Fun with sewage

Yeah! Septic systems. Everyone's favorite subject. The town sure thinks so. You need three permits out here to build your house: one for your house, one for your well, and one for your septic system and tile bed. The town inspector needs to make a special trip just to check the tilebed before it is buried. I guess they don't want your toilet water ending up in the neighbors well.

The first thing done on the house was to do a percolation test where an engineer digs a hole, fills it with water, and calculates how quickly the water disappears. It should disappear quickly, because you don't want liquid manure pooling and stinking up your yard. That gets you your permit.

Image 1 shows the first layer of coarse sand layed after the bulldozer removes the soil and tree roots. After that, add a layer of clear 3/4'' gravel (Image 2). Then, lay down the weeping tile (Image 3). Then, wait for the inspector to check the work, and bury with one layer of crushed stone, more sand, and cover with soil.

The weeping tile is actually the perforated plastic pipes shown here. The liquid fecal matter overflows in the septic tank, flows downhill, and is spread evenly over the bed shown here. The sand and gravel filter out all the crap (literally).

Mmmm. Lunch anyone?

Delivering heating system

Lisa caught me delivering the heating system from Vermont. The solar collectors took up the bulk of space on the truck. The big tall thing is the water tank, which needs to be kept upright (the other one is me). Yes, it's a tall puppy, about 6 feet high, and will keep the plumber on a ladder when he installs the cold water intake and output. I wish I could claim credit for this packing job, but I cannot. The guys at the radiant floor company really know how to pack a truck. I drove extra careful and avoided potholes for fear of damaging the collectors and glass-lined tank.

Finished porch

Finally finished the porch (only the metal roofing covers remain). The porch serves the practical purpose of preventing water from dripping on your head as you exit the door (or worse, getting walloped with snow sliding off the roof), keeping the summer sun from overheating the house, and giving you a nice place to sit, rain or shine. The ends of the porch are flat so that you can leave the porch without getting dripped on the rain.

We went with 6x6 posts which aren't from our woods. I thought we could use 4x4 posts as we have with our current balcony, so I sawed up a bunch of those last summer. However, Will recommended 6x6 posts. Thinking about snow sliding onto the porch from our rather large roof
convinced me to go witht the more solid 6x6 posts. The rest of the porch is straight out of the back of the property. It's hard to see in these pictures, but the wood is unplaned and unsanded. If you click on the imagery, you can see the rough texture. My philosophy on porches is that sitting on them should make you feel like you are in a farm in a western (one with good carpenters). We will eventually sand the floor planks once the project is complete and people are done trekking dirt and construction boots across it. We'll probably seal it to protect it from rain, snow, and sun. Hemlock is somewhat resistant to rot, but it is a soft wood and prone to scuffs.

Here's a detail of the timber ends showing how the rafter rests on the rafter plate . The roof actually overhangs the rafter plate, which in turn overhangs the last post resting on the deck. Also visible are the 1'' planks that act both as roof and ceiling. I thought I'd sand these, but others say they like them rough sawed. Great! Less work!

Leveling the concrete

The concrete is poured directly on the ground and spread using a special rake. It's backbreaking work because the concrete is heavy and the areas involved large. Once evenly distributed, the concrete is smoothed using a special polisher. More bending and back breaking as they check for straightness using levels. You need an eye for a level floor to do a good job. Our floor came out very nicely, thank-you.

Concrete pour for slab

The snow also brought with it our concrete slab. The cement truck backed right up to the door and funneled the cement right into the house. The cement is then funneled to different parts of the floor using an interior chute.

The truck actually ended up making two trips. It couldn't hold enough to do the whole floor. Wish I'd known the capacity. I would have made some adjustments to the floor design and saved some money.

We protected the bottom of the posts and chimney from splatter using newspapers. Apparantly, the concrete stains the wood permanently becuae it is alkaline and corrosive. It's a messy job too. The concrete splatters when it hits the ground.

I was away at work, and Lisa had to go into Montreal to take care of some parental health matters later that morning, so she only got pictures of the beginning of the pour. Fortunately, Papa came buy later and got pictures of the workers finishing the job (to be posted later).

April on the Pinnacle

So after 3 weeks of warm, dry April weather, the month goes out like a lion with 18'' of heavy, wet snow. By the time it ended, our yard looked something like this. The snow did not accumalate directly front of the house (foreground) because the running overflow from our well flows down the hill here (into our basement sump pump).

Here's a picture of one of our pear trees in bloom the day after. Most of the snow had melted by then, but it still makes for an unlikely picture. Fortunately, our trees did not suffer because the temperature never really got enough below freezing to damage the blossoms. I think we'll get pears this year.

Laying down the hydronic tubing

This is not an initiatory ritual of an ancient Greek mystery cult, nor is it a scene from the Lord of the Rings (with Alex starring as a Hobbit and me acting as an Orc). This is Alex and me on April 14 laying the tubing for the hydronic slab. Alex is tying down the tubing to a wire mesh using plastic ties. The tubing is somewhat unwieldy, so you need a second person to hold and unroll the tubing. Also visible is the polyethylene vapor barrier to keep the humidity away from the house interior, and the Styrofoam board used to insulate the outside perimeter of the floor.

The tubing is attached to the slab manifold, shown here. Hot water will be distributed by the manifold from the hot water tank to three loops that snake throughout the concrete floor. Here, only the first loop and the outflow of the second loop is attached to the copper tubing of the manifold.

My Dad has a whole bunch of pictures of the finished layout that I'll post later.

Judge presiding

Although it doesn't look it here, Don was not just watching the carpenters all day. Don was actually pretty busy loading boards with us for most of the day. In fact, he was quite tired by the end of the job, although he wouldn't admit it ... at first. Loading boards is a grind.

In the picture, Willy has finished the job and left his timbers for the day, but you will notice the specialized carpentry equipment remaining. You see a portable table saw used to cut the deck boards, and the specialized DeWalt boom box, with protective railing and a durable yellow casing, lest a workman dissatisfied with the choice of music bang it up.

The artiste returns

William (timber framer and ébéniste) was measuring the kitchen for cabinets last week when I mentioned the porch going up. He mumbled something about doing the notching for the porch. Later in the week, I mumbled something to Alex about Willy doing the notching, and Alex mumbled something about Willy doing the notching on site. Well, the deck was going up the morning of June 2, so I called Willy on the evening of June 1 to confirm ... too much mumbling going on ... Willy hadn't heard about it.

Fortunately, he came out and did the notching, bringing all his tools with him. It means that the frame of the porch will be as nice as the frame inside. When we got back from delivering our first load of planks to Cowansville, Will was halfway though the job. We got one shot of him in action, and one of him looking at the camera. I didn't get pictures of all the specialized tools he had along, but you can see his giant chisel and giant circular saw here. It's quite a specialized craft with specialized tools.

Unfortunately, we did not get the porch up and will have to wait until next week before we see the final product. I can hardly wait.

Some landscaping

I managed to get this blade onto the back of the tractor to even out the sand infront to the porch back on May 24, 2010. I looked so happy that Lisa grabbed the camera and snapped this picture as I returned from the job.

Moving wood to the driers II

Spent Friday loading up the truck and trailer for the drier. Here's the full load, which I loaded all by myself. This was way harder than doing it as a team of three. Note the posture indicating that I really wished I'd taken a water and lunch break instead of working for 4 1/2 hours straight. The planks are smaller than the hemlock, but they make for a heavy load. I had to floor the truck to get it up and over the hill on the way to Cowansville ... and, yes, we did have a little orange flag at the end of the lumber sticking outback of the trailer.

I was desperately tired and needed help unloading the wood, and to keep me focused on the drive to Cowansville. Here's Lisa at the driers with all the wood delivered so far. She's sitting on the hemlock. The rest is all hardwood. We were both pretty zonked afterward so we had a pizzaghetti dinner at Frelighsburg for dinner.

Installing the windows

We installed the windows in early April. There was a nice three week stretch of warm, dry weather that let us get this done. Papa came out to take a few pictures and got some really nice ones. The first picture gives an idea of how the windows were installed. Francois (shown here talking to the owner) shimmed them into the openings before sealing the holes with foam insulation. The picture also shows a full length view of the interior part of the chimney, how nicely the light plays with the yellow hemlock ceiling, and how it looked before we had the floor slab poured.

With the snow melted, Papa also managed to get a new pespetive on how the house interacts with surrounding landscape. This view is from the south side where there is a small pond along a path that leads to the sugar house in the back woods of the property. It's one of my favorite views of the house. When the leaves come out, it disappears!

Cutting up the logs II

The lesser qualiy hardwood species (sugar maple, black cherry, white ash, and yellow birch) were transported to a hill further down the hill. These werw smaller logs or logs with more knots in them, so they have imperfections in them and tend to warp as they dry. Generally, they are used for flooring, because flooring uses smaller planks and the imperfections can be removed as you saw the wood to size. Here's a before picture. I have an after picture of the sawed wood somewhere. I'll post it later.

Cutting up the logs

Here I am helping the sawyer cut up the logs into boards. It was very dirty work, especially when things got wet and rainy. The hemlock sawdust in particular stained my T-shirts into a reddish brown tie-die. The logs are rolled manually from the stack onto a hydrolic lift on the side of the saw (shown here). The log is then hoisted onto the trailer. The sawyer then moves the blade down the length of log, slicing off first the bark, then one board at a time. I then removed the boards and stacked them. The shown log here is ash, which will go into the steps of the staircase. Ash is among the toughest of the hardwoods, and good for stairs and flooring. We may also use it for countertops, although Willy (timber framer and cabinet maker) might need to special order some to get the dimensions he needs.

It was a grinding, hard lifting and exhausting, but the sight of stacked boards at the end of the day was worth it. The hemlock was particularly water laden and heavy as lead. The biggest boards. shown here, were a few 2''x12" board, 17 feet in length, and we nearly killed ourselves stacking it. It was also a challenge fitting them into the trailer for transport to the driers. The plan is to dry them, plane and sand them nicely, then have the sawyer cut them into tongue and groove planks that fit together snugly. They will make for nice plank flooring on the second floor of the timber frame, while the opposite side will act as a nice plank ceiling for the bedroom and mezzanine area. They will also act to solidify the structure of the frame one they are fitted together (the frame will be overbuilt by a large margin. Also shown here are some shorter planks, some 4x4 posts to hold up porch roofs, and some 1'' black cherry (the cherry, of course, is on the top).

We cut most of the hemlock into 1 1/2'' x 6" planks of varying lengths. The lesser quality boards went into the southern porch, but most will eventually go into siding. These will be cut into triangular ship-lap boards these don't need to be dried. We still hven't decided whether to let them weather naturally (into a grey barnlike finish) or to protect the wood with varathane an retain the wooden color.

Cutting the trees for the wood

We had trees cut for the hemlock siding, hemlock floorboards, hardwood flooring, and other hardwood cabinetry cut out from the back of the property and hauled out with horses (skidders damage the woods too much for our liking) in the winter of 2008-09. As it turn out, some of this would go into the decking as well. The wood was dragged to a clearing that was at one time supposed to be the location of another house that never materialized.

The logs were stacked for later processing. We would saw these up into boards later in June and leave them to dry for a year in the woods.

The wood came from the back our land, where there is a stand of hemlocks, some of which are 200 years old. They tend to blow over in thunderstroms, unfortunately. This land is now given over to an ecological servitude with the Pinnacle Land Trust, which means the land will never be logged again.

Moving wood to the driers

Used my pick-up today with a trailer from Alex to move the wood drying in the forest to Sechoirs Cowansville, where they will dry the wood to a uniform humidity. Alex was very good about lending us his trailer, and even adapted the brake cables so they could be attached to the pick-up. I was very pleased with the performance of the truck and trailer. My expression and posture here clearly indicates that this Chevy 1500 hauls ass, and that you should not mess with us.

Drying the wood means that it can be planed sanded, and then cut (into boards for flooring, furniture, cabinetry, trim) without danger of the finished wood warping or shrinking. Lisa and I had help in loading and unloading from Don Bissonnette, who likes lending a hand with do-it-yourself projects like this. Here we are unloading planks of cherry in the yard. The Sechoir people will move it with forklifts into the huge driers shown in the background and stack it professionally.

Here, Don and I measures and count the wood. We would like to get it all back in the end, so it helps to count it before you leave it. I believe this is the first load, which consisted of ash and cherry. The ash (whitish colour) will go into steps for staircases, whereas the black cherry (redish color) will likely go into flooring.

Yet more deck

I'm such a construction nerd. I just have to get pictures of the technical details. The flashing shown here runs along the entire length of the porch. It will one day be covered with wooden siding. In the meantime it's reassuring that it is protecting the house.

This detail shows not only the metal flashing in the doorway, but also the gaps in the deck flooring. You need these gaps or water will collect in the seems and rot away your wood. Nails between the planks ensure even spacing. These gaps will get wider as the wood dries.

More Deck

A busy day on the site today. After a rainy day of working on the kitchen yesterday, the crew took to completing the deck today. To protect the frame and house from the elements, metal flashing was placed between the house and deck. Tar paper covers the joints between the lumber joints so rain and snow will not penetrate the structure. The 2x6 along the house was bolted into the foundation. An extra long bolt was required to make it through the 4'' insulation. This compromises the foundation insulation a little, but it's better to have your deck to stay attached to the house.

Finally, the deck boards were attached. We actually used the lesser quality hemlock from the woods. In some cases, you'll see the rounded edge of the tree facing down on the flooring, with a full flat surface facing upward. Going for the rustic look outside. Really, it just makes sure we do not waste any part of the tree.

Here are the happy owners shamelessly posing on the new deck. For some reason, a deck just begs to be walked on and sat on, and it's extra satisfying knowing that it all came from the back our woods. When all the work on the house is done, we will sand the deck so you can walk barefoot on it.

Rainy day project

Tuesday was a rainy day, so the crew worked indoors insulating the kitchen. They put Roxul batts in the walls and finished it with the insulating board shown here. No picture of the open walls, unfortunately.

Entrance porch: Deck

Yesterday, we started the back porch. The deck extends out 50'' (4'8'') from the foundation insulation and roughly 32' along the entire south side of the house. Lisa and I moved the lesser quality 2x6 and 2x8 hemlock planks we had sawed last spring from the woods to the work site (the good ones will be used for siding and the upstairs flooring. The crew (that's Gord near the pickup) cut them up and assembled the deck frame. We thought we might plane and sand the floor planks (1.5' x 6''), but decided that we'd sand the floor once the project is finished (doesn't make sense to make them all nice while work crews are coming and going).

Besides, this is a working country porch overlooking a gravel driveway, a maple wood, and a small pond, not a prefabricated deck to line a backyard pool from Club Piscine.

The frame is suspended on concrete pillars that we poured from pre-mixed concrete into cardboard cylinders called "sonotubes". Normally, these extend down 4 feet below the frost line, but in our case they extend down to the bedrock. We will need to put a polyethylene (plastic) as a barrier between the concrete and wood. Concrete is quite corrosive to wood, even eastern hemlock, which is more resistant to rot and the elements than most other species (cedar).

This picture shows some details of the deck framing. The double beams are made of 2x8 . They span the pillars, and will support the posts that hold up the porch roof. They also support the floor joists, which still have the bark from the trees on them.