Rain

It rained today, so no work on the house was done this morning (we usually work a little bit before church, but because of rain, we took a break). I can't complain about the rain, because it's the first real rain we've gotten in a month or more. The trees were drying out and it was time to either hand water, or receive rain. So we're glad for the rain.It does mean there'll be more mowing, but overall, we're glad for the rain.

Yesterday, Josh came over and he, Rachel & I worked. We got another 50 feet of fence up. We could've done more, but we ran out of fence. Later in the day, Rachel & I bought 100 more feet of fence, and had intended on putting it up today. That didn't happen.

Around the house, I moved more gravel in and Josh leveled some of it out. Rachel and Josh (and I) picked up more nails, sharp objects, debris, etc around the site. Rachel cleaned off the roof. It's clean up there, but I still figure that before we apply any waterproofing, we'll take the shop vac up there and clean out the grit (especially at the base of the parapets and the cold joints between modules).

We need to get an angle grinder for grinding off the tops of the form straps that are sticking out from the concrete. We want these flush with the concrete before applying the waterproofing compound.

My hope is that I'll have time this week to get a plumber out to the site to talk about what needs to be done. There's a lot.Likewise, I'd like to get an electrician out to talk about getting electricity from the pole to the house. I'm hoping we can use some trenchless equipment (directional drill) for running the water line and the electricity, and while we're at it, I'd like to run a line to the propane tank. I'd like to get all this done so that we can backfill the excavated around around the house.

We figured out that we should only work Josh about 3 hours. He worked 4 yesterday, but he was dragging during that last hour. He's too young and inexperienced to work as long as we do (and we were only intending to work him about 4 hours, not 6 to 8 that we usually work in this heat). In cooler temperatures, we'll work 12 hours, but a kid that age just can't handle it. Josh is barely 16.

Rachel spent more time on the computer today, planning the patio area. We've figured out that we'll extend the retaining walls another 5 feet, because with the slope of the berm, the earth would be coming around the end of the retaining wall and back about 50%. That would've cut into the usable patio area, so by extending another 5 feet, we'll giving ourselves more room of usable patio area. If the retaining walls are to be extended, it'll be easier early on, than after we berm up on the north side of the house.