuever, turn around and you get a complicated cocktail of chaos. Snow is not so bad, but it eliminates parking areas for the tradesmen, meaning everytime someone comes or goes, someone else has to move their vehicle. The ice that is building up everywhere is a true foe, equally competent at causing logistical issues as well as safety issues. Putting on a roof after melting 1/2" of ice off, construction steps covered in black ice, ankle-breaking divots in the rough earth, soft spots, hard spots, things froze together, cold houses. This week we were attempting to install 2 roofs, among many other things. We encountered an ice storm on Tuesday, a blizzard on Thursday, and an ice/sleet/snow storm today. Onward we trudge.
Carr Residence Well Drilling
At the Carr Farmhouse, aka Farm #9, aka Lot 2, here is Peter Kestler drilling for water. Straight down into the earth with his boring machine, - first through the clay, then the hardpan, and in this case, after 100 ft - bedrock. Then down another 380 ft before hitting a Jed Clampett like vein of water - 100 gallons a minute when usually 10 glns per minute is considered great. if the Carr's ever want to open a 100 room hotel, they have the water for it.
Well drilling, along with quite a few others, is usually the risk of the home owner. Most builders will give an allowance for so many feet deep, and then the rest is the responsibility of the homeowner - the principle behind it being that no one can guess how deep you will need to go to find the water. However, as in many building contract scenarios, most contracts specify something like 200 ft, which for anyone in the industry knows is setting the homeowner up for that dreaded word - 'upcharge'. At $12/foot drilled, a very common 400 foot well would cost the homeowners $2400 extra.
At Catskill Farms, we don't play that game. We pay for it - period. The risk is ours. The customers can still have that leather couch they laid away, or in the case of Mr Carr - the concrete mixer he's been dying to buy.
Cottage 6
The Owner (actually I'm the owner until we are finished, but who's nitpicking) visited his house-in-progress today after a 4+ week hiatus of work and travel. We hope he was quite pleased at the progress. Today we laid out the electric inside the house, and discussed the bathroom designs. We also designed two pretty neat porch systems - one with open rafters, the other with exposed rafters and screened-in porch. To really pimp this place out, we are thinking about stoning the entire chimney, and maybe the foundation as well. Borrowing from a barn motiff, we are using rough hewn vertical board and batten siding on the exterior, and a bold black shingled roof.
By the numbers -
Our newest project is really moving along - we are cooking with gas. 850 ft of country road. 1000 ft of winding country driveways. 3 houses well under way. 3 propane torpedo tanks buried and waiting. 3 wells drilled for a total of 1200 ft of earth boring. And boy did we hit water. At Lot 2, we hit over 1o0 gllns a minute- mind you that 10 gallons is considered fantastic. 3 septic systems well on their way. 1100 feet of over head electric feeding the houses, 4 electric poles. 700 feet of underground buried electric directly feeding the homes. I'll save the rest until I have some more pics. Let me just say its a bit hairy out there, everyday brings 4 micro climates through the area - icy rain, snow, mud, freezing temps. Not much to worry about from your office - but start adding 14 vans, trucks, dumptrucks, delivery trucks, etc... trying to access the houses, and it's not hard to imagine the chaos of unexpected hurdles being hurled at us as we try to keep on keeping on. And, if you have been following this narrative for any length of time, you may be wondering how the race between the baby and the farmhouse 9 is going - well, it's neck and neck, and we are working weekends to gain an edge.
