Dear Bob and Patty
We got back from the Opening of the (rather mediocre) Mather Hospital Sculpture Exhibit friday night to a message that the excavator wouldnt be showing up on Saturday......I guess its good we don't have a Vermont contractor as well. Stopped at a new Home Despot in Greeenfield Mass. for a second shovel and one of those back braces. Arrived at the mountain before noon and I went at the dirt detail. The septic tank (aka foundation for the end of the porch/shed/ privy) wasnt as deep as I remembered.... 6" at the downhill side and just under two feet at the top of the slope. The back brace reminds one to bend at the knees rather than the back, which saved my back, but had me waking up all night with screaming upper leg cramps. Got the septic tank uncovered, sustained by the image of the porch extending all the way to the shed/privy structure built on a frame suppoerted by the inground tank. We were also sustained by the fantasy of including a sleeping loft in the top of the shed somehow, as a place for our kids to have some privacy during an overnight visit. When I checked the drawings later, this seems undoable given the present plan....not enough headroom between the collar ties and the rafters.
The powernailer worked pretty well, and we got the sills installed with smoo before dark, and the stud placement laid out. Next morning I measured each stud length with the WatrLevel which has a four foot scale that can be set to a base point (the highest of the porch support brackets) and then gives an offset reading for any placement within the 4' scale. The top of the tank was crowned, so this was great for generating the cutting list. Louise cut and I nailed. Our lumber delivery was short (were we robbed?) so I didnt have enough ply to finish or any Ice and Snow Membrane to seal the whole thing from ground water.
It wasn't until I got out the camera that I discovered the screwups made a year and a half ago in that bleak October when we froze in tents doing the foundation work. I laid the tank placement out expecting a 4x4x8 foot tank. What we got was 5x10(+ a little) in plan, and I didn't center the longer dimension on the porch girder supports. When I took pictures I saw that the uphill (west) end of the tank lined up with the Simpson brackets at the two foot stud on the tank structure, while the east end of the tank is about three inchs inside the girder placement. These alignments can be seen in the photos. The roof over the shed, as drawn, only extends 1'6" past the girders, so we have a six inch opportunity for architectural improvisation....Do you have the billable hour meter running as you read this...I hope! I thought maybe the south elevation of the shed should go assymetric, with a western extension that would cover the support wall and extend over a firewood storage area framed by the diagional support brackets that define all the house roof overhangs.. Maybe the roof could be rethought to allow a sleeping loft. In my shoveling fantasies I had thought the space under the porch cross gable would be pleasant to sleep in also, it it were insulated, and vented at the gable and with a sky light. But alas there is less than three feet to the inside of the rafter peak.....
We also got a pipe installed for emptying the chemical toilet into the tank by hand. I was amazed to discover that the tank was 2/3 full from ground water infiltration. The excavator had forewarned me of this, but it was still suprising. I have no idea at all about how to run the sewer lines and evetually hook up the low water consumption toilet in the privy, but the time to adress that problem seems fairly far off right now, however, there is the virtue of that pre-planning thing.....
I am sure the architecture gods are either punishing me, or prompting me to tap into your brilliant problem solving abilities to reconfigure a superior but still simple and cost effective solution ......I leave for Jersey after dinner tonight for a couple of days of poolside carribean fantasy set construction..... I enjoyed chatting with Patty when we discovered that we can now get a cell signal on the mountain, right at the camp! Hope you enjoyed Sears in the Catskills...love to all.... BSB
Posted by Bennett
at 9:31 AM EDT
