3R Home and Barn Project

3RRL · Aug 29, 2007

Yeah, good advice.
After all, he has the whole South camp meadow to hunt. He is a good kid and will understand, I'm sure.

fireshawn · Aug 29, 2007

First of all the house looks great and love the view. I do have a question though, you keep mentioning the fire protection stuff-what kind of requirements do you have? Also, have you ever been to the firewise.org website? They have done a lot of work on fire resistive landscaping for just the locations like you are in. Anyway thanks for the pics and keep them coming.

shawn

3RRL · Aug 29, 2007

fireshawn said:
First of all the house looks great and love the view. I do have a question though, you keep mentioning the fire protection stuff-what kind of requirements do you have? Also, have you ever been to the firewise.org website? They have done a lot of work on fire resistive landscaping for just the locations like you are in. Anyway thanks for the pics and keep them coming.

shawn

Hi Shawn,
Regarding the fire protection, I presume you are referring to earlier post where I was cleaning up the homesite and adjacent surroundings? Out here there is a code that your residence must have an area cleared "of flammable brush, deadwood or dry grasses" a minimum of 100' around your homesite. The new regulation is 200'! You can have other vegetation in that area as long as they are kept clean and green like grass, decorative bushes or trees etc. A sprinkler system is good.

So an area like this is Ok since it is cut down and the dead limbs are cleared.

And one like this is not. It needs to be cut and trimmed and cleared up.

I have not been to that particular website, but I've read quite a lot about recommended "fireproof plantings" as my other home is in Southern California, the World's Capital of fires. We will use some of the succulents they recommend for our surroundings, especially up the slope in front of the rock bluff. Slopes need to cleared more than flat areas.

3RRL · Sep 10, 2007

Well, I don't have any more photos of the house progress yet. Good news is we pulled all the permits for the house and barn finally, so they can continue with the build. We are waiting for the log package to get here Sept 22nd. Then we will take a weeks vacation up there to watch them lay the logs. In the mean time, they can now finish work on the garage and lay the foundation for the barn. The metal barn package should arrive in October.

OK, so this weekend we decided to start grubbing some of the Buckbrush on the steep slope in front of the rock bluff. This is a daunting project, since a lot of it is nearly a 45 degree slope. But we have to clear that area eventually for the Firemarshall approval. To compound matters, I have never had the tractor down in that meadow below the rock bluff either, since there is no access to it from the main road or homesite.

The first thing we decided to do was cut a road from the homesite past the solar shed and meander down along the ravine, then circle into the meadow below. For those of you who've been there, perhaps you can remember how steep the game trails are leading down. The following photos (I have lots) shows the area where we will be working.

This picture is where the road from the homesite will go past the solar shed (just past the tractor) and along the solar panels. This portion ended up about 150' long.

These pictures shows the intended path going from the solar panels down along the ravine and eventually leading down to the meadow. This part is about 600' long to the meadow. In the bottom of the meadow there is about 200' of road leading to the slopes.

These two pictures show the front of the rock bluff looking up from the bottom of the meadow. All that Buckbrush near the rock bluff and some small Oaks and deadfall will have to be removed.

I figure the road would end up being just shy of 1000' long. We only had a day and a half to spend on the project so we didn't get it all done. I was scared to death too!

3RRL · Sep 10, 2007

Without further delay, I started to make the service road from the homesite down past the solar arrays. This part was not too bad but still required some chainsaw, fel and grapple work.

All of the road was on a slant ... especially going down to the meadow. But up here I was able to use some concrete fill to build up the low sides first.

This one was not too bad and it turned out fairly good. It got over to the end of the solar arrays but not going down paralleling the ravine. That was next. As usual, I did a lot of bulldozing in reverse with my boxblade. The ability to tilt the blade with hydraulic side links made cutting out the slope pretty easy. Lucky there were not too many large rocks in this section.

3RRL · Sep 10, 2007

The next part of the service road was to go down a fairly steep slope and follow the ravine down to the start of the meadow. Loretta took the 4wd ATV ahead of me to scout for big rocks. I had to pick my way down the trail with the boxblade cutting ... no rippers down, and the fel held super low.

I don't like to use the rippers down because it's too easy to catch a big rock or root doing these roads. 4 wheel drive is a must in these conditions. After a couple passes with the boxblade it started to take shape. I kept cutting into the high side when needed to level the road out.

3RRL · Sep 10, 2007

There was one area where the service road had a pretty good tilt to it, leaning towards the ravine. I had to really work this area to get the road level. I had to cut a lot off the high side and move dirt over to the low side. I found my back dozing method really works good for me. Just like a dozer blade scalloping the high side off pushing the spoils to the low side.

In the above pictures you can see how the blade is tilted vs the slope of the land. This last pass I was able to push with a more level blade.

3RRL · Sep 10, 2007

After several hours working that section, we finally made it down to the start of the meadow.
This is looking at where we came from.

And these are looking towards the start of the meadow below.
To be honest, I did not think I would even get this part done, but it went surprisingly fast. In the background you can see the big Kama and Loretta on her Arctic Cat ATV.

3RRL · Sep 10, 2007

Also, here is a video of that one nasty section that was sloped towards the ravine. You can see the Kama working cutting out the high side and the ravine on the left about 15' or so. It was a pretty weird feeling to have the tractor sliding sideways towards it. Even with all 4 wheels spinning.

Here is another video taking a second pass, pushing a little more dirt. Then I was able to make some forward and backward passes to get it leveled up. If the ground is not too rocky, I can bulldoze in 2nd low. Not needing anymore horsepower, I never ran the tractor over 1800 rpm.