Building My Dream

[SteveSmith]

Over a year ago, my wife and I decided to look for some property where we could park our RV and have a little privacy. After a few disappointing weekends of visiting properties that didn't live up to the online photos, we realized that it would make more sense to purchase something for a longer term, i.e. somewhere that we could build our retirement home. About a year ago, we came across a beautiful piece with 50 km views to the south and east. It had a good forest full of maple trees and others, a stream and water fall and some old paths. It was quite steep in places but there was a lovely spot where we could build a home. This is what it looked like a year ago.
Steve

 

[Carl_NH]

Steve,

Welcome to TBN, and you have indeed found a nice place in the "thumb" of Ontario to build your dream home.

So, that picture was a year ago, which seems to indicate there are more pictures to follow!

Carl

 

[TomSeller]

Beautiful. And welcome to TBN

 

[Western]

Beautiful. And welcome to TBN

X's 2!! Now the work begins

 

[SteveSmith]

During the past year, we experimented making some maple syrup (10 litres - it's a start!). We have decided to put up a pole building 46' x 56' x 16' high to accommodate our growing collection of tools. We'll get it put up first and then build the house in the next two or three years. Meanwhile, we will live in our RV on weekends when we visit the property which is 2 hours away from home. We have spent several weekends clearing brush for the first building site. My wife used the brush cutter while I used the chainsaw. We decided to buy a PTO wood chipper to get rid of the brush. It's slow going but we will get there. Once the load restrictions were lifted, we hired a local contractor to dig out the organic soil and put in a foot of 3" crusher run for the first 400' feet of driveway. He also installed a culvert to bring the water to the east side of the driveway. We may put in a pond one day and the runoff coming out of the culvert will fill this potential pond. He also gave us an access to the building site as it was across a couple of very wet couple of ditches. The clay made it very muddy for working until the past couple of weekends.
Here is a photo of the new driveway a week ago.

 

[SteveSmith]

and this past weekend, the 400' were completed. We moved the RV halfway down the drive. It sure is nice to finally be out of the mud every time we step outside!

Nowhere on the property is it level. The building site is sloped with the contour going diagonally across. Zero is at the SW and NE corners. Plus 24" is at the NW corner and minus 24" at the front and that is just the building envelop itself. The land continues to drop in front of the building and is about 8' lower near the entrance to this area so we will need to bring in a considerable amount of fill to make it somewhat level. The NW corner will end up being below the existing grade so the land around the building will need to be sloped accordingly to redirect the water.
Question: the excavator says that we will need to remove the top soil for a few feet around the entire building and replace it with 3" crusher run to hold the fill under the slab. Can I backfill around the building with the clay that is onsite rather than importing stone?
Thanks
Steve
P.S. I have already learned a considerable amount from this forum just by lurking for the past several months. Thanks to everyone for your contributions.

 

[creekbend]

That is a nice piece of property. Here's wishing You and your Wife the very best. May all Your dreams come true. BTW, welcome aboard.

 

[sodamo]

Nothing like a dream to keep life interesting. We, too, are living ours.

David Sent from my iPad using TractorByNet

 

[stuckmotor]

Hi Steve,
That really is a beautiful location and so green.
I'm paying particular attention to driveways because I put in one myself, 30+ years ago and need to put in a couple more so, I have this question. Do I understand correctly that you poured crusher run 12 inches deep in the first 400 feet of driveway? I'm curious as to why it needed to be such a thick layer.

 

[mjncad]

Question: the excavator says that we will need to remove the top soil for a few feet around the entire building and replace it with 3" crusher run to hold the fill under the slab. Can I backfill around the building with the clay that is onsite rather than importing stone?
Thanks
Steve

Welcome to TBN Steve.

Cool, another house building thread for me to follow!

Have you had a soils and percolation test done on the area where the house and leach field will be? If not, spend the bucks and get it done as it will determine the type of foundation and prep work that needs to be done. I'm sure Ontario will require those tests anyway. In my area, our clay soils tend to be expansive (e.g. hot), and I'd be real leery of using clay as a backfill material without an engineer's approval and instructions.