Tuesday, October 31, 2006

A vision in chalk


Our builder laid out the exterior walls, footings, septic line, and front and rear porch areas in chalk today (see photo). The garage got cut off a bit on the right side of the picture. The backhoe is due out tomorrow for some trenching/digging work. We're breaking ground - woohoo!

Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD - the local electric provider) didn't show up today to discuss bringing electricity to the parcel like we had discussed. After I called to see why nobody had shown up yet, they said that the designer I had talked to was new and they didn't know why nobody was there. They rescheduled for tomorrow - the supervisor I spoke with will come out instead.

We have chosen a loan provider and that process is now underway.

We are now trying to figure out where fences and trees and sprinkler lines and the pump and the propane tank and the trench for power and phone service and everything else are all going to go....

Friday, October 20, 2006

We have a driveway



We got about 75 tons of aggregate base (AB) delivered today. Our builder smoothed it out into a decent enough driveway for construction purposes. Should get everyone through the winter and we will "revisit" it next year when construction is done, if necessary. Driveway is about 200 ft long or so.

Here's a couple pictures from this morning. First one is from the first of three deliveries of AB, second is the (almost) finished product.

Our builder should be on-site a week from Tuesday (October 31) to start laying out the house on the pad and may be excavating sewer lines and footing locations with a backhoe a day or two later. He's going to get us a final cost estimate on Monday or Tuesday so we can finalize our loan.

Kind of exciting to see things starting to move forward. I need to work on getting rid of the blackberry bush sprouts starting to pop up along the front of the property where we removed all the old bushes and the fence.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Got Aggregate Base?

We are having aggregate base delivered for the driveway next Friday (October 20th). About 75 tons worth.

We need to be sure that we are not tracking dirt onto the road because the county will fine you for the mess and the contractor may need access during some not-so-nice weather. We really don't need him getting stuck or unable to work due to a muddy driveway.

We have a lender selected and almost all of the required background information has been provided to them. Still need a couple things from the contractor, but I just got the paperwork for him from the lender today and he's picking it up tomorrow, so that should be done in relatively short order.

Things are starting to move forward a little faster. I need to go fiddle with the camera setup for the time-lapse photos I want to take of construction activities.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Plans approved

I got a call today from our builder saying the plans have been approved by the County and he's going to pick them up tomorrow. He is pretty excited to start on our house, as he is going to be doing a couple new things (using Stego Wrap for the underslab vapor retarder instead of plain visqueen and putting in two tankless water heaters in parallel, for example). Our home will also be very close (less than 10 miles or so) from his house, so a nice short commute is appealing, too.

We are obviously pursuing financing right now and while it shouldn't be a problem, we need to get the plans and some paperwork put together and submit it with a cost estimate/contract and get the ball rolling. We could be under construction in less than a month!