Timber! Then boom and crash (Day 1 of 273 to build)

Well, the trees started coming down on Thursday (Oct. 23), so that's our official start date for construction. We have 9 months (July 22nd) to get our occupancy permit and tidy up the outsides, so it doesn't look like a construction site. All went well until noon, then a little mistake occurred. The felling process for the medium-size trees (ca. 80') is to dig up their roots, then push the tree over with the backhoe (large Hitachi, 3 ft bucket; just like the kind we used for trenching faults at the USGS). Anyway, on one tree not all the roots were severed and when Bill Snyder (Balco, sub for clearing) pushed the tree it swung around and fell about 30° left of the intended direction. With a large boom, it fell across the property line and onto the neighbors backyard, taking down a fir and cedar and knocking the corner off their wood shed. To make a long story short, he removed a dead tree for them and will repair the shed. Crisis resolved (for now).

On Friday, Joe Thompson (a semiretired, professional logger) came to fell six of the largest trees. What an impressive sight to see this guy climb a tree, chainsaw in hand. He cuts limbs on the way up, marking the trunk in 20 ft intervals, then drops the top 30-40 ft, and works his way down. The remaining 40 ft stump is then pushed over, roots attached. Then a little slicing and dicing, and you have a bunch of nice logs.

The brush is being cleared with the backhoe (overkill), shaking the dirt off and staking it in a big pile to be taken away by truck (3-4 loads, probably). In addition, we placed a culvert (12" corregated plastic, 26 ft long) beneath the intended driveway, and covered it with 1.5" crushed basalt (the local Tertiary bedrock, ca. 15 Ma) to form a mud-free entrance to the street. We'll cover the gravel with asphalt or concrete when the job is done.

So, not to bad for 2 days of de- and re-construction at the site. Hopefully, the clearing will be done by mid week, and we'll get going on a hole (ca. 600 cubic yards of dirt moving). The house plans call for a 32 ft x 26 ft full depth basement, two 26 x 22 ft crawl spaces, and the garage (30 x 26 ft) with slab on grade. All told, this amounts to ca. 600 cubic yards of dirt moving, half of which will stay on site for backfill and building long low berm at the front of the property.