Community project day + a fireplace & flu

My wife and I showed up to the Yodelin community project day where two events took place. They shut off the water to our division so they could replace the shutoff valves at a couple junction boxes including ours.

Since I can't legally hook up to the system yet, my only contribution here was spectating / picture taking.

Then we ventured over to division 1 to help haul materials from the water tanks from the old system that was decommissioned over a decade ago.  It's sitting on land that will hopefully be purchased and preserved for the Pacific Crest Trail -- The PCT passes by only about 100 yards from my property! And preserving the land will protect the PCT (and our community) from the adverse affects of logging, which would place many of the homes in our community in danger of avalanches and erosion.

We helped haul wood, pipes, and plastic down the hill. (Katie was amazing.) The water tanks themselves will need professional attention -- probably with a cutting torch and some heavy equipment.

Here are a few beauties I found along the roadside.

Finally, on our way down the pass, we stopped in Monroe and ordered our fireplace and chimney/flu for the cabin.  I want to be sure that the chimeny flu gets installed the *same* *day* as the metal roof -- mutch easier to do the flashing and installation when we have everyone there on site.

And the lucky winner is....

This little beauty set us back about 4 grand, plus we're doing Class A external chimney pipe with install. That nearly doubles the price. Now we're poor.   

But who wants a cabin without a fireplace?!

Footings poured (with some last-minute improvisation)

A little concrete pouring drama on a Thursday afternoon.

Formed Footings & Faucets.

My "guy" (Norm) has been on vacation living it up in Cali, so not much progress this week. On our way to a dinner in Leavenworth, we dropped by the site to mount the *new* Brinno time-lapse camera. New location that will hopefully be a little more productive.

The footings are now formed, but no rebar yet.

Panorama from the NW corner

From the North edge of the cabin

From the SE corner

From the NW corner looking SE (note the unsupervised teenager playing with the rebar.)

From the NW corner looking E.

From the NW corner looking due East

Looking West to where the cabin will rise from the dirt (taken from the neighbor's stair landing)

My pile of rocks. (I love them.)

Despite little activity at the site, I did stumble upon some stellar purchases this week. 

I ordered all the in-floor heating. Ended up going with ThermoSoft in-floor heating. (We need to have the ThermSlab cable when we pour the slab on grade.) I would have preferred to get the Step Warmfloor system, but it was WAY TOO EXPENSIVE -- like over 3X more expensive. There was no way to make it pencil out, even calculating electric cost savings for a decade.

I also poached my dream faucet on ebay this week, a Kohler Karbon wall-mounted beauty, brand new at the screaming deal price of just under $400.  Considering it retails for $2000, I'm feeling pretty smug about my auction win.

The final purchase this week was 4 identical faucets for each bathroom. These are Cifial 221.157.620 wall faucet satin nickel techno series. I went ahead and purchased these now even though I won't need them until we're close to done -- mostly because they are not widely carried, and I found a pretty good price.

You'll notice, I like wall mounted faucets. I just hate cleaning all the crud that builds up around the bases of faucets. With wall-mounted and the handle over the sink, this just seems like the perfect setup (to me.)

Drone flyover and footing excavation

The video speaks for itself.

Forming the footings with TONS of rebar has begun. The next major activity will be pouring in about 2 weeks. 

I've continued to get bids on the in floor heating and will pull the trigger in by end of the week so we have material here when we pour the slab. 

Time lapse of lot clearing

I'll let the video speak for itself.

For those who are wondering, I contacted Amazon customer services about the crappy, artifacted picture on the Brinno TLC200 camera > they put me in touch with the 3rd party vendor who sold it to me > and they are replacing it.