Whoa !  Look at these Christmas Eve lobsters!  I can't wait to dig in!  What?  Another dozen in the sink?  You mean I get seconds?  Thirds?  Leftover lobster sandwiches?  

Unbelievable but true...  eat your hearts out, this is Christmas in Nova Scotia.

The lovely Pamela (Rhonda's sister) is putting the finishing touches on the table while Dad cleans lobsters in the sink.  We're minutes away from enjoying a family tradition on Christmas Eve.

We've had lots of snow, beer, presents and fun times.  It's great to spend time with Rhonda's family and catch up.  Christmas was a hoot, New Years spent at cousin Natalie's "Foggy Goggle" pub in Halifax - we got home in a blizzard that night around 5 am.  AND Rhonda and I went to a hockey game (Halifax Mooses v. PEI Rockets) !  A great game that went into overtime, lots of fights and skating - PEI (Prince Edward Island) won with a great goal with less than a minute in the 4th period, sorry Mooses.  [Yeah, I know, the plural of moose is "moose" but that's what they called them at the game.]

If you click on the photo you can make out my lobster in the lower right corner of the photo...

Here's a new photo of Chase.  He's grown a bit and his skin has improved.  We think he may have some sort of allergy but I give him 1/4 pill steroid every other day that keeps it under control.  Maybe when I get settled in  at the ranch he'll improve or I'll have him tested.  I've got him on prescription ultra-allergen free food, too.

Brock has a new e-mail address now, "brock@hanveys.com", so you can e-mail at that address directly.  

Exams are done for this term, YEAH !!  I don't want to jinx it but I think I did ok.  I'm really glad I don't have to study for a little while.  Exams are getting old and I'm looking forward to the day when I don't have to take any more of them.  Only 3 exams left !  

We're framing the roof this week on the house but the metal will have to wait until after the holidays.  Scheduling workers this time of year is tough.  I'll be catching up on all my duties that I've put on hold during exam prep time.  The house, of course, is a high priority.  I'm looking forward to moving out there and getting all my stuff that's in storage.  Looking forward to a comprehensive job search as well.  I know this is a really bad time to look for work but who knows, maybe I'll find something that I like.  May take a while but that's okay, I'm sure things will improve soon.  The VA won't pay for foreign distance learning courses any more so that's a huge chunk out of my budget that would have helped smooth my transition.  Just my luck but I've already paid for the last three courses so I don't have to worry about that, only paying the bills, putting food on the table, just like everybody else.  Lots of layoffs in Rockdale, from Alcoa.  Hard times.

Well I'll be out of touch for a few weeks, for the holidays but I want to wish everyone a very happy/merry Christmas and happy new year.  Don't forget that Christmas is "Christ's mass", and that the focus should be on His gift to us of life.  I appreciate all your comments and e-mails, it means a lot to know you're interested in sharing your lives with us, as we are wanting to share ours with you.  So Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Phil and Rhonda with much love.  Miss you all terribly in England and wish we could afford to just hop on a jet and come for a visit.  Love to all our families and can't wait to see you during this holiday season.  Thanks so much for all your e-mails, cards and letters... it means a lot to us.  

Be of good cheer and remember how well we are all being taken care of now as always and give thanks!  God bless!  See you next year!

Here you can see the laundry room and garage being framed in.  You may be able to see the first of two rainwater collection tanks in the background.  The tank was delivered yesterday and placed behind the laundry room.  I'm going to try to finish the garage framing tomorrow and the roof framing will begin on Monday.  As soon as the roof is framed metal panels will be place on it - metal is more desirable for potable rainwater collection.  The metal roofing is an aluminium-zinc mix. (yes, I spelled it correctly)

Here's a better view of the tank.  It's a 7500 gallon tank made of fiberglass and has a special liner that prevents the water inside from growing algae, etc. for long periods of time (years).  The inlet has been located at the top of the tank rather than protruding from the side, which is usually the case.  This customisation allows an extra 600 gallons to be stored, giving a total of 8100 gallons.  Normal consumption per person is 50 gallons per day for washing, drinking, toilet, cooking, etc.  This tank would give two persons and 81 day supply.  I plan on adding a second 8100 gallon tank, perhaps next year (we'll see).

Unfortunately I didn't get a better picture of the pump truck, which was huge.  You can see the boom behind the two cement trucks though.  It's really tall, the photo doesn't do it justice, perhaps 7 stories tall.  The guy handling the hose on the scaffolding is a consultant.  The walls took 23.5 yards of concrete and the pour went fairly smoothly.  

So the walls are done and next I have to find a roofer.  My brother Steve and I will frame in the laundry room and garage next week.

For those of you who don't know anything about this type of construction, the foam forms are made from recycled materials.  They stay in place and provide 2.5 inches of insulation on the inside and the same on the outside.  The concrete is 6 inches thick between the foam panels and since it provides such a tight seal it performs the same as an insulated stick frame house having an R-40 insulation factor.  So it's "green" building that conforms to construction codes.  The mass of the concrete absorbs and releases heat very slowly and moderates temperature and humidity swings indoors such that we will need only 1/3 of the air conditioning duty that would normally be required.  The costs are estimated at 7% higher than conventional stick-frame built but I believe that includes the labor involved in framing and insulating,  If you've been following, I put the walls up on this house with one hired hand in two weeks, including all the window bucks and rebar.

Here's some more progress, as of Friday evening.  We've got 4 runs of blocks across the front and right side of the house, along with the bucks for the front door, picture window and casement windows.  We've also installed braces along three walls and will finish the fourth on Monday.  Then we'll build the walls to height, which will be a total of 7 courses.

The pour is scheduled for Wed. p.m.- I have a consultant coming from San Antonio who has done this a thousand times and it should only take a couple of hours to complete. 

It takes place in two pours.  The first brings the concrete up to about 4 feet in all four walls.  The window bucks are built to allow concrete to be poured in through the bottom window buck.  Then a second pour brings the concrete to the top of the walls and "J" bolts are inserted.

This is a view of the left wall.  There will be three french doors placed in this wall, two in front for the den and one toward the rear in the MBr.

All of the doors open outward, except for the front double doors.  There will be a covered wrap-around deck eventually, when the economy improves.  (ok, my economy)

I just published this and went back to view the latest comments...  Hi, Mom!  Yes, we're being very careful and I only hit my thumb with a hammer for the first time on Friday, twice in a row but not hard and didn't really hurt it.

Paul and Lisa:  Thanks for the comments, I'll try to post some doggie photos soon.  Chase is growing fast and Buster is glad to have a playmate.  I had to chuckle a bit about naming our path.  Seems that in my haste to get a roof over my head I've overlooked that detail - poor form on my part and I do apologise.  I'll have to put some thought into it so please be patient.

These are the Eco-Block foam blocks that I'll be building the walls of the main house with.  They snap together with connectors and will be stacked 7 blocks high.

Concrete will be poured down in between the blocks and create walls that will be 6" thick concrete with 2-1/2" foam on the inside and 2-1/2" foam on the outside.  The walls will be 9' 4" tall.  Drywall can be screwed directly into the foam blocks in the interior as they have embedded webs that will hold the screws.  A variety of materials may be attached to the exterior, I think I'm going for synthetic stucco, we'll see.

Here's what I got done in a day.  I'll finish assembling the blocks Monday and get the lumber to the door and window bucks.  A consultant is coming Tuesday to deliver bracing/scaffolding and help me get off to a good start.  I should be ready to pour the walls by the weekend, fingers crossed.

It's cooler now and we had some rain that settled the dust and greened everything up.  There's a little water in the pond and everything is really pretty.

Here are some deer tracks in the road that runs from the homesite to the north end of the property.  Looks like Grand Central Station.

I fixed the feeder on the north end so there should be some deer drawn in.  I'm working with a wildlife biologist to take a census and manage the herd so I may get some free doe tags this fall.

Okay, if you read Paul's comment then you understand why I don't post photos of myself (just kidding).  I'm not an exhibitionist but, REALLY!  If you didn't want to look, why ask.  (It's friggin' hot here!)

By the way, I don't have neighbors that I'm aware of.  Not that I've seen anyway.  Besides, I'll wager the girls in Sheet Harbour got a tickle.  At least my wife, I'm sure.

So, enough sarcasm...this photo shows the steel in the beams and the first layer of steel on top.  

Above are photos of the step coming from the laundry room to the garage and the rest of the steel being put in.  Notice the bracing on the step.  NOW THE POUR BEGINS!!! .......

Firstly, the concrete is poured into the beams.  The crew arrived at 6:30 am and there were 7 cement trucks lined up and ready to pour at 7:00 am.

After the beams are filled it's time to go back and bring the concrete to the top of the forms.  You can see the crew working with two trucks simultaneously.  Each truck holds 10 yards of concrete, about 270 cubic feet.

You can see the concrete has been brought up to the top of the forms and being leveled with a 2x4, this is called "screeding".  Additionally, the top is smoothed out (left side of right photo) with a bull float, called "floating" the concrete.  Floating pushes the gravel down and allows the smooth cement to rise to the surface.

Here the forms on the step have been removed so it can be trowelled and the machine on the upper part of the slab is smoothing the surface.

It is solid enough to stand on after a couple of hours but still a bit pliable.

Still a bit of a mess at this point.

And FINALLY!!!

The surface has been smoothed on the upper part and the garage (lower part) has been smoothed and raked gently with a wet broom to make small grooves on top.

Ain't she a beauty !!

Now curing for 72 hrs, remove the forms and on to putting up walls!!  The slab will be fully cured in 3-4 weeks.

By popular demand, a photo of me in front of the foundation as it is.  As you can see I'm wearing my "boss" hat, keeps the sun off my neck and the crew in line.  We're getting close to the pour.  I just can't wait.  It's taken a lot longer than I anticipated but it will be well worth it.  I got a quote of $4600 to lay the steel over a three day period.  Said, "No thanks, I'll do it myself."  Me and "Red", a hired hand, have it almost finished in about five days for under $300.

We had to bend squares of rebar and tie them to horizontally run 20 ft. rebar "sticks", 3 on top/ 3 on bottom.  Rebar is made from mild steel and provides tensile strength, which is resistance to pulling apart.  Concrete has great compression strength but little tensile strength.  By embedding steel in the concrete you get both.  When we finish putting steel in the beams we'll lay a grid of rebar on top with sticks spaced 18" apart and tied together with wire.

This is closer view of the cages in the beams.  The plastic is there to keep the concrete from drying too quickly.  The longer it takes for the concrete to set the stronger it will be.  The rebar is tied together with wires that are cut to 5" length and have loops on each end.  We use a tool called a "pigtail" that hooks into the two loops, then you pull and spin the tool and it twists the wires.  Some of the squares were cut and bent by us, others were bought pre-bent. About 1/2 of 'em.

THANKS FOR ALL THE COMMENTS !!!  KEEP 'EM COMIN' !!

 

Is this beautiful or what ?!

Be sure to click on the photo to see all the detail.  This is quality construction.  ($$$)

Tomorrow we cover with plastic and start laying rebar.  Hope to pour next week and then begin with walls.  I'm really glad to see the progress.  I know, you want to look some more at the kitty.

Have you ever seen a cat that has opposable thumbs?

This is Steve's cat, Wally.  Wally's thumbs actually work.  Wally is not very interesting otherwise (to me) but I thought you might enjoy a break from construction photos.

Enjoy another fine photo of Wally.

Shake hands, Wally, shake !

Okay, here's the progress I've been talking about.  As you can see, the pad is leveled to grade from the left rear corner.  It is quite high at the front right, which is the laundry room, but there will be a step or two down to the garage so that we don't have to build the garage up quite as high.  M-kay?

We used another 20 tons of road base today and I had to order another 20 tons for tomorrow.  We should finish leveling tomorrow and move on to forming and rebar.

This is the result of about an inch of rain.  You may be able to tell from this photo that the right and far sides have been deeped/steepened somewhat from the previous photo.  I held the camera close to the ground so you could see the depth.  Now all we need is more rain, a few fish, a few tropical lilies and some swim trunks!  Should be grand!

Well, there's been a little more progress than this but its the most recent photo I have.  These sandbags will hold the road base (sand, clay and limestone) in place when we fill in the middle of each "island" and keep it from falling into the beams.  They'll have to be stacked to make the pad level (to grade).  After that I'll cover each "island" with plastic and place rebar in the beams, then cover everything with concrete.

Here I've hired a service to clean out the pond.  Lonnie and I had partially drained it.  They're pushing some of the mud out through the channel we dug and the rest is being scooped out by the track-hoe.  Big machines, huh?  If you recall earlier pictures of the pond, it was all silted in and really nasty.

Another view.  Shows the technical difficulty of this job.

Nearly there.....

Ta-da!!  Actually they went back and made it deeper than this... to about 10-12 feet in the middle.

Can't wait for the rain to fill it back up!

My brother's wife's uncle Lonnie ran the machine for this dig and I did the layout, smoothing, trimming and grading.  I did run the machine a little, which wasn't too hard to do, except for the extreme heat and sheer boredom of it, but Lonnie has done this kind of work his whole life and was much faster and more innovative than I.  He did some things with the machine I would have never thought of.  I'd like to say we enjoyed this but it was projected to take a weekend and ended up taking a full 7 days, due to the hardness of the soil at depth.  A good lesson for you kids, don't burn your bridges with these older folks, they have a lot of experience and know-how!

I should have some road base delivered this week and start building the pad up and leveling it.  Road base is a mixture of limestone, clay and sand.  It packs down hard and level with a vibrating machine and provides good structural support for the concrete pad.  I'll go around the perimeter of each of the squares you see above with road base in sand bags and fill in the middle, level and tamp.  I'll put some loose road base in the beams to pack them down and make them level and solid, too.

Also, tragically, last Thursday a good friend, Björn Enderle, was killed in a motorcycle accident.  Björn had just e-mailed me last month to ask me how Rhonda and I were.  He leaves behind his beautiful wife and son, Anja and Linus, parents, Moni and Volker, and brother, Sibo, as well as many, many dear friends.  Björn was young and as full of life as anyone I have ever known and it is with the most profound sadness that we express our deepest and most sincere sympathy and prayers for Anja, Linus, family and friends.