2016 01 22 Corners "Pinned", Utilities ..

2016 01 22 Corners "Pinned", Utilities .. 

Today was a windy cool day.  The surveyor was at the site to very precisely mark some of the significant corners of the house.  This will make the concrete work that much more accurate.  This two photos show the southwest and northwest corners of the master bedroom.  If you look closely you will see a small wood post hammered into the ground, and a nailhead in the wood post.  That is the corner.  The flagsticks are there to make it easy to find the wood posts.

A lot of topsoil and small rock is being "exported".

And a lot of utility pipe is being buried in the rock.

Even the machinery looks tired at the end of the day .. 

2016 01 21 Storage, Shop, Garage Excavation, Utilities ..

2016 01 21 Storage, Shop, Garage Excavation, Utilities ..

Same activities as yesterday, garage, storage, shop slab excavation, and utility trench.

NV Energy will put their transformer on a slab around the vertical conduit.

Looking at the garage, storage, shop part of the house.  The deeper digs are for foundation.

Same.  To the left of the small job shack in the background you can see the pole that will soon (I hope) mount a time lapse camera.  It will point right back at the viewer in this photo.

Working on garage, shop, storage slab.

Just the nice view to the south east, with the camera pole.

View to the southwest from just outside east end of garage.

2016 01 20 Storage, Shop, Garage Excavation, Utilities ..

2016 01 20 Storage, Shop, Garage Excavation, Utilities .. 

I just like this shot looking a little north of east out at the mountains.  That end of the house will be mostly glass,

Digging trench for power and other utilities.  They are putting in at least a couple of extra conduits.  The verticals are where the transformer from Nevada Energy will sit.

Looking to the southeast at the digging for utility trench and digging for garage, storage, and shop slab.

Looking more or less north down utility trench.  House on the hill was built by our builder.  Owners of that house made recommendation.

Digging for garage, storage, shop slab.

Same.

2016 01 18 Foundation dig done ..

2016 01 18 Foundation dig done .. 

The long basic rectangle of the house will have a 6.5 foot "crawl space" under it.  It will be possible to walk in places where there is not ductwork or equipment.  That rectangle has been finished and graded flat.  Concrete work will start soon.  The grading for the garage, storage, and shop parts of the house is done now, those parts of the house will all be on concrete slab.  A deep trench is being dug for electric, phone, cable..

Firs picture looking a little north of west at house profile the long way.  Utility room has floor about 3 feet lower than crawl space so ceiling is higher.  Water treatment and other equipment go in here.

Digging trench for electric, cable, phone, whatever, that will come from the street.   Looking southeast.

This next picture is really for Sharon.  She loves tumbleweeds and there are now several in the "crawl space".  I might ask the builder to leave them there..

This is how they grade to an elevation.  At a survey point they set a piece of equipment that has a laser that spins in a horizontal circle.  The height of the beam can be changed. The portable stick like gadget has a sensor that emits a tone when it detects the beam.

Another shot of digging through rock for utility conduit.

2016 01 12 Excavation continues ..

2016 01 12 Excavation continues ..

First photo looks ENE, along the long dimension of the house.  The back of the tracked excavator is on a small bridge the excavators are leaving temporarily so they can move equipment around without tracking outside the house outline.  Last two photos look mostly north from about where the guest part of the house will be.

2016 01 06 Excavation continues ..

2016 01 06 Excavation continues .. 

More digging, more screening.  In the last photo the outline of the house is starting to be visible.  The space to the right is the location of the SE facing deck off the living area of the house.

2016 01 05 GSHP buried ..

2016 01 05 GSHP buried ..

The ground source heat pump "plumbing" was all buried today.  There is about 1.5 miles of tubing in the ground in the 12 300 foot deep holes that were drilled last month.  They are tied together into a continuous loop of tubing.