July 4th weekend

Arrived at Stony on Thursday night and stayed in the John Dwyer camp. The Joe Dwyers were up (32 of the 46?), as was Joe Stevens, and it was such a pleasure to have such friendly, gracious company for the weekend. Wish I could remember all the kids names but names were never my strength.

Tim and Nick installed the 16' beam on Thursday, using 2x's to shim up each end 1.5" at a time. Tim thinks it weighs 600 lbs. LoknLogs does not skimp on structure. This is built to last. Got a delivery of materials from Widmeyer on Friday (mostly porch boards) and helped Tim and Nick finish setting floor joists and the 8' beam for the second floor. Joe Dwyer helped me put in half the porch boards on Saturday, while Cory sorted and lugged logs up to the camp (hurting his back). Gerry came by on Sunday and we finished the porch. We put down screen under the boards to discourage bugs from attacking us from the below.

Unbelievable fireworks party across the lake on the 4th I am told, but I was so exhausted, I went to bed at 9PM and actually slept thru it with the help of some ear plugs. Over the weekend, Paula, Cory and I sorted the rest of the logs and brought them up from the driveway so they are now stacked inside in the order we need to access them for every course. Mind you they go up in the air now, so need to get some scaffolding for the south gable end.

Cory and I attacked the dormer on the lake side, and got about half the courses up before we had to leave. Tim and Nick got the porch headers up Tuesday and were starting back on the cabin for a day or so. Paula walked around and took some snaps with my Blackberry to show where we are.

Top of the windows

Notes on the site as of last Tuesday. Nick and Tim (and I) did get the logs over the windows on Wednesday, but that is not shown at this point. Getting logs over the windows to line up takes a bit of effort with braces and come-alongs.


reposted this with better video, as I finally figure out my avhcd to youtube settings

Iron Worker Weekend

Joe, Marty, Anne, Tess, PJ and Riley all came up and pitched in over the weekend.   Joe and Marty made the door/window frames and figured out bracing, while PJ figured out how to set a control line for use with the PLS 5 square laser to check that walls are vertical (not leaning). They are a hard working team.

Lok-N-Log Training Day

Day 1 is delivery, and day 2 is training.   Lok-N-Log's Barry Campbell came up from Sherburne and patiently explained how to put the kit together.   Here are some clips for the record.   


Part 1 of 3


Part 2 of 3


Part 3 of 3

Logs arrive

Lok N Logs dropped off 2 tractor trailers full of logs at the snow plow turnaround on Thursday the 10th. From that point, the dirt road is so narrow and twisty that you need a smaller truck. First truck was a commercial carrier and showed up at 9:30A, although I had been promised an 8A delivery time over and over. Right. Or maybe 9:30??

We used a JCB rough terrain forklift to unload the trucks and load up 3 trailers. At the site, a Lull (similar to the JCB) unloaded the trailers and carried pallets up the driveway. Once there, they got unloaded and the first 20 courses (rows from the bottom) got sorted. Each log is numbered and labeled, so easy to tell exactly where it goes in the wall.

Logs have a tongue on top and a groove on the bottom so they interlock. The tongue gets a foam gasket, and caulk at the edge, and then 9" log hog screws hold the logs in place. Seems very solid and very tight. Caulk oozes out here and there, and some cleanup is needed. Barry Campbell of LokNLogs came out Friday and led a training session. Tim Lee, Nick, Luke Waite and I got about 4 courses down. On Friday night, cousins Marty, Joe and Anne came up with a friend, Tess. Saturday was a bit rainy, but Marty and Joe made window and door frames and then we set them in place. The walls at the porch door were way out of level vertically, so we used a come-along and some braces to fix that. PJ and son Riley joined us on Sunday and we leveled the rest and set the frames in place along with a couple more courses.

M/T/W it was off to the races laying logs with all the braced frames keeping them honest. We lowered two small windows a few courses, as they were ridiculously high in the air. The designer lined up the heads with big windows which made no sense, and I did not catch the error till Monday. Tim and Nick figured out how to swap some rows so it still worked out.

Framing -May 2010

Fabulous weather and lots of help, so we got the framing done.   Ger, Bren and I checked level and square with my laser tool, and then we got posts, sills, rim joists up,  then Luke Waite helped us set beams and joists, and then they went back to the real world, and I stuck around a few more days with Tim Lee and Nick to finish.  

Here is a short clip showing where we are now.  

April Summary

Went up north last weekend and with help got the site prepped for the foundation.   Met with power company and contractors. Foundation work is underway and should be finished up in a week or so.  

Rained and snowed, but here is a short clip of the site from the day I left it.  Got a nice Canon video camera now, so you might not get nauseous trying to watch  this one.

Pump Monster

I bought a portable pump at the local HD last fall to pump water up into the stock tank and run the pressure washer and make concrete.   It came with 1" threaded fittings and an adapter for garden hose.   Since I need to pump about 200 feet and 50 feet vertically, garden hose is pretty feeble.  So, I bought some 1" flexible pipe... but turns out the pump is Italian and has British Standard Pipe threads which are bloody useless in the States.   So I had to use the garden hose adapter and a pile of fittings:

• 1" BSP to garden hose
• garden hose to 3/4 NPT 
• 3/4 NPT to 3/4 pipe
• 3/4 pipe to 1" reducer bushing
• 1" bushing to 1" coupling 
• coupling to black pipe 

Looks ridiculous, but .... this took me awhile to figure out so it looks good to me. 

Now all I need is expansion tank, pressure switch and a pumphouse.  

Opening the site

First trip for 2010 next weekend. Heading up Thursday night to meet National Grid on Friday, as well as contractor(s) too about foundation and shell. Other tasks for this trip in order of importance:

• Set up strings over the perimeter showing where foundation wall gets placed.
• Set strings for porch and center line piers
• Drill holes for rebar 
• Chisel rock to 3 in 12
• Build forms for footers using scribed plywood 
• Build 2x4 staging platforms for logs 

Foundation

Asked structural engineer to do another plan, this time with concrete block foundation and alternate for poured foundation. Motivation was pricing of micro-lams needed for the pier type foundation, worry about lugging them microlams into place, and a solid wall is better for snow anyway. Cost is probably equal, but we will never REALLY know.

Insanely frantic at work, partly on software, web, marketing type projects (infrastructure for knowledge based biz), so hard to focus.