It officially happened. We broke ground this past weekend! Finally starting the barn after many delays. This is not directly dome related but a needed step prior to starting the dome. One of the requirements of building the dome is to have on site water and power. It made sense to us to put in the barn with the water and power first. We will just move the water tank etc. to the house once it is built.
Delays are inevitable but still frustrating.
Some delays were due to our miss guided idea that we should just wait until everything was ready and submit permits all at once. Some delays are due to the lengthy and complicated engineering phase. Some continue to be related to not fully understanding the permit process. Some were related to contacts going on one or two week vacations. The one big take away from our experience so far: Submit your paperwork several months BEFORE you want to start that part of the project. I continued to make the mistake of starting something one month prior. This is NOT sufficient time to schedule things. Inevitably you will not file the correct stuff and no one thinks to tell you until a week or more has past. Or the one person who can approve something will go to the Caribbean for 2 weeks. All these delays add up and add to the stress of trying to schedule things. I just put this approach into practice by starting the process with the well company when we want it done in March! I may be over compensating a bit but giving a month leeway was NOT working.
We are trying to rent machines when we have our projects lined up. This is a bit harder than it sounds and just adds to our delay problem. It is the same cost to rent a machine to do one project as to do several. The delivery fees also really add to the cost of the machines. So a cost saving measure is to line up several projects to do at the same time.
We dug the first 300 feet of our power trench towards the road as well as the barn foundation this past weekend. There is still about another 100 feet left to do after the power company puts in our pole. We can't dig that until we know where we are digging to. It is good to get the bulk of the project out of the way while we have the excavator for the barn foundation.
Dirt = fun! There was much fun had by all! Nothing like deep trenches and mountains of dirt to occupy kids and a puppy. Mr. Dometastic is in love with excavators and had a great time digging as well. I just got a bunch of blisters and a sore back from raking and leveling all weekend. I got the short end of the fun stick but it was great to see everyone else enjoy it. The classic New England fall weather for the whole weekend made it nice to work outside. This weather is what keeps me in New England. It is pretty fun to drive the skid steer so it makes sense that it would be fun to drive the excavators. I haven't given it a try yet since I would need to wrestle it away from Mr. Dometastic but I still have many chances before we are done.
Mr. Dometastic wants to win powerball so he can buy a new one. I argue that if we win powerball we can just hire someone to do all this for us and when he wants to play with dirt he can just rent them. He didn't buy my logic.
Here are a few photos from our weekend project.
It was a productive weekend. Now we wait for the foundation contractor to come and get the town out to do their inspections so we can fill in the death trap...I mean trench.
Delays are inevitable but still frustrating.
Some delays were due to our miss guided idea that we should just wait until everything was ready and submit permits all at once. Some delays are due to the lengthy and complicated engineering phase. Some continue to be related to not fully understanding the permit process. Some were related to contacts going on one or two week vacations. The one big take away from our experience so far: Submit your paperwork several months BEFORE you want to start that part of the project. I continued to make the mistake of starting something one month prior. This is NOT sufficient time to schedule things. Inevitably you will not file the correct stuff and no one thinks to tell you until a week or more has past. Or the one person who can approve something will go to the Caribbean for 2 weeks. All these delays add up and add to the stress of trying to schedule things. I just put this approach into practice by starting the process with the well company when we want it done in March! I may be over compensating a bit but giving a month leeway was NOT working.
We are trying to rent machines when we have our projects lined up. This is a bit harder than it sounds and just adds to our delay problem. It is the same cost to rent a machine to do one project as to do several. The delivery fees also really add to the cost of the machines. So a cost saving measure is to line up several projects to do at the same time.
We dug the first 300 feet of our power trench towards the road as well as the barn foundation this past weekend. There is still about another 100 feet left to do after the power company puts in our pole. We can't dig that until we know where we are digging to. It is good to get the bulk of the project out of the way while we have the excavator for the barn foundation.
Dirt = fun! There was much fun had by all! Nothing like deep trenches and mountains of dirt to occupy kids and a puppy. Mr. Dometastic is in love with excavators and had a great time digging as well. I just got a bunch of blisters and a sore back from raking and leveling all weekend. I got the short end of the fun stick but it was great to see everyone else enjoy it. The classic New England fall weather for the whole weekend made it nice to work outside. This weather is what keeps me in New England. It is pretty fun to drive the skid steer so it makes sense that it would be fun to drive the excavators. I haven't given it a try yet since I would need to wrestle it away from Mr. Dometastic but I still have many chances before we are done.
Mr. Dometastic wants to win powerball so he can buy a new one. I argue that if we win powerball we can just hire someone to do all this for us and when he wants to play with dirt he can just rent them. He didn't buy my logic.
Here are a few photos from our weekend project.
Barn foundation is now finished and ready for our cement contractor
Digging almost all the trench from the barn to the road.
First 300 feet is done and a 2 inch layer of sand spread in the bottom.
Time to run all the conduit pipes for electric and data cables.
Four conduits total. Two 3" and two 2" runs. One for power, one for data, one to run power back to the road for a powered gate and one extra in case we need something in the future. After these we covered the whole thing in 4 more inches of sand so the conduit is encased. (no photo because it looks the same as the other sand photo)
It was a productive weekend. Now we wait for the foundation contractor to come and get the town out to do their inspections so we can fill in the death trap...I mean trench.
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