A(nother) Home in the (different) Woods

dstig1 · Nov 6, 2011

So we had our three giant brush piles that sat there all winter, and were burned in the spring, as you saw, but there was one last big thing I had to do last fall (2010). Just before the early ice storm messed up my chance at burning the first piles, I rented a GPS surveying unit from a local surveying outfit. This turned out to be an awesome deal. I took coordinates for my lot corners from the County GIS system, and then matched them up with the corner points in my CAD design for the site. Then I was able to reference the key points I wanted to survey from those (X,Y coordinates) and sent the spreadsheet to the rental company. They took that data and uploaded it into a GPS unit for me.

Then all I had to do was walk around with the GPS unit (on a tripod with antenna) and punch in the point I wanted to find. It would tell me how far to move which way and I would adjust until I got there. When the unit said I was pretty close, I'd stick a stake there and mark the stake with the point reference info. I did this for a series of points up the center of the driveway, corners of the house, and a few other items like retaining walls and the center of the turnaround circle (town required for driveways over 300').

This was a very useful exercise as it told me how close my guesses were and what other trees needed to be dropped. There were a couple dozen that needed to go around the edges. Many of them smaller and the lesser types (poplar, basswood) and a couple pretty big oaks too. Turned out my driveway guess was close but what I had done was sort of "split the difference". The driveway was designed to work across the slopes to keep the steepness down, but my guesstimate path pretty much went straight up the middle. So I had to take out more to left at the bottom, and more to the right at the top. C'est la vie. So we did that towards the end of winter. It didn't take too long to do as we weren't fighting through all the brush and everything this time as it was pretty clear. Basically and afternoon of dropping trees.

So I spent this past summer cleaning up that mess and blocking up firewood. ...And making a new brush pile that has continued to grow up until just recently. I don't have much in the way of pics of this stuff, but it was all leading up to getting a driveway put in this fall. They just finished that a week ago, and I'll have some pics of that next post.

What was also going on all last summer (2010, not 2011) was my friend that had been helping me out was splitting oak with the Supersplitter I bought for all this. The plan was to sell off the good firewood, as there was so much of it we couldn't possibly use it. Just oak alone, we probably ended up with 20 cords worth, and a bunch of that is still out there. Here is a look at the pile of splits when mostly done. You can see the splitter sitting there for size reference:

And here it is all neatly stacked up. About 15 cords in this pile:

I needed to get the driveway path cleared out, so in addition to cleaning up the trees we dropped, I had to move stuff that was in the way. I split a ton of basswood from my junk pile, and moved stuff that wasn't very good to the burn pile. Got probably 4-5 cords from that. My MIL likes to burn it in her fireplace as it is light weight to haul in, burns easy and she can get tons of it for free! Not great heating wood, but perfect for her needs. So that plus giving away a few truckloads to some neighbor kids for bonfires, and giving away a bunch of split basswood to another neighbor for his fire pit means that now I only have.....still a ton of basswood out there...

But I moved whatever was left out of the way and sold off some of the remaining oak wood that was blocked up to a co-worker, which saved me a bunch of time in splitting and hauling. So I gave him a very good deal. Whatever he didn't take I moved over out of the way. This is why I love the grapple - you can use it to grab brush, and to haul logs, and to haul blocks, and to haul splits... You never need to swap it out for most of this work.

So finally about the beginning of Oct (last month) the driveway path was cleared and ready to go. We first started cutting trees Thanksgiving 2009, so it has been basically 2 years to this point.

Next up - Driveway!

Brokermike · Nov 9, 2011

Soak a hay bale with some diesel and you'll never have problems buring again. It burns pretty slow and pretty hot, it'll get even a snow soaked pile of green wood going up here in VT

dstig1 · Nov 16, 2011

I've heard from a few people on this thread that the pic sizes are too large, so I will slim them down more. Sorry about that - I thought they were small enough, but I guess not!

Driveway time. After I finished cleaning up the rest of the mess from the remaining trees we dropped, I got a couple quotes for the driveway. This was for a gravel base about 400' long, main purpose being to get real access across the ditch and up the hill. There is still more driveway to come during building, but this gets the main section in and gives it some time to settle and compact (with driving on it).

I got 2 quotes as the third guy was too busy to quote it now. Big price difference. Both of these outfits were recommended by a builder friend, so I went with the lower one. I also figure that if there are issues there is plenty of time to fix it later as this is basic stuff. The higher bid was ~$11k and the low one was half that. I was worried it was going to be even higher going into this, so those figures were better to hear than I was expecting.

It took the guy a few days. Basically he brought the equipment out late Mon afternoon and was all done by the end of Fri. I was pretty happy with the job he did. He dug into the hillside to get some good base material and he found it, so he used that as a sub-base and then brought in 200ton of crushed limestone for the driving surface. Each layer was about 4-6" deep, after scraping off the top soil.

Here's what it looked like before they started. The path through the ditch does not look bad, but you drag your hitch receiver going through it every time.

Those tall thin white stakes are the center of the driveway, so you can see the path we were using was off a bit from that, as it was a guess. The actual path is designed to work better with the grade.

From the street

Looking uphill at the first main bend

Stacks of logs and firewood in the distance up top. New brush pile is the one on the far right in the distance. Too small to see much.

Looking down from the top

dstig1 · Nov 16, 2011

Here's the start of the driveway build. He brought this excavator - a decent sized Deere 200c and a small Cat D4 dozer to do everything. This was Mon early evening when they started. You can see he just popped out a few stumps near the street and that was all for that day.

And here is a couple days later when the sub-base was all in. I had him lay a couple conduits/pipes below the base in 2 spots for wires and stuff later on, and that is what he is doing here. The path seemed OK at this point, but turned out to need a couple corners softened later on.

dstig1 · Nov 16, 2011

Then on the Friday, he must have gone wild bringing in crushed limestone as when I stopped down there Fri after work it was basically all done. AFter driving on it a couple times that weekend, I cam e to the conclusion that the first big turn to the right around that oak was a bit too sharp, and then the big swing to the left at the top was even moreso, so I had him bring in another load or two of limestone and soften those curves some. They may not be perfect yet, but they are better, and we can adjust them again later on, if it seems to need it. The driveway is fairly steep, so I want to make sure we have as few problems as possible with curves in the winter, and also for construction vehicles and other trucks.

We gots driveway! Woo Hoo!

I also had him knock down a poplar that had broken off and hung way up high in an oak. Just before he started we had a major windstorm, and it broke the top of another poplar off and hung up more stuff in the same place! Ug. They were way up high, so he was able to whack them with the excavator bucket and knock them down as part of the deal. You can see the mess on the ground off to the far left in the pic above.

See? It works! Even the little car can drive up there now!

From the street. The original trail we made was much closer to that oak on the right of the driveway, for reference.

dstig1 · Nov 16, 2011

He did some decent work on drainage and water control, but time will tell what needs adjusting. He put mild ditches on both sides, but I agreed with his point that you don't want anything too sharp of a drop off so if you slide off you aren't hopelessly stuck. I believe the bulk of the water is directed away from the road bed, but we'll see after some rains and snow melt what it looks like.

Being this late in the year he suggested winter wheat as something that would sprout fast, and hopefully get going yet this fall if the weather holds out, so I spread a bunch of that plus some grass seed and then covered the area with some hay I picked up cheap off of CL (it was too moldy to use for animals, but perfect for ground cover). Nasty dirty job that was!

Here the hay work was about 1/2-2/3 done. I didn't take a shot after it was all done, but it doesn't look like much anyways. I found out I really needed a landscape rake or something for the tractor, but I improvised with the grapple, which helped a little, and the rest of the work was just hand raking the seed in.

I had plenty of bales, so I used a few of them as water breaks to slow down the flow in the ditch areas. Mainly the line up on the left in the above pics.

And that is where we stand today. I finished the hay and seeding work last weekend. We are hoping to start the house in the spring, but I don't know if it will happen. I kind of doubt it as it is finances more than anything else, but we'll see. The driveway can take time and settle in now, no matter what.

I will put some more things up on this thread about the house design and other work I have been doing, but this is about it for the site work until we start building. Just burning more brush and clearing out the firewood left up there, is all the site work left to do at this point.

955Lincoln · Nov 17, 2011

Huge accomplishment....I'll bet that feels satisfying! The entrance sure looks much better, did you have to place a culvert pipe in the ditch?

dstig1 · Nov 17, 2011

Thanks - yeah it does feel good to make it this far. Culverts are required, even though the excavator said it really wouldn't do any good here based on the way the land slopes at the street. I suspect he's right, but I don't think it is a big deal. So we put in the smallest one allowed - 15". You can see the culvert sitting in the ditch off to the left in the first photo of post #43 and the end cap is barely peeking out on the right in the last photo in #45. My only concern there is that due to the utilities and having to cut into the bank of the ditch, the culvert isn't covered by a whole lot of fill. Maybe 3-4" tops. Not sure, but that may become a concern with heavy trucks?

dstig1 · Jan 20, 2012

OK, I posted something in another thread, so I might as well put it here too. This is a rough look at the site plan and the exterior, without anything in the way of architectural detailing. It's a 2-building setup that has the main house with a small second story "library" that allows a nice lookout view of the land, and a separate shop building for Woodworking, metal work and car work.

There are changes that have happened since I took these screen shots, but they are pretty close.

I know the risk of posting plans on TBN :laughing: So these are just (semi-)pretty pictures... Plans will come later on. I am currently slogging through getting the construction docs prepared for some quotes.