Back in February I had an itchy trigger finger and felled a bunch of trees to beat the wind. Last weekend I worked from can-see to can't-see to clean it all up. Prized timbers were marked for milling, and Tim Bittorf of Bluffside Services (920-495-8482) is taking the rest away, for wood chips and toilet paper.

It may not look like it, but we're getting close to having Nick's team at Lily Bay Sand & Gravel — the winners of the sitework bids — come to scrape the building site and remove all the stumps. They won't be thrilled, but I'll be onsite for that, grabbing as many unearthed stones as possible for our foundation and patio. Lots more to come soon.

Back in the fall of 2022 we thought we'd settled on a slab-on-grade foundation. It seemed like the easiest and most inline with MVC principles.

After some more research and back-and-forth with our builder, we've pivoted and decided to go with a crawlspace foundation. There are several reasons:

• Mistakes will be made. It will be a lot easier to fix them with a chase under the MVC than with things cast in concrete. This I am sure of.
• We are getting old. An appeal of the slab-on-grade was the notion of simply using the slab as our floor. But standing on concrete sucks, especially as cartilage has become thinner (or non-existent). A forgiving wood floor on top of a forgiving wooden floor truss — combined with Hush Puppies and Dr. Scholl's inserts — will make everyone happier and healthier.
• We can put some mechanicals down there. We're not sure what, exactly, quite yet. But given the MVC's petite 24x36 figure, even an additional square foot is precious.

Here's the drawing for the crawlspace subslab. Once this is in place, 3" of rigid insulation goes on the interior of the foundation walls, and then a 4" slab is poured on top of the 10mm poly (the yellow part).

I haven't posted in a while because we were in France and Spain visiting the surfer son who is "studying" in Barcelona this semester.

One of the highlights was driving way off the beaten track to Bourbon-l'Archambault to visit the ruins of Château de Bourbon-l'Archambault. For just 7€ — and with *zero* other tourists present — we were allowed to climb to the top of 2 of the 3 towers (one is closed due to safety concerns) of a castle built in the 1300s.

On the second floor of the east tower (the one to the right in the picture below), the duke and duchess quarters had an en suite fireplace and an open-air "toilet" where the 💩 landed two stories below, presumably left for some servants to scoop up.

Even more impressive was the builders' water management on the top floor. Without proper drainage this would quickly turn into a rooftop pool — sans DJ — but multiple drains carried the water to extended carved stone gutters (that looked like gargoyles from a distance) to get the water away from the foundation. Fantastique!

Three bids are in.

Turns out, everything is in the same general ballpark, so we'll probably end up going with the contractor who's been giving off the best vibes.

We're still waiting on a couple more. You know who you are.

At this rate, the MVC will ship in 2025.

We've now got two sitework bids, and I've added the second one to the table below. The numbers are pretty close for the most part, except Contractor B is coming in way below on the backfill price. I need to find out if we're all talking about the same thing.

Also, I am going into the stump-grinding business.

The housing market can be hot, and it can be slow. Rates can be high, and they can be low. But one constant remains: most contractors aren't great at answering calls and emails, returning calls and emails, providing estimates, and in general doing what they say they will do. And we haven't even started construction yet.

When the sun dies in 5 billion years, this will still be the typical behavior.

It's been over two weeks since five different contractors looked at our project, and I have only one estimate back. I wanted to post it here to give readers an idea of what we're looking at in order to do all the sitework. As more bids come in🤞I'll add their numbers to the table in the most normalized, apples-apples way I can.

Foundations are *by far* the thing I've spent the most time researching, looking at different assembly drawings, and trying to understand. There are so many different approaches it can start to make your head spin, especially if you don't come from a building background. TBH I'm still not on totally firm ground. (End of foundation-related puns ... for now.)

One constant in my mind has been that bedrock is near, so we should use the foundation Mother Nature has generously provided. It's as good as it gets. There is 4' of soil on top of bedrock at the thickest points. At the MVC site it's more like 2 feet, and at the northwest corner of the volume it's basically exposed bedrock.

The other piece of the puzzle is that we're cladding the structure in a full stone wall, so that has to sit on something hard.

So with the help of our timber framer — who also builds whole houses — here's where we're at right now:

Points to note:

• For the stone wall, I wanted to start it directly on the bedrock, but in the interest of time-to-market we decided to go with a 2' wide concrete wall rebarred into the bedrock. I can't let my time-consuming, amateur stonework block the structure's erection. 🤭
• 2" of foam is shown here, but we're still looking at foamed glass aggregate — specifically Glavel — as an option. We already have loads of foam in the Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) that's giving me anxiety. (Much more on SIPs to come.)
• Adding to the anxiety is the amount of concrete, but given the site, the building plans, the timeline, and its familiarity to most masons, it's a logical route.

Any foundation pros out there, I'd love to get your take: dack@dack.com