Product Approval Sheet

We have everything ready to submit for permit . . . except the Product Approval Sheet. Because we live in the sunny state of Florida, we have an extra form to fill out due to the risk of hurricanes. This form lists every single product that will be on the exterior of our home - from windows to brick, doors to roof . . . everything must be listed. We have to select exactly what we will be putting on our house and specify the manufacturer and Florida Product Approval Number. This seems to be rather hard to find and is taking us a bit longer than expected. Hopefully we'll finish up this last form very quickly and then submit our set to the county. I've added the first sheet of this form for your viewing pleasure. We'll let you know when we get our permit - then we'll really start moving.

We have also completed all the engineering - the mechanical, plumbing, and electrical sheets are 100%, so those permits should be attained quickly when the time comes. Adam is toying with the idea of getting a licence to do his own plumbing for the house. This requires taking a test for the county. I'll let you know what happens.

TIMBER!!

We took down the pine tree yesterday! I would like to say a special thank you to Auntie and Uncle Stan for letting us use their chain saw and for helping out so much with the planning, supervising, and cleaning up. Thank you, we really appreciate it!! Thank you also to Nels and the Harris clan that came out to help.


Here is the before picture. Adam climbed up and tied a rope around the pine as high as he could go (about 30-40 feet).


Adam tied the other end of the rope to his new Dodge Ram. This was the first real test for his 6,000 pound truck. Believe me, it was plenty powerful!


Then, Brian cut off a lower branch of the oak that was in the fall path of the pine.


Now comes the wedge cut. In order to make a tree fall in the direction you want, you have to cut out a wedge on the side of the tree where you want it to fall. Then, you cut through the opposite side of the tree, angled downward, to the end of your wedge cut. Tying the rope to the truck also encourages the tree to fall in the right direction. Brian was at the chain saw and Adam was in the truck. We got the blade caught in the tree once and the rope snapped on us twice . . . but then we got it . . .


TIMBER!! The pine came down in the direction we wanted and no one got hurt - Hooray!


Adam celebrates by showing his authority over the pine with his truck. After we got it to the ground, we measured the height of the tree at 90 feet - that's pretty stinkin tall!


Then, Brian cut up the rest of the tree in smaller peices and we put them in a pile to haul off. There was a small mishap with the chainsaw, so we're going to finish cutting the tree later. Here's our final pile.


This is the new look of the 3 oaks. We plan on deadwooding them this spring and hopefully they'll be around a long time. Deadwooding is when you remove the dead branches from the tree to help it's health.


This is a close up of the scar on the oak where the pine tree was touching it. I hope it's not infected, that's a pretty important limb. But, all in all, we successfully got the pine to the ground and it only cost $20 for the rope. I'd say, a job well done. Stay tuned for more adventures. We should submit for permit by the end of this week.

Schedule

This is the schedule that Adam created for our house. It has the completion date in August. Things got pushed back with the delay in closing and truss design. Hopefully, we can stay on track and finish the house according to the schedule. Some things should move more quickly - like the County Approvals. However, other things will inevitably take longer than expected. We still hope to finish this before the summers out. We're getting very close to submitting for permit. The truss design is complete as of today and the structural engineer just has to complete his design, then we'll be putting together everything for permit. At that point, we should be able to move along much quicker.

Trees

We have an issue with the trees on our lot. There are 3 oaks and 1 pine tree that will be outside the back corner of our house. The pine tree is tall and awkward looking. We would love to take it down, but it is growing together with an oak tree and could damage the oak if we take it down. It might prove difficult, but it would be best to take it down now before houses are in its path. What do you think? Is it an eye sore? You can leave a comment - I like getting them. :)

Soil Testing & String Lines

The geotechnical engineer did five borings to test our soil. According to his report, we passed. So, we have a good dirt to build on - we're happy about that. Here's a picture of one of the borings they did.


Adam and I worked this past weekend on the batter boards and string lines. Here's how this works . . . We nail together some 2x4s and stick them in the ground on the outside of the corners of the house. Then, we run string from board to board, this corresponds to the exterior perimeter of our house. The intersection of the strings mark the corner of the house. This is shown in the picture below.


To simply things, we made a rectangle of the outer most walls. We will measure off these lines to find the inside corners. This means two of our corners are "imaginary", because they fall outside the actual house perimeter. This diagram shows what I mean.

We now have a perfect rectangle for our house. The angles are all 90-degrees and the lengths are correct - this took some adjusting. Here's what everything looks like now.