Hey, look! We've got a mailbox!

Looks good!

Apparently all we have to do is call the town post office and tell them we put it up, and we'll start getting mail. Easy enough.

For the record, we got the cheapest steel mailbox we could, because we don't expect him to make it through the winter (rural snowplows always knock them down). Poor li'l guy...

Building Permit Application: Submitted!

Earlier today we were told that the site plan mylars are at the Town Hall awaiting the final signature from the Planning Board Chairman. The Board and the Town Attorney are still working on the drainage easement language, but the hope is that the Chairman will sign the mylars to let us get our driveway and building permits now. Knowing this, our surveyor suggested that we could probably go ahead and submit our driveway permit applications to the DOT and building permit application to the town - so, we did, along with final stamped engineering drawings and the rescheck (which were just dropped off to us today). Everything is finally coming together! (And seemingly all at once, serendipitously.) Now we just have to wait for approval before we start building - and thankfully, this time we only need one person's go ahead!

Site plan approval, still continued...

After last week's promising update regarding the site plan, we were hoping that enough progress would be made in a week that we might just be able to get our building permit. Unfortunately we were being overly optimistic, but Matt met with the building inspector during his office hours yesterday nonetheless to give him a copy of our house plans so that he could be familiar with them when the time comes for us to apply for a building permit. It turns out that our engineer neglected to do something called a "Rescheck", which is required to get a permit, so it's just as well that we couldn't apply yet anyways. Yet another road block, but at least this sounds like a pretty small one that can be resolved pretty quickly.

So what's the hold up? At this point, our surveyor had the mylars of the site plan signed by the MCDOH and dropped off at the MCDOT. They should sign them on Monday, after which they have to go to the Town Engineer and then back to the Town Hall. The only unresolved issue is the drainage easement. Apparently the Town Attorney is still revising their standard easement wording, and has asked if we could wait until May 22nd or so to add the new language to the description. Then once the town planning board chairman signs the mylars, the surveyor will have to pick them back up and have prints made to distribute to all of the agencies. THEN we can get our driveway permits and the building permit. Slowly, we're getting there... We really would have liked to have been further along by now, but what can you do?

Getting Stoned

Well I probably jinxed it with my last post, because of course our stretch of beautiful weather broke and we got rain right when we were scheduled to get gravel delivered. And, it was a lot of rain, so of course that area near the road that I was afraid would get all muddy got hopelessly soggy and slippery. The gravel truck arrived last Thursday and before pulling in, the driver walked over to express his doubt on account of the weather. (He also took a moment to doubt the ability of our tractor to effectively spread out the gravel between deliveries - "You're going to do it with that?! Oookaayy...." - Needless to say, we did not appreciate this unnecessary negative sentiment.) However, we figured with his heavy truck and huge tires, he ought to be okay. He pulled in and dropped off one load, and based on how that went, we figured we'd go for a second. Unfortunately, on his way out he got stuck in the slippery mud, and for a few moments were were concerned that we would have a huge truck stuck at the entrance to the driveway. Thankfully after gently rocking forward and backward enough times he eventually made it out. Matt got to work with the tractor while my dad and I used shovels to help spread the gravel, obviously concentrating on the puddles and extremely muddy areas first. For having ordered 4" bank run, a lot of those cobblestones were considerably larger than 4"...

After about 45 minutes we had the first load spread out, and we were left waiting for the next load (take THAT, non-believing truck driver!). While this load was delivered much more effectively than the first thanks to the new layer of gravel we had just leveled out, the driver was not confident that we would have continued success, and told us we should wait until the weather improved and things dried out. Drats. We leveled out the second load and called it a day, and once again we were left waiting.

The rain eventually tapered and we were able to schedule the remaining deliveries for today. This time, instead of dumping all of the gravel in one pile that needed to be spread out, the driver started at one end of the driveway and slowly dumped while driving. The hatch of the truck had a chain on it that only allowed the door to open so much, so that the flow of the gravel was rather controlled as the truck rolled along. This left very little work for us to then have to do, other than some minor leveling out and a whole bunch of driving back and forth to help pack the gravel down. And by "us" I actually mean Matt and my dad, as I was unavailable, so it's a good thing that there was less work to have to do this time.

So now we have a driveway!....mostly. We still don't technically have an approved site plan, so we still can't get the driveway permit that would allow us to complete the driveway where it meets the road. But for now, at least we have a "paved" pathway that will allow us to drive in and out from the site without getting stuck in the mud anymore. Progress!

Updated budget:
$370.00 - Rush Gravel Corp. 2 trucks of 12 yds #3 gravel
$555.00 - Rush Gravel Corp. 3 trucks of 12 yds #3 gravel
TOTAL SPENT SO FAR: $39,253.29

So tired, tired of waiting...

Today we got an update on the status of our site plan! The plans have been approved by the Department of Health, and the Department of Transportation should be finished with their review by the end of this week. Our surveyor has finished his updates to the site plan and has drafted up an easement agreement with the town which has been dropped off at the Town Hall. It looks like we are finally making some progress... It has been 7 weeks since the Town Planning Board meeting when we were given conditional approval. Could it be that a building permit is finally on the horizon?? With springtime weather having finally arrived for a good stretch, it seems like a promising time to get started, which we are very anxious to do. All this paperwork has really been holding us up.

"Baby Jessica" Down the Well

So Matt and I caved (hardy har har) and got a Go Pro a little while ago. While it has already come in handy for a few other things, and its time lapse mode should be really fun for when the house starts getting erected, the major motivation to get one came from the well report that said we had caves underground at 110`! Today, we finally decided to see what was down there.

My dad picked up a few flashlights at Harbor Freight that were so cheap it wouldn't matter if they don't made it through our experiment. He rigged up a little contraption with weights, a holder for the flashlights, a mount for the GoPro, and a "guide" made out of 2-liter bottles.

Matt holding "Baby Jessica".

We popped off the cap from the well, and lowered in the camera system (known as Baby Jessica) with much anticipation and no clue whether this would work. I was able to preview the video on my phone for a short time thanks to the GoPro's WiFi, but once the camera went underwater I lost signal, so the rest would remain a mystery until we got the camera out and could hook it up to a computer. Was it even going to work? Would there be enough light from the flashlights to see anything? Is there really anything down there?

Well, here it is: the world premiere video of the mysterious contents of our well:

The first 45 seconds are just the shaft put down the drilled hole, with the bright spot being water. Underwater, you'll see some gunk that we're not sure about; probably either precipitate or an iron bacteria (which is common in water wells and, according to our literature, is harmless). At 2:06 the pipe ends and you'll witness varying limestone formations. Some crazy stuff starts appearing at 2:50, and then we suspect the noted caves begin at 3:06! We hit bottom at 3:40 (but I left the rest of the video on there too because it's kind of interesting to see the water dripping off when the camera re-emerges).

Amazing!!! It was pretty scary to drop Baby Jessica down what seemed to be an endless hole in the ground with no idea what's down there or whether it would all make it back up successfully. But it worked perfectly! And the video is absolutely fascinating. It was really exciting to view the video for the first time and discover what's deep underground. Now that we have a better idea of what's down there and we know the setup works, we will probably stage the whole thing again with the camera mounted sideways so that we can try to see more of the caves!

Driveway Prep

Although our site plan isn't yet fully approved, and therefore we cannot get an official driveway permit, we have gotten to work on the driveway (just not in the area near the road). Using the tractor we got recently, we have been scraping away the topsoil along a 10' wide path that we outlined using stakes and string (just from eyeballing). After laying out the path, we measured it to be about 350' long! So scraping away the topsoil has been a rather long process. Matt has manned the frontloader for most of it while I have used a shovel ahead of him to cut away the edges cleanly. My manual effort has been a real pain because we are realizing just how many rocks there are just underground! It seems like every other time I break ground with the shovel I hit a rock.

I tried to get a picture of the driveway, but as you
can see it doesn't really look like very much.
It's tough to get a high angle.

Now that we are pretty much ready, we have put in an order for gravel for this Thursday. Here's hoping the weather cooperates, because the area near the road (which we can't even work on until we get a proper permit) can get really muddy!