29 June 2012

 

Chree and I spent the morning and early afternoon dragging a couple of stumps and five truck-loads of brush from the house site over to our bonfire spot (future leach field site).  Also dragged five spruce logs off the house site over to the campfire area… and punctured the left rear tire in the Ranger, but that’s another story.  Once that was done and the new growth hacked down, the house site was fairly well cleaned up, at least enough to put stakes in the ground (for the umpteen zillionth time) to mark the corners of the future house.  We checked the bearing for true south by using the azimuth of the sun at the proper time (11:56 exactly for this date and location).  Our original desire was to have the house oriented exactly north / south / east / west.  But true south is a lot more east than we thought, so after scratching bug bites our heads for awhile, we decided to turn the house 25 degrees clockwise, i.e., the south-facing wall will actually be aimed towards 205 vice 180 degrees true.  Once the house corner stakes were in the ground (no mean feat given the abundance of rocks, all located exactly where each stake needed to go) and checked for reasonable squareness, we had to decide the house base elevation (top of the foundation walls).  Further scratching of bug bites finally resulted in a nail being driven into the large hemlock at the northwest corner of the car turnaround area, said nail denoting the house base elevation… at least in present-day theory.  All of the aforementioned work needed doing in order to decide exactly where (location and elevation) the wooden walkway will begin.  Had to turn on Delores’ air conditioner mid-afternoon to make her habitable for the dogs, even after they spent a joyful half hour in the lake.  Delores has a slightly rounded top and the AC condensate drain is, of course, on the starboard side, which means the condensate drips right onto the middle of the main entry stairs… and anyone entering or leaving the RV.  Some engineer was really not thinking too straight the day he/she/it did that design!