First a Garage

[denmansoft]

After owning this property on Denman Island for 30 years it is time to build something to retire to. 8.5 acres with 160' beach waterfront. the area was logged 80 years ago and is mostly covered with 2nd growth fir and alder with some patches of red cedar.
Here is a couple shots from the beach.

One of our local Blue herons standing guard on the beach.


Looking north Waiting for Sunset.

 

[denmansoft]

We would go camping on the beach, and of course sometimes it would rain. Kayaks are great for playing around here.


But then it was time to extend the season so we picked up this 23 foot 5th wheel.


This has made camping on Denman far more civilized and frequent. For the last several years we have been doing 3 day weekends every 2 weeks from Easter to Thanksgiving.

 

[ultrarunner]

Great project and don't forget the pictures!

 

[denmansoft]

Now we are set up for anything.


Generator is awful noisy, so we 'borrowed' power from a neighbour. 225' of #12 cord worked for a while.

 

[denmansoft]

Here is our dining room and view. We still eat many of our meals down here on the beach. The trailer is back about 100' and up 15' from the beach.

 

[denmansoft]

We built a bridge across a gully for something to do.


Next came services.
This whole area is solid rock so we had to blast a hole to put in our power pole for service. Now we only need one power cord to the trailer!


The Well was drilled 30 years ago but no pump ever installed. We put in a 3/4hp submersible down near the bottom of the 240 ft. hole. We don't get a lot of water and will need to have storage tanks for a buffer.
Lots of pipe to go in the hole

Pump all ready to drop down.

Pump house all closed up.

 

[EddieWalker]

Very nice. You have a beautiful place.

I'm looking forward to seeing more pictures and your progress on building your garage.

Eddie

 

[denmansoft]

Next was to get the power up to the well and the water back down. By the time this was done we had gone through a spool of #8-3 and 900 feet of water pipe.
Of course we had to blast some of the road to put the services under it. This was done in a hurry because we heard they were going to re-pave the road.
By getting our crossing done first we didn't have to patch the pavement.




They ended up adding 8" of asphalt and that made our driveway even steeper.
It took a while and another truckload of gravel before I didn't need 4WD to get out.

 

[denmansoft]

Thanks Eddie.

The next step was trenching in the water and power 350ft from the road to the well. It was scraping down to the rock almost all the way. That is tough work with a backhoe. We were running about 2 ft down most of the way.
We were working so hard on that that we forgot to get any pics.

CLearing the site for the garage was a bit of work. just a few 75' trees to get out of the way.
I gave my Bro-tek thumb a good workout.








Stumps go over the cliff....

 

[denmansoft]

Now the trees are out of the way we can scrape the last part of the dirt off the rock.



Site is all ready for the rock driller to put in the holes for pinning the foundation to the rock.

 

[mjncad]

Wonderful property you have there and I'm looking forward to seeing how this project progresses.

 

[denmansoft]

All the vertical rebar is grouted at least 1ft. into the rock with Rockite. It won't be moving with all the earthquakes we get around here. The flatdeck trailer turned out to be an excellent workbench for this kind of stuff. We got all the lumber where possible in 16ft lengths.


Forms are all done. Now for the cement pump and truck.

 

[denmansoft]

We used 8 cu meters of concrete for the footing and walls. The cement pump they sent was a 42M reach pump truck. (almost the smallest they had avail.) It went straight up to the top of the trees, over and then back down. My garage is only 24x24...


Here I am fillling the forms. One pass to fill in the footings and run the vibrator around. next pass around to fill the walls. Run the vibrator around again and we were done. It was an intense couple of hours, but my first foundation went in almost perfectly.


Now we need to re-build the grade so it looks like a garage foundation...


here is more what it will be like.


We put 2 loads of sand into the inside and 3 loads of gravel in front and on one side to get the grade close to what I want.

 

[denmansoft]

Two walls are up and squared off.

Second load of sand to fill up the sand box.

Sandbox compacted.

First door beam up. The FEL bucket was all I needed for this one.

The second beam needed some help with my forks.

 

[Egon]

Thanks for sharing the pictures.

Denman and Hornby Islands are very nice indeed. Heck, if I looked into my slide collection I'll probably find quite a few.

 

[Jagmandave]

How do you get your vehicles there? is there a bridge?

Garage is coming along nicely, you'll love having the shelter and storage as you finish up your house build. I'm surprised they'd run electriccal service when all you had there was the 5th wheel trailer - they won't do that on my remote property.......

 

[denmansoft]

Egon
I thought I'd traveled a bit. Is there anywhere you haven't been?
We are hoping to get back to the maritimes soon.

Jagmandave:
There is a ferry from Vancouver island to Denman Island. Runs every hour, 10 minute ride.
It costs me an extra $15 to have the trailer on. Any truck delivery of lumber, or processed aggregates etc. will run $200+

When we asked for the pole service for power we asked for a 200Amp service to handle the house once it was built.
If all we asked for was for the trailer, then they would probably have said no.
We had to blast the hole, put in the pole and wire it. ($$$$) all they did was put a transformer on their pole on the other side of the road and run the wire across to our pole. ($$$$) After a few months we got a huge power bill. The new fancy digital meter had gone beserk and showed SSSSSSS across the display. The Meter reader wrote it down as 2222222 Kwh. It took 4 months for them to go and actually test the meter and replace it.

The biggest problem with getting power was they wouldn't even open a file until we had a house number! We had the Blaster/Backhoe, pole, electrician all lined up ready to go. After many months, phone calls, and queries we finally found that none of these agencies did or knew who handled house numbers for our island: Islands Trust(municipality), Post office, Land Titles, etc. I finally found someone working in the property tax office who lived on Denman: She said the Fire chief handled the numbers. Our fire chief is the Blaster/Backhoe Contractor!
6 months from when we initially asked for power our application was on the books. One month later we had the trailer hooked up.

 

[Maxfli]

Just had an opportunity to go to Stuart Island BC Sure is a neat area. Looks like you have a gret place there. Here was the neighbors boat.

 

[denmansoft]

That looks a lot like Tacomite?
We haven't been up to Stuart Island since we sold our ketch 10 years ago.

 

[Maxfli]

She is St. Eval, owed by Dennis Washington.