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kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.

Himalayan blackberries in the Northwest do not play games.

My last thread is still going because I'm still trying to finish the House of Theseus to sell it. But things are ramping up on the new place so rather than continue with that megathread I figured I'd start a new one and try to stay on topic.

My wife hates New England winters, summers, bloodsucking bugs, etc. She's not wrong, Washington is a much better place. I just never knew any better since I grew up in New England. So we are finishing and selling that house to fund building the house and shop-barn-mahal we actually want, on 5 acres of land West of Seattle.

How it looked when we bought it:
(Placeholder until I find and upload old pics)

When we bought it, it had just been logged and halfheartedly replanted with Douglas fir by the loggers. And it had a 6 year development moratorium on it because of the type of permit they logged it under. That was in late 2016; the moratorium would be up in late 2022 but we jumped through a bunch of hoops and got it lifted. We also spent a week in January 2019 replanting it with literally a thousand more seedlings.
(Placeholder till I find and upload old pics)

Ideally, it will grow back into a forest and we can hide here forever and tell the rest of the world to go screw. If things really go south we will try and pick up one of the neighboring vacant lots for farming purposes as well.

Next, construction plans!

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kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
We just finally got our septic plan approved a few months ago and have been playing email and phone tag with the well driller. Last week I finally got plans set in stone to come out for well drilling this week. So I hopped on a plane Monday and holy poo poo, the place is overgrown, and it was not that bad in early March when I came here for septic planning and soil logging.

Time to dive in.
It took me 15 minutes to thrash my way through 300 feet of blackberries, recover my loppers, slog back 200 feet, and then another 2 hours to clear this entrance road of brush and blackberries.


Looking in from the road, after cutting out a bunch more blackberries and scotch broom.


Then the well drillers unofficially let me borrow their mini excavator to make it so they could actually drill the well this week instead of having to clear this themselves. This is a lot faster.


Well goes right about there.


Access road after hand-clearing it and then driving the excavator over what was left a few times.


Well drilling site is cleared and mostly leveled. Sad to monster-truck a dozen or so of the trees we planted, but the barn is gonna go on this footprint anyways roughly so we didn't really lose much.


Looking the other way.


This is the rough layout we're planning on.


(Google earth screenshot here)

The public utility quoted us 30k for grid hookup so it's uncertain if we're paying that, doing all the work but the grid tie ourselves, or going wind and solar because OW.

We will be living in an RV until my house sells, at which point it's full speed ahead on building the barn, then park the RV in the barn and live in it while building the house.

kastein fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Oct 1, 2020

Rhyno
Mar 22, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!
Ground floor!



I've enjoyed the hell out of your other thread, I can't wait to see this project ramp up.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
It'll be slow going for a while. All I expect to get done over the next few months (hopefully) is septic plan final approval, septic install, talk to the neighbors and utility about collaborating on grid hookup, and begin drafting plans for the house and barn.

Well drilling rig won't be here till late today at the earliest. I was hoping we would be drilling today but they texted me last night after having a mechanical failure. Guess I'm probably flying home Sunday not tomorrow at this point.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
I'm looking forward to following this! Do you know how far down the water table is?

When I was a kid, my dad decided it'd be a good idea to drill a well in our backyard in the California hills. He went down some hilarious distance through mostly bedrock, and ended up with a well that could provide supplemental gardening water during the winter and ran dry every summer...for about ten years, then the pump broke and he couldn't get replacement parts without rebuilding the entire thing, so he just left it to sit.

IOwnCalculus
Apr 2, 2003





Future AI compound when climate change forces some of us further north? :v:

Rhyno
Mar 22, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!

IOwnCalculus posted:

Future AI compound when climate change forces some of us further north? :v:

I got dibs on the top bunk.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

I'm looking forward to following this! Do you know how far down the water table is?

When I was a kid, my dad decided it'd be a good idea to drill a well in our backyard in the California hills. He went down some hilarious distance through mostly bedrock, and ended up with a well that could provide supplemental gardening water during the winter and ran dry every summer...for about ten years, then the pump broke and he couldn't get replacement parts without rebuilding the entire thing, so he just left it to sit.

Neighbors well is just under 100 feet, we're hoping for the same.

I can't guarantee space for anyone, but there's plenty of land for sale cheap on this street and I'd love to have more like minded people around.

tomapot
Apr 7, 2005
Suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness.
Oven Wrangler

Rhyno posted:

Ground floor!



I've enjoyed the hell out of your other thread, I can't wait to see this project ramp up.

Bookmarked and 5’d!

sharkytm
Oct 9, 2003

Ba

By

Sharkytm doot doo do doot do doo


Fallen Rib
In! Godspeed, you crazy fucker.

jink
May 8, 2002

Drop it like it's Hot.
Taco Defender
Here as well. The lunacy will be reduced, I'm sure...

H110Hawk
Dec 28, 2006
:stare: those thorns.

Wrar
Sep 9, 2002


Soiled Meat
Are we about to witness kastein unleashed from the confines of 120 years of construction dogma?

:getin:

immoral_
Oct 21, 2007

So fresh and so clean.

Young Orc
I'm just here for the inevitable tinbanging in a year and a half.

sharkytm
Oct 9, 2003

Ba

By

Sharkytm doot doo do doot do doo


Fallen Rib

Wrar posted:

Are we about to witness kastein unleashed from the confines of 120 years of construction dogma?

:getin:

I think "about" is optimistic, although the market is pretty crazy right now in New England.

Elviscat
Jan 1, 2008

Well don't you know I'm caught in a trap?

H110Hawk posted:

:stare: those thorns.

They're pretty good.

Note to self: Do NOT wear sandals to Kastein's place again.

Jaded Burnout
Jul 10, 2004


:allears:

Coasterphreak
May 29, 2007
I like cookies.

Elviscat posted:

They're pretty good.

Note to self: Do NOT wear sandals to Kastein's place again.



I'm pretty sure steel toed boots are basically mandatory if you go anywhere near Kastein.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Sorry dude, yeah the blackberries are rabid. At least you didn't get a nail through your foot in my kitchen like Slow is Fast did back in 2012ish though. (For the record, I did warn people not to step on piles of debris.)

immoral_ posted:

I'm just here for the inevitable tinbanging in a year and a half.

I'll be using a much more traditional unit for this house and designing it to have ducts run from square 1 instead of having to shoehorn them in after the fact. So it'll be a lot more boring this time. Hell, I'll be able to do a proper manual-J without going loving insane. I wouldn't be surprised if it's all 16x8 and 8in round with no custom parts except the tees and some transitions.

I like our midea mid static ducted units performance, but I'm not very impressed with their tech support (they completely ignored me despite me literally asking them simple questions so I could buy things from them) documentation or spare parts availability.

Jaded Burnout
Jul 10, 2004


immoral_ posted:

I'm just here for the inevitable tinbanging in a year and a half.

Going all H H Holmes but sheet metal trapdoors.

dreesemonkey
May 14, 2008
Pillbug
I know you've got your plans set but if you moved your shop closure to the eventual house you could have water/septic there as well. Unless that's already planned and I missed it. I don't think you'd regret having water/septic hookups in your shop.

I had a similar desire someday to build a pole building "cabin" and park a camper in it with water/sewer hookup until I was ready to finish out the inside.

Darchangel
Feb 12, 2009

Tell him about the blower!


kastein posted:

I can't guarantee space for anyone, but there's plenty of land for sale cheap on this street and I'd love to have more like minded people around.

Tempting. We've never lived anywhere but TX, but wife is... unenthusiastic about more TX summers.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Put it this way, we paid 23k for just over 5 acres, the 40 acre lot that hasn't been logged in 20 years and has a nice young forest growing on it already is valued at 250k.

Well drillers just finally got their service truck here. They went to go get the drilling rig next. Cross your fingers we will be drilling by end of tonight and hopefully finish up tomorrow.

There's basically no code enforcement aside from building permit stuff, if you want to have 20 dead cars in your yard go right ahead. I will hopefully have a 40x80 barn with a 2 post lift in it set up by end of next year. Anyone who isn't a terrible person is welcome to use it when I'm not doing so.

I looked up the neighbors well and it's 97 feet. They never even hit bedrock, the whole well is in overburden. Really hoping we hit after around the same depth.

kastein fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Oct 2, 2020

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
That sounds really nice, to be honest. What's the climate like?

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I had a whole big post written up about how nice it is but the awful app decided to eat my post draft for some reason so... It's nice. Really nice. Very mild most of the year. Fin.

Service truck got here.


And the drilling rig backing in.


They're good at this poo poo. Actually got the well a couple feet further away from the barn corner than I was hoping, AKA my barn can be bigger now.


All set up and ready for morning. Hopefully I have good news tomorrow.


I've got some more blackberries to kill now so that's all for today.

cakesmith handyman
Jul 22, 2007

Pip-Pip old chap! Last one in is a rotten egg what what.

Do those blackberries at least give decent fruit?

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
They do, but I arrived right about when most of the fruit is old and rotting on the vines. I guess a few weeks ago was blackberry season.

Alright... I should get my rear end up and finish clearing the blackberries from around the rig.

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

You've got a miniex with a blade on site. Is there some reason you didn't just push out the entire area with the blade before they got there with the equipment? Would have taken all of 20 minutes.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Because I'm a bull in a china shop who barely knows which control to grab :v:

I actually did do that on some of this area.

I'm also trying to preserve as many of the trees we planted as possible because we want this to be a forest not a field, and I'm nowhere near good enough with the machine to avoid running poo poo over that I don't want to.

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

kastein posted:

Because I'm a bull in a china shop who barely knows which control to grab :v:

Oh, that would explain it. I thought you'd run those before. Yeah, it's not as easy as a youtube education on running one :)

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
It took me a good solid half day on Tuesday to be grabbing the right lever and moving it on the right axis at least 80% of the time. I'm not known for being well coordinated.

I've run a mid 70s Case 580b but never a modern joystick machine.

Wednesday I was a bit better after sleeping on my learning, and I actually did pretty alright today clearing enough space for their rollback truck loaded with drill rod and well casing to back into. They're 20ft down, casing seal bentonite in and welding the next 20ft of casing on now.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Alright!

Well is drilled. They hit water at 128ft, but we put another 20ft of casing in after that whole stick was done (total of 160ft) to improve flow and give access to more reserve capacity during dry summers. A bit more expensive than we were hoping, the plan was 100ft, but hopefully it's a once in a lifetime cost.

This is the second 20ft length of pipe going in. Volume warning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80c9o_kxO20

Then weld the next 20ft on and repeat.


Pound and drill until it's at chest level again. Repeat.


Testing water level: you pull the drill bit as far up as you can, then turn the air compressor on and lower the bit until you start getting water. That's about the quiescent level of the water in the casing. Indicated by first finger in camera field of view. The bottom of the casing is about level with the drilling platform, give or take a few feet. We should have roughly 32ft of water in the casing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRMA3xR5tvM

That's all for today. Well flow test, liner, and capping tomorrow.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
It appears that quartz is harder than the other kind of stone in this pebble. Glacial till, I wonder where the stone actually came from? Probably Canada or something.


Well drillers notes.


Translated:
158' of casing from top of casing to bottom of screen
Top of screen is 150'8" below top of casing
We hit water initially at 128' below surface
Water level in casing rose to 118'5" after recovering from drilling (which forces a buttload of air into the soil, probably depressing water level a bit, plus a bit of static pressure)
A bit over 32' of water standing in the casing
Tested at 10gpm (what I asked for) for like 15 minutes while flushing the filter media sand around the screen, it is already coming out pretty clean and level dropped 6'6" in the process. Recovered nicely in a few minutes.
Some kind of magic math told him this well is theoretically good for 49gpm. That's WAY over what we need, even though the state likely will mandate a fire suppression system given climate change and the fact that Oregon had bad wildfires this year. I don't disagree with them on this.

Well well well what do we have here

tangy yet delightful
Sep 13, 2005



I was actually meaning to ask your thoughts about how you will build and landscape in consideration of wildfire risk. Looking forward to following what you do here.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Well. That's a great question. I've never had to, in New England a drought means it's still raining, just not as much as we would like. I need to get ahold of the code book for fire suppression and start planning. I assume I'll need sprinklers inside and if they have adopted the California system, I may need to put exterior and/or roof sprinklers and a large pressure tank in.

I'm also going to have to ask about setback between trees and building. We were hoping to go with the "cabin nestled into a grove of trees" thing, but that won't play well with fire safety and home insurance probably won't like it either now that I think about it.

Dr. Garbanzo
Sep 14, 2010
In Australia we have a recommended distance between buildings and trees to help stop things burning quite as quickly. We also have intense building codes for places that are deemed at risk of fire and a lot of it is to do with stopping embers blowing into the building envelope itself but even with that places still burn because it only prevents it up to a point and nothing will really stop the sorts of fires we copped last summer.

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

kastein posted:

Well. That's a great question. I've never had to, in New England a drought means it's still raining, just not as much as we would like. I need to get ahold of the code book for fire suppression and start planning. I assume I'll need sprinklers inside and if they have adopted the California system, I may need to put exterior and/or roof sprinklers and a large pressure tank in.

I'm also going to have to ask about setback between trees and building. We were hoping to go with the "cabin nestled into a grove of trees" thing, but that won't play well with fire safety and home insurance probably won't like it either now that I think about it.

Ask the local FD what they recommend but yeah, nestling in trees is a huge no go.

This is a huge overgeneralization but generally anything you do to try to emphasizes "wilderness/nature" is likely going to bite you in the rear end when it comes to dealing with fires because all that shits gonna burn.

Jaded Burnout
Jul 10, 2004


May I suggest replacing the nearest trees with fire retardant car dealership inflatable waving dudes. Namaste.

cakesmith handyman
Jul 22, 2007

Pip-Pip old chap! Last one in is a rotten egg what what.

Dig a basement the whole house can slot down into with a solid fireproof ceiling cap.
Observation dome, air filtration, hydraulic lift mechanism etc left to your usual mechanical aptitude.

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Jaded Burnout
Jul 10, 2004


cakesmith handyman posted:

Dig a basement the whole house can slot down into with a solid fireproof ceiling cap.
Observation dome, air filtration, hydraulic lift mechanism etc left to your usual mechanical aptitude.

I once worked at a company that did the digital signage around football pitches, and the way fire evacuations work there (particularly after the Bradford disaster) is that all the fans need to be able to quickly get onto the pitch, tricky when there's waist-high 4" thick LED panels around three sides.

There are a number of solutions to this now, but at the time Man United was the first to get them fitted, and the solution they went with was to, as you say, dig a concrete pit underneath them all so they could all be dropped at a moment's notice, and this had to be tested before every match.

Did they fit a hydraulic lift to bring them back up? No, only the richest football club in the world installing £1m of hardware, why bother? To be fair they only need to go *down* in a hurry. So whenever I worked a match there I got to see an admittedly impressive tonnage of computer hardware drop 4ft into the ground, but then also got to see two guys from the club named Dave and Steve go round with a hand jack and lift them back up one by one.

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