April 13, 2007—We have walls!

Driving up our driveway, we now see the first floor framing on the barn.

That big black thing you see in the background a little bit to the right of the barn, is our temporary water tank. It is no longer in use since our water system, consisting of an lower well (below the pond) and upper well (behind the temp tank) and a 10,000 gallon storage tank, is hooked up and running.

A good look at the barn slab and the beginning of the first floor framing while the crew is out to lunch.
Here is the south side of the barn. The concrete things on the ground will hold up the deck for the second floor entrance.

The piers and grade-beams for the guest cottage have been poured, but we ran out of void-form so the slab pour has been put off.

Because the soil is so expansive, we need to suspend the slab between the grade-beams with a space underneath so that when the soil gets wet and expands, it doesn't touch the slab. If the slab were poured on the ground, the soil could expand enough to break up the slab. Evidently, this was a huge problem with the original development in Ronhart Park.

The void-forms are these cardboard boxes which are about half the size of a sheet of plywood. They are laid on top of gravel and over them goes a sheet of insulation and the slab is poured on top of it all.

Here is a view of the guest cottage and barn taken from near the big water tank. We are looking due south in this picture.

We take a break to check out the view down the gully to the pond.

The gully runs just east of where our master bathroom will be when the house is built.

If you look closely at the dam, you can see some of the new fence along it.

The big gray oval in the top of the photo is an arena at the horse farm below us.

We drive out of our driveway through the excellent gate.