Day 12 : Foundation undressed

Things are happening fast now!

So they poured the foundation walls on Thursday and must have taken off all the molds on Friday already because it looked all nice and clean as we went to check the progress today on day 12.

I made a pano shot from a different angle for a change: from the northern side of the house and along the driveway.

Pano shot from the northern dirt pile

I wonder how long this nice dirt pile on the west will allow me to take photos like that. 

Day 9 : Foundation walls

We are entering the third dimension now!

It was one of those picture perfect days today: temps in the 70s, low humidity and plenty of sunshine. The crew poured the foundation/basement walls today. We showed up mid afternoon just as the concrete truck finished its work. Since this is a walkout basement design, basically only the back half is below ground. So the 8' concrete walls do not wrap all around the basement area. You can already see the attached garage on the right, where the porch will sit on top. The main living quarter is the larger area on the left.

Here are a few pics again.

Reference Photo 2014-06-19

Day 7 : Footings are poured

Today they poured the concrete footings for the foundation.
But only after more of that stubborn ledge had to be removed.

Construction site with concrete footings

Nice viewpoint on top of a pile of dirt

Reference Photo 2014-06-16

Day 3 : Digging has started

The day has finally come. There were delays for various reasons, but most notably it was due to a winter that simply did not want to end. The road's posted signs (Vermont towns do not allow heavy trucks on minor roads during mud season) have been lifted in Westford on May 19, and nobody we spoke to could remember it being that late in spring.

Here is the last "pre construction photo of the site, taken last weekend:

Building Site, Pre Construction

We got notified by the builder a few days ago that digging will start on Wednesday, June 11, 2014.

On June 12, we hit the first road "block" on our way: A big ledge rock that need to be removed either by blasting or with a special (and expensive) chisseling rig. We almost expected this to happen as we know the ledges on the slope above the site in the woods.

Here are a few photos from today, June 14. You can see the special rig being brought to the site already, waiting to do its job on Monday I suppose. Oh and yes: It has rained for the past two days, hence all the water in the photos!

Construction site with westerly view

Chisseling Rig

I decided to take a "reference photo" as often as possible, always from the same spot. Here is the first one. You may compare it with the "pre construction photo" above.

Reference Photo 2014-06-14

Nothing is constant but change

Everyone building a custom home can probably confirm that this old saying is more than true. Of course, we can confirm as well. As 2014 rolled from winter into spring, we made some adjustments to our plans. This also included minor floor plan changes.

For cost reason, we had to scale back to 8" walls (still > R30), but we stuck with the triple pane windows. The gas stove has been replaced with a pellet stove (no fossil fuel here!) and we changed the porch (12'x16' now) as well as deck design (with the exit on the south along the smaller porch). We got the final prints from our architect in May (see below).

And even those will most likely not be implemented exactly. Some updates we already know about, and I am asure that there will be more tweaks as we go along. But we spare you with all the minor modifications and present the "official" plans as we handed them to our builder:

Main (First) Floor

Ground Floor 

Elevations

Moving out!

We put our house on the market in November 2013. We decided against the help of a real estate agent, at least for the time being. There were many houses for sale in our neighborhood, including our direct neighbor's as well. Despite minimum advertising (Zillow, Homefinder/Free Press, lawn sign and on our own website), we had several showings in 2013, but no immediate offers.

Things picked up again towards the end of January and we got two offers on one weekend. We decided to accept one of them and agreed on a closing date at the end of March.

Then we started to move stuff into a storage unit in February.

Storage unit beginning to fill up

But by mid March it was finally time to get serious with moving out and into our temporary place in Jericho. Unfortunately, the tough winter of 2013/14 did not want to end and so the weather was not what we had liked. But it had to get done nevertheless!

First we got a larger U-Haul truck to bring the bigger pieces to the storage unit and a few things out to Jericho on THU and FRI before closing day. But there was still much more "stuff"... so we got another van for the weekend and did more runs from Williston to Jericho, moving the rest of our belongings, including everything that was supposed to go to a friend's shed in Underhill's woods.
There was no way to get there with all the snow in March.

U-Haul to the rescue!

Moving in winter is no fun!

We wrapped up cleaning the house just in time for the closing. Everything went well at the attorney's office, and we had a celebratory beer with the new owners in the old house.

The time had come to say goodbye to our house in Williston!

Suffering under Solar Hibernation? Clean your Panels!

We had a sunny week, but hardly made energy. Why? There was snow on the panels. Lucky for us, they are close to the ground and CAN be cleared. We got a special foam "broom" for delicate surfaces (recommended for solar panels). I finally got around to clear the panels on Thursday noon. The result was amazing: Even though there was still a bit of sow/ice left, the panels cleared within a few minutes and were back from hibernation.

Before

Immediately after snow removal

A few minutes later

We made > 86 kWh today (Friday), which amounts to roughly $16 in electricity difference compared to the days before. So unless your panels are on your roof, get out there and clean them on those sunny winter days! Just make sure to use the right equipment that does not scratch the surface.

The graph below from our monitoring system shows the energy production almost halfway through my cleaning exercise: Most panels are still dark, i.e. do not produce energy. On the bottom, you can notice the flat curve (basically zero energy) for the days before.