Our new swimming pool!

The foundation walls have been stripped of their forms and now make a great swimming pool!

In the lower pix they look like a fortress with a moat around it...

As you can see, it's been really wet on Cortes and we have not yet sorted out some of the drainage issues on the site.

Nevertheless, the foundations are done and they look good.

Pouring the Foundations

On December 21st Mike and his team successfully poured the concrete foundations. Here is David Rousseau's report on how it went...

Your foundation walls were poured successfully (in heavy rains) on Tuesday. By now the forms are stripped and it's mostly cleaned up. Mike, Noba, John Hayes (English stonemason living in Moreka's cabin) and I did the pour. The truck couldn't get as close as Mike would like because of mud. But it wasn't much of a stretch. Took about 3-1/2 hrs to unload and place the concrete, and another 3 hrs to set bolts and cleanup. There was almost an extra yard (this is inevitable), so it went under the kitchen area as a thin slab.

Looks like a wet and very muddy scene. I feel a bit guilty about enjoying the comfort of our condo in Burnaby while others do the dirty work. But maybe I'll feel better when I get the bill!

Anyway, we are delighted it all went well and we are now close to being ready to start framing the house. Meanwhile, Danielle and I are planning a visit to check things out between Christmas and New year.

Forms in place

Here you can see the wonderful Mike and Noba working on the forms for the foundation walls for our house. Mike is the guy who built the workshop this past summer and who tolerated me as his helper.

Noba Anderson is his partner and also happens to be the Regional Director for Cortes Island. I first met Noba when I sold her my baidarka (kayak) a few years ago. She is a remarkable young woman with a serious IQ.


These forms will contain the concrete as it is poured and then be removed once it has set. The floor joists will sit on top of these walls and there will be a crawl space underneath.

This is a critical stage of the house construction because everything rests on these foundations. It's very reassuring to have Mike's expertise combined with David's on-site involvement while this work is being done.



Once the foundation is completed, it will likely sit until April when I plan on returning to Cortes to start building the house, hopefully with Mike once again playing the role of construction boss and me as his humble helper.

Footings

Over the past couple of weeks Mike has been working on the foundations. Here are the forms for the footings
Island Readymix provided the concrete.
I wasn't there for this part of the project but from what I hear the site has been pretty muddy. Mike has been running a pump to keep water away from the newly poured concrete.
The poured footings with rebar sticking up for the next stage, the foundation walls.

House design revealed!

After months of deliberation and many hours of design work by David Rousseau and his team we now have a design for our house that is pretty close to "final". The basic configuation is a "V" as you can see in this view of the south elevation. On the left is the living room and on the right is the kitchen. In between is the dining room and the "central core" in which there will be spiral stairs to the second floor. There's a deck and a patio in the notch of the V. These face the open meadow and the garden.
Viewed from the east this pic shows the kitchen on the left, with its own small deck. The carport provides sheltered access to the main entrance which is actually on the east side of the house at the end of the driveway.

















The interior view is from the living room looking through the central core towards the kitchen and dining area. A nice feature is the way the exterior steps from the deck to the patio are continued inside as steps down to the living room.

At the back of the house is the master bedroom, bathroom, a small office and a laundry room.

Upstairs there will be a bright and spacious multi-purpose room with its own deck and a small bathroom. We see this as our "studio", guest bedroom, etc.

We are delighted with the design and look forward to seeing it materialize as we work are way through the construction process over the next few years.

Breaking Ground!

This week the excavation for our house was done by John Vosper, with assistance from Mike and David. This is the first major step in the construction process and it's exciting to see it actually happening.



As you can see, the dirt that was removed is good top soil that we can re-use around the property.
John Vosper will be back in a few days to do some landscaping and move our huge burn pile out to the meadow where it can be safely burned.

Fire!

Today I tackled the formidable burn pile. When the site for the workshop was cleared back in the spring, the stumps and branches of the trees that were removed were piled up in a spot under the cedar trees. Good spot except for the fact that they could not be burned there. So today, I started burning the pile by moving it, armload by armload, out into the open area in front of the workshop. The fire was never too big, but over the course of the day a lot of stuff got burned. I must have made close to 100 trips between the burn pile and the fire, a distance of maybe 15 yards. So that adds up to 1.5km of me carrying heavy armloads of wood. OK it's not a marathon, but I feel like I did a day's work! As the day wore on I began to view the pile as my nemesis, my arrogant enemy. I vowed in my heart to vanquish it/him. Little by little I would pull him apart and tear him down.... Humble him!
It was a silly game but it kept me going for a while. I figure we ended up in a bit of a dead heat, the burn pile and me. It's still huge, but not quite as huge.

Fire!
Dance of transformation.
Intense heat.
Penetrating heat.
I feel it in my bones.
Like no other heat
Fire radiates
Right through me.
Fire reaches into me
Finds my hidden places
Warms me completely.
Fire is so rare these days
Hidden from view
Like sex.
Fire is almost an alien in our modern world
The devil's energy
The energy of volcanoes and forest fires
And arson.
Yet fire is the missing element
In our lives.
We have air, water and earth in relative abundance (if not purity)
But where is fire?
Hidden in the hearts of our automobile engines
Hidden in our gas furnaces
Hidden in our garbage incinerators
But wait...
Fire has been tamed and civilized.
Fire is now acceptable and available at the flick of a switch
In our fake log, gas-powered fireplaces.
Oh joy!

Tonight John Vosper came over and we had a meeting with David to discuss the excavation work. In typical island style we talked about many things before we got around to the excavation work. I am confident John will do a good job.