Sunday, April 16, 2017
Digging holes in Richmond
My friend Benjamin bought twenty acres of land up in Richmond last fall .
The plan is to build a house on it this summer . Here is a shot looking south on the property.
This is the goggle maps aerial view. The property has about 900 feet of road frontage. The driveway is the black line . The proposed location of the house in the larger yellow square . The black oval is the septic system already installed last December . The smaller yellow square is to be the tool shed/ workshop . The idea is to build that first before building the house .
Last week we got together and made a list of materials we'd need for the shed . On Saturday we went up there to sort things out and bore some holes to put in the pre-cast tapered frost posts as a foundation for the shed . Those four foot tall pots are 230 pounds each .
We laid out the twelve by sixteen footprint of the shed .
And with a rented power auger we bored holes in the clay soil .
First couple of feet were fairly easy going , After that it was just mud the consistency of wet cement , then at about three feet it turned to hard packed clay .
I guess that is as far as we are going . As the grade slopes a bit on the spot it can be filled in around the pots later
In about two hours time we got six holes drilled about as far as we could . The hard clay stopped us going much further, and ground water from recent snow melt just filled the holes . So we will need to wait for that to dry up a bit . Some more hand work will be needed to enlarge the holes to be able to set the posts . But we got done what we could and set the frost posts across the holes so no one would fall in inadvertently .
So we took some time to scout out the property a bit , here I am coming up on the septic system that was put in last fall .
This one looking from the driveway to where we were digging the holes .
Opposite view looking up the driveway back towards the road
Took a walk around the back side of the property to the open fields that meet the back boundary line
Nice open hay fields
Looking south east over the fields
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Lindo proyecto, suerte.
ReplyDeleteNice property.
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed Gorges, provides some elbow room for a fellow.
DeleteI assume he has a well in? Nothing brings a house project to a halt like no water.
ReplyDeleteHey Sixbears, nice to see you back on the blogosphere. No well yet, but given how much water we were seeing just drilling three foot holes I have no doubt there is water there. The Kenebeck river is about a mile away so it stands to reason that there is reasonable expectation to have decent water. Seems all on that road have well right around 200 feet.
DeleteI sure do like the look of that land. It seems strange to see so much flat land, but there are so many things he can do with his property, that I can't. Most of mine is too steep to build anything on it.
ReplyDeleteHe couldn't have a better man helping him. I've seen the things you've done over the years now and I've always been impressed with your know how and skills.
It should be a fun project. Right now our trouble is there is too much ground water. The holes we bored for the frost-posts are full of water and we still need to do a bit of hand digging to get them deep and wide enough to fit the posts. Weatherman is calling for wet weather in the next week so it wont dry any time soon. The land is in the town of Richmond about an hour north of me. It used to be hay fields that have gone fallow. So much of our land around here is heavily forested that finding open land like that is a nice change.
DeleteHey Mike, nice property, sounds like mine. When I dug the first hole and the second one, I got down 4 ft. and hit clay and water. I'm hoping my remote property is better when I start digging. The property looks nice, good acreage. I myself would rather have more trees. Your friend couldn't have a better helper. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteHey John, things are still wet up there. It has been cold and drizzly so things have not had a chance to dry out. It is still early in the season. We might have to wait a couple of weeks before we can get back to it. Once we get the post in it should make for a fun project.
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