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Milling Lumber
June 11th, 2009
Since we had so many trees taken down we decided to have some lumber milled from some of the larger trees. We had a portable bandsaw mill come from the day. Lebco custom milling kindly did the job for us. They worked real hard and cut us 2 or 3 decks worth of cedar planks and a variety of fir boards.
In addition to all this great dimensional lumber. I have been able to pull quite a few beautiful pieces of wood out of the slag pile left behind by the milling. These would be great for furniture, tabletops, signs etc.
Besides a drift of sawdust there is a large pile of slag from the milling process, But I was able to pull out 2X3s, 1X2s and lots of other sizes of boards from the waste pile. There are still some gems in there.
who loves cedar?
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Clearing Land
May 19th, 2009
Our approach to starting this project was to first identify the place where we wanted to place our house site. We visited the site frequently, observed the lay of the land and came up with a basic idea of where we could place an old mobile home to start, where our additions and out buildings could be as we add to our starter building and where our main outdoor living space would be.
My two main considerations were access. ie. identifying the path of lest resistance from the street to the house-site. and Vista, meaning a spot where several main features of the property would be visible from the home.
Then we called in the machines. This was the fastest, safest and most affordable way to create a large clearing. Check out this video to see the preliminary clearing done on the property.
A team of two cleared our area in about a day and a half. One operated the backhoe while the other wielded a chainsaw, bucking limbs and separating trees from stumps. Logs were stacked to the side while branches and stumps were placed in the middle of the cleared area for burning.
The stumps and branches were set alight and we manned the fires for about 5 days until it finally burned out. During this time, a few Mudgirls came and hand-graded the access road that had been created. Although I wasn’t able to clear the land completely by Mudgirl, It was a great hybrid effort between woman and machine.
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Affordable Housing from Scratch
May 7th, 2009
The property is raw. There is nothing there but trees and moss. The land is very dry and there is no obvious water source. There is no power. The terrain is extremely rough with loose sandstone boulders, and undulating ridges. There are no clearings and there is no access road.
In order to comply with my local government a few key things need to be in place. Is it easy to become overwhelmed with the bureacracy if this is something that you have never done before. There are a couple of important things that ecclipse others in terms of legalities.
Firstly, goverment officials will insist that there needs to be a human-waste management system that is approved by the ministry of health. In rural areas not connected to the sewer, this means a septic tank. There are endless ways to set up a wastewater management system, depending on the terrain, materials available and the needs of your household.
Secondly, there needs to be a potable water-supply. (Oh, that silly government! requiring you to have drinking water on your property!) In the case of my place. I would probably need to get in a professional dowser to find a promising drilling spot and drill as deep as 300 feet to reach the possible groundwater. Living near water has always been a human trend that is starting to make extreme sense.
To get power to the site, Several power poles are going to need to be added from the main road. Small-scale alternative energy is a bit prohibitive on the site that I am building on. There is no sustained sunshine, very little wind, and no creek or stream. The only way to have self-sustaining abundant power would be to set up something such as a geo-thermal system.
So far, Just having site amenities may put me in the position of later living in a tent. So, I am going to be using recycled housing. This means an old-unwanted mobile home or similar set-up. And I am finding there are many many opportunites to recycle housing and this is a very viable option. Check this website out for example, nickelbros.com. These houses are being saved from demolishment. A bit out of my price range but regardless, less than a quarter of my budget will be spent on the actual shelter.
Not including time spent researching or having insomnia. I have a timeframe of one month to make this happen. You laugh! (So do I sometimes, but I am very determined.) This will include time spent on site clearing and removing trees, having a septic system installed. Developing a water storage system and source. Arranging to have power to the site as well as filing permits, and finally, finding a starter building and having it located there.
It looks as though I will be able to use a mix of natural building methods and conventional methods to achieve my recycled housing project. Stay-tuned!
