We've had problems getting the building permit. This is a bit problematic because we've already destroyed the house (see below, not to mention previous posts). The main problem has been that the county wants a paved driveway and a sidewalk. There are no other properties in the vicinity that have sidewalks. But something must be there, regardless of what the rest of the neighbors think or want. We thought this wasn't a hard requirement because other recent house projects had not resulted in sidewalks, but it turns out that the county has an alternative: we pay them a fee, based on what they THINK a sidewalk might cost, and they ship that money off to some other place in the county that needs a sidewalk worse. If a sidewalk must be installed along the frontage of our property later, they will take somebody else's money and build ours. Hooray for government. Guess what--our contractor can build us a sidewalk for less than the County's guesstimate, so we will put in a sidewalk now and actually get some benefit from the money. So the photo above shows our site map with the sidewalk and driveway. The purple is the driveway. They don't want gravel, so we have to pave it, too. Grr.
In the world of semiconductor physics, the absence of something (an electron) is just as important as the presence of one. In this case, we have the absence of an electron, and it's called (appropriately enough) a hole. That's the dark rectangle near the center of this photo -- it's where the old house's little basement was, where the water heater and gas furnace were.
This shows some of what's left of the old homestead. We wanted the pump house and garage left intact. This photo shows the pumphouse, and some remnant structure that connected the pump house to the main house. Part of the old brickwork is still there. Partially-decrepit (and deliberately built as such) structures are used in some gardens to deliberately give a sense of antiquity. They're called follies. So this is our folly...
Septic system construction (this is the first instance of construction instead of de-construction!).
A few rocks encountered during the septic construction.
Drain pipes. They're interesting because they are a system rather than a simple pipe with holes in it. The drain pipes (replete with holes) are inside a mesh bag, which is also filled with plastic packing peanuts. The peanuts are supposed to serve as a "substrate" for bacteria to live, to help break down the effluent coming out of the septic tank. In the past, the holey drain pipes were surrounded by gravel, which probably served the same purpose: but gravel now costs a lot more to transport, and there seems to be no lack of recycled plastic peanuts. Ain't recycling wonderful?
We've had problems getting the building permit. This is a bit problematic because we've already destroyed the house (see below, not to mention previous posts). The main problem has been that the county wants a paved driveway and a sidewalk. There are no other properties in the vicinity that have sidewalks. But something must be there, regardless of what the rest of the neighbors think or want. We thought this wasn't a hard requirement because other recent house projects had not resulted in sidewalks, but it turns out that the county has an alternative: we pay them a fee, based on what they THINK a sidewalk might cost, and they ship that money off to some other place in the county that needs a sidewalk worse. If a sidewalk must be installed along the frontage of our property later, they will take somebody else's money and build ours. Hooray for government. Guess what--our contractor can build us a sidewalk for less than the County's guesstimate, so we will put in a sidewalk now and actually get some benefit from the money. So the photo above shows our site map with the sidewalk and driveway. The purple is the driveway. They don't want gravel, so we have to pave it, too. Grr.
In the world of semiconductor physics, the absence of something (an electron) is just as important as the presence of one. In this case, we have the absence of an electron, and it's called (appropriately enough) a hole. That's the dark rectangle near the center of this photo -- it's where the old house's little basement was, where the water heater and gas furnace were.
This shows some of what's left of the old homestead. We wanted the pump house and garage left intact. This photo shows the pumphouse, and some remnant structure that connected the pump house to the main house. Part of the old brickwork is still there. Partially-decrepit (and deliberately built as such) structures are used in some gardens to deliberately give a sense of antiquity. They're called follies. So this is our folly...
Septic system construction (this is the first instance of construction instead of de-construction!).
A few rocks encountered during the septic construction.
Drain pipes. They're interesting because they are a system rather than a simple pipe with holes in it. The drain pipes (replete with holes) are inside a mesh bag, which is also filled with plastic packing peanuts. The peanuts are supposed to serve as a "substrate" for bacteria to live, to help break down the effluent coming out of the septic tank. In the past, the holey drain pipes were surrounded by gravel, which probably served the same purpose: but gravel now costs a lot more to transport, and there seems to be no lack of recycled plastic peanuts. Ain't recycling wonderful?
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