Photos at last

If you're wondering why there have been no recent progress reports, it's because I have no progress to report. On the ground, anyway.  Have some pictures instead:

Inching forward or possibly drilling through

The septic drainfield is, at long last, done!!! Or at least, almost done.

Hooray, hooray, hooray!!

But ...

of course, there's a but ...

As I mentioned back in Chapter one, the contractors who poured the foundation installed the pipe for the septic outlet too high. Not hooray; that little problem has come back to bite us in the ... septic system.

The outlet, says the county, must be located a foot below the surface, which means that poor DH must either drill a new hole through the solid cement foundation or dig underneath it. Digging would be easier; it's a question of whether that will permit enough of a drop for the gravity-fed system.

And so the fun continues.

I don't believe I've mentioned the roof truss people lately. They continue to express their annoyance, via the lumber salesman. 
On the bright side, we have been fortunate in the weather, which has been dry and sunny. The forecast calls for rain on Wednesday, and several days thereafter.

Septic trauma

It has not been a charming week.

I am very tired of mud. Mud everywhere you walk. Mud on our boots. Mud on the dog. Mud on the towels used to clean the dog. Mud on the floor, mud on the bed. I do not like it, Sam I Am.

The forecast calls for rain, showers, chance of showers, chance of rain, and chance of showers. Also, fog.  

The septic system remains in progress, with a great deal of hand shoveling remaining to be done. In the mud.

I am very tired of mud.

Also, the lumber salesman called DH to complain that the roof truss company has been complaining to him. We are still not ready for the roof trusses, because there still is no building to put them on.There will not be a building to put them on until we build it. Which we will do ... someday ... I hope.

DH thinks he may have broken or damaged a small bone in his foot, that keeps hurting like the dickens, and has been for some time. I am in physical therapy for my arm. Which the physical therapist thinks is connected to my neck. I resisted the urge to break into song. 

Onward we go.

Did I mention that I'm tired of mud?

Of Frogs and Mud and Septic Systems

I am newly convinced that there are tiny tree frogs spontaneously generating in our soil.

It's possible they are actually climbing up from the underworld, but I don't see how. There isn't enough room in the soil for them to be climbing around in there; it's very tightly-packed clay over sandstone. The spontaneous-generation theory seems much more likely. 

The septic system is awaiting inspection on Monday.

It has rained and continues to do so. Not enough to penetrate the ground very deeply, but quite enough to turn the heaps of heavy clay around the trenches into thick, sticky, goopy mud that grabs onto your boots, adding several pounds of weight per foot.

It also sticks to the pipes you're trying to glue together, whilst standing in the mud, in the drizzling rain, trying to get enough of a grip on the slippery plastic to actually get any leverage. This is especially fun if you happen to have any strained tendons in your arms (me), or be experiencing ankle pain (DH). Yep, we're quite the fit-and-hardy team here.

I have never before closely observed a septic system-in-the-making. It's ridiculous; looks just like a puzzle toy I expect my 3-year-old niece and nephew to be playing with, only adult-size. Plastic boxes with various holes in them, into which you have to fit pipes at juuust the right angle, sometimes with the aid of elbow fittings, to fit into other box holes at the other end, and eventually into silly plastic domes-in-trenches, all connected back to a big cement box.

Come to think of it, the whole way septic systems work is weird, and kinda gross. I'll be happy to move on to another project. Even happier if it doesn't involve mud. And happier still when we finally get back to the actual home-building part of this home-building exercise.

The aforementioned big cement box, the septic tank, sits in a very large hole – one we have to use a ladder to climb in and out of. There are tiny little tree frogs down there, whom I saw jumping up at the walls, trying to get out. How the Hades did they get down there, you ask? Unless they spontaneously-generated there, I do not know. Accidentally fell over the edge, like Wile E. Coyote? (Holding up tiny signs saying "Uh, Oh," one presumes).  A rain of frogs? They appear to be burrowing beasts, but who the hell burrows six or seven feet down? They're smaller than a quarter, for cripes sake, and the ground is hard as a rock, and devoid of anything that looks like frog burrows. Incidentally, I also found them burrowing Up inside the crawl space, back when I was smoothing that out. Which could be seen as favoring the climbing-up-from-the-underworld theory, but certainly does not rule out the spontaneous generation theory. We scientific types like to be cautious about interpreting evidence.

I caught one in the septic tank hole, laboriously climbed the ladder hand-less while it determinedly poked its nose between my fingers trying to escape, and let it go in the field, but I was unable to reach three more, who ran away from me into a narrow area behind the tank where I could not fit. Eventually I put a long branch into the hole, hoping they would hop up the branch to freedom. They also appear to hide under the giant cement tank. I really need them to leave before the hole is filled back in. Who knew this business would be so emotionally fraught?

After meditating on the potential miseries of being sick in a travel trailer, we scheduled our flu shots. DH promptly fell ill, and I was close behind. So the shots are still unadministered, but we are back on our feet, if not bright-eyed and sparkling.

The timing was unfortunate, as getting the septic system in needs to happen with great promptness, a fact that DH fretted about even as he lay racked with fever, headache and coughing. Fortunately for us, if not for the general state of the climate, we were experiencing an unseasonal period of warm, dry weather, and it was painful to watch the days slip away without action.

The gods chose to smile upon us, however, and graciously extended the weather break, so as soon as he was on his feet, DH began frantically measuring and calculating, and calling equipment rental places.

He explained, first to our local place, that he needed a 12,000-pound excavator with a smooth (non-toothed) bucket, two feet in length.

(The non-toothed bucket has some specific technical name that I can't recall because my brain remains fogged by the lingering exhaustion of illness. That's my excuse, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.)

The non-toothed bucket also is a good deal less efficient at digging, especially in rock-hard, bone-dry ground, but it has been decreed by They Who Rule The Septic Permits, and one does not lightly defy Them, if one wants one's septic system approved.

They have also decreed that the trenches – which are somewhere around two feet deep and 100(-ish? I think) feet long, vary in depth by no more than a single inch. It was tempting, if intemperate, to inquire whether we also would need to scale a glass mountain, but discretion prevailed: They might have said yes.

At any rate, DH ordered an excavator, and in due course, it arrived.

“Stop!” yelled DH. “That bucket is four feet! I ordered a two-foot bucket!”

“We don't have a two-foot bucket,” the delivery man said.

He took the excavator away again.

DH called more rental places, and found one in a city just about an hour away.

He explained that he needed a 12,000-pound excavator with a smooth (non-toothed) bucket, two feet in length.

Sure, they said. We'll have it there tomorrow morning.

It did not arrive tomorrow morning. They changed the delivery date three times before it finally arrived, while DH gnawed on his knuckles and performed frantic calculations and measurements.

But, at last, it came: A 9,000-pound excavator, with a two-foot bucket.

“I ordered a 12,000 pound excavator,” DH said.

“It's the same basic thing,” the man said.

It is not the same thing. There is a 3,000 pound difference.

“Well, we put them in the same category,” he said.

DH sighed and decided to take what he could get. The smaller, less powerful machine has slowed progress considerably.

I walked down to watch him work one day. When the bucket tries to dig into the (rock-hard, bone-dry) ground, the entire machine tilts forward, because it doesn't have the weight to remain squarely on its treads.

It's rather alarming to watch, and even harder on the operator, who gets banged up and down all day long.

However, progress is being made, and, the-gods-willing, will continue.

We have temporary power; yay!

Nothing to use it on yet, but no matter; another of the endless incremental steps has been completed, and this is happy news.

On to the creation of the septic system! More happy news; it's going to be dry for the next several days, which is just what we need.

Onward we go! -- wait, the builder is sick.

Crap.

Well, I guess we're just gonna hang out here for a bit then.

A nice man in a power company truck pulled into our driveway this morning. DH was out running errands, so I went down to talk to the man.

"I'm supposed to put in temporary power," he said, "but I don't see your main power or your transformer. What have you got going on here?"

"We're building a house, so we don't have main power yet. You can see the foundation there. There's a pad for the transformer down there," I explained, pointing 300 feet down the driveway, "but they haven't put the transformer in yet."

The man rolled his eyes. "Somebody put the cart before the horse again," he said. "About three times a month they get their signals crossed and send me out to put in a temporary power meter before there's a transformer in to hook it up to. I'm sorry, I can't do anything for you. I'll go back and tell them they need to put your transformer in."

"I'm sorry you had a wasted drive," I told him.

"That's Ok, I'm getting used to it," he said cheerfully. He put his truck into reverse and drove it away, beeping. I went back inside to reassure the pets, who hate beeping.

DH, meanwhile, was out driving around to plumbing supply shops in search of "no lead" brass for the water pipe fittings.

No lead, in case you wondered, does not mean "There is no lead in this brass." Lead is an essential component of brass. "No lead" actually means "Well, hardly any."

So naturally that's the thing you put into your water supply system. I'm sure there's a technical reason for that, but I haven't got the energy to look it up right now.

Onward.