Garden completed, June 19, 2009

Built fence around the garden and planted it today. The fence is 4 feet high. I am told deer will jump an 8 foot fence. I hope the deer don't find me this year. I drove in 8 foot posts 2 feet into the ground, so I can add more fencing on top. I also installed the egress window, ladder, grid and cover in the basement today. The bluebirds don't seem to be interested in building a nest in the basement anymore. I hope this lasts until I get the basement doors installed. The doors should arrive in about two weeks.

Creating a garden and working with Bluebirds, June 18, 2009

Today I took a shovel and turned over the soil to plant a garden. This is ground that has never been tilled. It was a lot of work. luckily, I knew a friend with a rototiller. It still took about three hours to complete. The garden is 20 ft by 20 ft. I will get fencing material tomorrow and put it up before I plant. There are deer and antelope, as well as a herd of cows who would probably eat everything I planted in one sitting. I also had to do some bird work today. A pair of bluebirds keep trying to build a nest in the basement, so I built four birdhouses and attached them to posts I dug into the ground. I placed three in front of the house, and one by the garden. You can see one on this picture at the left upper corner. The birds were inspecting each of the three houses out front. It looked like they couldn't decide which one they liked the best. I picked up the rest of the material today to attach the sill logs; coupler bolts, threaded rod and the drill bit to drill the holes in the sill logs for the anchor bolts to pass through. I will have the lift delivered to our property on Saturday, so I can build the peeling rack and start putting logs on the wall on Monday. I think next week will also be the week that we get the driveway built, as well as the rest of the dirt leveled around the basement and the garage slab.

Tomorrow, I will plant the tomatoes and peppers my Mom started for me, and move the fifth wheel trailer on top of the garage slab. I will set up a tarp over the front of the trailer for shade and protection from rain. 

Electrical power to the house. June 2, 2009

I found out every house has to have an electrical cutoff box at the house. I installed it to an eight foot treated post buried close to five feet in the ground. I installed two grounding rods, one for this box, and one for the main panel in the house.

Team Anderson Shirts

My lovely daughters designed a t-shirt for the log cabin journey. Don't be jealous, you too can order one for around twenty dollars. The front of the shirt says "We've Got Cabin Fever... Butte Montana Summer '09" and the back says Team Anderson 09.

We have running water! June 2 2009

I plumbed in the water pressure tank, hung the control box on the wall and finished wiring in the water pump. I left the faucet at the well head open with 100 feet of hose hooked to it to flush the system before it went into the house. I thought it was a good plan! I learned that I need to make sure all valves are turned off inside the basement before I go to see if water is coming out at the well. We have good water pressure, water was flying about a third of the way across the basement floor. I did need to test the floor drain at some point anyway. It worked great!

Tomorrow I plan to head back to the mountains and cut some more logs. We will also get logs suitable for building a peeling rack. Thursday it is supposed to rain, so I will install the water heater and the water manifolds.

June 2 2009

I finished the wiring from the house to the meter today. I set up the wiring to the garage and and just folded the cable over inside the meter panel. When the garage is finished, I'll install a 100 amp breaker at the meter and hook the wiring to it.

First Logs. June 1 2009

These are the first 8 logs on property. Myles and I cut 12 logs on Saturday and hauled 8 of them on Sunday. We hit a snag while we were dragging them out of the woods. I buried the tractor up to the axles in mud. Red Wrecker pulled us out with a one ton truck using the towing winch. He lifted the front end of the truck completely off the ground several times in the process!
I have to get one more load of smaller logs to use in building the peeling racks before I can start installing logs.

I have to get extensions for the anchor bolts coming out of the poured walls so they pass completely through the sill logs to properly bolt them to the top of the walls.

I finished up the house wiring at the cut off box by the house, and in the main panel in the basement today. I wired in a circuit for a GFCI outlet by the main panel, and one in the ceiling of the mechanical room, then I hung a 48 inch florescent light in the mechanical room for temporary lighting. All I have left to do to get electricity to the house is hook it up at the meter. It was raining today, so I'll finish this in the morning. No more 200 feet of extension cords!

I started installing the pressure tank for the water, and found out I was missing some important parts. I picked them up today, and I will finish installing the system and wiring it to the main breaker panel in the morning. We will have running water tomorrow. I'll run the water from the frost free faucet at the well casing for an hour to flush out the system. The next step is to install the water heater and assemble the manifolds for the cold water and the hot water, and mount them to the wall. All waterlines, hot and cold, will run directly from the hot or cold manifold.