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