October snow and progress report

So we've been doing a lot behind the scenes. Engineering is more or less winding down. We've engaged a local timber framer and s/b doing the barn frame in Nov. and the House 6 weeks later...the latest dwgs are shown. I will start posting progress photos, etc shortly. We got a couple feet of gook on the ground....had to shovel my way to the bathroom for the last two mornings. Probably got 3 inches of water in the storm....

Decon is complete....now the fun starts

Once we got rolling on the deconstruction, things went pretty well. I think we saved for reuse or repurpose most of the materials that had significant value. Studs, roof sections, red wood siding, flooring, wire, etc etc are all either sorted and stacked in the yard or stuffed into shipping containers....the rest, well, we'd hoped to find an on site waste grinder, but that proved fleeting. No one has attempted to bust through the on site roll off dumpster paradigm. We did haul off the unusable clean lumber for reuse as chip board, or OSB. The painted lumber and other waste went to the dump. The drywall, chimney bricks, and some fill dirt and concrete rubble from BVM went into the parking pit. Which is now a parking area missing the final grade fill and road base. Any metal, like nails, drywall corner metal, duct work, etc. went to the metal recycling bin, the insulation batts and wrap got to a dump, and the blow in fill insulation got saved for use as thermal mass [hot water] storage tank insulation.

Our plan now is to pull permits for the barn and the grading/foundation work. We will have our bids from the timberframe companies this week.

man camp has inhabitants who are hungry

Man camp has a porch too

ok, me at Man Camp, editing the blog, Bennett took photos for me, of me, yuk!

the kitchen , complete with epiphilum hanging around....gotta build a house for our plant!

The basic plan here is to recycle the entire house, grind up on site what we can't re-use, and save some materials costs as we go. The main roof elements are going to be our barn roof, smaller kitchen element will be a small shed on skids, and the other smaller roof elements become the shed roof on the sides of the barn

man camp has a bathroom, with plastic roof too!
mman

The kitchen roof comes off

Lift off!

the first section lift off shots

back to lift off

Straps on in

Ryan up on the roof making holes for the straps

Jesse w/Boulder Valley Crane arrives on time and ready to lift, as usual.

decon

the pile of insulation, some will be reused, the pink is being taken off site, most of the house will be recycled as our barn or ground up on site and used as land fill for a parking area

here's the view of the rooms after day one of decon

Friday afternoon was large, after a weeks delay due to a severe lack of information from the County, we finally got lift off.

The deconstruction required a permit from the County, which we applied for and then proceeded to rip the guts out of the house while we waited for permit approval.

The shocker came when we got the permit, along with it was a nice envelope from the state of CO, which said that we had to have an inspection of our house BEFORE we were allowed to tear it down, all under the asbestos control regulations, which isn't a big deal, but it would have been really nice to know this up front, after 780 usd of testing, we skated clear. Could have had to pay 10-15K$ for clean up since we'd already disturbed most all of the stuff that could have been hazardous. Anyway, we chewed on the county guy for a severe lack of info. up front.

Bennett decided his bedroom wall needed holes in it. I had a couple heavy hitters and Paul do the decon, my neighbor BVM was nice enough to give two of his guys, who rocked ....first day the kitchen and two bedrooms along with the HVAC unit were into the storage containers from our old neighbor Joe and Beth Kent, their company MSC brings us what we want for short term rental. I am looking to buy a 20 ft unit with doors on both ends for a job site shop, etc. Right now it's hard to lock up my stuff, and as some of you knnow, I've got some stuff.

the frame?

Monday was a good day if you needed to get to Kansas quickly, we had a bit of wind....PJ got the barn work done so the overhead service feed was removed....all in preperation to reduce the house to a pile of usable materials and scrap drywall/insulation, etc. My neighbor, BVM - a GC in the area, came over for a beer or two and we talked about what a pain the County can be. We are hoping we can buy wind power from Xcel Energy instead of putting PV 110V service on our roof. We want to do a 12V circuit for pumping water around through the floors, glycol through the solar panels, and running LED lights only....we'll see what transpires on that front. They seem to want to mandate energy independance on larger home projects, but wind power is the best option as it's cheap and green, etc.

Photo is of the house as it is, dwg if it is displayed is of the east and west elevations planned

Sat/Sun 2-7/8-09

JC and I tried to use a rental trencher from HD with not so much luck, took it back and got my money back, soil was too rocky....had to resort to using the TLB from JD [I wanted a skid steer adapter trencher tool, but no rentals nearby available]...we trenched in order to relocate the hot tub away from the house, cleaned out the barn so I will have an office on site, etc. Got to use the welder, backhoe, loader, auger, front bucket/loader, leaf blower, drill, etc. JC looks like he's going to be good part time labor for the project. He's the son of our housekeeper and is in college for Arch. Design/Engineering. This project will be a great experience for him. PJ is due today to finish the gate job he did at the entry and some barn elec. box work, then we can get rid of the overhead lines and destroy the house....etc. He brought enough rough sawn 1x8 material to scab on the existing fence at the entry, this will keep the gawkers from thinking of coming down the drive to prowl for stuff to steal. Next free weekend will involve fixing the fence and getting the barn emptied, cleaned, ready for an office, etc. The shipping container is massive and will take a long time to fill, etc.

We achieved site plan approval today, 2/6/09

The house to the right will be deconstructed and replaced with a passive solar timber frame....