February 2025
🔨 📐 Septic & Windows 📐 🔨
a fun combination?
February 2025
Makai Buzzy View
Since the beginning of the year we've started to switch from framing to quasi-finish work. Not quite finish done type of work but almost finish work. Although the septic is now officially "done". Yay! Of course, that doesn't mean the framing is actually finished, there still some to do but the majority of it is done.
Buzzy II showed up at Christmas so the aerial picture options are now available again. Flying cameras buzzing around can be annoying, but the pictures are lovely. The first Buzzy (that's the name of the drone) had a 'hard landing' when the monster bamboo grabbed him out of the air and flang him to the ground. Bamboo can be quite vicious when one can't see them while flying a drone. This type of drone is operated by viewing a screen on a cellyphone and it's "tunnel vision" since you can't really see up, down or sideways in the screen. Which allows for vicious bamboo to grab poor unsuspecting drones.
From the bamboo incident, one of his legs that hold the propellers broke in half and that's where the antennae are for calibrating his location. Our kind neighbor, Eddie, soldered his new antennae into his new leg, but even after that, Buzzy 1 never paid attention to his controller from more than ten feet away.
Buzzy II is very similar to Buzzy I. Buzzy I is a DJI Mini-2 and Buzzy II is a DJI Mini-4K. There's also a DJI model called a "Mini-Pro", but that's an entirely different critter. The Mini-2 and Mini-4K are almost identical so replacing a Mini-2 with a Mini-4K allows for all the accessories of Buzzy I fit Buzzy II. ( More information than you wanted to know about drones, but at least now there will be aerial pictures again. )
The project site
Another Buzzy picture, yay!
This is the project site of most of our construction projects since 2019. The house with the white sticky paper roof (with "HPM" written all over it - that's the local hardware store name) is the current house project. The green roof hiding under the avocado tree is the workshop. That got stuffed too full to be useful when we had to download two storage locations of stuff into it. Hopefully, after this house is built a lot of the stuff in there will have been used to build the house so we will have enough room to use it as a workshop again? The bluish-gray roof is the Little House that got renovated in 2019-2020, and the roof with the solar panels on it will be the next project after the current house project is finished. So we will be working on this project site for the next few years, no doubt. We don't work all that fast.
The blue rectangle in the lower left corner is the container with the septic tank in front of it. The septic tank and the tin roofing was delivered in the container.
In front of the house with the solar panels on it is a nice green lawn, that's about to be dug up for the septic tank to be installed there. I guess this is the "before" picture?
It's not apparent in the picture, but the big concrete driveway between the two upper buildings and the two lower buildings is a fairly steep driveway. The whole property is pretty close to a 10% slope.
Oh yeah, and two Costco carport tents over by the green workshop roof. Those are mostly full of various construction bits and bobs, they should be empty when the house is finished. Eventually, when they're gone, it'd be nice to shift the blue container over there, if we're gonna keep the container. I'd like to put a garden pretty much where that container is sitting. But, we're still a long way from final landscaping.
New Septic!
(yeah, I know, major excitement, eh?)
Beginning Septic Work
Dave is the guy in blue, he's the Dave of Dave's Land Services. Luke is the one in orange, he gets to do a lot of the work while Dave goes to organize other projects. When they're both working on the same site, the dirt does fly!
This is the beginnings of the septic installation. They had it done very quickly. The overall scope of the project is to attach both houses to the same septic tank. They are very precise about the placement of the tank and all the assorted parts to the septic system.
Double Diggers
"Scoops" & "Diggety Dawgg"
Dave & Luke brought their own digger. He didn't have a name and it didn't seem polite for Scoops (the digger that lives here) to hang out with a nameless digger so we named their digger "Diggety Dawgg".
Diggety is the one on the left and Scoops is the one on the right. Diggety is actually a size bigger than Scoops and has a "thumb" although his thumb isn't functional at this time. They are both a Takeuchi and they both came used from Allied Equipment. Hmm, it's doubtful that they had names when they were there at Allied?
The septic installation is about half done. The tank is set, the sewer line coming down from the new construction is installed but the septic field still needs to be dug up.
Septic Field
Luke in a hole!
The septic field took up the rest of the front yard in as well as most of the existing driveway. These "tunnels" are the new way of building a septic field. It used to be perforated pipes, now it's these big plastic humps. We did get the kind that can be driven over once they're installed, so the driveway will be back to a driveway eventually.
Diggety got a cracked arm so Dave is on Scoops while Luke is the guy in the orange shirt in the hole keeping things level.
Septic Field
Luke still in a hole!
It's a lot more fun to play with the excavator than to be the guy in the hole, so since Dave is the boss, he gets to operate Scoops while Luke is the guy in the hole. Diggety was only broken for one day, Dave hauled him off to a welder and Diggety was back again the next day so Luke didn't have to stay in the hole for the entire installation.
Double Diggers
Luke finally got out of the hole
Diggety Dawgg and Scoops were both busy covering over the septic field. The existing house is now attached to the new septic tank and there is a sewer line going uphill to the new construction, but there's still not anything attached to that line yet.
Dave & Luke have gone off to the next project since they only do the underground part of the plumbing. Luke did come back and did some weedwhacking on the weekend, but that's a separate side job from him. He will probably come do some rock wall work, too, once we get the elevation change from the existing house to the new house sorted out.
Box Sledge
version at least 5.0
Since a lot of lovely topsoil got dug up and we need to fill in front of the new lanai at the project site uphill, a lot of soil needed to be moved. Ideally, that would involve some sort of a front loader and a dump trailer, but we don't have that so we have to make do with a box sledge.
This has been rebuilt about five times so far, it's always getting destroyed in use. It's about four feet wide and long, and it's made of 2x12s nailed together and reinforced with metal strapping, but it still requires reconstruction after dragging a couple dozen loads of soil around. It does work pretty well, though.
Moving that amount of soil scoop by scoop would take forever. The sledge can hold about twelve scoops of soil for each trip so it saves twelve trips. The teeth on Scoop's bucket catch the chain on the sledge and then it gets dragged to wherever we need the load of soil.
For anyone building a house, if you can, buy an excavator at the beginning. It's appalling to think of how much all this excavation work would have cost had we hired it out. Eventually, once the project is done, Scoops will probably move to a new home, but he's a really lovely tool to have around.
Relocated Soil
new front lawn area
New Dirt Location
We needed the good topsoil brought by the box sledge to fill in the new lawn area alongside the new lanai. It still needs some more soil on the left side near the second post. Eventually, this will hopefully be a nice lawn that is at the same level as the lanai. We hope to be able to walk off the lanai onto the nice grassy lawn without any stairs. It will 'extend' the lanai out to across the lawn and hopefully make it seem huge?
It will possibly need a bit of rock wall by the driveway to level off the lawn. Which would then need to have a stair or just a few steps up to the lawn area. The larger the flat and level lawn, the better.
From the driveway into the carport, it will be level with no steps, though. One of the basic themes of this house design is zero elevation changes. From the carport to the kitchen to the living room to the lanai to the lawn, all same level - no stairs.
There are some stairs up to the loft, though, so we didn't get entirely away from them. At some point, there may be a stair lift of some sort, but hopefully that will be twenty to thirty years away. When designing and building a house, it's always good to take the long view.
Box Sledge
version at least 5.0
Since a lot of lovely topsoil got dug up and we need to fill in front of the new lanai at the project site uphill, a lot of soil needed to be moved. Ideally, that would involve some sort of a front loader and a dump trailer, but we don't have that so we have to make do with a box sledge.
This has been rebuilt about five times so far, it's always getting destroyed in use. It's about four feet wide and long, and it's made of 2x12s nailed together and reinforced with metal strapping, but it still requires reconstruction after dragging a couple dozen loads of soil around. It does work pretty well, though.
Moving that amount of soil scoop by scoop would take forever. The sledge can hold about twelve scoops of soil for each trip so it saves twelve trips. The teeth on Scoop's bucket catch the chain on the sledge and then it gets dragged to wherever we need the load of soil.
For anyone building a house, if you can, buy an excavator at the beginning. It's appalling to think of how much all this excavation work would have cost had we hired it out. Eventually, once the project is done, Scoops will probably move to a new home, but he's a really lovely tool to have around.
Windows!
Windows
some assembly required
A lot of the windows in the new house are framed tempered glass windows. Very much similiar to a "Hicks Homes" type of window, if you're familiar with that Hawaii builder. The windows are wooden framed big sheets of tempered glass with louvers either below or alongside. This allows for a lovely view without screens to obscure the clarity.
Dining Area Windows
The dining area is a fourteen foot diameter half circle, so there's seven matching windows required.
At the moment, they're just held in place by some temporary braces. Once they're all built, then the window sills will be secured together, then the window frames will be attached to the rough openings. After that, there will be louvered windows built for the space below the fixed glass windows to allow for ventilation.
One window left to build and then it will be on to the next project of figuring out how to secure the windowsills to each other.
Kitchen Window
The biggest chunk of tempered glass is the kitchen window. Instead of having the louvers below the window like the other big fixed glass windows, the louvers on the kitchen window will be on the side. This allows for ventilation above the cabinet level.
Lanai Progress
(not that it's easy to see in this picture)
The lanai is improving with the soil brought up to the level of the lanai floor. The dining area and kitchen window are built, but still only held in by temporary bracing. One more dining area window and then the next step will be securing them in their final precise location.
The metal roof installation is also being started now, although it's just barely in the picture.
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