Eagle View - Shop Construction has Officially Started!

Wednesday was a big day for Eagle View.  Troy, our local excavator started working the pad preparation for the 36'x50' Shop building.  The task was to prepare a pad 3 ft beyond the outside perimeter of the building, having 6-8" of material above the highest grade point.  That makes the remainder of the pad at least 6" of fill material.  The theory is that the fill material will maintain the 3 ft column holes and prevent cave ins.

The first step was to remove all of the grass and vegetation from the pad area.  Troy used the backhoe front-end bucket for that.

Once Troy had the vegetation removed, he began working the ground to a rough level based on his eyeball while in the backhoe.  He has a very keen eye.

Once he had it eyeball level, he set up his laser system and checked out the grade.  He set the laser base up by his truck, remarking there was less chance of backing over it there.

Below, Troy checks each corner with the grade elevation rod and remote laser sensor.

Once Troy established where his high and low spots were, he jumped back into the backhoe and used his front-end bucket as a bulldozer and back blade simultaneously.  This was obviously not his first rodeo.

He also picked up some dirt from the highest spots and moved it onto the lowest spots.

Once he had the pad area rough leveled, he proceeded to haul in 90 Yds of 3/4" fill material.  Below Troy tailgates the last load.

Once all the 3/4 material was in place, Troy went back into the leveling mode, the fine leveling mode now.

Zoom in  little more. 

Troy proceeded to pack the pad with his 10-wheel truck, Gari inspects.

Not bad progress for one day of excavating!  There is about a half day of work left.  A little more laser tuned leveling and spread the dirt piles around the pad to establish easy access for the concrete trucks.

Gari stands on Chapel Rd at the entrance to our driveway .

Zoom out and you can see the culvert ends at the rock stacks on each side of the driveway. 

 Do, Do, Do, Looking out our front door!

4th of July Peak Trail

Gari found a new trail.  It is on the Pine Creek Pass that leads into Victor, ID.  This trail turned out to be about 1.5 miles straight up!  We went very slow and made it all the way to the top.  The trail was not well marked and was a bit difficult to find.  Even Gari's Garmin handheld GPS was off  by over 200 ft on the location of the trailhead.  As we approached the area where we expected the trail to start, we saw a small path going straight up the hill.  Coincidentally there was an old cowboy taking a break with his horse, pack horse and 3 Border Collies by the creek near the trailhead.  We shouted and asked if he knew if the small path going straight up the hill was the 4th of July trailhead.  He just shook his head up and down without a word.  We shouted our thanks and started up the steep slope.  Below Steve crosses the creek that separated the dirt road from the trailhead.

As we ascended the first 200 ft of the steep trailhead, Gari looked back and snapped the picture below. If you look closely you can see a thin gray trail marker just in front of the vegetation frame center close to the photographer.  We had to see that marker from the dirt road.  Not easy to see.  The cowboy's horses grazing by the creek are much easier to see.

Below, Gari sets the GPS at the start of the hike.  This tells us time on the hike, distance and elevation statistics.  The total distance was 2.41 miles, the elevation gain was 850 ft, and we spent 1 hour and 45 minutes on the trail.  It took us about an hour going up, we milled around the top for 20 minutes and then the walk down took only 20 minutes.  It was steep and slow going on the way up!

We observed many pretty wildflower along this trail.  We like the delicate thin lines on these petals.

Below are a couple red Indian Paintbrush flowers mixed in.

There were thousands of these yellow Daisy like Cone Flowers.  We must have missed the height of the bloom by a couple of weeks.  Note to self, hike 4th of July Trail in late June for more blooms.

This meadow was covered with the yellow Cone Flowers!

Gari at the top of the trail on the 4th of July Peak.

A dramatic fallen tree view.

A mountain scar seen from atop 4th of July Peak.

Gari standing on that rare ground where a step in any direction is downhill.

Steve stands in front of the road, on which we traveled into the area.  You can see the white gravel US Forest Service road snaking into the mountains down below.

Steve's hero shot atop 4th of July Peak.

It is always nice to see Romeo waiting just where we left him.

On our drive out on the Forest Service road, we caught a glimpse of the Grand Teton mountains soaring above Victor, Idaho.

Update at Eagle View

For the last month or so, we have been doing what seems like a lot of waiting on the Eagle View Project.  In reality a number of things have been happening in the background that move the planning forward, but they don't really show up much in physical progress at the lot.  This post will touch on those things that have actually occurred.  As we mentioned in our last post about Eagle View, we entered into contract with an Idaho Falls builder for construction of a Shop Building or Pole Barn.  We did some planning at our kitchen table and provided those notes and sketches to the builder.  From those beta sketches, we drafted a contract together with the builder, and then the builder completed a set of professionally engineered drawing plans.

Below is our kitchen table sketches that will become our Shop.  Although the sketch reflects a 34' wide shop (add 3' of overhang at the eaves), the contract now reflects a 36' wide (add same eave overhang) by 50' long (add gable ends overhang) building, still maintaining the 16' inside ceiling height.  We plan to be able to park Penelope in there during the harsher weather seasons when we are at Eagle View.  We specified a 1-1/2" standing seam roof metal with field striations at 26 gauge and in the color of Weathered Copper.  The field striations are supposed to eliminate the oil canning effect that can occur with standing seam metal roofs.  The exterior walls will be covered with a 3' Delta Rib metal at 28 gauge in the color of Hickory Moss.  The building will also have a wainscoting in the same metal as the walls, but in the darker color of the roof.  The overhead doors are Raynor commercial insulated doors and are colored Desert Tan, which is a shade lighter than the exterior walls, hopefully providing a subtle and pleasant contrast.  There are three overhead doors planned; the two on the front view seen below at 12' wide by 14' high and a single overhead door on the back at 12' wide by 10' high.  The rear overhead door will be lined up with the front left door so that a pull through scenario is possible.  Currently no gable end vents are planned, rather the building roof will vent through a continuous roof ridge vent.

The left side of the shop will face the future house, and therefore we planned two personnel doors on this left side.  The eave and gable ends of the roof line will all have the same soffitted 18" overhang.  Three each 4' by 2' windows with clay colored trim will be hung high on each side wall.  A seventh 4'x2' window will be mounted on the rear wall.  These windows do not operate and are for the purpose of letting natural light into the shop area.  The right side view that we did not draw appears similar to this left view with the exception of the personnel doors.  The wainscot will appear on all four sides of the building.

We took a cut at engineering a wall section of the pole building shop for description purposes.  The construction technique used here in southeastern Idaho is a bit different from what we guessed.  The building will utilize wet set brackets to anchor the shop poles or 6"x6" columns to the foundation, which keeps the wood above grade and more protected from ground rot.  Rather than use 2"x6" bottom boards they will set 2"x6" pressure treated sill plates directly onto the concrete, fastened down by anchor bolts also set into the concrete slab.  Rather than use 2"x4" Girts, this builder uses 2"x6" Girts hung horizontally between the 6"x6" columns.  Side sheathing of 7/16" OSB will be mounted to the Poles and Girt edges.  That is wrapped with a air blocking house wrap.  The shop floor will be a 6" thick slab reinforced with steel and fiberglass.

Pictured below are the roof trusses which are engineered by the truss manufacturer.  They will be 2"x6" top & bottom chords with 2"x4" webs, all triple laminated. 

The roof will use 2"x8" Purlins hung vertically between the trusses.  1/2" CDX plywood will serve as roof sheathing with a 30# roof felt underlayment.  These professionally engineered drawings are much harder to read than our simplistic kitchen table drawings.  However there were a number of errors in the professional drawings; wrong roof metal specified no roof over hang, no wall sheathing or house wrap, missing 7th window on rear elevation - these were the main things that jumped out at us upon inspection of this engineered drawing.  We are just glad these things were detailed in writing within the contract.  Nothing is easy!

The above gives a fairly good overview of the shop element of the project.  The drawings and plans were submitted for permits last week.  We also contacted the well drilling company to move forward with the well on Eagle View; the permit for which was also submitted last week.  We expect the excavator to start preparing the building pad for the shop next week, and hopefully finish off the main driveway started a few weeks ago.  A septic system and second driveway will follow all that excavation work.

The last thing that occurred recently was our contact with Lower Valley Energy (LVE) for electric service to Eagle View.  We were going to wait until next year to pursue the electric, but decided that we wanted to obtain a meter box now so the shop builder could trim the metal siding nicely around the meter box.  We were previously informed that we would have to obtain the meter box from LVE.  That is why we engaged with LVE now rather than wait until next year.  What we found out is that our desired 400 Amp service will require CT Monitoring.  We had no idea what CT Monitoring was, now we do.  It turns out the CT stands for Current Transformer and this is the method descriptive of the monitoring approach for electric service over 320A here is southeast Idaho.  What this means to us, is that we have to mount a CT cabinet on the side of our shop then the LVE supplied electric meter mounts to that cabinet; in addition all service disconnects must be mounted on the outside of the building for fire first responder safety.  The big deal is that the CT cabinet along measures 3'x4'x1'.  That is one huge box!  That is not going to look lovely no matter what we do.  And so it goes...

Return to Bear Creek

Bear Creek is a NFS area on the south (opposite) side of Palisades Reservoir.  The last time we rode out there with the kayaks, the road was gravel the entire way, about 12 miles.  This time the road was paved about halfway, making for a much nicer ride.  The area was busy with lots of campers still, presumably continuing vacation after the Independence Day holiday.

A look out Bear Creek back towards the reservoir from our picnic spot.

Gari heads up Bear Creek with her paddle.

A view back to shore near our picnic area.

An interesting rock ledge crosses the slope .

Gari unloads at the picnic site as Bek watches from above.

Chad strikes the Happy Paddler pose on Bear Creek!

 Looks like primrose...

An entire thicket of color behind our picnic site.

Chad performs his magic on the mini Weber Kettle grill.

Chad & Bek prepare picnic goodness as Dijon watches closely.

Dijon gets comfortable after her meal.

Steve and Chad discuss events of the day as Dijon watched ground squirrels.

We returned to the RV park and Chad put on a repeat magnifico grilling performance!

As always, Dijon waits patiently for the next burger.

         

Little Elk Creek Trail

Little Elk Creek Trail was a first for all of us a week or so ago.  It was a nice hike with some elevation gain up to a mountain pond where we were surprised by a couple locals when we arrived up top.  Below Bek and Steve wait in the shade at the Little Elk Creek Trail Head.

Off we went; Chad in the lead, followed by Rebekah (Bek), Steve, and followed up by Gari (photographer of this shot).

We observed more delicate Mountain Columbine flowers, beautiful they are.

Halfway up we were treated to a peek of a peak.... still with a little snow on top June 23rd.

Group shot in front of another peek... L-R: Steve, Dijon, Bek and Chad.

More of view, less of a peek.

Chad strikes the Happy Hiker Pose somewhere along the trail.

Arriving at the top where the mountain pond is located we were greeted with a nice surprise.  A cow Moose and her calf feeding in the pond.

This is the best view of Moose that we have encountered in our seven years of hiking.
Zooming in a bit....

We watched as they fed for 10 minutes or more.

Momma Moose with a mouthful.

Mom kept an eye on us...

Another hiker not in our group got too close and made baby nervous, and the little tyke signaled to mom that it was time to go from the edge of the pond.  Though mom wasn't quite finished snacking yet.

Finally mom moseyed over and was ready to depart.

 And off they  trotted back into the woods.