The Miller Project

[Copied from an e-mail, pronouns edited to make sense]

We need to decide where to build the outhouse.

After all day working on the sheds foundation posts, we tried the post hole digger at another location and it zipped right down because we were in the wet area vs the rocky dry area we were in.

Jake has a toilet at his house I got from my sister in law she used in her outbuilding where she lives – got for the price of shipping

I think we were looking at a 5 x 5 foot, might of been 4 x 4 ft platform to build; it would be a changing room also; probably engineer a shower, with the plastic bag holding water in the sun

I will order the exterior siding from the mill down the road; it will need to be picked up there and delivered and walked in; it might take a few trips; I would like for Jonathan and Jake to see what they could engineer to have that delivered. This is when they invite some friends to come along for the day!!!

I will give to Jonathan and Jake a list of what they can do next that they might be able to work on that next day saturday or another day – I am sure Jake might not get the day of either

Next phase after the joists and floor laydown will be to build the walls. I am planning that in June at Ian Childs parents house where there is ample electricity and a chance to get to home depot quickly.  I just noticed that week when Ian and family will be there is the week Gwen and I were going to see a favorite ballet company in NYC right in the middle of the week Weds. I will figure it out.

So in conclusion: I will leave Jonathan and Jake a list (will call) of some further work we can focus on. Major thing I think will be the outhouse foundation. we have 4 x 4′s for the posts and 2 x 6′s to wrap around the posts which need then to be cemented in place the holes are dug, just not sure on location digging only on the driest of the property has major challenges – I know for sure why they call it the rocky mountains, all we could find is one rock after another

In June too we will build the roof frames. We will haul it up there in a Ryder truck.

There are now 8 post holes dug below the frost line, one 5×5 and one 10×12. The 10×12 has posts and yesterday (10/24/2010) we poured the cement to secure them. It snowed overnight but we don’t know the conditions at the ranch. It was kind of cold and rainy yesterday, but if we hurry we might be able to build the floor next weekend and have something not-lumpy to put a tent on during the winter.

Also, I built a bridge over the newly identified river running east -> west, but it’s not finished.

Jake has the pictures.

Since the July fun I’ve checked up on our work to see if it did anything, positive or negative.

The upper ditch has captured water and the lower one has not.  This means the upper was enough and that the lower should be enough in times of flash storms.  We’ll need to dig the trench taking this water to the lower section now so that we don’t end up with mosquito friendly ponds.

The irrigation channel was good in some areas but mostly it created extra flooding on the east side.  This is bad on the surface (get it?) but good because the topology is now very clear.  We’ll need to expand the channel around the bushes as they have been made into choke points by the widening we did.  I expanded the exit point (southwest) and built flood walls using the mud I dug out.  This added an extra 2 feet to the height.  Doing this along the entire channel should be enough to stop most of the flooding.  I’d like to get this done before winter since we’ll need to see how the entry/exit points behave during spring thaw as well as how the leakage from our westerly neighbors affects us.  We may need to put a wall of sorts on the property line.

Speaking of which!  Apparently the valley was surveyed in the 60′s with what has been proven to be incredibly inaccurate.  Some GIS maps from the county show property lines that bear little resemblance to the fences.  I don’t know if these are authoritative, but we need a survey!  A licensed surveyor would be best, but someone with a GPS and some experience would be a good starting point.  There are things we need to dig and build that are dependent on knowing where we are allowed to start and stop.  The upper ditches may already be wrong.

Fall is basically started and winter is soon.  Come ski!  I have guest rooms now.

I got frustrated trying to figure out how to embed a gallery when I did the July post (even computer nerds experience this!), and I’ve been busy moving and generally changing everything forever to revisit the issue.

But no more! I have unlocked the secrets, and without further delay here are our experiences in July when the family gathered with chainsaws and heavy machinery.

What a difference a day makes… or about seven of them anyway.

Mark (who isn’t related to the Miller family but is always up for doing something if it’s outdoors) and I went up today to spend a few hours clearing more wood.  We wanted to spend most of the day up there but I had things in the morning and we had to get back in the evening to watch the Pittsburgh Penguins in game six of the playoffs against the Capitals (which they lost unfortunately).

We realized though, that it really is a great time to do work up there because despite the wet conditions the logs are all exposed and we were able to get at some that would have otherwise taken a while to get to because of all of the grass and other shrubs.  We were able to clear more area for camping as well as clear a better and drier trail from the Howell/Purpurra property.  We also discovered (or rediscovered if Jonathan already realized this) a clearly defined fence line on the north end of the property.  I think that fences surroud roughly 85% of the property which makes everything a lot easier to figure out.

We went along this fence line and tried to cut through some thick growth from the open pasture part of the land to the more wooded part.  It’s pretty swampy but we got a start.  We also laid some logs over the swampier parts that we needed to go back and forth over like little bridges.

The main difference though from a week ago to today is the water level is a little bit lower and it’s more defined exactly where the water is coming from.  There are actually two main paths the water is following from the high part to the low part of the land and two paths the water is following from North to South.

The water flowing from the high parts to the low parts can be taken care (I think) by digging a french drain (as suggested by Jonathan) along the Eastern edge (the higher edge) of the property and the Southern edge.  The two streams flowing North to South can be brought together shortly after they enter our property and the one remaing path dug deeper and wider to avoid creating the marsh we have now.

I still think it will be at least one more long weekend up there before we’re ready to rent a small tractor to get started on this but I think it’s very feasible.  The one other obstacle in the way right now is the power line running to the Howell/Purpurra cabin is down.  The transformer nearest their cabin is actually sitting on the ground and the power lines sag to about six feet off the ground.  I have no idea if the lines are still live and I’m sure not willing to find out and I don’t know what is going to be done about this but there is no way to safely get any large piece of equipment onto our land with the line down.

Here are some pics from today’s outing.

Well, we’re not actually sure if it’s considered the first snow fall since it didn’t really cover everything on the ground, but either way it was indeed snowing.

After hopes of getting more people to come up to the ranch with us it ended up being just the regular three going up.  We went up just for the afternoon to continue clearing more of the fallen trees.

With the snow on the ground we weren’t able to clear any overgrowth so we just started a fire and got the chainsaw revved up.  We just started clearing everything around the existing camp site.  When it was Jonathan’s turn to use the chainsaw I think the exhaust fumes got to his head and he went around cutting everything on the ground.  It worked well though, we got a ton of wood cut but then the chain got too dull to cut anything else and the sun was setting anyway.  There is now plenty of firewood up there for anyone who wants to go up and spend the weekend.

Panorama of camp in its early stages

Making the trek to camp, starting at our neighbor’s driveway

And some random pictures.