At the Park – Days 24 – 25 – Seeking Simplicity

Let me start this entry by saying thank you for all the feedback both in the comments left on the blog as well as via email. While I may not respond to comments left, I do read and appreciate each comment.

Saturday morning I was up at sunrise, but hung around the trailer to take care of business before heading to the property to work.

The call to the equipment place to order my tractor was not as productive as I would have liked as the salesman was working in the field. We agreed to touch base Monday after I finish work. Next on the list was making my first run to the recycling pickup for Portal. Finally, onto the property.

I started by spending an hour or two walking the SW section of the property. All that brown in the satellite images is generally high land where water does not linger thus nothing is growing. Seems like a good place to build to me. Made use of the 300′ measure I bought Thursday evening to mark off distances from the nearest wash for the car port (50′). Identified the SE corner of the attached car port for the house. Made an attempt to mark the rough location of the other 3 corners of the series of house structures (car port is on the east end, utility room and house to the west, then covered patio on the west end). Practiced finding true north using the shadow method. I would like to note that this is impossible on cloudy days, and challenging on partly clouding days. Given it is monsoon season here, I did not have the success I was hoping for due to cloud cover but I did get a semblance of a line. Given I will have to redo it after the land is cleared for construction, I think what i have is good enough for planning purposes. Why true north and not magnetic north with a typical compass? I plan on building a passive solar home for heating and cooling purposes. The purpose is to have a home that requires little to no resources other than nature to heat it in the winter and cool it in the summer. The delta between magnetic north and true north (true north having to do with the rotation of the earth and the path the sun takes across the sky) is enough to lead to sub optimal heating and cooling. Given this is my first attempt at such a structure, I want to make every effort to optimize the design and construction. Just hoping the authors of the books I’m using for reference know what they are talking about and I can translate that into a functional home that stays comfortable year round. Anyway, I digress. As I was out of cold water (I do keep a gallon jug of water in the truck for emergencies, but it is certainly not cold) and the lunch I had taken with me was eaten hours before, I headed to the tavern for my usual, naked baked potato with a side of BBQ sauce and naked broccoli, nice cold ice water, and a couple of tasty margaritas.

Once back to the trailer, I started reviewing flight info as I learned I have to fly to PA in early August for work. Left that matter undecided as it was getting dark and a laptop outside attracts pesky bugs. Took Sasha for her evening walk then off to bed.

Sasha dumped her food dish around 1AM so she could eat while she lays on the floor. Brat. I scolded her and went back to sleep. Sasha reminded me at 2AM that I forgot to give her water with some loud barks that woke me from a sound sleep. Hershey woke me around 5AM at which point I gave up on trying to sleep for the morning. Got up, made breakfast, ordered signed up for 3 year membership for two different medivac services (if you are seriously injured, helicopter to the hospital is your only choice around here). Reviewed my to-do list. Got food and water around for spending the day at the property. Headed to the property.

At the property I started to clear brush from the building site for the house with pruners. After about 15 minutes I had enough and went and got the chainsaw. I think the chain saw wanted to take more breaks than I did. None-the-less, I was appreciative of the breaks that the chainsaw wanted to take. I’m sure I need to do some maintenance on it now. The brush I was cutting with it was close to the dirt so the chain spent way more time in the dirt than is good for a chainsaw. The bar oiler was already leaking some oil but by the time I was done, bar oil was all over the chainsaw case. So need to sort that out and now the chain is dull as would be expected. Anxious for the tractor where I should be able to dig that stuff out with the backhoe instead of using the saw to cut it down and still need to dig it out later. Fortunately, I was finishing up the last mesquite bush as my body was running out of the energy needed for running the chainsaw and clearing the brush. As fate would have it, I could see a bit of rain heading my way around that time as well. Packed everything up, closed the shed, and then spent another hour looking for that property marker on the NW corner (rain was just some sprinkles here and there). No success.

On my way home, the lack of sleep from the previous night started to really hit me. Got back to the trailer and set an alarm for an hour for a short nap. I think I got up two hours later feeling much better.

Using the permit process as an excuse to obsess over the property marker (supposed to have property line info in my site building plans I will submit to the county for building permits), I once again opened google earth and started with data points I knew about – the two southern property markers. With the understanding that the property boundaries should each be 1/4 mile long, a quick google on how many feet in a mile then divide by 4 gave me a distance in feet to the property marker. Also under the notion that the lot boundaries are on E-W and N-S lines based on the plot map, I was able to estimate the location of the two yet unlocated markers. I will likely go look for the NW marker again sometime this week in the area indicated by google earth.

And now, I give you what you have been waiting for: pictures.