2007_08_22 First floor of logs just about up

Well, I went up to the job site to take a check to Scott and took a couple of pictures. Yeah, that's right; a couple of pictures. That's 2 pictures. I had dropped Kathy off in Springville to get her hair cut and then went to the property. I had to pick her up again so I didn't stay long, but I did get to talk to Scott and that always means that I get to ask him questions!

You can see that the 1st floor is just about finished so the logs are just about done.

In the closer shot below you can see better what they are doing. The log they are working on is on its side while they do some custom cutting to make it fit better with the one below it. Steve is cutting it to fit.

Scott was there to pick up the check and to pick up some of the boards that they had been going to use to finish the deck but were not straight enough so he could take them back to the place he bought them and get them replaced.

We also got to talk about what to do with a couple of other things. First, we may decide to leave off the steps on the front porch altogether and replace them with a 'bridge' that will go straight out from the front porch to the ground out in front of it.

That will allow a power chair or wheelchair to drive straight up onto the porch should Kathy need that later. If we have steps we'd also have to have a ramp or 'bridge' somewhere off the deck in front anyway. Scott says that we can probably have it go out to a concrete parking pad or concrete driveway or to a sidewalk or stone path, etc and it could still be almost perfectly level since the 'yard' in front goes up slightly from the front porch.

Also, it looks like we'll have the steps at the rear of the deck go off of the back corner outside the screened room. There will be a landing off the back corner and the steps will then go down and back toward the garage door entrance and come down right there onto the driveway beside the back portion of the garage door.

Regarding the different coloration of the logs due to some being in the sun and other not, etc due to the fact that they have been in the sun with some in sun and some in shade (due to being stacked onto others, etc) they have a plan for that. Roberto and his wife will later bleach all the logs inside and out to make them more consistent in color and get out (or off) markings that might not should be there. They they'll sand the inside of the logs so that they are not rough.

The outside of the logs will be stained and protected by a Honey-colored preservative and stain combination made by WoodGuard. Scott recommends that we not stain the inside walls and just keep them a natural color to keep them light colored. We may just do that since we both like the natural look pretty well.

The honey-colored preservative/stain can also be used to stain the deck as well. It will be light. I think that we agree on that also since if we were to stain the deck darker then any of our beautiful Alabama red dirt that we got on our shoes would leave noticeable tracks on the deck. Clay concurs that dark is not good for the deck since he said it was a problem in their Woodstock house when they had a dark reddish color on their deck.

2007_08_21 Deck almost done - 7 rows of logs up

They have virtually finished the deck floor except for trimming a few boards at the back corner outside the dining room and for the last board or so across the very back of the deck.

There may be a reason for that remaining section not being done, but I don't know what it is. It's almost like they intentionally are leaving it undone because they have obviously moved on to the logs and done quite a bit of work on them since the last deck work they did.

Below is a view of the front of the house now:


The view below is taken from the corner of the house where the laundry room/pantry will be. In the far corner you can see (from left to right) the French doors at the end of the great room, the door from the great room to the screened room, the French doors in the master bedroom, and the window in the master bedroom.


The little dog, below, is the one nicknamed Ruby by Kathy and she is looking at the back edge of the deck wondering why it hasn't been completed. She told me that they had to be a reason for that being left undone, but neither of us know what it is.

Here's what Ruby was looking at in the picture above:

Below you can see a good view of the dovetail joint corner construction. You can also see that the logs are of varying colors from log to log and, sometimes, within one log. After all, wood does vary from board to board and from the sap wood to the heart of the logs so there will be a good bit of variation. Some of the difference could also be due to some of them getting sun for the last month and others not since the coverings have pretty much been blown to heck by the wind, but I'd guess that they'll all get plenty of sun between now and when they get stained and sealed later and that'll likely even out some of the difference from one log to another.

The picture below is a view out through the French doors in the master bedroom from pretty much where you'd be when in the bed.

This little window is the kitchen window so this is basically what will be in your view when looking out the kitchen window except that, of course, there will be a deck railing there too. Rose wants to help us try to figure out what to plant out there to make it pleasing. The bottle of water won't be there (unless we decide to keep it there). The Pella windows haven't been delivered yet. They will come on a separate shipment later directly from Pella.

I may go up there again tomorrow during the day since we think that Scott is going to be there unless his plans have changed.

We have been talking with a company that does installations for both DirecTV (satellite TV) and DirecWay (satellite internet connection) and we want them to be able to give us (and Scott) their advice regarding the type and number of cables and wiring that will need to be installed to get the best quality of service. Since we won't be in a place where either cable (for TV or Internet) or DSL (for Internet) will be available our only options for now will be getting all that via satellite.

The Internet connection won't be as fast as most of you folks have out there now via DSL or high speed cable, but it'll actually be much faster than the slow cable we've had for the last 2 years. We've been opting to take just the basic service that came as part of our apartment rent rather than paying extra for the higher speed connection. If we can live through what we've been using the service we can get through DirecWay will actually be a breath of fresh air!

We also need to decide what company we want to use for a monitored security alarm system and get them to be ready to make sure that whatever wiring we need for that can be done soon.

2007_08_13 Base layer of Logs and Septic Inspected

Two basic things happened today. The crew that wanted to be working on the deck had to stop work on it to wait for the septic system work to be finished, inspected, and the machinery they were using out of the back of the house so they could pour more concrete footers for the support posts for the deck in the back of the house.

Below you can see what they decided to work on while they waited. They decided to put down the base layer of the logs in a few places. They put down a 6" wide type of foam insulation strip first and the first logs go on that. The very first one they put down is a smaller one in height (i.e. not the 6" x 12" type). I don't really know how to explain it well, but you can't put down the 1st row and have all the logs be 12" tall because if you did then they could not go one over the other in the dovetail fashion. So, you'll see in some of the corners that they did today that the adjoining corner logs (although they are very short due to 2 sets of 6' French doors going in there) are the full 12" in height.

They attach the first ones to the 2 x 10s that are already around the perimeter of the sub-floor with long screws. The rest of the logs will be connnected to these with long thru-bolts that will go through all the logs and also keep pressure on them with a large spring to make sure that as the logs shrink due to aging that they all stay pressed together tightly.

Then they put the next log end to end (with a type of insert that goes into a groove on the end of each log from top to bottom), toe-nailed it into the end of the other log to keep it from moving away from it, and then screwed it down like the first one.

Below you see one of the workers holding one of the small logs that mates with the shorter one on the side. It is short since one of the French doors will start where it stops.

Now that short log is attached at the corner. You can see that it is taller and from here on up the logs will alternate one on top of the other and the dovetail ends will fit together.

Below you can see 2 of the 3 rows of the Infiltrator system that is the drain field for the septic tank. From the septic tank there is a long 6" (I think) pipe that runs down the hill for about 30 or 40 feet to the 1st of 3 rows of the Infiltrator system. They run perpendicular to the pipe going down the hill. The 1st row of the Infiltrator system is 68 feet from one end to the other, the 2nd is also 68 feet, and the 3rd row is 64 feet long. So, there is lineal 200 feet of it.

Here is a view along one of the lines. They are all kept level from one end to the other (within a 2" tolerance from one end to the other).

Below you can see the filter that goes into the septic tank between the stuff in the tank and what goes into the pipe and down to the Infiltrator system. You can't tell it from this photo, but the long red thing has very small slits in it so that it will not permit anything but liquified effluent to go into the drain field. Solids are not to go into the drain field.

If there should ever be a problem with the tank not draining properly (now get ready for this) you can remove the green tank cover, remove the round concrete top which has a nice metal handle on it to make it easier, pull out this filter, and use a hose to rinse it off, then put it back in the same way you took it out. It has an arrow on the top of it that points toward the exit pipe to show you which way to insert it. I guess we need to make sure that we always have some rubber gloves handy, huh? :-)

Jerry said that there probably won't be a problem, but we need to know! He said that with only 2 people living there the tank probably won't need to be pumped out for maybe 10 years. He confirmed that there should be no need to use anything like Rid-X to add bacteria since there should be plenty naturally. The written material also says that.

Below you can see where the pipe from the septic tank has a 90 degree angle joint that directs the liquid from the septic tank into the Infiltrator.

Here one of the guys from Bailey Environmental Services, Inc is showing me why the pipe that connects the 2nd row to the 3rd row goes UP from the one in front of him before going DOWN to the next row. The bottom of the pipe at the top of the little "hump" needs to be just slightly higher than the top of the one down the hill. That is so that the entire length of the row above needs to fill up before sending any overflow to the row below it. I would have thought that it would have been just the opposite (i.e. that they would all run downhill so that the liquid would tend to go all the way to the one at the bottom of the hill, but that's wrong). I guess it's a good thing I don't install these things!

I stuck the camera down into the opening of the septic tank to show you what it looks like inside. It surprised me that they have these dividers in them from one half of it to the other and I have no idea why the little squares on each side at the bottom. It is a 1,000 gallon tank.

Below you see Jerry Bailey (the company owner) at the left. The woman is the inspector from the St. Clair County Health Department. She drew out a diagram of the entire system and checked everything to make sure that it was installed properly. She had them show her (with their laser surveyor-type equipment that there was no more than the 2" difference between the height of the lines from one end to another, etc. She checked the tank and the Infiltrator system. She signed off on it and gave the paperwork to Jerry. She'll file a copy with the Health Department and Jerry will eventually send the pink copy of it to our builder or to us (I'm not sure which now).